Three cheers for @kfwyre and @wes!

Great event as always, much enjoyed!

Only 8 bingos? That's it? Nobody else? Nobody at all? ;)

This was another great event. I really enjoy taking part, and I think I have to up my write-up game on the games I'm picking. For the one in May, I might try to stick to 5 games, and actually do a more in-depth write-up like some of the other people here did, though I don't think my game analysis is on the level of some of the other great writers here; I tend to really simplify down to "fun for me" and rate it on only that scale.

I am definitely really liking all the updates that have happened to the bingo cards @Wes. I think all the additions have been great, and the overall look and feel of the card is pretty delightful. Great work!

With thanks to @Wes and @kfwyre, and everyone who poured their energy into writeups this month:

This event was really good! I think I rekindled my love of writing about games -- my gratitude to everyone who said nice things about my critiques. I think that playing a game with the intention of eventually writing about it has the potential to really improve your experience with it. If you let yourself be open to a game, make use of downtime to analyze what the game is doing, how you're experiencing its mechanics in relation to its themes, where the plot is going, etc etc, it can really be fruitful. This is true of all art of course but as a kind of integrated multimedia games are complex enough that I think it's actually harder to really get everything out of them, easy to fall into a sort of surface-level engagement. For me, the thing I care about most in games is the text -- the writing, dialogue, plot, structure, optional collectibles even -- and all the other components tend to fall by the wayside. But this month by really focusing on this, idk, critical playing? I think I was able to really enjoy games for reasons other than their writing: the music of Outer Wilds, the resource economy of Prey, the puzzles of Call of the Sea.

Incidentally, there were a few games I played in part this month that I maybe didn't finish, maybe didn't have a lot to say about them, but still got them off my backlog: Ghostwire: Tokyo, which was just too bland to continue after four hours. Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical and Marvel's Mignight Suns, which both opened with dialogue so rough that I immediately had to turn them off (for different reasons: Stray Gods' dialogue reminded me painfully of the dialogue I used to write back when I was nineteen, and Midnight Suns' reminded me painfully of Joss Whedon). KID A MNESIA Exhibition, the free Radiohead art gallery game, which I finished and was great and something that should probably be felt, not written about (convenient, as I can't write well about music). My third attempt at Death Stranding, which I strongly feel I should love, and which nonetheless stalled at the eight hour mark for some reason.

Right now I'm muddling through Outer Wilds's "Echoes of the Eye" DLC. It's too early really to do a full analysis but so far I will say that I'm a bit bummed out by the scope of this thing, how it's all contained to a single planet (technically not a planet; technically there are two) with only one real mechanic -- but not at all bummed out by the unfolding of a new mystery, a new puzzle, a new spooky supra-natural phenomenon to unravel.

All told I cleared fifteen games off the backlog, a sizeable chunk, which feels great, and now I feel like I need to pivot to books -- The Lathe of Heaven and Babel and Kraken remain yet unread!

Another Backlog successfully Burned. Thanks to all who participated!

As always when ending these events, I feel both a sense of accomplishment, and a little worn out. It does take some mental energy to start something new, and that's probably why it's so easy to put these games in the backlog in the first place. But it feels great to finally make some backlog progress, to find some hidden gems in our own libraries, and to do it as part of a larger community event. I hope everyone has been enjoying playing their games and reading others' write-ups as much as I have.

I was blown away by the number of contributions this time around, and learned about tons of interesting new games through your write-ups. Reading about game histories, your own backstories, and other fun tidbits made it all the more interesting.

As always, a huge thanks to @kfwyre for creating the original Backlog Burner event, and for allowing me to be a part of it. Also fantastic work on the new Flow categories which proved to be a hit!

This time around, I set the goal for playing fewer but longer games. I don't think I quite pulled that off, since I had 3-4 full length titles on the shortlist that never got their start. I did make it through at least two with Praey for the Gods and Another Crab's Treasure, though. I also finished a couple shorter titles like Golf Club Nostalgia and Portal with RTX. So, not bad!

I also put more of a focus on multiplayer than I was expecting. I'm still working through Remnant II and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light with others. And though it's not technically multiplayer, I've been streaming Super Mario Eclipse for friends, so it's become a bit of a shared experience.

My final card is the same as from Week 5(ish), but I'll include it here as a final send-off.

You can add me to the Bingo win list, with my apologies for lateness!

I would like to thank @kfwyre and @wes and to all fellow participants. I'm already looking forward to the next Backlog Burner!

For better or worse this was not a month for me to explore new games and engage with difficult concepts but more of a time to mentally escape to places where I didn't need to put a lot of conscious thought into things, just execute.

For an idea of how much Mario Maker I played, I cleared 106 levels in November. Many of them only took a couple of minutes each, but several needed upwards of an hour or more.

Last Epoch is currently satisfying my periodic desire to binge an action RPG with 21 hours put into it over the past four days and I might return to it again later with different classes since there are a couple of alternate routes I haven't taken yet.

Thanks for organizing and hosting again, hopefully next time I'll be in a better position to play a broader variety of things.

Last month’s Backlog Burner had me stumble across a surprisingly varied choice of games, with none of them being unmistakably mediocre or poor. Which is quite the contrast compared to the rather safe and arbitrary selection of my May 2024 bingo card, particularly if you take a look at my what-if bingo card near the end of my reply.

What helped me a lot is having access to many current and past gens consoles, alongside setting my bingo card with Flow categories and having Perplexity to suggest the most appropriate games.
I also selectively checked games with the AI to compare key themes that are directly and indirectly related to what I have on my card.
For example, Perplexity proposed Norse mythology, personal struggle and heroic journey for Jotun: Valhalla Edition. The last theme matches with the Friction category as it brought up navigating challenging environments, defeating powerful mythological beings, and earning respect through skill and perseverance.

The process was a tad trickier than picking whatever game that comes out of my head for each Flux category, but the challenge behind the Flow categories led me to many satisfactory playthroughs. It felt like each title has a clear direction on what they’re trying to accomplish, with mildly varying degree of success.

Looking at how small my amount of played games was, I often found myself wondering why I didn’t further push myself into tackling many more. And in that regard, my event participation was a success.

Good enough to continue (6): ActRaiser, Affordable Space Adventures, Part Time UFO, Pikmin 4, Metroid Dread, Mushihimesama
Still good, but shelved (1): Jotun: Valhalla Edition
Planned, but didn’t reach (18): The Last of Us, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS), Creatures 3, Yo-Kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters, de Blob (Steam), Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (Steam), Zero Zero: Perfect Stop! (Playdate), Pick Pack Pup (Playdate), Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, Bayonetta (Steam), Fez (PS4), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch), Shadow of the Colossus (PS2), The Witness (PS4), Spiritfarer : Farewell Edition (Steam), Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Switch), Fire Emblem: Awakening, Neon White (Steam)

Not a single bingo! My grandma, who was a bingo addict, would be disappointed.

Thanks @kfwyre and @wes for running this! This was a lot of fun and I enjoyed seeing what everyone was playing.

So I chose 20 of 25 max games to play. There were some categories I got that I couldn't fill. Not because of lack of games in the backlog, rather I didn't have something that fit, or was unsure. Like one of mine was about romhacks. I had to look up what a romhack was. I could've swapped the categories out, but figured I'd be true to Bingo: the card you get is the card you get.

Of those, I played 11 games. Which is actually less than I expected, given how much I game. But thinking about it now, I got halfway through my list. Not bad. But in November, I also picked up 2 more games on Steam that I haven't yet played. It never ends! Either way, it was a solid start on the backlog.

There are some I'm still playing or planning to keep playing:

• Signalis (though I haven't played in like two weeks...)
• Yes Your Grace
• Reverse Collapse (though I just started it the other day)
• Between Horizons

I guess Cyberpunk is on that list, but I'm just not feeling that kind of game right now.

The surprising one for me was actually Yes Your Grace. In my review I wasn't sure if I'd continue playing it. But I ended up going back to it the day after I posted the review. I played for several more hours. I was a little hooked. I got through the first "phase" of the game and survived by the skin of my teeth. Now I need to see if I can get past this next phase. Like I said in that review, I'm not usually one for "choose your own adventure," but I'm also trying to expand my gaming horizons. Because sometime I'm pleasantly surprised, such as with Yes Your Grace.

Haven't decided if/when I'm going to play the other 9 games I didn't get to. Obviously I intend to play them at some point; I just don't know if I'll continue the Backlog Burner through this month. Maybe I'll just wait til the May event.

Separately, thanks all who took a peak at my little recordings of games. Hope it helped you see what some of these games are. I meant to do at least a couple more, but then I got lazy. Plus talking for 45-60min straight is a bit difficult. For almost all of them, I was doing these late at night, at like 3-4am. My throat would be hurting afterwards. And being dead tired, I'm sure I was repeating myself or making no sense, lol. Maybe I need to shorten them to like 30min max if I'm just giving a taste of a game.

Thank you @kfwyre and @Wes for hosting, and everyone for joining in!

As a first time participant, I appreciated the addition of Flow style and being able to go off vibes; I think I already do enough research during sales looking at bundles, historical lows, gameplay, total hours, hard drive space/hours ratio, if it's on GOG, if I should also install on steam deck, etc etc that while I totally get the hunt of Flux style, I personally prefer the simplicity of "check concept, boot game". I expect I'll be back for more next time, by which I mean I've already cracked under the Steam Autumn Sale and Jingle Jam, but hey, progress is progress yeah? A little busier than expected for the month, but I was able to devote a weekend afternoon to each game to give them their due and having a steam deck certainly helped for completing Keylocker and Rabi-Ribi during my work downtime.

I passed this time for a couple reasons -- the most relevant of which is that my friends got into Metaphor ReFantazio and I picked it up so we could talk about it... but then I blew past them and couldn't talk to them about it any more. The funniest part though is my backlog is way longer than last event. I've been buying so many Steam games since I got a deck and have been tricking myself into buying games instead of snack store runs. For several months I had averaged buying a new game per day, no clue if that's still the case. And then I got my buddy to join my steam family and now we've broken 1000 shared titles with a lot of really high quality stuff in there.

I have read what y'all have had to say and wishlisted some games based on it, others rocketed up the backlog. I appreciate what y'all write, I find them much more useful than reviews anywhere else. It's also cool since I get an idea of what a given user does or doesn't like, that added context is also helpful. So thank you @kfwyre for running the event and keeping things so organized, thank you @Wes for creating and improving the site, and thank you to everyone that contributed.

Thanks to @kfwyre and @Wes for putting this on. I had fun going through my backlog and trying the games that I had put off playing.

Sadly, I really did not get any other game played this past week, my free time was taken up by MGS V this past week. The surprising games that I did enjoy was Hades and MGS V: The Phantom Pain. The reason that these games were the surprising ones is that they are both from genres of games that I typically find really annoying to play, roguelike and stealth games. Roguelikes because for whatever the reason I simply can not wrap my head around the mechanics, take for example FTL, I really want to enjoy this game, to the point that I had picked it up a couple of times, but I find that I can't find any enjoyment, so I just drop it. As for the stealth games, I really don't have the patience to really stealth it out, like that is required in games like Thief series and for the Dishonor series. But for whatever reason these two really clicked for me. As for my least favorite game(s) would be Thief II: the Metal Age and Party Hard. The reason for Thief II is that there was no tutorial, which makes me wonder if it was meant to be played immediately after finishing the first game, because that one did had a tutorial (minus the fact that I was killed almost immediately by a guard). Party Hard because I had found it to be just meh. I really don't have any other reason to why I didn't enjoy that game. And I really can't explain as to why I found it to be meh.

The outer wilds link just links back to this thread right now!