Encased - It's essentially an updated version of Fallout 1 or 2 set in a 1970s post-apocalyptic world instead of 1940s. Upon creating a character, already modeled after my sweet-but-very-very-dumb cat, prompts informed me that if you chose a very low intelligence that different dialog options and even gameplay would be available. Challenge accepted. So I set the character's intelligence to 1 and I highly recommend it. Unlike Fallout, pretty much every dialog option takes into account that you are not an intelligent character and you can do many things you would not otherwise be able to.

Duskers - A command line interface space horror game that is significantly better than it sounds. It's difficult to describe other than it's a damn good game. Highly recommended.

Spiritfarer - "Empathy". This is a management game where you usher the spirits of the dead to their final final release. I'm playing this from my daughter's library (usually the game sharing goes the other way!) on her recommendation. It is a heartfelt game, that I am not very far into as of yet, but that I think that I will play to completion. It is visually lovely game with a really sweet concept that is pretty well executed - for at least the first couple of hours, anyways, which is as far as I have made it. I like building and arranging the boat, I like exploring and finding souls to ferry, and the characters are beautiful. This is a solid game.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe - "Recursion". For the most part, I was trying, with this card, to select and play games and then find a place in the card for them to fit. Alas, I cheated myself slightly by looking ahead last week and seeing that "Recursion" was what I needed for a Bingo, and then having a long think about what game would actually have recursion. I have had SPUD in my backlog for a while - since it released - and had barely touched it, with under 15 minutes of play. So this was a very comfortable return to The Stanley Parable, which is one of my favourite games. If you are not familiar with it, then I recommend trying it out; it would certainly be on a top ten list if I was composing favourite video games. It is smart, fun, witty, recursive, and enjoyable. The new stuff form the Ultra Deluxe edition seems pretty good so far, but I am confident that I haven't seen it all.

Pattern - "Precision". After chatting with @Wes last week about one of my selections, they mentioned Precision from Simon Tatham's Puzzles, which is another one, like Slant, that I had not really given any time to at all. I tried it out, and I quite like it, though I have a small problem with the android version of the game. These overgrown hams that I call hands have ginormous fingers, and the squares are very small; the level of precision required makes it mechanically difficult at times. My daily carry pen used to have a stylus end on it, which would have helped, but I have lost the stylus end, rendering it not particularly helpful. Ah well, it is good practice for precise digital manipulation of screens. I've added this to my list of Simon Tatham favourites, and have played at least one of these every day since Wes told me about it.

UpGun - "Sound". My son wanted to get this game to play together. It is a first person shooter that feels very similar to Rounds except... 3D. Each round you acquire more abilities to even the playing field against your opponents. For the first several matches, neither of my kids realized you could hear the other players, and were wondering how I kept turning in time to kill them. This one is fun, free, and we'll certainly return to it.

Tank Team - "Connection". This is another game that my son wanted to play, and is also free. As a team, you control a tank in a Scorched Earth-esque tank battle. However, you have a character inside the tank, and you have to work with your team to operate the tank. It's a cute game, well worth the free. I don't think we'll return to this particularly often, but it was a fun experience.

Ragnarock (VR) - "Endurance". Okay, this is a bit of a stretch, because I don't think it takes too much endurance to play Ragnarock, but my arms did get a bit tired after a while. It's like Beat Saber, except it's drums, and you're on a Viking warship. I found it more difficult than Beat Saber, but not because it felt like it was supposed to be more difficult. I'm a moderately good drummer, but had a lot of trouble with timing things properly. It got better after multiple calibrations, but after a couple of sessions, I just felt myself wanting to do Beat Saber more. I haven't uninstalled, but I don't know if I'll do much more.

Pistol Whip (VR) - "Dimension". This is another action-rhythm game; it's a shooter on rails where you have to identify the bad guys and take them out. You get a bonus for doing so to the rhythm. I liked this one better than Ragnarock, but I had a similar feeling; it just made me want to play Beat Saber. I feel like Beat Saber was just the winner of this particular genre for me, and I havne't played it so much that I'm sick of it yet. I guess when I get to the point that I don't want to play Beat Saber at all, I'll turn to these.

Girls Like Robots - "Belonging". This is a cute little puzzle game where you have to place Girls, Robots, Nerds (and maybe more) on a bus in a configuration where they are happy. Girls like Robots, Girls don't like Nerds, Nerds like edges - now you have to place them in a particular order to maximize happiness. It's a very cute game so far, and I'll probably play it through, since you can do a puzzle in 2 or 3 minutes and there appears to be a lot of them.

• Released: Sept. 18, 2019
• Purchased: Feb. 2, 2021
• Bingo Category: Has Permadeath
• Time Played: 5hrs

Crying Suns has many similar systems to FTL. The ship you’re controlling is being chased through space. There’s a branching-path starchart, where there are limited opportunities for backtracking. If you backtrack, you could get caught out by the enemy and have to face some very difficult opponents. You’re pretty much always moving forward to the next sector. These are all FTL-like.

There are ship upgrades – weapons, hull/armor/shield, fighters/drones -- and they cost scrap,. You also have to watch your fuel; if you run out, that’s game over. Which I believe is permadeath. Like FTL. Haven’t actually tried that out yet.

The place where it differs, however, lies primarily with the battle system. Battles in Crying Suns play like an RTS. Simply, each side sends 1-4 fighting ships – fighters, frigates, drones, or cruisers – from their respective battleships, with the goal of blowing up the opposing battleship.

But that battles aren’t that fun. They seem more like battles of attrition, and once you figure out a good strat – such as using your own battleship weapons against the enemy ship and using your combat ships as battleship defenders – you can just keep doing that every engagement. Managing the combat ships just seems to get in the way. Also seems like it wants to be turn-based. Mainly because you can pause combat, which seems to be encouraged, in order to plan and execute actions. It’s not like a true pause where the UI becomes inaccessible.

Gameloop-wise, it’s explore a system, battle some BSs, deal with random events, maybe do some planet-side exploration to gain scrap or loot, visit stations to buy/repair, and then move on. And then do it again. And again. And again.

It also doesn’t have the same level of pressure or danger of FTL. In FTL, you might have to limp your damaged ship through space, with limited resources, hoping you can avoid fights or coming across a small chance to repair/restock. But in Crying Suns, the battleship gets repaired after every engagement. If a combat ship isn’t wrecked (not fully destroyed, but damaged and partially fixed) once during a battle, they’re auto-repaired to full after. In 5hrs of playing, I’ve yet to feel the pressure of running out of fuel or scrap.

Overall, it’s an OK game. It’s basically an easier, but trying-to-be-more-complex FTL. And I don’t think it does a great job at it. More than anything, it’s repetitive and even boring at times. It's something to play, but it’s not like I’m itching to get to the end.

• Released: March 25, 2024
• Purchased: March 26, 2024
• Bingo Category: Focuses on Exploration
• Time played: 2.3hrs

Between Horizons is a detective game. The player controls a young woman who’s the Chief of Security for this large generation ship of about 1300 colonists. And there appears to be some kind of conspiracy going on. As I’m exploring this ship, I’ve been presented with cases like, “Who attacked the network engineer?” and “Who’s trying to recruit who for this shadowy group onboard?” More importantly, “Why did my dad get killed?” I’m sure all of these will coalesce and be revealed by the end.

I’m only a couple hours in so far, so the main story is just starting to emerge. Can’t speak much about the story quality yet.

Solving the cases requires actually looking at evidence. The only case I’ve solved this far required me to figure out how to interpret characters or shapes. Had to do some simple math to see what numbers a square or line represented. Another piece of evidence has some kind of visual marking that I need to be on the lookout for as I talk to residents on this ship.

My one complaint so far is the control scheme. You can pretty much play the game with left-hand only on a keyboard. But it feels clunky. I find my constantly pressing the wrong key and exiting menus unintentionally or skipping past dialog (luckily there’s a log).

In menu screens and dialog boxes you can use the mouse. But navigating the character around the 2D side-scrolling world can only be done with keyboard. Same with interacting with the environment; no mouse. I wish I could click and she’d move. Hmm, I wonder if controller would be better here, now that I think about that. Anyway, I think I’m complaining because I’m expecting it to be a point-and-click game. And it’s not.

I’ll probably keep playing this. I’m always down for a good detective story and mystery (I’m still playing through the Ace Attorney games). Hopefully it’ll be a satisfying ending.

How can this be on my backlog when it's a 2 month old game? Answer: I backed this on Kickstarter in 2021 because I really liked Moonana's previous game Virgo Versus The Zodiac and by all means I should've been playing this on launch. Well now I've got Dissonance ending A & B after about 20 hours and I can say I like the full experience here too. I finished the Mutable route in Virgo and I plan to play another route at some point before I attempt New Game+ for Keylocker and go for the Resonance endings.

Both games have demos, please do give them a try.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/920320/Virgo_Versus_The_Zodiac/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1325040/Keylocker__Turn_Based_Cyberpunk_Action/

Runs well on steam deck, though I remember running into 2 points with consistent crashes: once at the intermission set between chapter 3 & 4, and once during chapter 4 I believe. Had to continue on my PC to get past those points.

The full title is Keylocker | Turn Based Cyberpunk Action; like its predecessor, it's a JRPG with action commands in a weird setting laden with mythology based off the cosmos, Saturn and its moons in this case. Where Virgo had frontline/backline positioning, color triangle, cooldowns, buff/debuff management, and a strong emphasis on counterattacks, Keylocker has a hex grid for positioning and the electricity bar which acts as the first health bar against electrical attacks and as fuel to amplify the damage/armor of physical moves. There's a lot more gameplay to chew through, but let's go over the basic story.

So the basic plot premise: music is banned on Saturn, it generates electricity which is of course controlled and sold by the reigning, uncaring Satellites. But Bobo... she can sing, she can throw concerts with her band to generate electricity (to sell at a markup with her brother Dealer, but nobody's perfect). This makes her entire existence criminal. On her way out escaping from prison she finds Rocket, an ancient jukebot who can play music, which sows the seeds of rebellion in this tale of Bobo, the rebel, Rocket, the loyal robot, and Dealer, the man who'll do whatever it takes to make sure he and his loved ones have a peaceful life. This marks Resistance, both as a fight against the system, and as electrical resistance from citizens being denied the basic resource they need to live.

The game has 4 classes for Bobo and Rocket to choose from, one to represent each action on the field: Juggernauts for physical attacks directly targeting health, Samurai for temporary armor points to protect health and enable counterattacks, Hackers who siphon electricity with excess damage hitting health, and Sequencers who generate electricity for themselves and their allies along with dealing electrical counterattacks until their next turn. Bobo gains the ability to multi-class at the start of chapter 3 (Dealer is a Hacker and gains the ability to multi-class here as well) while Rocket is able to multi-class a third of the way through chapter 4. I chose Sequencer for Bobo which is apparently the most popular choice according to global steam achievements followed by Samurai; I assume this is some combination of Sequencer being the most fitting for a singer, them being the defensive classes which are easier to work with, and/or simple aesthetics due to Juggernaut and Hacker having bulky diving helmets/TV heads. Multiclassed with Samurai for Bobo to have the ultimate counterattack experience teleporting around with the baseball bat while I had Rocket become a seige sniper with Juggernaut/Hacker and Hacker/Sequencer for Dealer to minmax the electrical stat for him.

Let's go over a few more differences between Virgo and Keylocker:

• Virgo's full party of 3 is assembled quickly by chapter 2 and is the standard (from what I remember). Keylocker has the party being a pair for most of the game due to various story circumstances keeping one person or another out until the last chapter finally allows all 3 of them to be used at the same time.

• On normal difficulty, perfect parries in Keylocker fully negate damage instead of just reducing it, but armor here is completely used up after a single counterattack unlike Virgo (unless investing in one of the Samurai skills which retains 20% armor)

• Virgo has standard RPG levels while Keylocker has the enemies drop keys, in lieu of EXP, which are spent on each character's skill tree(s) to level them up. This led to a much more uneven experience for me since I gave the lion's share to Bobo which made her my hypercarry, but also led to me having to play much more carefully during the segments without her.

• In Virgo, characters could only have 1 type of buff and 1 type of debuff active which led to cute things like curing poison by casting taunt on the character to swap debuffs. In Keylocker, there are Digital Effects which activate the buff instantly, and Analog Effects which are buffs/debuffs that stay on the field tile. This can lead to crazy stuff like say, using a Siege or Massive range weapon to flood the entire field with a debuff which then activates one of Samurai's passives for having a debuff active.

• Using drinks in Keylocker doesn't take up the turn which makes for easy revives.

• Virgo has 4 equipment slots and 4 slots dedicated for counterattack moves. Keylocker has 4 equipment slots and an alternate loadout to swap between freely during battle for different ranges, attacks, or stats.

Something I like about both games is that equipment is never obsolete, all of them fill different niches and are perfectly usable from start to finish. I kept the Old Vintage Disc for Bobo simply because one of its stats was +1 Move which is very nice considering default movement is 1 tile; this movement stacked nicely with the Attorney Cap's +1 movement up until I equipped the L. Def Baseball Bat which let Bobo teleport/swap to whatever tile she wanted on the field, but that's more on the sheer utility and power of the bat.

As for flaws, I would say that there were a few spots I didn't realize I could jump towards or that talking to Save Dinosaur was necessary to advance the story in quite a few locations. I also missed out on the romance system; the only location where I knew I could gift stuff was at the train during the end of chapter 2 and Bobo was otherwise out of luck in romance on my run.

Pretty happy with this overall though.

Just for fun at cramming this game into every slot golf style. Possible and likely spoilers!

1st row

• Humor: Absolutely. All the different interactable objects have unique lines for examining them with tons of humor sprinkled in.
• Connection: Aside from the literal wires forming all the synthetic beings, it's Bobo's music that's forming a connection everywhere she goes to spark rebellion against the current system.
• Synthesis: Doppelgangers are a species of synthetic beings modeled after humans.
• Morality: Are Bobo and Dealer good people? Both of them commit murder, not in the JRPG way but in the raw coldblooded logic way. Dealer would do whatever it takes to secure a peaceful life for Ivy and Bobo, and Bobo is an eat the rich, burn it all down revolutionary.
• Progress: Aside from Bobo inspiring people through music to rise up against the caste system, the game could be considered an evolution of the gameplay found in Virgo vs the Zodiac.

2nd row

• Harmony: Bobo's in a band that adds more members as time goes on, they're harmonizing.
• Love: The 4 loves are seen: familial between Bobo and Dealer, friendship between Bobo and Rocket, the different Satellites being in a romantic relationship that manifests as a gameplay invulnerability mechanic, and the love for all that shifts Bobo's motivation from fame and glory for security into rebelling against the system to grant everyone equality.
• Erosion: Not sure if I'm remembering this fully correctly, but the three decades of rain mentioned in backstory was a(n intentional) breach that more or less caused the liquid layer to rain down and spread the Hydrogen Plague to kill off the remaining humans.
• Causality: As revealed near the end, Bobo's journey was set to happen at one point or another to due it being very planned out by outside forces.
• Trust: The trio all trust each other, but I wish to highlight Dealer who constantly betrays that trust to secure a peaceful life for himself, Ivy, and Bobo, but not Rocket.

3rd row

• Pride: Bobo has male and female romance options. One boss is part of a doomed yuri pairing and another boss is a yaoi pairing fighting in sync.
• Resistance: Bobo has been a rebel and the game is a long journey of her burning down the caste system establishment.
• Wildcard: Bobo and Rocket are able to spec into 1 of 4 classes, and then multi-class during Chapter 3's start and 1/3rd of the way through Chapter 4 respectively.
• Justice: Most of the Satellites Bobo faces are corrupt beings who take delight in abusing all the citizens in their zones. Bobo bringing them down is a clear act of justice.
• Sound: Chapter 3 takes place in a city forcibly choked into silence with Bobo and Rocket being the ones to bring sound back into it again.

4th row

• Fragmentation: This one's the biggest stretch, but all the protagonists could be considered as temporarily being separated from something of theirs. Bobo's memory of what happened to Yu was locked away, Dealer lost his sense of peace until the end of the game (and his arm for a bit), and Rocket lost his memories of his previous owner and later on, his floppy disk.
• Change: Bobo is a force of change, bring both music to the masses and the downfall of the reigning Satellites.
• Choice: The game has 2 ending routes and 2 sub-variants for 4 endings determined by major choices made in the end chapters.
• Community: The residents of the Scrapyard Zone are all tight-knit, especially after they're all slated for execution and forced to flee together.
• Light: The game's 662.62 MB according to Steam.

5th row

• Threshold: Bobo passes the threshold of each zone and never gets to look back.
• Symmetry: Doppelgangers (the species) are made in pairs with them having a Doppelganger (non-identical twin)
• Isolation: There are several points where Bobo, Rocket, or Dealer are separated or lured away and have to fight on their own against the enemy.
• Happiness: Many of the Djinn are happy being enslaved and granting wishes to their owner; maybe half of them express confusion and dismay at Bobo wishing for their freedom as they're aware of what happened to other Djinn who sought individuality.
• Fear: While Dealer is a calm person, he exhibits an irrational hatred of Rocket because of the threat he represents to the calm, peaceful life Dealer wants with Ivy and Bobo. Rocket pokes fun at it being jealously at one point, but him being a jukebox bot is also what caused Bobo to really decide to take a stand against the establishment.