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May 2025 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion
Week 2 has begun!
Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!
If you did not participate in Week 1 but want to start this week, that's fine!
Reminder: playing bingo is OPTIONAL.
Quick links:
Week 1 Recap
10 participants played 7 bingo cards and moved 23 games out of their backlogs!
At least 6 different platforms were used: Nintendo DS, PC, Playdate, Switch, Wii U, Wonderswan
There were 0 bingo wins.
- 4 people played Flow bingo cards
- 1 person played a Flow Golf bingo card
- 2 people played Flux bingo cards
- 3 people played free choice
Game list:
- Advance Wars: Dual Strike
- beatmania
- The Botanist
- Braid
- Chicory: A Colorful Tale
- Costume Quest
- Cranky Cove
- DREDGE
- The Farmer Was Replaced
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- The Letter
- Life is Feudal
- Lugaru HD
- Match-o-3000
- Ratropolis
- Resident Evil 2
- Roundguard
- Shelter
- Shelter 2
- Suzerain
- Theresia
- Trackminia
- Trauma
Pinging all Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: here's the new topic for the week.
Notification List
@1338
@aphoenix
@Aran
@CannibalisticApple
@d32
@deathinactthree
@Durinthal
@Eidolon
@J-Chiptunator
@nullbuilt
@SingedFrostLantern
@sparksbet
@Pistos
@Wes
@WiseassWolfOfYoitsu
If you would like to be removed from/added to the list, let me know either here or by PM.
Day 7...
Capitalism, Ho! Tonight's game is Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale. I purchased it Nov 25, 2010 as part of Steam's "Indie Story Pack" and I believe it originally came out in 2008, making it nearly as old as Lugaru.
In some ways it feels like I've played this game before. The core "run a store where you decorate and place items then help customers Buy/Sell/Pick Something For Me" gameplay is nearly identical to that in recent indie game Amber Isle for instance. It feels sorta like playing Harvest Moon after many years of Stardew Valley.
I played until I got past the first loan payment. I had a day to spare on getting enough money and then I bought something expensive and got multiple customers wanting to sell, leaving me super close to not being able to pay the day-of, but luckily I was able to sell two beef bowls and came out well on top. I got past that and met my rival hiding underneath an amazon box (like literally the box had the curved arrow on it - it felt almost anachronistic). I didn't get a chance to send off on an adventurer's guild quest but I met the first adventurer. I'm really curious to see how that mechanic works.
The ticking clock aspect feels a bit dated (thinking of e.g. fallout 1) but it might just be a more popular mechanic in Japanese games (thinking of Metaphor/Persona). My only other major complaint is the fact that the bartering screen is completely fucking identical whether you're selling or buying! The only way to distinguish which you're doing is the sometimes vague/confusing dialogue before the bartering screen pops up. I lost like a grand buying a beef bowl I thought I was selling :(
This game is wonderful and aged decently well despite the nearly 20 year old graphics and screen resolution. Once I figured out how to remap the keyboard bindings to something usable (my keyboard is 70% so no arrow keys, which is the default), I was able to launch it without issue. The writing is silly in a way that fits the style and setting well. The tutorials are a bit excessive, but that's nice after so many games where they're totally lacking. The art is nice and timeless so it still looks good even with 20 year old tech and a resolution a 1/16th my total screen size.
Definitely going to revisit this game.
Oh hey, I have this too! I played a bit during last May's backlog burner on my Steam Deck (which can launch it despite being listed as unsupported, it's just finnicky to set up), but unfortunately, the background music plays once on Steam Deck and then goes silent until you move to a new setting. And that silence drove me crazy.
That said, I could tell I'd enjoy it from the little bit I played. Since we're moving tomorrow my Windows computer will be in a much more accessible location though, so maybe I'll give it another go on that later this month!
I'm always listening to a podcast or audiobook when I play games (unless it's super story heavy like BG3) so I probably wouldn't have noticed even if it had impacted me. But ya, definitely think it's worth it. Though I did read one review on the store page that mentioned something about an upcoming HD version in the works
Day 8...
What comes in many forms, is last place twice-over at its core, and is the core mechanic of the game I played tonight? That's right: puzzles!
I played Puzzle Agent, a game I bought in the same Steam Indie Story Pack as yesterday's game when the game was actually only several months old. Strangely, this is a Telltale game, I guess from before they found their niche of decision and narrative heavy games. In this you play as an agent in the FBI's puzzle division investigating a presidential eraser factory on the behest of an astronaut... or something. Really the story doesn't matter, you just click around to get between puzzles.
The puzzles themselves are... interesting. One of the early ones is literally the word "nine" as the puzzle and the answer is "9." One has you grouping things in a rectangle (similar to one of the puzzles from Simon Tatham's puzzle collection). One was essentially a test of "mathematical reasoning." Another was a "which of these shapes matches the pattern." So it's a good mix of types of puzzles. I hit a couple I disagree with because they rely on unstated or illogical assumptions, which is pretty typical for any sufficiently sized collection of puzzles. Some of the controls are a bit obnoxious as they presumably didn't want to spend a huge amount of time getting every single one-off puzzle's controls just right.
Didn't hit any bugs or pain points despite the age! It launched fine and even had a resolution option matching my monitor's native resolution (I stuck with 1920x1080 since obviously it didn't have a UI scaling option).
Will I play it again? That's a puzzle I haven't solved yet. Maybe if I'm feeling intellectually bored one day.
I said it last week, but I’m loving reading your writeups. A lot of your picks are standout midweight indie games of yesteryear, like this and Shelter. They weren’t the ones that made the biggest splashes (like Braid, which you also played), but they each had their own little moment in the sun. Recettear was actually a longstanding meme on r/gamedeals which was probably why I ended up purchasing it and playing it myself back in the day. (editor’s note: see editor’s note)
Puzzle Agent was one of the first games I played on Steam, and I remember enjoying it. It felt like a playable version of Highlights — a puzzle magazine I used to like as a kid. I also played the second one but remember less about it. I seem to recall liking the first a lot more. Not sure if that’s because it was better or because I was older and the formula had worn more thin by the time I got around to the sequel.
Editor’s Note from the Editor: I now remember. It wasn’t the meme! My boyfriend at the time (now upgraded to husband) started playing it and got me into it.
Day 9...
Tonight I played two... well, I'm not sure if "games" is the right term... let's go with "interactive experiences."
Several years ago I supported the kickstarter for the original Oculus Rift, which got me the developer kit version in the black case and, a few years later, the original consumer version. As a result I have a couple "waves" of VR games in my library such as when Steam first added support and when I moved into a new place and had a new setup. Now, it's been several years since I last put on the headset and I'm sure my CV1 pales in comparison to the newer option, so most of my VR only games aren't real candidates for this backlog burner. However I found one item that added in support for non-VR some years back so I decided to give it a try.
I purchased Kismet on Jun 25, 2017, which is rather shocking as it's a mere 2 weeks after I bought factorio (which is now my most played game at 2,100 hours -- granted several of those were from idling my pocket-crafting overnight). Kismet is, I guess, an astrology and tarot simulator. You're sitting at a table across from fortune teller and have three options: draw three tarot cards, get a daily horoscope based on date of birth, or play a game.
My tarot card reading didn't feel very applicable to the question I had in my head and most notably ended with my future card being "the hanged man."
My horoscope gave my personality based on my sign (which is the exact opposite of my real personality) and then my daily fortune said I should sit down and plan my life starting with what I want to accomplish by the time I die and work backwards.
The "game" in Kismet is a round of Ur that's made all the harder by the default camera position being at a distant angle of the board (if only I had VR so I could lean forward). You only play with 3 pieces so it's pretty quick. I won the one round I played.
I also discovered Kismet has a bug where if you open the "gallery" you can never leave. It's apparently been a bug in the non-VR mode for at least 4 years.
Overall... I enjoyed learning about Ur from this game but Astrology and Tarot aren't my thing (especially not RNG versions). I don't see more Kismet in my future.
After spending only 20 minutes on the above, I had plenty of opportunity for something else so I had a choice... a Choice of Robots.
This is less a game, more a "chose your own adventure" with some extra numeric attributes that increase/decrease based on decisions and gate what you can do at certain points.
The overall story takes place in a near-future with scifi sapient robots. I did one play-through and in it I decided to make Military my dumpstat and max out on Empathy. So my choices were very hippy-dippy. Here's the summary of my playthrough the game provides:
Summary
Summary of Completed Chapters
Chapter 1
On the day you first built Linux, you awoke from a dream about a robot companion to head to the lab. Your graduate school advisor pressured you to make Linux more acceptable to the military. After some back and forth, you ended up making a wooden winged robot with a humanlike head and humanoid hands.
You then met up with Josh, your startup CEO friend, to discuss business.You agreed to help his company make robot stuffed animals.
Chapter 2
The next day, you hooked up Linux's biodiesel engine and tried activating rhim. and chatting with Mom.
As months passed, you became busy teaching Linux about the world through high school textbooks and taking rhim to the park. Your funding from U.S. Robots kept you in Professor Ziegler's good graces during this time.
In time, Mark Ali, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, heard about Linux and asked for an interview. You refused, but suspected Mark might try to run his story anyway.
Chapter 3
Mark wrote an article that was generally negative about you and Linux. When Professor Ziegler found out about the article, he was very displeased, but decided that the most effective way to get you out of his hair was to let you graduate.
Mark's article also attracted the attention of one "robotObsession1987," known in real life as Tammy Cooper.
You found yourself attracted to Tammy, despite or maybe because of the fact that she was kind of a mess.
A month or so later, you received your doctorate. Shortly thereafter, your father passed away. You resolved at his funeral to be remembered not only for your intellect, but for your kindness as well.
Having no interest in the world of business, you decided to live a Bohemian life in which you could concentrate on improving your craft.
Chapter 4
Unemployment seemed to be common in the United States, and it seemed people tended to blame either robots or China. Riding on both of these sentiments, Jacqueline Irons won the presidency. After President Irons enacted a series of protectionist tariffs to keep out Chinese robots, Sino-American relations steadily worsened.
The tensions between the United States and China came to a head with the assassination of the Chinese Prime Minister in San Francisco. War followed shortly thereafter.
Chapter 5
You were uninterested in contributing to the war effort in any way.
Tammy was worried that she was being targeted by the government's anti-spy measures, and asked you to help her. So you did, and found that Tammy wasn't really wanted for anything after all.
An agent came to your place to try to get you to lure Elly there, because she was suspected of being a spy. Elly was captured and incarcerated as a result.
A man identifying himself as "Mr. Sun" hacked his way into one of your robots to ask you to defect. You did not.
You found out through Mark that Juliet died while performing field tests of Linux V, Professor Ziegler's copy of your robot.
In the end, America muddled its way through the war relatively unscathed. Tired of seeing robots used for violent ends, you decided to create a truly beautiful robot.
Chapter 6B
You created a humanoid companion robot named Linux Jr, but you were fairly bad about allowing her to do anything fun. It seemed Linux Jr was interested romantically in you. When Linux and Linux Jr were attacked in the street, your robots were badly damaged. You pressed charges and dissuaded Tammy from any further attacks.
Chapter 7
In 2049, you went to Surprise, Arizona to handle your mother's estate, since she had passed away recently. On returning to San Francisco, you had a brief stroke, followed by a vision of a robot companion -- the same one you saw thirty years before. In the hospital, the doctor told you you had Algernon's Disease, a rare disease that increased your intelligence, but came at the price of increasing seizures, comas, and possibly, death.
You chose to undergo surgery to remove the damaged tissue in your brain. You survived the surgery, thanks to your own robot surgical technology. In 2054, you officiated a robot-human wedding in Massachusetts, optimistic about the future of human-robot relations.
There's a couple interesting things in that summary:
During the game itself I noticed a couple anachronisms. For instance since I avoided the military I never met a certain character but I still received an option to contact him for help later. And I was credited with professional achievements I never did because I was unemployed most of my life. When you consider the exponentially many combinations of choices there are in the game, I can't really blame them for having a few anachronisms slip through the cracks.
One funny thing is that when you finish the story it gives you a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey and asks for your email to join their mailing list about new stories.
But it's interesting playing this game a decade later given all the LLM and robotics advancements in recent years. Nowadays you'd use ChatGPT to adjust the story section and prompts each turn based on those past decisions... and a game about sapient robots would be just the type of story for that.
Overall this was an amusing way to spend 80 minutes or so. I might do one more play-through where I choose the exact opposite choices and go super militant and violent and join the war. Beyond that, I don't see myself revisiting it as the choices only add so much variety and the writing itself isn't anything special.
Day 10...
Today was a bit scattered. I started out playing Revenge of the Titans. It's a 2D tower defense game I got Aug 9, 2011, probably through Humble Bundle. It has a plentiful upgrade menu and a few game modes as well as a rather unique UI. It plays like a fairly generic tower defense game, at least the little bit I played. Each round in campaign mode is quite fast and you start over each round rather than building up on the same map for several rounds. I don't really have much problem with it but I just honestly wasn't feeling it.
I tried playing Ricochet, which I feel like I have in fact played before but it might have been before Steam started tracking play time. Ricochet is of course one of Valve's earliest games, dating back to 2000. I got Ricochet through the Counter-Strike 1 Anthology, which was my second ever purchase on steam (my first was Audiosurf and my 0th purchase was the Orange Box, which I bought in person at a Gamestop (or maybe it was still EB) but of course introduced me to Steam). Anyways, nobody else was online so I couldn't really play. I jumped around for a bit by myself and looked up how to add bots but couldn't be arsed.
Finally I switched over to Puzzler World 2. I purchased this and Puzzle World 1 on Nov 23, 2011 and I put a whole 0.1 hours into the first one previously. Despite the name, this game is less puzzles and more an interactive off-brand activity book. It has word search, crosswords, color the picture, miniature sudoku, and some weirder ones I didn't really understand as the instructions were quite poor. It was apparently originally built for DS and ported to PC, which explains the weird quasi-touch interface. The game was made by a British company, which I discovered due to some difficult crossword hints like the one about a British sex toy retailer I had never heard of before (Ann Summers). When you beat a "puzzle" you then "get to" do a time-limited actual puzzle like solving a word jumble. If you beat that then you get to spin a wheel and earn "hint tokens" to use for hints. I got through several puzzles, the only one I enjoyed was one where you connect two same-value numbers in grid with a path whose length is that same value. So two 3s get connected by a line of length 3. The numbers have a color associated and in the end it paints a picture. It's the only one that felt both puzzly and proper (unlike the 6x6 sudoku).
Don't see myself revisiting any of these.
Day 11...
I decided to launch up Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic after seeing @kaffo talk about it in the "What games have you been playing" thread.
I bought this just under a year ago in June so it's one of the more recent games I've done so far this burner. It's a USSR themed city builder so of course very similar to Skylines and other Sim city themed builders. I mostly just played through the first several parts of the campaign tutorial so my city amounts to several dreary looking apartment buildings, some shops, sports fields, and a farm. Overall this seems like a pretty good builder. The most frustrating thing is it seems impossible to build on a grid unless there's some option or keyboard shortcut I missed. That makes some sense when you consider it puts less emphasis on things being car-centric and snapping to roads. Instead rails, roads, walkways, are all equally first class citizens and the simcity style zoning is replaced by manually plopping every single building. That gives you a lot more control for good and bad.
There's clearly a lot I couldn't get to touching in just an hour or two. I'd like to spend more time playing it properly but the UI has a lot of small elements. I was squinting the whole time playing it on my TV even with the UI elements scaled to max size. When I was playing BG3 I hit this issue and had to rely on steam's remote play to stream from my desktop in the living room to my laptop at my desk. But I don't know if I like this game enough to jump through those hoops so it might go back on the backlog.
Honestly I think it's a niche game, you gotta be really into city planning and logistics and enjoy this one. I'm finding it hard to put time into right now myself because there's just other games which are more appealing, but I'm going to go back to it when it want a good slow game and want a twitch stream on the second monitor or something.
For future reference by the way, there is a grid on F4 but it's pretty lame. It's very very small and sits at a weird angle so it's useful for some stuff, but not for a lot of building. And some tools (like the copy past tool) just don't work at all with it.
Day 12...
When I wonder how my Steam library got so huge, I only need to look back on days like Jul 22nd, 2012 when I bought 42 games in one transaction for a total of $65. One of those games was Bob Came In Pieces, which I finally played.
Bob Came in Pieces is a physics game where you control a little space craft and fly it through various puzzley obstacles to get through a level. You can make tweaks to your spaceship and attach various structural elements and move where thrusters and other attachments are positioned. So while you start with just up, left, and right movement you can later have thrusters going down or up-left or have poking sticks and suction cups. It's a pretty good game, it reminds me of a flash game with a similar control scheme but the spaceship in that was super fragile and the aim of the game was to be super ginger. This game is quite the opposite; the spaceship is immune to damage and you sometimes have to recklessly fling the ship at that things to solve puzzles.
It aged pretty well graphically and even scales up to my screen's full 4k resolution. Only weirdness I hit is that you need to hit alt-enter to go fullscreen as the toggle on the option screen is broken.
The game can get a bit frustrating though. You frequently have to rebuild the ship to get past one roadblock and then immediately rebuild it again 2 seconds later. It'd be better if one build could be used for a few puzzles in a row. And what really got me was how easy it is for your ship to become stuck in place with no recourse but restarting the level. It'd be much better if you could self-destruct and go back to the last build pad instead of the start of the level. But as it is, you have to go back and redo like 3 puzzles you've already figured out because you actually got jammed against a rock just wrong. And since it's a physics game with intentionally finnicky controls, it's not like solving it once makes it that much easier to do a second time.
It's a maybe if I'll play more. It's a game I think I would have liked more had I played it like 15 years ago when it was made but I could see myself getting in a mood for it.
Day 13...
Today was a game from an IndieGala bundle I got in March 2012: "Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes" though the most grotesque part is certainly the camera. This game is more-or-less an indie cRPG made by people who like both western and Japanese RPGs. There's a core there that feels like it could have been good. The combat is fairly simplified and has a slightly more actiony feel in the combat controls while still being very much turn-based. It is from 2010 and I'm torn on whether it did not age well or whether it was always this rough.
Overall, not going to revisit and don't think I would have cared for it even if I had played it when I first got it.
The Old:
When you launch the game you get one of those old-school launcher and config tools. Except this one is now utterly and totally FUBAR. It seems they decided to run it as a webpage and, I'm not sure if the built-in renderer is way behind the webpage or it's a matter of modern Window's security changes or what, but you get dozens of javascript execution errors you have to click through before you can launch the game. You could forgive that for just being such an old game if not for the fact that the game is still for sale on Steam.
I guess this game was before widescreen monitors became popular because when I played it most of the UI was horizontally distorted as if they designed it to look right on 4:3 and then set width to 100%. This game is quite dialogue heavy and the main UI element affected by this is the dialogue box along the bottom of the screen, making it really painful to read.
The bad
The game aspires to parody but it fell flat for me and instead felt like an earnest reproduction of the worst tropes. The attempts at humor just did not work for me and I highly doubt that gets better even if I were to play it all the way through.
The evil
Once you get past the poor ageing, the really painful part of this game is the controls and camera. It's hard to explain exactly why without experiencing it, but it feels like they tried too many things without spending nearly enough time testing that it feels right. For an indie cRPG like this they should just have click controls, not tried to support click controls and WASD and a grid system and a freeform camera and smoothed auto-camera w/ framing offsets. The net effect of these elements, as well as the lack of clear transition between battle and non-battle, feels disorienting.
Reminds me a bit of the King's Bounty franchise, though less-positively reviewed. For good reason, perhaps.
To your previous one, I played and enjoyed Bob Came in Pieces when it came out. I always thought fondly of it, and it now reminds me of the early days on Steam (Audiosurf, World of Goo, et al). I was actually surprised that the reviews were as poor as they are, as I thought it was a fun and creative little game. Maybe I never got far enough to get to the tedious rebuilding stage.
I do like Bob, now that the annoyance is worn down I feel more inclined to try it again.
Rebuilding only started to bother me after getting stuck and needing to restart the same level multiple times. And it was a level where you need to build long arms and counterbalance. I suppose I could have saved/restored the design, but at the time I first built it I wasn't expecting to need to restart it.
You are really putting the burn in Backlog Burner! The pace of your posts is IMPRESSIVE. I’m loving reading your writeups and seeing which game you’ll pick next.
Aw shucks
I started Ricochet up mostly as a joke a few years ago to play with a buddy. As we messed around, more players started joining our server. Before long, we had a full lobby going and it was actually a blast. It was kind of surreal playing this old meme of a game and actually enjoying it.
I used to joke about Ricochet and how Valve should devote their full efforts to working on a sequel. Now... I kind of want to see it.
I can't believe Tammy would betray Linux Jr. like that. Does robo-jealousy know no bounds?
I have to admit, going off the screenshots, I was a little turned off by the blinding white webpage design. But the reviews are super positive, and it does look like there's a surprising amount of variation, even just going off the the achievements. It appears most players actually had Mark write a positive article (maybe should've accepted that interview).
I really applaud how many of these reviews you're cranking out. You're making a serious dent in that backlog. Nice work!
I did find myself needing to blink repeatedly to be able to make out my wall clock after staring at the story a while.
Embarrassingly I've only about broken even so far due to buying a mega-bundle last week (they were only $2 each and there's a couple I might even like!)
Abundance✅ Cranky Cove
Emergence✅ Shining Gadget
Curiosity✅ Simple Pinball & Mage's Tower
Friction✅ Trackminia
Color✅ Match-o-3000
Increment✅ Core Fault
Brief✅ The Botanist
I was making good time progressing through different Playdate games, only to hit a wall with Match-o-3000 which is unfairly addictive. I'm going to force myself to put it aside so I can try other games. Finding a great game is normally wonderful, but it's a big inhibitor for the Backlog Burner! (Also, despite my clear resolve to play other games, I have no doubt that I'll come back to it here and there for a run or two. It's got its teeth in me.)
My Playdate grip and dial also arrived today. Those, combined with Mirror, pretty much get rid of my main complaints about the device and make it much more comfortable to play. It's great. I'm starting to fall in love with it, feeling about it the way I felt about the Dreamcast way back in the day (I'm a sucker for an underappreciated underdog).
I'm glad that I'm spending this month diving into it. My growing affinity also spurred me to pre-order Playdate's Season 2, which starts releasing at the end of the month, so it looks like I'm going to continue playing it through June as well. Honestly, with how much I'm liking it and how much more comfortable my setup is for playing it now, I can see it ending up in my gaming rotation for good. It'll never get as much time from me as my Steam Deck, but it'll almost certainly get more than I had previously been using it (which is to say: not at all).
Recommendation Dog - ★ Wildcard
First things first, check out my updated Playdate. Grip, dial, and light, all in one easy and convenient and significantly less pocketable package!
Also pictured: my dog, except he’s underneath his favorite donut blanket, so you can’t actually see him. Yes I put my Playdate on him to take a picture. Yes he’s okay with it because it feels like I’m petting him through the blanket (which, in my defense, I also do all the time — he’s not just a shelf!). He was being a Sleepy Dog while I was being a Recommendation one.
Anyway, the game pictured isn’t Recommendation Dog (it’s Match-o-3000 — have I mentioned that enough lately?) but that’s because Recommendation Dog would be hard to take a picture of because of it’s a game of near-constant time pressure.
You’re a dog that works at a temp agency (natch), and you have a Rolodex of profiles of temp workers. Each one has a name, picture, profession, and different scores for things like Reliability and Charisma.
Someone will enter your temp agency and ask for a candidate that is, say, FAST. As soon as they ask, a timer starts ticking down. You have to dial through your Rolodex looking for a person that has a high speed score and recommend them before the person gets mad and leaves. Complete eight successful matches, and you advance to the next round. Get three wrong matches or timeouts, and you lose.
Of course, the matches aren’t all as simple as someone FAST. You’ll get different qualifiers, sometimes based on their stats, sometimes on their profession, often on both. They might ask for a HIGH QUALITY SPEEDY ARTIST or SOMEONE WHO IS GOOD AT MAKING FRIENDS (that is, high charisma). Also, as you advance levels, new people get added to the Rolodex, meaning you have more people that you have to sift through (but the same amount of time).
It seems the way to succeed in the game is to roughly memorize your cast of profiles, so that you can access the one you need quickly. In the early rounds there are fewer candidates, so it’s not that hard to find someone who fits the request, but in later levels you won’t have time to sift through everybody and need to already have someone in mind. Between rounds the game actually gives you time to study the profiles so that you can commit them to memory before diving in (a point which I shouldn’t reveal because it clearly overrides my excuse for not taking a picture of this game — is it because I wanted a picture to tacitly show off how well I was doing in Match-o-3000? Maybe. Also have I mentioned Match-o-3000 enough lately?)
I played this for a few rounds, enjoyed it for what it was, and then put it down. I don’t feel compelled to chase a higher score in the game, but I’m glad I tried it out. It’s a cool idea with good execution, but the time pressure and demands on working memory aren’t super enjoyable to me.
I will say that this was, unintentionally, the perfect game to inaugurate my new Playdate setup, as the dial in place of the crank is PERFECT for a Rolodex game. I’ve been taking that off and putting it on depending on the game, since some genuinely do work better with it as a crank than a knob, but this one is definitely a knob game.
I struggled with where to put this on my board. I honestly don’t feel like it’s a solid fit for any of the categories, but I also don’t want to use up my wildcard this early in the event (even though it does bring me very close to my first bingo!). I’m putting it there for now, but I might end up re-slotting it if something else uncategorizable comes up. One of the fun things about what I’m doing right now is I’m playing all of these games blind, with next-to-no foreknowledge on them since I bought most of them a year ago (or more).
Except for Match-o-3000, which came out recently and which I only just bought. By the way, have I mentioned that game lately?
Also, on another positive note, the main menu of Recommendation Dog has a
Barkoption that lets you, the dog, bark. Great feature. Other games: take note.Flipping through a virtual rolodex actually sounds like a perfect use for the new dial. I know they're a bit anachronistic now, but I do miss using some of these old tactile devices. Hole punches for reward cards. Credit card imprinters in stores. And rotary phones! They were considered old even when I was young, but I really liked rotary phones.
Anyway, if you're looking to reclaim your wildcard, it sounds like this game might also work well for Time or Tense. At least, the time pressure would immediately make me tense.
Also, I'm really happy that you were once again able to be the dog. Now all you need is to find an "AI Companion" game and the prophecy will be complete.
I thought time as well, and maybe style for both the bark option on the menu and being a rolodex style game. There also seems to be some conflict about playing this over the Machbox 20 game.
Core Fault - Increment
This is the first game of the Burner that I'm lukewarm on.
Core Fault is a Vampire Survivors-inspired game for the playdate, which I was very excited for because I love the survivorslike/bullet hell genre.
You're a robot with three weapon slots, and you deploy into a mine, selecting your starting weapon. In the cave are monsters and ore. In true survivorslike style, your attacks are automated. You also automatically move forward, so the only control you have is your direction, which you control with the crank (or, in my case, the knob I put on it).
Defeating enemies gives you XP. Mining ore gives you resources for persistent upgrades. Fill up the XP bar on the side, and you can descend a level of the mine. This takes you down to a level that has more ore (greater rewards) but also more/harder enemies (more risk). Each time you descend you also get to choose an upgrade, ranging from additional weapons to passive upgrades (e.g. health, piercing shots, etc.).
Why
Increment? Because the game is all about incrementing things. Incrementing your ore counter so you can buy upgrades. Incrementing the level of those upgrades. Incrementing your level in the mine.There's also a ten minute timer. I don't yet know if you're supposed to make it down to a certain level within the ten minutes, or if it's simply an endless progression and you're supposed to see how far you can go.
The game has good bones. It feels good to play, and the progression mechanics are all there.
Unfortunately, it falls pretty flat for me.
The primary issue is one of balance.
There is one weapon that is far better than the others, for example. This in and of itself wouldn't be too bad, but there's also an item you get that spawns ore for you. Great right? More resources!
The problem with this item is that the rate at which is spawns ore is SO fast that it's completely overrides getting ore from the levels themselves. In fact, the optimal way to play is to get the item, and then simply STOP advancing levels and just farm the ore it generates.
Does this break the game? Yes, but also no.
See, the resources you need to advance seem to be calibrated around this. It might take you 50 ore to upgrade something, which might take you multiple runs to get if you play normally. With the ore-generator item, however, you can get it easily and so much faster. So, it feels like the game IS intending you to use that item (it would be way more grindy without it), but also using that item means ignoring the game's intended structure and progress.
It's odd.
Also, separately, the game doesn't quite follow the "game-breaking" builds path that other survivorslikes do. Your weapons get more powerful, but it doesn't have the satisfying cascading powercreep that you get in other games in the genre. It almost feels like a tech demo for a survivorslike game, where someone built the systems but never fully fleshed them out or polished them to perfection.
I haven't fully finished the game yet, but I'm almost done maxing out all of the upgrades, after which I'll try to see if there's a "bottom" of the mine that I can hit.
I feel a little bad being harsh on this game, especially because I know Playdate games are labors of love from indie devs. I don't dislike the game, and I have enjoyed playing it -- it's more that I feel that with a few tweaks to its design that it could really shine.
Shining Gadget - Emergence
I felt bad for being lukewarm on the last game, so I get to feel really bad about this one because I actually do dislike it.
Shining Gadget and its sibling game Shadow Gadget (which I haven't played) are creature-collector games clearly inspired by Pokemon (right down to having two concurrent releases of slightly different games).
You'll encounter a ghost. On the top right of the screen you'll see a cursor and a circle. Tilt the Playdate to navigate the cursor to the circle, then crank. The circle will get smaller and then eventually change locations, so you'll have to move the cursor and crank again. Across the top of the screen is a bar letting you know where you stand between capturing the ghost and having it escape. Be too slow with your cursoring and cranking and you'll lose the ghost.
When you catch a ghost, you get an image of it, a summary, a score of your capture, and it goes into your collection. There are 140 (not 151) different ghosts to capture.
After you capture a ghost, you're then shown a "Ghost Signal Strength" counter that starts at 0%. You have to get it back up to 100% before you a new ghost
emergesand you can capture it. You have four methods of incrementing the counter: cranking, speaking into the microphone, walking (IRL), or just letting time pass (it will advance even if you're not in the game).For my first few captures, I tried to manually build up the strength percentage but found myself aimlessly cranking for no reason, just watching the number go up quite slowly (it takes probably 5-10 rotations to move it one percentage point). I didn't try the "walking" method because I don't really take my Playdate anywhere, but I do like that idea -- similar to hatching eggs in Pokemon Go.
Instead, I've simply been letting time do its thing and going into the game whenever I pick up my Playdate or change games, because I know a capture will be ready for me.
I thought I would eventually unlock more to the game, -- letting the monsters battle, or an overworld, or crafting, or breeding, or upgrading, or taking care of them like they're Tamagotchis, etc. Turns out that crank-to-capture is all there is. Get a ghost and fill in its dex entry -- rinse and repeat 140 times (or likely more, since I'm assuming you can get repeats). The only thing I haven't done is use the game's "Wonder Trade"-style option, which I'm assuming exists because there are only certain ghosts available in the separate releases of the game (Pokemon-style), and this lets you share them between the two games (this is pure supposition on my part though).
There's just not a lot of substance to the game. And honestly, the little that's there is a little uncomfortable. The tilt controls don't feel very fluid or accurate. I know they could be, and that it's not a fault of the hardware, because I've also been playing Maze which exclusively uses tilt controls that feel excellent. I think I would be a lot more lenient with it if the game were a lot less expensive, but at $13 USD it's one of the priciest Playdate games out there.
This is my first full-on disappointment of the Backlog Burner.
It sounds like this one might have the bones of a deeper game, but just didn't get the needed gameplay systems in place to justify all the cranking and collecting. If a Pokemon game consisted of nothing but catching (ie. finding the magical rhythm of pressing A and B in sequence that totally helped), that would probably not be a very interesting title, either.
Looking at the screenshots, while this one feels quite stylistic (especially the ghost in the 3D-looking web), the flashing lights are also a big turn off for me. So I think I'm content to have read about this one rather than played it myself.
Also, I did not know the Playdate had an accelerometer. With the crank as a launcher, and the ability to physically tilt, I'm starting to see this as the perfect pocket Pinball machine.
Simple Pinball and Mage's Tower - Curiosity
Your comment made me
curiousto see if there were any pinball games out for the Playdate. I initially found Devils on the Moon, but that's not out yet. I then found three more games: Simple Pinball, Mage's Tower, and Slingshot Pinball. The first two were free, while the third costs $2. I'm not opposed to paying $2 for a game, but it does feel wrong to buy new games for the Playdate when I'm specifically trying to play through my Playdate backlog.So, I went with the free ones (which somehow feels different than buying new games, despite the fact that it isn’t at all!). I downloaded them, and then, instead of playing them immediately, I went to play something else instead so that they could legally be considered part of my "Backlog." 😂
Before I talk about these, let me talk about another thing that is very cool about the Playdate: over-the-air sideloading.
While there's the official Playdate Catalog for buying games, devs can also sell games themselves directly. There are over 1200 games and apps for the Playdate over on itch.io. You download a game/app as a .pdx.zip file, then upload it to the Sideload page in your Playdate account. It'll then be downloadable on your device. No need to plug in any cords (though that's much less of a hassle for me now that I use Mirror all the time). Also, the games show up just like any other games on your list, so they're not treated as "second-class citizens" on the device or anything -- they fit right in!
Both Simple Pinball and Mage's Tower are incomplete prototypes. I put them together simply because neither one alone felt substantial enough to fill an entire square.
What you see on the itch.io page for Simple Pinball is what you get. There's a single screen, with no scrolling. You get three balls, and +20 points every time your ball hits one of the circular bumpers. Keep the ball hitting them to get a high score.
Mage's Tower has a larger board that scrolls vertically, with a more traditional pinball layout. It has a score system, but it's unclear what gives you points. You also have unlimited balls, so you can just keep playing indefinitely.
Unfortunately, neither of them uses the crank for launching or the accelerometer for nudging/tilting the table. Simple Pinball uses the A/B buttons for left and right bumpers (which is a little uncomfortable), where as Mage's Tower uses left on the d-pad and the B button for the bumpers (which is much more comfortable).
Simple Pinball has very bouncy physics. It felt like playing pinball with a rubber ball, instead of a metal one. Mage's Tower had much more traditional pinball physics, but its layout felt a little less optimized. I'm not a great pinball player or anything, but I did 100% Yoku's Island Express, so I at least know a little bit about shot positioning. Some of the areas on the table felt hard to get to or line up. Furthermore, my first shot of the game came to a complete stop on top of one of the table features. With no way to nudge the table, I was softlocked and had to restart.
Despite the rough edges, I honestly liked playing both of them for the short time that I did. They reminded me less of full-fledged video games and more of those standalone electronic pocket games I used to have back in the 90s -- the kind of thing I could kill time with on a plane or waiting in a doctor's office.
Oh man, I remember those standalone pocket games. In fact, they were how I first learned how to play Poker. Though something about a device that can only play one (usually subpar) game feels really uneconomical nowadays.
Anyway, I'm glad you were able to explore the exciting field of Playdate pinball! Shame they don't make use of the physical features for input, but maybe in the future we'll see more of that. It does seem there's some market for pinball on the device at least.
The sideloading feature is very cool. I like that it's built in properly and not a "hack" like on other devices (eg. Meta Quest). It feels like a very pro-consumer move to include, and is in the spirit of the hacker/indie community they seem to be fostering.
Thanks for the writeup, and should you ever ask, I'll always be happy to sidetrack your backlog plans with wild suggestions in the future.
Complexity✅ Epigraph
Recursion✅ The Farmer was Replaced
Balance✅ Suzerain
Fleeting✅ Dredge
Summary of last week's games:
Dredge - Fleeting. The first game I played, and I really enjoyed it. It's a bleak game, and it's a boat pun; what's not to love? full comment from last week
The Farmer was Replaced - Recursion. A cute programming game that would be really good for teaching people an intro to python. full comment from last week
Suzerain - Balance. A game about navigating a world of global politics, which felt a bit too real to me. full comment from last week
I'm hoping to have a relatively clear Friday night and weekend, so hoping to knock off some more games this weekend!
Epigraph -
ComplexityPerspective. On the general suggestion of @Wolf_359 I decided to try Epigraph, a linguistic puzzle game. You are given some artifacts covered in symbols, a couple of written clues, and you are given the task of deciphering everything. I imagine that anyone who is into conlangs would find this to be a delightful game; it is well designed and it gives you enough clues to get started and to start figuring things out. I don't think that I will be completing this one - conlangs aren't my thing, and I generally don't want to bust out pen and paper to play a video game - but this is a very well constructed game, both from the point of view of the puzzle itself, and considering it as a game; the artifacts look cool, the overall design is very pleasing. If "you must decipher a well thought out constructed language" sounds like a puzzle that you want to do, this is probably the game that I would immediately recommend to try.Edit: I'm actually going to move this from "Complexity" into "Perspective". After even a brief chat with Wolf below, I've actually moved it into my "try again" folder on Steam.
Thanks for sharing a far better review than I was able to articulate!
I agree that this game is not meant for folks who hate busting out pen and paper (or a spreadsheet). Typically I don't either but for various reasons, some of which you mentioned, I was pretty hooked on this. I think the tone, music, and quality of the game did a great job roping me in by creating a sense of intrigue.
I think you nailed it - the sense of intrigue is just about perfect. It's a compelling setup, with compelling game features that entice you to stick around and get to it. I think I will actually return to this in the summer when I'm less busy and looking for more of a mental challenge and less of a mental balm in my gaming.
And thank you for the kind words, though I would say that your original review was good, and compelled me to install it as a part of this, so I'm very grateful that you enjoyed my assessment.
The 7th Guest - Treasure. This is a game that I have played before, but not recently. The first time I played this was around 1993, at a friend's house, and we did not finish it; several years later, I got a copy to play on the family computer, and I played it together with my sister and my mom, crowded around the screen all together. The 7th Guest is more than 30 years old (obviously, since the first time I played it was more then 30 years ago) and it still kind of holds up. It's a puzzle game, where the main antagonist, Stauf - which now seems clearly to be an anagram of Faust, which I did not catch 30 years ago - has created a haunted house filled with puzzles to solve; solving the puzzles usually triggers a cut scene that advances the plot. The game is designed in such a way that the live action cut scenes are integrated into the 3d models of the world in a stylized way. The puzzles are not particularly difficult, the actors overact everything, the story is straight-forward but creepy, the graphics are grainy, the exploration is on rails... but it all works together, and it makes me feel like a teenager again, discovering computer games when all that I'd had up to that point were console games. This is very much like finding a buried treasure from years ago, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I am going to return and finish it later, and I think this time I'll get all the cut scenes - if you take too many hints on a puzzle you don't get the story video that comes with it!
This really hit the nostalgia factor hard for me, but I think it would probably still be enjoyable if people can look past the grainy, early 3D models.
This is linked in my brain with "The Eleventh Hour" by Graeme Base, for probably two different reasons. First and least - there is a sequel to the 7th Guest that is called "The Eleventh Hour", which I also remember with some fondness, though not as much. Second and more importantly, we had gone through the Grame Base book the same way that we ended up going through the 7th Guest - my mother and sister and I working through the puzzles together. Both of these are very treasured memories for me.
I absolutely adored The Eleventh Hour (the Graeme Base book, not the 7th Guest sequel) as a kid. It was like an escape room before there were escape rooms.
I, of course, wanted to rip open the envelope at the end that revealed the culprit immediately, but my parents wouldn't let me and told me that I needed to puzzle things out first. That ended up being a very wise decision, and I'm glad they made me sit with my lack of closure instead of indulging my impatience.
I ended up spending hours pouring over the pages and discovering different secrets. I still remember some of them!
Watch the Clockson the gates, or how you could "read" the curtains in (I think it was) the billiard room if you tilted the book and looked at it almost parallel to the page.I also loved the artwork. It was gorgeously illustrated. And the characters! Fun animals with different personalities. And the story! A perfect, kid-friendly whodunit. WHO ATE ALL THE FOOD?!
I treasure my own memories with the book alone, so I can only imagine how meaningful it is to you that you got to work through it with your mother and sister.
Also, this is yet another specific coincidence for us, aphoenix. Our clone theory gains new evidence with each passing day...
EDIT: Just ordered a hardcover copy of The Eleventh Hour off of Bookshop so I can revisit it. Talking about it here made me want to experience it all over again!
I'm not adding to my backlog if I buy a new book instead of a game, right?
The neat part about book backlogs is that it's always okay to add to them, because they're always infinite, and they don't get any bigger! I'm a mathemusician so you can just trust me on it.
And so coincidences can continue... after making my comment last night, I almost ordered a fresh copy of the book to go through with my kids. You may have felt the twin-sense tingling which made you order it. :)
I asked ChatGPT if I could trust the informal proof of a mathemusician, and it replied with the following:
It was pretty convincing! I’m impressed that ChatGPT can be installed in human-like androids, and the haircut actually turned out really nice. AI truly is getting more lifelike by the day!
Anyway, thanks for using your quantum entanglement powers to get me to buy the book. I’m genuinely thrilled to revisit it. Despite still remembering the solution, I’ve forgotten a lot of the secrets and puzzles. Plus, even if seeing them again does trigger my memory, I still want that walk down memory lane and to enjoy the book’s beautiful artwork. I keep a small collection of physical graphic novels that I love, and this is a worthy addition to that library.
I really like your application of the category on this one. It sounds like a treasured memory indeed.
I've not played The 7th Guest, so I was actually curious to learn a little about how it played. I picked up the VR edition a year or two back, and I wonder if that might be the most "modern" way to play the game. The visuals look pretty nice as compared to the Anniversary Edition. Though there's also a definite charm to that low-res aesthetics and sates the nostalgia sensors in my brain.
I know people dog on remakes a lot, but I really do enjoy seeing these old games (I'm thinking Myst and such) to be reimagined for a new audience. The old games are usually still available in some form, so I consider it to be a mainly additive experience.
I didn't realize there was a VR edition - I might pick that up, it seems like it would lend itself well to that format.
The Anniversary Edition looks like it's quite a bit cleaned up from the version I'm playing which is no longer even available.
I agree with you about remakes - I think that some of the games are very well crafted and can continue to be enjoyed, but sometimes look pretty bad on modern screens, so I'm glad there are some options for this one. It's interesting how differently things progressed; for example it starts with an unskippable almost 10-minute long cut scene, which seems unthinkable today. I wonder if that is changed for the 25th anniversary or VR editions!
Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master - Synethesis. In a previous event, I played The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk which I found to be a delightful game. Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master is filled with the same sort of humour as its predecessor, but is a totally different type of game, so it's a synthesis of the attitude and humour with a strategy / management game. Le Donjon do Naheulbeuk is a french language comedy podcast from before there were podcasts. It kind of lampoons the D&D genre, as does the game.
I think putting a comedic twist on a strategy / management game - in this case, you manage a dungeon, trying to make it lethal and profitable - works fairly well, but I think that Two-Point Hospital was cuter, funnier, and maybe better overall with the gameplay as well. I'm going to give this a few more hours of play next month when the BLB is done, but I don't know how long I'll devote to this one.
Pacific Drive - Emergence. This is a first person survival-style game focused on you driving your car through the Olympia Exclusion Zone in Washington in an alternate history late 20th century. Please forgive my generally fuzzy understanding of the game, because I didn't get all that far, but there are bad areas in the Zone that deal damage to you that you have to stay out of, and you drive around getting scraps of other cars to customize your car so that you can drive your car around to get scraps to customize your car. I think the ultimate goal is likely to emerge triumphant from the Zone. I feel like this is probably a pretty good game overall, but maybe generally not for me. I wasn't grabbed by the driving, I wasn't particularly grasped by the story, and I'm okay with my driver never emerging from his forest in the Rockies. I don't see myself returning to this, though I will say that it is a beautiful game; it did capture the feel of driving in the Rockies, which I did enjoy.
Monster Prom - Love. Well, this one is a bit of a stretch; it's more about lust than love, but it's a cute little dating sim. There's not too much to this game; you play as a Monster at Monster High School, and you need a date for the prom. Over about 20 minutes (short game) or 40 minutes (long) you make choices that change your various stats, and then at the end you ask a different monster to the prom. The drawings are cute, the stories are silly. It's a cute way to spend a short bit of time; I doubt that this will have the staying power of the games that I go back to when I'm in curmudgeonly play-only-familiar-things mode and I've got a half hour to spare. It's no Brotato or Slay the Spire, but it's cute and fun fluff that I enjoyed more than some of the other things this month.
I kind of just want to go back to The 7th Guest. I do have a few more write-ups of games that I tried here and there over the last weekend though.
Diplomacy is Not an Option - Friction. This is a medieval city building / managing RTS style game where you build your little town and repel the invaders. It is, by its very nature, a game about friction with the enemy. You enter the map knowing that you are going to be attacked, and that you must prevail, you prepare yourself for the inevitable friction of combat, and you hopefully win the level and move on to the next one. As RTS / city builder / management games go, it's not bad, but it didn't really grab me, which brings me to the secondary cause of friction here. I tend to really like games in this genre, but I have written two sentences about this and probably told you everything you need to know to make an educated guess about how almost the entire game works and plays. I was prepared to really like this game, and when it was available in a humble choice, I immediately redeemed the key and installed it. However, in its failure to immediately grab me, I am feeling rubbed the wrong way. Maybe it's because I followed Drudge and the 7th Guest with this, or maybe it was Naheulbeuk's DM which I enjoyed a bit more, though it's not quite the same genre, but while this is a perfectly serviceable game, I was unenthusiastic about it.
I'm going to return to it in a couple of months and see if I feel differently about it, because as with Epigraph, sometimes a perspective change is all that is needed. I can sense the good bones in this game, and maybe playing 3 maps isn't enough to write it off.
Good to see everyone having fun in the first week! Some really solid game choices and write-ups so far.
Here's where I'm at right now:
Uncertainty✅ Roundguard
Ascent✅ Golfing Over It with Alva Majo
Golfing Over It with Alva Majo
I went through highs and lows with this game.
Players have many different motivations for playing games. They might enjoy uncovering a story, finding secrets, chasing high scores, unlocking achievements, or competing with friends. For me, overcoming personal challenge has always been a primary motivator. If something feels difficult, it motivates me further to try finding ways to overcome that challenge.
For that reason, I've always loved titles like Dark Souls, Super Meat Boy, and Hollow Knight -- renowned games with notorious difficulty. Despite their difficulty though, they're rarely punishing in their design. If you drop your currency in Dark Souls, you always have an opportunity to get it back. In Super Meat Boy, you never lose more than 30 seconds at a time and are thrown right back in after a death. There's no time to focus on your failure. Fundamentally, these games still want the player to succeed.
Golfing Over It doesn't care about any of that. As with its progenitor, Getting Over It, it eschews the common rules of game design. These games don't shy away from producing frustration. Instead, they ask the player to confront and deal with it directly. Life is hard, and sometimes you get sent back to the beginning: get over it.
Players are often quick to dismiss titles like these as feeling unfair, and of being poorly designed. "It controls horribly!", claim the Steam reviews. "Why don't they respect my time?", they ask. They can't believe that a game would be designed this way. However, I believe this kind of experimentation is actually critical to the process of game design. So before we get into discussing Golfing Over It specifically, I'd like to explain my thoughts.
Over the years, we've enshrined a lot of rules and conventions in gaming. Checkpoints go before bosses. Cutscenes should be skippable. Tutorials should be smoothly integrated into gameplay. These rules often have good reasons behind them, and we as players now have certain expectations of polish and standards from the games we play. Following them closely means a game has good design, and ignoring them means just the opposite.
My concern, however, is that blindly adhering to these rules has the adverse effect of also leading us towards homogeneity. For example, have you ever noticed how many action RPGs now start you along a narrow forest trail, requiring you to jump over exactly rock and crouch under one log? It's surprisingly common.
It's great that game designers have been effective in figuring out the field of making games fun and accessible to all audiences, but I'd argue it's also worth reviewing these rules from time to time. Best practices need not become dogma. It's important that we continue to push games in all directions, challenging these rules and trying new things, even at the risk of upsetting players or earning negative reviews.
One well-known example is Demon's Souls, which famously broke every rule in the book when it launched. If you died, the game not only sent you back with less health than before, it even made the level harder for your next attempt. It was completely paradoxical, and different than what anybody else was doing. And yet, it was profoundly innovative. The Souls series took these concepts, evolved them, and helped popularize their mechanics in the now lauded "soulslike" genre.
As another example, "lives" in games are historically seen as a point of frustration. It sucks to lose progress and need to go back and redo something again. However, they can serve a purpose in breaking up monotony. Instead of being stuck on a difficult section for hours, it can help to go back and redo the previous level from time to time. This not only introduces some variety, thus reducing overall frustration, but can also help to short-circuit the pattern you've been locked into.
If you've ever been stuck on a difficult section in a game for a while, yet beat it immediately after taking a break, you know exactly what I'm talking about. When you keep performing the same action over and over, you're not just reinforcing the good patterns, but the bad ones, too. Switching gears can help you break those bad habits and make progress again. Lives systems are a way of incorporating this directly into the game. It might feel frustrating in the moment to be sent back, but there can be benefits that players don't realize.
Finally, there are titles like I Wanna be the Guy. This game was a cultural phenomenon, and went on to inspire many fan games (over 10,000 at last count).
These games work based on violating your expectations. A red apple which might traditionally give you a power up will instead fly across the screen to instantly kill you. The only way to progress is to discover each danger, then experimentally learn how to avoid them. You might think that kind of game would turn off everybody, but it was extremely popular to both watch and play. There's clearly some enjoyment to be had in violating expectations, and progressing slowly through repetition.
These games show that violating the sacrosanct rules of game design can often let us tap into something that we didn't even know was there. They've led to new genres, unique and fun challenges, and entire communities of like-minded players.
Gaming is in no way a "solved problem", and breaking the rules of game design shouldn't be dismissed as "bad design". It's simply one of the ways that we can continue pushing the medium forward.
I first played Getting Over It near its release in 2018. It was clunky, unintuitive, and frustrating. Like the games described above, it deliberately broke many rules of game design. Ideas like "don't waste the player's time", and "avoid creating frustrating situations". Most people hated it. I thought it was awesome.
Its creator, Bennett Foddy, has a long history of making these kinds of experimental games. You might remember his earlier works like QWOP or GIRP. The difficulty of these titles was never intrinsic to the gameplay itself (such as by facing tough enemies or puzzles). The challenge was always in getting your character to do what you actually intended. I find this kind of design fascinating.
At some point in your life, you likely trained yourself to use a joystick, to press A to jump, to rotate a 3D camera with instinctive flicks of the right stick, or to aim with the mouse. These inputs are second nature now, but only because you practiced them over many years.
Foddy's games strip away that familiarity. They force you to start over. In Getting Over It, you are handed a hammer, placed in front of an obstacle, and told to get over it. No tutorials, no gentle coaxing. Anything after that is up to you.
When people finally beat Getting Over It for the first time, they often sigh with relief and say something like, "I'm never playing that again". I believe this is the wrong attitude! I'd argue that if they tried playing it again, they'd quickly find that the game is a completely different experience the second time around. That tree that took ten minutes to climb before? It can now be sailed over effortlessly. Those slippery rocks? A mere backdrop on your trip skyward. So many players put in the work - and got over it! - but never took the time to appreciate the fruits of their labour.
The game even has an achievement for reaching the top once, and a second achievement for doing it again. I think Bennett understood perfectly well that the second playthrough, despite being exactly the same, is a completely different experience. It isn't grind or filler. It's there to let you see for yourself how far you've come.
I consider Getting Over It to be a significant game, and an important deconstruction of modern expectations and norms. It never asks too much of players. It's hard, but doable, and encourages and rewards perseverance. I believe Foddy understands game design far better than the negative reviewers might suggest, and I'm quite looking forward to his next game later this year.
However, we're here for golfing, aren't we? So 1,200 words in, let's take a look at Golfing Over It with Alva Majo.
I picked this game up in a random Steam sale because I thought it looked interesting. I didn't read any reviews, or watch any gameplay videos. It cost me $1.50, and I forgot about it five minutes after buying it. We must feed the beast, right? I dropped it into my Steam collection labelled "Backlog" where it's been waiting patiently for just this occasion.
When reviewing games for this event, I knew I'd be playing this one after my eyes ran across it. It was exactly the kind of game I was in the mood for, and it beautifully fits the category Ascent.
This game is a clear homage, and not in a subtle way. Golfing Over It replaces your hammer with a golf club, yet still tasks you with climbing a mountain of miscellaneous detritus. Unlike Getting Over It, you do this by performing golf swings. Choose your power level and direction carefully, and hope the ball ends up where you intended. It's a long way down, though, and balls tend to roll downhill.
As you might expect, the first obstacle is another tree. I have to admit it took me over five minutes to figure out how to cross this stupid tree. I simply could not get enough velocity on my ball to make it over.
While I applaud Getting Over It for its intuitive gameplay and lack of tutorials, I think a small one may have been warranted here. The game does not mention that you can make additional strokes while your ball is in the air. They're weaker hits, and you lose the ability if you touch a wall or ceiling, but otherwise you do have some influence over your airborne ball. Once I discovered this, I was able to navigate around the tree and press on.
I continued stumbling, and climbing, until I made it off the ground and into the clouds. Over the picket fence, past the Hatsune Miku horse, over the eagle, and up the flying fish. This section was tough, and it felt like a massive loss every time I tumbled downward, needing to start the climb again.
It was around this point, about an hour in, that I realized that those additional air hits can be charged up. By holding the mouse down, you can impart significantly more force to your ball. What a revelation! I felt like I'd unlocked a super power. Suddenly, drops were not such a big deal. I felt that I could now sail past the friendly Horsune Miku without concern.
The rest of the playthrough went far more smoothly after that. I ascended the castle, greeted the dragon, and with only a few slips, made my way to the goal. Not quite a hole in one, but surely under par? I beat the game in about an hour and thirty minutes.
Here's the thing though: I knew I could do better. I felt like I'd only just found my rhythm, and I wanted to see what I was capable of. So following my own advice, I started a second run.
As expected, the early areas became much easier to traverse. There were still slips, and more than a few restarts, but I'd improved considerably since my first run. By the time I finished, I had a clear time of just 13 minutes. By my third run, it was 7 minutes. Now that's better!
So what did I think of the game? I liked it well enough. The golf mechanics played well, and the levels were designed with enough stable sections to catch you if you fell. I felt the controls could have been made clearer, and I do think it loses some points due to originality, though this was at least addressed in the monologues of its creator. Alva explains that what started as a funny experiment in Unity ended up being interesting enough that he felt it deserved to be made into a real game. I can respect that, so I won't knock it too hard for being a clone.
I did prefer the original Getting Over It though, for a couple reasons:
I still enjoyed my time with the game though, and I wouldn't discourage anyone from playing if they're interested in this sort of experimental design. I also think it's great to see more games that are playable with only one hand, for the multitude of disabled gamers out there.
While Golfing Over It doesn't push any new boundaries or redefine genres, I do think it's valuable in its own right and offers a respectful nod to what it emulates. I'm always glad to see more experimental games that aren't afraid to break a few rules.
I said I wouldn't be participating normally but I did come up with a silly idea that may or may not be in the spirit of the event.
One thing occupying my free time was PAX East this past weekend, a gaming convention and one I've attended annually for more than a decade (outside of 2021–2023 due to the pandemic). The show floor there has hundreds of booths demoing all kinds of upcoming releases as well as several free play sections with their own libraries of tabletop and video games, so in this context my backlog was everything the convention had to offer and ended up being a four-day whirlwind of gaming. I missed out on some things I wanted to do like play a tabletop RPG (I did pick up some solo-friendly books that I could count here but haven't played yet) but I did a lot of hanging out with friends as well, though I'm only including games here.
Durinthal's Bingo Card (Custom/Free, 11/25)
R✅ Royalty Free-For-All
P✅ Perfect Tides: Station to Station
V✅ Virtua Cop 2
N✅ Nocturne
M✅ MLEM: Space Agency
W✅ While Waiting
F✅ Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson
S✅ Steel Battalion
J✅ JoustMania
O✅ Orna
C✅ ctrl.alt.DEAL
Of course for the games that were just demos I often only had a few minutes to play them, but I feel like I got decent impression for most of them in that time. A lot of them have demos on Steam as well and I even went to play a couple of them some more after I got home. In alphabetical order:
ctrl.alt.DEAL
ctrl.alt.DEAL
Unfortunately maybe the game I liked the least, the concept is interesting but I didn't enjoy the execution here. You gain cards by interacting with some elements in the corporate building and use them to interact with other elements and people, but with a lot of neon colors what elements were able to be interacted with weren't always obvious and (maybe I was unlucky or missing something) I felt like I quickly ran out of things to do with no obvious path forward aside from trying to repeat actions I had already done.
Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson
Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson
A combination of Slay the Spire and Mario RPG combat with a music theme, I'm on board. Only managed to play for a few minutes but it's on my wishlist and I want to return to it once it's out in full.
JoustMania
JoustMania
A free version of Johann Sebastian Joust where several people hold Playstation Move controllers and the idea is to jostle everyone else's controller to get them out while not moving your own too quickly, with the winner being the last one standing. The controllers have an accelerometer in them and there's a tolerance of motion based on how fast the music is being played, so when the music speeds up you can move around more without being knocked out.
Prior to the pandemic this was one of my favorite regular events at PAX, run by one regular attendee in their own free time in an empty space in the building. While that person didn't resume after the convention returned, someone else brought it this year and ran some games which I joined for a few rounds, though they didn't draw nearly as much of a crowd from what I saw. I hope they weren't discouraged by that and it'll continue again in the future and get a regular audience again.
MLEM: Space Agency
MLEM: Space Agency
A board game that I played with some friends, it's a push your luck mechanic with a whole group relying on one person's rolls each round. Pretty straightforward, wouldn't mind returning to it again.
Nocturne
Nocturne
I only played through a couple of fights at the convention but already played through the entire demo available after I got home and was sad when it ended. It's a rhythm game in the style of Guitar Hero with a story that drew me in and I really want to find out what happens next. The keyboard controls are a bit awkward but I never looked into remapping them; it's the kind of thing where everything outside the combat would be better with a controller.
Orna
Orna
A mobile GPS-based game like Pokémon Go but a classic fantasy RPG. I saw the booth at PAX but was too busy to participate then but spent several hours earlier today trying it out in my neighborhood. I think if I had friends who were also playing this it could be fun, but I already go out for walks enough on my own to not need this as an additional incentive.
Perfect Tides: Station to Station
Perfect Tides: Station to Station
A point-and-click slice of life as a teen girl struggling with college in the early 2000s, I didn't get very far in this but it hit home for me. I loved the writing in the little amount of it I played and with some nice pixel art, I feel like this one won't be as much of a drag as some other adventure games from a previous Backlog Burner were for me. It's also a sequel so I have the first game about the same character to tide me over while waiting for this one.
Royalty Free-For-All
Royalty Free-For-All
Super Smash Bros. with public domain characters. Didn't feel great as a platform fighter but I did only play one match with a group of people, that said I'd still probably go back to Smash or Brawlhalla rather than giving this more time.
Steel Battalion
Steel Battalion
Not the oldest game on this list (see the next entry), but close. Steel Battalion is a mecha combat game for the original Xbox, but rather than using a typical controller it requires a unique setup with a lot of buttons dedicated to specific functions like a windshield wiper and fire extinguisher, switches, foot pedals, and two joysticks. There's an elaborate startup process each time you get into a mech where you need to flip all the switches to on, press a few specific buttons in sequence, and only then can you get moving. Additionally, if you don't hit the eject button in time when your mech's about to be destroyed, you're killed in action and it deletes your data so you have to start over from the beginning.
Now why is such a strange game from 2002 at PAX? It has a dedicated room and audience for it so Penny Arcade keeps bring it back, that's why. At PAX East for the last several years I've attended I've worked in an area near the Steel Battalion room but never actually sat down and played it, so this was a good incentive to finally get around to it. The setup here has ten consoles networked together and playing free for all multiplayer matches that anyone can come up and join, along with a tournament held during the weekend for the hardcore fans.
Even though the first thing the people running the room tell you is that the most important button is the eject one, I failed to hit it in time and died my first time playing. You also get kicked out of the multiplayer match that way and as mentioned need to create a new profile before joining the next match, so that's extra work for them. I came back later for a second time and survived, getting fourth place out of ten so a solid improvement. I'll try to make a point of coming back for at least one match every PAX, it's fun being a mecha pilot there.
Virtua Cop 2
Virtua Cop 2
I was never especially good at arcade light gun shooters, but I did enjoy them. I don't know if I ever played this particular one before but it would have been at least 20 years since the last time if I did, so I had fun going through a few rounds of inevitably dying after missing a shot in this one. This was part of a dedicated arcade room with a couple of others I played but didn't include here because I already had other games for that letter (e.g. the 1993 Mobile Suit Gundam fighting game) but also one rhythm game I wanted to try (Wacca Reverse) always had quite a line whenever I came by so I never got to it.
While Waiting
While Waiting
Okay this game's already out but I saw it and wanted to give it a try since I saw it had a booth and I had a few minutes. It's a series of cute minigames with some weird humor to them, not sure I'd buy it unless it's under $10 though.
This is absolutely in the spirit of the event and is such a cool contribution! The whole point of the Backlog Burner is to try out games and talk about them, and that’s exactly what you did.
If anyone gives you any grief, just tell them that you have
kfwyre’s Official Regard Noting Certification of Backlog Burner Belonging(KORNCOBBB for short). And then ask them why they’re bringing grief to a fun event in the first place?It’s cool to me that there’s still love for older or more niche games like Steel Battalion and Virtua Cop 2 (I used to sink some quarters into that one back in the day). Also JoustMania looks like tons of fun. I might have to look into getting some Move controllers for my next friend meetup.
Also, congrats on your Bingo win! You’re our first!
This was a really cool way to participate, and also really neat to read through!
This makes me wish there were more events that were just for gaming experiences like this. There are so many games that you can't really play at home for various reasons (thinking of a couch game I saw the time I attended GDC—as in, the couch was the controller), or games that are more fun in a public setting. Joustmania and Steel Batallion from your list are key examples of that, those sound like they'd be way more fun to play during big events.
Greetings all. I have in fact been simmering away in the background, but haven't had time to update you all. So here's my updates, covering this week and Week 1.
Eidolon's Bingo card
Nominated for The Game Awards✅ Balatro
Has punctuation in the title✅ Yoku's Island Express
Has a fishing minigame✅ A Short Hike
It’s already installed✅ Baldur's Gate 3
Balatro - Nominated for the Game Awards
Initially I was interpreting this as a GOTY nominee only, but this game counts though it ended up winning the Indie award! I won a copy on Tildes during the most recent giveaway, and over the holidays I got acquainted with the rules and ticked off some easy decks and obvious leans with flushes especially. Now I'm returning for a challenge, the Black Deck - and I won! It took maybe 8-10 tries. I managed to get a good stack of Jokers going that just kept me comfortable most of the time, with a bit of luck to see me over the line - and one death save joker to save the day. I like that it's very casual and accessible for dropping in and out for a quick run. So much so that the game has spurred a growing interest in roguelikes and other deckbuilders, which I had previously gotten cold feet on. I'd like to try Slay the Spire and am planning to fire up Hades for a first-play during this month's event, so stay tuned!
A Short Hike - Has a fishing minigame - Fully completed and struck off the backlog!
Another game I knew about thanks to Tildes, and then a friend gifted it to me right when I came down with Covid. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. My schedule was clear but my brain was foggy, and I got right to the end of the game, then forgot to come back to it. There's many things I like about this game, but the music and the humerous dialogue were highlights. Fishing is one of the minigames on the island, although beach volleyball has to be my favourite. I won't spoil the ending, but it was just as charming as I thought it might have been - quite heartwarming actually! This game is a total gem, as others have mentioned.
Yoku's Island Express - Has punctuation in the title
Yet again a game I heard about on Tildes, and scored at a giveaway event. However, I had forgotten what it was about, so went in completely blind! It's a platformer pinball game, a bit unusual for sure, but very inviting. I love all things bugs and it's just so adorable! You feel quite nested into the forested world which is very well designed and thoughtful about how you get from A to B without having to back-track all the time. I'm not the most co-ordinated of gamers so sometimes it wasn't easy to get the flippers to kick at the right angle, but I got well into the first part, maybe a 1/3 through the game based on a 6 hour playthrough. I think it's another gem, really polished, smooth, and I'm genuinely invested in the story. I haven't hit a wall yet though, maybe that will come though...
Baldur's Gate 3 - You already had it installed
I haven't played through BG3 solo, but have completed one 4-player run which unfortunately became a bore in Act 2/3 because the difficulty became trivial (we were playing standard). Now, following Patch 8, I've got another 4-player run, except this time we're on Honor Mode. This isn't like the HM from earlier games like Divinity Original Sin - there's no permadeath, you just go down to Tactician. And so far, weirdly, it feels easy. We've had a couple of tough fights but the overall experience hasn't been as grueling as I was expecting. It feels easier than the original playthrough, even. So much so I thought it was bugged, but it isn't. Maybe we're just better at the game now, or it will pick up later in Act 1? From what I've heard it will be more of a chance thing, depending on what legendary buffs bosses pick up that can annihilate a party quite fast if you get unlucky.
I'm playing a Monk and at level 5, I'm the weak link of the party. The new Drunken Master subclass has been underwhelming so I am going to try respec to Open Hand, but I think I just need gear and time. We're playing with a loot randomizer and a handful of other mods, so that introduces some difficulty when gear chasing, but it's been fun so far nonetheless.
Ah, this is so cool! A game I gifted (Yoku’s Island Express) is being played in the Backlog Burner! You just made my day, Eidolon. 😁
Any gifted game would have made me happy, but that one in particular is so delightful to me. It’s such a joy. One of my favorite games of all time. I’m glad you’re liking it.
There's my laziness not looking up who gifted to me! How delightful. Thanks again, I look forward to continuing with over the month.
Today, we moved. It has been a long, busy day, but oh so worth it.
Slow-burn✅ Animal Crossing
Comfortable✅ Animal Crossing
Knowledge✅ Tales of the Neon Sea
Unlock✅ Theresia
Simplicity✅ Animal Crossing
Organic✅ Animal Crossing
Repetition✅ The Letter
Happiness✅ Animal Crossing
Isolation✅ The Letter
Unexpected✅ Tales of the Neon Sea
Connection✅ Animal Crossing
Sly✅ Tales of the Neon Sea
Courage✅ Theresia
The TV we put on the porch had the right inputs for my GameCube. And I felt like it was only right to start with the game that drove me to get it in the first place and the one I've been craving the most, the original Animal Crossing. Which let me cross out the middle row, so hooray!
Ramble coming in a separate comment.
So. Animal Crossing for the GameCube. The game that started it all, for me and so many others. The whole reason I got my GameCube in the first place, and the one game I have found myself craving the most lately. Felt right to be my first game at the new house.
(Fun story: my parents gave in after inviting a cousin to spend the night with his GameCube and Animal Crossing, which I loved playing at their house. In exchange, he got to play The Sims, because I had every expansion pack up to that point. It has to be the most transactional sleepover of my childhood, I don't think we talked much that night. My parents were mildly disturbed, but we were both very happy and satisfied with the arrangement xD)
Anyways, onto my thoughts!
Diary for August 5, 2020
Yes, you read that date right. The game was set to August 5 for some reason, and was at 4:26 am. Note, that photo was taken at 10:12 pm so even the minutes are wrong. I have no explanation for why, because pretty sure the GameCube itself is in like... 2022?? No idea why the GameCube is off either. If anything, I'd expect the date to be ahead because I was impatient when this is basically the original slow burn game.
Yeah it's weird.
Anyways, the controls are jankier than I remembered. I have to drag all tools and clothes to my character, and do that by selecting an item and clicking "grab" from the menu that pops up. Yeah... Tedious. I'm used to just holding A to quick-grab stuff. And also pressing the down arrow to unequip tools. There's a slight learning curve.
But oh my gosh, the nostalgia. The atmosphere. The hilarious wanted poster I left in 2008 (or... 2012/2013?) for Pelly that I included in the initial gallery. The fact there's a romance letter on the bulletin board among all the notices for events I missed. This game was truly happy, simpler times. Seriously, I opened the game and my mailbox was flooded with birthday letters and gifts.
I checked off Comfort, Connection and Organic for a reason. The villagers feel so alive compared to New Horizons. I talked to one villager and she ended the conversation singing with joy. In another acre, villagers had two different conversations with each other that left one walking away fuming. I forgot how lively they could be when every conversation wasn't super friendly. (Though I'm also half-convinced Scoot and Pompom are dating because they're neighbors and I've seen them leave two conversations singing. Also their bills overlap when they talk, so looks like they're kissing.)
Some villagers make snarky comments to me about being gone, others are more friendly and just happy to see me. By the way, it's been 133 months since I last played according to Scoots, Kiki and Freckles (whose photo was too blurry). Just over twelve years. Which made Gulliver's quip about being "asleep for over 150..." bring actual, genuine concern the punchline would be years, not minutes.
Seriously, it was a genuine possibility after talking to Ozzie, who I apparently just ignored even when I was actively playing. Sorry Ozzie...
All that aside, I intend to start a new town on the other memory card I have (the one that isn't corrupted). I loaded this one for nostalgia's sake, since this memory card came with the game, but looks like I'd already restarted that file long ago. I remember the original was named Startown, and the second town which became my main was Mooncity. This has been a pretty casual dip into the game, and yeah my town is loaded with weeds... but it's mostly been a happy experience.
The newer games, while each have their own charm, have never managed to recapture the cozy feeling of the original.
Case in point: Cookie, my all-time favorite and best friend due to her presence in my main save. If photos were a thing in the original, I'd have probably multiples of hers. I wrote her dozens of letters before that save was corrupted. She's in this town too, and she's not super annoying in this game!! Seriously, NH made the Peppy personality the worst. They only care about being popstars, and are just so annoying. And... Honestly, all the personalities are pretty one-dimensional in NH. The game lacks personality. Even the bulletin board isn't as fun.
So going back to the roots just makes me happy. I see all these people wanting a remake of New Leaf, but this is the one I want remade. A faithful recreation of the original with standard quality of life improvements without changing or removing the content, complete with mailing fossils to the Faraway Museum, Resetti yelling at you, and having neighbors steal your lullaboids (it's been probably 20 years but I still remember Truffles!!).
Though there's one final note: the diary. I remembered it was one of my favorite features, and was so disappointed they didn't return. I'd use them to create sagas about imaginary siblings living with me in the game, because I was a lonely only child (seriously Truffles, my imaginary siblings cried so much over that Lullaboid you stole—). And sure enough I did it in this save, too, brief as my time with it seemed to be. You can only leave entries for entire months (and that's for all years with that month), and I left some in November and December. Here's the gallery if you want to read it.
Honestly I can rave about this game for hours (and I have written this over hours). But I'll leave it there. It's now 2 am and I'm beat. This was a good way to end the night though, and feels like a good start to the new house!
Congrats on the move!
I am a complete sucker for a three-season room, so I am naturally SO jealous of your amazing new porch (but mostly just really happy for you)! I got to dogsit one time for some friends that had a closed-in porch and I pretty much lived there for the week. It was so nice and relaxing.
Also I loved reading your writeup. It’s cool that the game feels so alive and acknowledges the passage of real time (albeit inaccurately 😂). The games we played when we were younger already feel like windows to those selves when we revisit them, even moreso here because you had an actual journal in it!
Thanks! We had one at our old house, but it was definitely more of a porch. Only one outlet in the whole thing, and in the one corner where any extension cable would have to pass a door. We're going to both be spending even more time on this one.
Yeah, I can definitely feel the passage of time just from the weeds xD I thinj the journal was probably done as an ode to my childhood, since I think I would've been in my final year of high school based on the comments from my neighbors. There's so much nostalgia though. Even though I don't remember this save specifically, I could tell what some of my priorities were. I definitely played at Halloween because my letters were filled with candy, and there's Spooky furniture all over town.
I'll probably play this file a bit more before starting a new save on the other memory card... Or maybe I'll actually try to clean it up and continue growing this town? Guess it depends on if I want this to remain a time capsule or not!
I loved the first Animal Crossing, so I am right there beside you in nostalgia town. I even pulled up the OST to listen to while writing this comment to really bring me back.
I remember just how lively everything felt. The town was lived in, and while you had some control over it, things would often just happen around you. Old friends would move away, and new folks would move in. The endemic life would change with the seasons.
The sense of discovery was unparalleled. You'd think you knew your world from back to front, only to discover an entire hidden island with a new home to decorate. Or suddenly learn a new vocaloid songs being sung by the famous KK Slider.
Also, the game wasn't afraid to be mean. Animals could get upset with you. Tom Nook was actual capitalism incarnate. And Mr. Resetti did his very best to bring me to tears. I miss that...
I've only briefly played the later Animal Crossing games, and I agree they just don't have the same feel to them. It could be me that's moved on, but I'm more than willing to take your post as direct and indisputable proof that it's the
childrengame developers that are wrong.Also, I bought Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp when it released as a premium game, and I did not care for it at all. It was nothing but busy work. No exploration, no real relationships or activities. Just grinding to make numbers go up.
I'm much more on board with this older, jankier, simpler game. I loved the screenshots, and found your notes very cute. I hope you found that igloo you were looking for.
Yeah, the town was a lot more lively and spontaneous. Special NPC visits were always such a surprise. The bulletin board gets a ton of random posts, including treasure hunts. Neighbors ask you to deliver special items instead of presents. Even loading up and saving, you talk to one of the villagers and get to see their personalities.
Also, the island was so fun! It was fun to see who lived there, and then play with the islander on your GameBoy for a bit afterwards. I still have my GameBoy connector cable, and visiting it on this save is on my to-do list!
The later games all have their own charms, but none match the cozy atmosphere of the original. I think the best one since then was New Leaf, because it added a bunch of cool new features and found a good balance with adding the old. It's a very different experience, but it's still a good one!
New Horizons meanwhile isn't bad and has some great stuff (outdoor furniture! Terraforming! So much customization!!), but it definitely feels a lot more empty. The content it implemented is well-polished, but it's lacking so much. I mean, the Nookling store gets only one upgrade. There isn't a single simple armchair, and they removed a bunch of longstanding furniture sets like the Regal and Modern sets. It feels like they decided to cut all development earlier than originally intended.
And that's before getting into how nice and easy the game is. Getting rare bugs and fish feels super easy, and we have special NPCs visit literally every day of the week, so even stuff like Saharah's wallpapers and carpets are easy to amass now. People talk about starting new islands because they run out of things to do, and that's just not the Animal Crossing experience.
Writing all that and comparing it to the original, I think its biggest
problem is that there's too much in our control. It lost all the spontaneity. I barely ever let villagers move out, and that alone adds to the feeling that nothing happens or changes. Nothing feels truly special anymore. I mostly play it just to customize houses these days.
On that note... Yeah, Pocket Camp isn't really a good example of AC gameplay. I can't recommend it at the full price tag (or any price really) to a brand new player because there's just not much to do unless you like decorating or dressing up, and also have a lot of stuff amassed. I bought the premium version during the early offer for $10 only because I'd been playing for about a year, and knew I'd have fun with all the exclusive furniture and clothes I already owned. If something happens to this phone and I can't transfer the save, I doubt I'll bother starting over.
I've started another game! Tales of the Neon Sea, which I was gifted by @culturedleftfoot during a giveaway last year.
This is a cyberpunk noir mystery game about a detective named Rex. And also a cat named William, who is why I checked off Unexpected and Sly. Guys, you play as a cat sometimes. This city has its own ongoing cat-based political drama that humans and robots are totally unaware of, and it is amazing.
I just started the second chapter of the game, and I'm definitely hooked. The game opens up with Rex being chased and falling, and having to repair himself, before flashing back a few days. There's a definite political conspiracy going on revolving around robot discrimination and a robot revolution from 10 years ago, and an upcoming election. There's tons of lore you can collect to flesh out your knowledge of the world, which is half the reason I checked off Knowledge.
There are also puzzles. Many puzzles. So far they're not the usual logic puzzles I encounter in games, but more "rotate these two dials until you can move the dot from Point A to Point B". So far I've only had to look up one puzzle, which is apparently known as "the clock puzzle" and seems to be notorious. It's kinda refreshing honestly.
It's a fun game with a pretty cool setting and cast! I'm going to play more now, and might check off some more categories depending on what happens.
Awesome! I actually only played it myself a little under two months ago, over the course of a few days. I really enjoyed the world and read just about all the lore and dialog everywhere in the game. I ultimately got the feeling that maybe they would have liked another 6 months to fully iron out some kinks (e.g. some plot details end up feeling unresolved or at least not as important as initially presented, and the English translation is kinda rough in a few places in the second half of the game), but the ambition is commendable. I'd recommend anyone interested to pick it up on sale.
Yeah, I just finished it myself. I'm disappointed I missed some of the collectible notes on lore (just one in history and one in life, maybe a couple in the news, I think?), but I had a blast! The puzzles were the right level of difficulty (only had to look up the optional clock puzzle), and the story was terrific. They really fleshed out the world well. My biggest problem was that the game glitched out twice in chapter 3 and got stuck, forcing me to exit and reopen the game.
Like you said, there's some unresolved loose ends. The game ends on a major bit of sequel bait, so I assume some of those loose ends will be addressed if a sequel is made. But it does wrap up the main case nicely, so I'm pretty content with it! Fingers crossed a sequel is confirmed sometime soon.
I missed the Week 1 topic due to Real Life but did get to some games. I'll give that update then try to give another update in this thread in a couple of days.
deathinactthree's bingo card
Berzerk Boy
Albion Online
Bang Bang Racing
Berzerk Boy
An unabashed love letter to Mega Man X, to the point that on the surface it looks like a simple reskin done as a fan project. Fortunately it's a little more than that--it's definitely a Mega Man-style game, no more and no less, but with a focus on speed and movement and chaining attacks. At least at first, you don't have any projectile weapons, you instead attack by jumping on or dashing into enemies.
Once you get the first Berzerk Orb that turns you into the titular character, you gain more power in your dashes and overhead smashes, plus an electric attack by punching the ground. Importantly, jumping and dashing lets you bounce off of enemies and you can chain that into attacking other enemies, which both gives the game an almost Sonic-like speed element and becomes necessary in short order to reach certain parts of levels.
Like Mega Man, you fight themed enemies and gain their powers when you beat them by absorbing their Berzerk Orbs. You have the ability via a radial menu to switch between those powers (Lightning, Fire, Earth, Air, and Ice) at any time once you attain them.
As a big fan of the old games--Mega Man 2 was one of my first NES games and I've put hundreds of hours into the core series--I can say simultaneously that "there's nothing here you haven't seen before" AND "this is a quality homage and very fun to play". If you're a Mega Man fan but haven't burnt yourself out on the series after 4 decades, this game is totally worth your time.
Albion Online
I'm not really a fan of MMOs at all. I don't like the grinding, I don't like the repetitive combat of using the same ability stack in the same order to fight 30 wolves to collect 10 wolf pelts or whatever, the stories and writing are usually paper-thin and unengaging, and I am generally not someone who enjoys multiplayer games.
However, I'd had my eye on Albion Online for two reasons: first, it was directly inspired by Ultima Online and primarily focused on the actions and economy driven by players, not by the game world. I'd been unable to play UO the first time around because it was back in a time when I didn't have sufficient Internet access, and so many people raved about it that I'd wondered if I missed out on something. Second, it's available on literally everything, every OS including desktop and mobile, and while I normally don't go in for hours of chopping wood and managing crafting stacks and killing the same trash mobs over and over, I actually liked the thought of having something kind of mindless available on my phone and tablet to pass time sitting in the lobby of a tire shop, say. Something that would also sync progress between anything I was playing it on.
It's exactly as advertised. It feels like a very polished version of an old-school MMO. The graphics are polygonesque and comparatively simple for 2025, but clean and with a very solid aesthetic. There's plenty to do, but most of it early on involves collecting resources and crafting. You do have early access to some dungeon quests, but even then you're going to want to wait until you craft or buy at least Tier III gear (it doesn't take all that long). Combat is the familiar ability bar and there's nothing new here, except for one mildly annoying thing--positioning matters in the sense that some enemies telegraph directional or AOE attacks that you can move out of the way of, but you can't, say, dodge arrows that just track you in the air wherever you are in the old-school tradition of "the game state means you are either attacking or being attacked". It's not confusing if you've ever played an MMO before, but I found myself longing for a dodge button or ability. I started spec'ing a Dagger fighter and also found myself desperately wishing for a dual wield ability, since you have to grind a completely different branch of the skill tree to hold any shield whatsoever.
Another thing that drew me to it is its classless system--you "are" whatever gear you're wearing. If you're holding a staff, you're a mage. If you holding a bow, you're a Ranger, a sword a Fighter, etc. Or do a bit of multiclassing by mixing outfits among the class archetypes. You do have proficiency skills in the skill tree that affect how effective the gear you put on is, though, so if you want to switch your skill focus you'll have to grind another skill up a bit, which I think is fine and fair.
Obviously this is not a game you can finish or even make too much progress in in a month but I put a number of hours in. I do believe I'll continue playing it casually (I'll probably avoid PvP and stay in "safe zones" for a long time) as a time-killer in airports and dentist's offices. It's nothing I'll become obsessed with but it's a well-made game that can give me a downtime alternative to Gems of War, the match-3 RPG I've been playing for over 4 years and love but have done pretty much everything there is to do.
Bang Bang Racing
An arcadey, top-down racing game in the style of older isometric racers like RC Pro Am and Micro Machines. It has everything you would expect in this kind of game, including unlockable cars and tracks, road hazards like oil spills and traffic cones, and "unfair" opponents whose speed and relative position are entirely based on you in order to make it feel properly competitive (a la F-Zero, if you need a reference). Unlike more modern arcade racers or Mario Kart games, there are no weapons in this one, just steering to avoid obstacles, the clever conservation and use of nitro, and occasionally ramming opponents into the wall during a sharp curve.
Honestly not a lot ot say about this one. It is genuinely fun if you like old-school top-down racers that do not even slightly care about even a facade of realism, which I do. But it's pretty forgettable and not a game you can play for more than an hour without wanting to move on to something else.
Welcome to the party, glad you could make it! Great job by opening with three submissions.
I'm not a big MMO gamer either, but I completely get the desire to have a passive time waster game. Something to make a bit of progress in when you don't have the time or mental acuity to play something more engaging.
I considered starting an Oldschool Runescape account on mobile for the exact same reason, but eventually realized the idle games were a better fit. I found Melvor Idle which is basically all the skill grinding of Runescape but in a simpler tap-friendly interface.
Another one I can recommend is PokeMMO. It's a legal project as you need to supply the roms, but it provides a nice interface for playing earlier generations of these games that works across devices. That scratched the same itch on mobile for me for a while.
Rubberbanding in racing games is such a contentious issue. When done poorly, it feels really unfair as a player. However, when not there at all, it can also make races feel completely empty and boring. This is especially bad in combat racers, because once you "clear the pack", you can often pull ahead even more easily. There's of course the Mario Kart approach of "spam blue shells at the player", but that's also not great.
I think players might be more accepting of rubberbanding if there were in-lore reasons to explain it. Maybe it's a thick atmosphere, and the vehicle dynamics really hurt the player in first. Maybe the opponents are all miserable cheaters and take unsanctioned shortcuts and set up banana peels to sabotage you. Maybe you're just broke and racing against their far-better vehicles.
Whatever it is, I think a bit of lore to explain game mechanics can actually go a long way towards player acceptance. It's a bit funny though that we've still not really found a great solution to this, despite there being hundreds of racing games which all needed to deal with this problem in some form.
SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 6/25)
Tense✅ Resident Evil 2 REmake
Annihilation✅ ZeroRanger
Traditional✅ Gravity Circuit
Distribution✅ The Hungry Lamb
Absence✅ Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Curiosity✅ Tunic
Annihilation - ZeroRanger
ZeroRanger is a vertical shoot 'em up that is a little more than meets the eye. Annihilation is a rather obvious choice given the genre, but it's also very meaningful for those who have reached the end of this game. I've gotten there once and failed for those wondering. My current preferred loadout is Type B ship, side shots, charge shots, and sword.
The first thing you'll notice after a game over is the metaprogression: your score on a run contributes to unlocking more continues (maxing out at 8) which the game expects you to use (along with the stage select) just to reach the end of the game and truly finish it, so there's no shame in using both. It is a departure though from most games in the genre though; I only know Bullet Heaven and Bullet Heaven 2 as having a shop between missions and those are flash games.
I don't believe this plays as a bullet hell game in the way most people define it? No slowdown button for the ship, no bombs, no super intricate patterns to weave through as a result; just the enemies and figuring out their method of attack. No insta-death contact damage either, though enemies can still bump into you enough times to take a life. You also pick up 3 additional weapons at the end of the first 3 stages:
Back-firing vs Side Shots: Both of these cover the normal blind spots and deal the most damage at point-blank, especially if the enemy is big and doesn't deal contact damage. Frankly I picked Type B ship because the effects look way cooler, backburners and shooting lightning beams respectively.
Lock-on Homing Vs Charge Shots: The big AoE options which also bypass most defenses I think? I don't really get the lock-on besides extending the multiplier by hitting background targets so I can't rate it objectively. Charge shots have a constant hitbox near the ship, so it's nice for ships rushing into you along with being able to tank some bullets. The Type B ships also causes a constant explosion hitbox when it hits the target.
Sword Vs Drill: The close-range defensive option that erases small bullets and stalls large bullets in addition to doubling the multiplier cap while using it. My preference is sword mostly because it has a wider hitbox while my beginning experience with the drill has gotten me hit too many times.
I'm not a 1CC player or a bullet hell guru, but I do feel myself improving here. I think I'll keep playing after the bingo ends since it's probably gonna take a while to properly finish it. Not sure I understand the hype as an amateur though; I remember seeing comments on how good it is which was definitely a reason for me getting one of those big itch.io charity bundles.
ZeroRanger - The big, big surprise (spoilers)
After defeating the final boss, you're given the chance to challenge the true final boss to get a better narrative ending as the aliens have successfully killed off everyone and your pilot has 4 minutes of life support left. However, you're warned that you're going to have to risk everything to travel back in time to fight it and your remaining continues flash ominously in the background while you're given the choice to either accept or back out. Accept, and your continues holder shatters apart while you, the pilot with no ship, mech, or weapons, have to fight the boss with just your contact damage. All the remaining continues you had before are now your remaining lives. And if you lose them all...
That's it. All your metaprogression is deleted. The scoreboard and White Vanilla mode are the only indicators that you've played this game before while you start from scratch and have to rebuild your continues stock. This is the other meaning of Annihilation.
But you start again. You've improved, made it much farther than the first time you've booted this. Your continues meter is building up much quicker than before from your higher scores. It's a shump anyways, so you're subconsciously ready if you're familiar with the genre. It's just another run. This game made this metaprogression system so you can have this sense of building something up only to lose it, and then build it back up quicker again.
Or well, Wes made a very big post for Golfing Over It with Alva Majo this week about breaking expectations and noticing how you've improved after losing progress. Go read that if you haven't. Or read it again!
Am I to understand that there is a shmup with Rogue Legacy-esque progression between rounds? That isn't designed for hardcore veterans of the genre with 9,000 hours in each Touhou? And that I already own from various Itch bundles??
Hot damn! Thanks for letting me know about this.
I also just dug properly into the Itch app to see what else I had in there (too much). But I discovered the Collections system for tagging games. Don't tell the Backlog police, but I've started yet another list of games that I want to play. To find them, I opened up randombundlegame.com, selected the bundles I've purchased, toggled "Any", and then sorted by Popularity. Tons of great picks emerged.
One step forward, two steps back...
I can see you’re plugging our sister event: the Backlog Builder!
It runs year-round, and, while it’s entirely optional, most people end up participating whether they intend to or not.
Started up both Bullet Heavens to double-check since I only remember 1 from its soundtrack; 1 is the one that's upgrading each stat, 2 seems to have 3 character-specific buffs to purchase under the Costumes tab and general buffs under the Cheats tab (though they reduce score).
randombundlegame having a sorting option for the entire pile of itch bundle games is such a great way to dive into them. And also remembering that you own X game which came in in massive bundle Y.
Trigger Warning stuff for The Hungry Lamb
So upfront, the visual novel gets dark:
Separate from the dark stuff:
Distribution - The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty
The Hungry Lamb is a Chinese visual novel about a bloody bandit named Liang, introduced in the prologue as looting a man after murdering him in cold blood, being reluctantly convinced by his partner Tongue to take on an escorting job to lead 4 lambs to a wealthy sheep; in non-bandit terms, human trafficking on 4 children, girls who haven't even reached 10 years old in this case, to a rich man far away. Liang's only principle is not killing women or children, so he's led to believe the client will purchase them to adopt or take in as servants, but that gets challenged when Sui, one of the girls, tells him the client is the Swine Demon who plans to devour them whole...
The time period is one of extreme drought and famine with the effects widely seen; maybe half the characters seen are driven by desperation: people turning to banditry, rebellion, even outright cannibalism just to put food in their bellies. The other half use the crisis as an excuse to take whatever they want: officials and soldiers who wield their authority like a club for extra taxes, bandits whose rallying cries to take food back from the hoarding landlords shift into taking everything from them. While Liang has enough funds for the journey to feed everyone and enough fighting skills to defend his flock, his chapters are interspaced with Sui's flashback chapters which detail how her happy life on the family farm was torn apart by the famine.
I'm sure you can see where the story is going though. Liang gets attached to the children and they get attached to him. Tongue is a greedy asshole, so Liang is the good bandit by default to them. They have nowhere else to go and almost everyone else on the road is worse than him; they at least know he'll protect and feed them without any abuse. It's not quite dad simulator fiction though; you can see that the cover art is just focused on Liang and Sui rather than the whole group. It's their story, the wolf and the cat.
I don't think there are any big twists so to speak, so much as the VN setting up the dominoes and letting you anticipate the size of the bombshell and when the other shoe will drop. It's a rather linear story with the flowchart showing when a chapter has a choice that will lead to a bad end and those decisions are pretty obvious besides the first one. Aside from that, there is a hidden value which determines which of the normal ends you get; again it's easy to get the best one, though you can consult a guide to see which decisions lead to a worse ending. The path to the true ends is locked by getting 2 endings to unlock all of Sui's chapters, followed by gaining max affinity and replaying Chapter 15 again.
If you do play this, make sure to pay attention to Sui's story. What she says, does, and knows in the present and compare/anticipate it to her gradually revealed past. The game wants you to analyze it from Liang's doubt to her story and the immediate contradiction shown in her chapter 1.
About 11.5 hours to 100% according to my steam playtime. It was a worthwhile experience, definitely evoked emotions like dread and an aversion to meat for the next few days.
Curiosity - Tunic
Tunic is basically if someone wanted to recreate the mystery feeling of the original Legend of Zelda and then attached Souls combat to it. This is also one of those play blind knowledge games, so it's certainly powered by Curiosity to keep discovering new things. The game manual itself is the primary collectible of the game, split into many pages which impart different lessons and requires some piecing together since most of it is written in the game's runic language.
I think the start is the most rough though; you're at your most powerless state wrestling with souls combat and there's not much wonder yet besides discovering some hidden shortcuts. Once you get the shield though, the game opens up because you have all your defensive options now and can survive going off road to explore, along with the game dripping some solutions to the mysteries you've come across. The rest of the main game is a loop of exploring and cross-referencing the manual to check your findings and discover a new thing which does generate that feeling of awe and the urge to backtrack with your newfound knowledge. It bears repeating though that it goes heavy on the souls combat so either pridefully throw yourself at it or check the accessibility options.
Beaten the final boss, but the normal ending feels deliberately unsatisfying. Normally this is the point where I'd just search up a guide to get to the true ending, but it's also the type of game that really does ask you to figure it out yourself to avoid ruining the experience. Probably gonna leave this until after the bingo because my brain feels fried from all the backtracking and hitting the point of not knowing at all what to do at this point.
Tunic - Current Progress
Manual: 24 pages according to save file?
- First Page: Table of Contents
- Missing Page: 48-49
- Last Page: 51. ToC says there's a page 52 for memos
Noticed the new Save File #2, but clueless on what to do since I thought I'd just be putting the Holy Cross pattern and it doesn't fit here?
There's also the mountain door and the holy cross door just sitting in the field in the top left, neither of which I know what to do with yet.
There's that chest that's blocked off by the bridge light under the swamp/graveyard dungeon.
Traditional - Gravity Circuit
Gravity Circuit is an action platformer that follows in the Traditional gameplay of Mega Man Zero, with a red, melee-oriented robot facing off against 8
Robot MastersCircuits who've turned their backs against robotkind. Playing Zero 2 on my brother's GBA is a pretty fond memory for me, so I'm very happy that this game managed to dredge up those memories and just feels right as an inspired game. In particular, it basically has the Chain Rod as the dedicated subweapon to grapple around with and the added bonus of being able to grab defeated enemies/projectiles to toss them back.I think are 2 big differences (aside from being able to slide):
It feels like bosses have a very noticeable mercy invincibility period if too much damage is dealt to them in a short period of time. Then again, I remember myself doing charged attack hit-and-runs for the Zero series, so I don't know how accurate that is. Probably need to either lab or watch some speedruns to see how to bypass this.
The game's boss techniques are purchasable after finishing a level instead of having to score an A-Rank. They need a bar of energy to use, so you can use them a bit for normal enemies, but bosses only drop 2 refills. My specific loadout is the Hardware Barrier, Heavenly Piledriver, Clone Array, and Catch Interrupt.
Each Circuit stage has a few collectibles: 1 max HP or energy booster, a palette chip which is basically the armor system that provides unique effects, and 8 NPCs to find which provides rescue tokens to trade in for Booster Chips with up to 3 equipable for a passive boost, similar to Zero 3's equipment chips,
and defeating enemies for their data chips. Get ready to destroy a lot of breakable walls and do some platforming for these.My specific Booster Chip choices include the double jump at all times, faster punching, taking less enemy damage or less environment damage cause I get hit a lot, and dealing damage when dashing/sliding because that causes Kai to bounce off the enemy instead of taking collision damage.
It's got most of the other conveniences for a modern game: in-game achievement list, replaying stages along with going into a specific checkpoint, training area against a dummy, boss select and post-game boss rush.
Took about 3.5 hours according to the in-game time which includes menuing. Had a fun time, would 100% and New Game+.