Just played a bit of another game, I and Me, on my Switch. I bought it a long time ago, and it was a perfect fit for Symmetry because it's a platformer where you simultaneously control two cats. You need to move them so they're both standing in picture frames to end each level, using the level geography to help reorient your cat.

I checked off Fragmentation and Causality because you're basically moving in small fragments. You need to be very mindful of every movement, as jumping or walking at the wrong moment may doom one (or both) cat. Sometimes there are spikes, sometimes there are enemies, sometimes there are walls to stop one cat and sometimes you'll just send it to a watery doom by walking off a ledge. You're constantly readjusting your position in tiny increments with helpful walls to try to get the right spacing.

It has gentle, soothing music and very calming, introspective themes told through the level titles and notes you can find. Which is nice, because this game could easily be a rage game. It is good this game does not have lives because you will die over and over, either from mistakes with timing, failing to get the right spacing, or just needing to explore to see the routes you're supposed to use.

This is a game that calls for patience over anything else. And I... Am not the most patient person, apparently. I've reached Level 2-10, which is funnily enough the most symmetrical level yet, and I'm calling it for the moment because, again, it calls for patience.

Still, it's a clever game. I'm not big on platformers in general, but I can appreciate the design and intent. It has this meditative atmosphere that keeps it from being too frustrating, the difficulty really does come more from my own impatience rather than the game itself. Which fits given how introspective this game is.

EDIT: Here's a link to it on Steam! I'm playing it on Switch, but I wanted to link it because I have a feeling some people here will like it. Just keep in mind it's short (found a playthrough video that's about an hour, though the repetitive nature makes it longer), so maybe grab it on sale.

Cool idea to try to complete a full card using just one game. Completing two cards in a single event would surely be some kind of record.

Blue Prince came seemingly out of nowhere, but is shaping up to the puzzle game of 2025. It has strongly piqued my interest. We've seen a bunch of surprise hits this last month, with Clair Obscur and Oblivion Remastered also doing very well.

It makes you wonder if the conventional wisdom about game marketing may be shifting. Personally, I'd be completely okay with not learning about a game until shortly before release. Too much hype can begin to feel taxing. I'm okay with being pleasantly surprised at a new release!

Celeste (Randomizer)

As part of the The Great Tildes Archipelago Randomizer event, I opted to play Celeste. I hope nobody minds that I'm doubling this up with the backlog burner!

Funny enough, Celeste was actually on my backlog for a very long time. It was a game I knew I was going to like, and so I wanted to set aside a period of time for it when I had nothing else going on. I finally played it last year, and as expected I greatly enjoyed it. It has extremely tight platforming, charming art, and a spectacular soundtrack that I picked up on Bandcamp immediately. The accolades were well-deserved.

This time I'm playing a randomizer via Archipelago, and it's a pretty unique spin on the game. Every chapter is automatically unlocked by default, but many of the interactables like moving platforms, jump arrows, and bounce pads remain inoperable. This means that your progress in each chapter might be blocked by something completely unexpected. What's normally a trivial jump might become extremely difficult, or outright impossible.

If you're unfamiliar with Archipelago, it's a multi-player, multi-world randomizer. This means that the "checks" that unlock things in your world might be in a completely different game being run by another player. In Celeste, the strawberries act as checks that you can send out to other worlds. Over a period of about a week, we had over a dozen players syncing hundreds of checks back and forth, so it got a little chaotic.

Now, I'm no slouch when it comes to platformers, though neither am I an expert, so it was interesting trying to approach some of these difficult sections while asking "Is that even possible?". I did thankfully learn how to wavedash by playing the Farewell chapter and C-sides last year, which prepared me for some of the more difficult jumps and tricky strawberries in the randomizer.

For the category, I'm putting this under Harmony. The randomizer inherently requires harmonizing with others, to work together to complete your games. There's a secondary meaning though, as this game's story is largely about coming to terms with and accepting yourself.

Celeste is a beautiful game, and works surprisingly well as a randomizer title.

e: Typo

Endless Alice

Most of my bingo entries I've planned out in some way. I reviewed my categories, tried to match them to games of a reasonable length, and thought about what kind of commentary I might provide. This time though, I'm just winging it.

I ran across Endless Alice while organizing my Steam library (as you do). I haven't played many anime-style games, and the gameplay seemed similar to Risk of Rain 2, a favourite game of mine. I was in the mood to try something new, so I figured, "Why not?". I need to spend less time talking about games and more time actually playing them. Mild NSFW warning as this game is sexualized.

The comparisons to Risk of Rain 2 (henceforth RoR2) are definitely justified. The game is mechanically very similar. You land on a planet(?), enemies begin to spawn around you, and you shoot them to earn money. That money lets you purchase chests that are dotting the landscape, and those unlock random upgrades to make your character stronger. Meanwhile, the enemies continue to grow stronger as time progresses (thus the Time category), so you need to efficiently loot the stage. Find enough useful items to beat the boss and move to the next stage.

Most RoR2 gameplay concepts seem to carry over. Combat is cooldown-based, so you rotate skills based on the situation. Many of the item buffs are familiar for RoR2 players (eg. 1 extra jump, or boost movement speed out of combat). The game still features item rarities, multishops, item recyclers ("altar of dismantle"), and a "lunar coins" analog for progression between runs.

One change is that there's a talent tree system. It looks like you can upgrade each character between runs, making it easier to progress in the future. I spent my few points on movement speed, with the assumption that avoiding damage is better than taking less damage.

I tried 3 of the available 5 characters. My first character used an auto-lock on, similar to the Huntress in RoR2. While I think this is great for beginners, it does make target prioritization more difficult. My second character was a melee class with swords, similar to Mercenary. Great mobility, but close range meant I took a lot of damage and the run ended quickly.

My best run was with the third character, who is most similar to Captain, using drones and strong attacks with long cooldowns. I reached the fifth stage with her before things got too hectic for me. Around stage 3 I found the "Rocket Running Shoes", which fired off rockets while running around. I tried pivoting into a movement-focused build to take advantage of this, which worked for a while, but I couldn't overpower the boss of the fifth stage. That's where my final run ended.

For each of my attempts, the stages seemed to remain the same. I may have just gotten unlucky and there might be stage variants like in Risk of Rain, but they looked identical to me. The stages in general also seem a little too large, with a lot of open space between points of interest.

I don't really know what to say about the graphics or overall style. The first character is a large-breasted woman with a shiba inu that fires laser beams out of its eyes. It doesn't feel very cohesive or artistically beautiful to me. And while I've nothing against the anime aesthetic in particular, I also don't really understand why everything needs to be sexy. I don't generally want to be titillated while playing a game like this, so I don't really get the appeal.

The localization is pretty funny. Starting the game, the tutorial reads: "Proceed to Teaching Stage". One of the pause menu entries was "Break through the checkpoint". Any guesses as to what that does? I'm still not sure. A lot of the text had display issues in English, with it running outside of containers and overlaying other elements. I'd say that RoR2 is better about this, but to be honest a lot of their tooltips are also wrong or misleading.

For what I presume is an indie game, Endless Alice surprisingly has all the latest engine tech like Nvidia Low Latency and DLSS. I guess that's included out-of-the-box in game engines nowadays, but it's still unusual to see.

This is the kind of game that's hard to evaluate without putting in a lot of hours to learn the maps, characters, build strategies, item synergies, etc. After three runs though, I did feel like I was already seeing repeats of a lot of the items. I suspect the builds may not be very complex right now.

I don't expect I will go back and play this any more, barring a major update where they add content or polish it to the nines. Moreover, games like Risk of Rain (1 and 2) have always been multiplayer-centric games for me, and I don't see my group adding this game to our rotation. We'd probably just play some more Risk of Rain.

I also picked Dredge, it was one of the first games I played for this event. I really enjoyed the moment I realized that the rocks I was crashing into weren't there in the day time or when my fear meter wasn't high. There are a few game design choices like that which I thought brought a lot of polish to the game. I also enjoy the progression of fishing, which is strange because I'm not really one for fishing mini-games - part of the reason this was still on my backlog for so long. Overall this was my favourite discovery of the event so far, so I'm glad that you're liking it too!

A Case of Distrust - Unexpected. I like this game. You play as Phyllis Cadence Malone, a hard-boiled detective in San Francisco in the 20s, and you have a mystery to solve. I don't want to spoil the story itself - and I can't spoil the whole thing because I haven't finished it - but I do want to talk about the feel and the mechanics. The art design and direction is fantastic; everything is presented in a monochrome and has a real film noire feel to it. It's not all black and white, some scenes are red, some green, yellow, or other, but they're all single shades. I was not expecting the art style at all when I started the game; the entire game is in the style of the hero banner that you see in Steam, and gameplay images don't always make for good posters.

Each scene feels well written and polished, and could have sprung from a Dashiell Hammett novel. I won't say that the characters are real or multi-dimensional, because that's not the point of any of them; they're cool and noire and sometimes they blend noire tropes. If playing a Hammett novel where the first case you take is one where your first case involves convincing a cat of something, then this is probably the singular option you have to do that.

The way the game plays is as a detective, you gather clues in your notebook. You can review the clues and draw conclusions, and you can consult your notebook to progress dialogue options. It does a pretty good job of making you feel like an actual detective.

I plan on returning to this and completing the full story in June.

Astral Ascent - Collaboration. "Wait, one sec," you might say. "Collaboration? But what's that just one word down on your card? Is that the word Ascent?"

Listen, I have a plan here, it's okay!

This is a roguelite with an anime style and some really slick and enjoyable gameplay. There are (I think) 4 playable characters, and they all seem to have pretty rich build options. There is a bit of randomness to how you build your character, as you can only make builds with options that are presented to you. Each character has four ability slots, and they are replaceable, but you can only replace them with abilities that you come across.

Each run you progress through to the boss, one of the Zodiacs, and the Boss designs are all pretty cool. Sometimes you may end up with a build that makes a boss easy; more often I ended up with sub-par builds where the zodiac ate my face, and I ended up getting carried by my co-player and collaborator!

I have mostly played this game with daughter, Kid2, who is so much better than me at the game. She has consistently helped me figure out better builds, has explained story beats that I have missed, and is the only reason I have beaten the 13th boss.

This is a really enjoyable game, another winner from this round. I definitely see myself coming back to it with some frequency, because I'll probably do a run whenever Kid2 asks me to do so.

Tales of the Neon Sea - Knowledge. 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 enjoying it a lot and I totally wrote this!

Dordogne - Gentle . This game is like playing a modern version of a french impressionist painting. It is beautiful and poignant. You explore your grandmother's house in an attempt to restore your memories, which you do by solving puzzles. You play in the present and in the memories themselves, as a tween version of yourself. The puzzles are not long or difficult - according to How Long To Beat, I'm more than halfway - but they're all sweet and beautiful.

I really cannot overstate how this game is like playing a Manet. It is a beautiful game.

Pool Panic - Light. I took this more as "not heavy" than "giving off photons". This is a silly game, and I mean that to be very positive, as it is attempting to be silly. You play as a sentient cue ball, travelling across the world to snook and billiard your way through a bunch of challenges and puzzles. Almost all of them so far can be brute forced, and you can reset and try to get a better score / fewer shots on each individual "table". The controls are okay - a bit jittery - but intuitive enough, and there are loads of different balls. Look out for the bear balls, they'll attack you, and the skelly balls are hard to deal with. If you want to spend 5 minutes on something that puts a smile on your face, this is a good option.

I am getting close, and it's a long weekend here in Canada, so I feel good about my chances. I"m trying to keep my board updated as I put these out so I know how close I am.

Timelie - Silence. This is a stealth puzzle game where you control the flow of time to silently sneak through a maze with robots that are trying to capture you. It is a 2d Isometric game that has cute if somewhat uninspired graphics (I think I was spoiled by Dordogne). The conceit of the game is that you can adjust time like you're watching a video - scrub back and forth on your timeline to see where the robots are going to path and what they're doing so that you can avoid them. It's another short game that I haven't made it all the way through yet, but in this game, you also get to control a cat to work your way around the robots.

This one is cute, I'm going to return to it and play it all the way through at some point in the near future.

Nomad Survival - Harmony. This is a bullet hell/heaven game that is similar to so many others in the same vein, but it's got a certain something to it that make it pretty engaging. I've played 6 runs so far, succeeding at 4 of them. The two that I failed were because of complacency; once I thought that I had sufficient damage to kill a bigger enemy and make it through a gap that I actually couldn't and once I was listening to Tom Scott's Lateral and got pulled in to one of the stories and just didn't pay enough attention.

The bullet H game that I've played the most before this has been Vampire Survivors, which I do like quite a bit, so it is in the comparison of these two games that I decided that the main differentiation between them is how you build the characters. I'm not an expert on Nomad Survival, but it feels like there are just more options and more fluidity to how you build your character. You have to strike a balance - a harmony - between active and passive abilities. You also have to choose if you're going to keep taking different abilities, or focus in on just a few. I felt like I was able to play each game differently by picking characters with different core abilities, and then also picking different active and passive abilities within the same character. Most of my runs have been with the Cultist, and it is easy to build him with an area of effect centred around himself, or with aimed attacks, and both felt effective and fun.

This one is enjoyable, and was also one that I picked on the suggestion of kfwyre for the recent April Humble Choice where I got not one, but two of the other games that I've played this BLB.

Amnesia: the Dark Descent - Endurance. This is, I believe, the sixth time I have made a go at playing this game, and this time I decided to just stick it out and endure what was happening. The graphics aren't great, the soundtrack is, and the atmosphere trumps every other game that I have played. I don't know what it is about this game that works, but it works. To me, this is the seminal horror game, and the one I usually recommend despite my own inability to complete it.

I am filled with existential dread; facing the monster is hopeless, I must hide.

What's the name of the meta game? BANGO? BONGO? BINGPOT? What's happening here? I'm close I think.

Day 15...

I decided to go with another deck-builder today: Griftlands. I bought this about a year before Gilgamech (from yesterday) in summer 2023. The two games are an interesting contrast with each other, Griftland is, in about every way, bigger. Griftland has not just one type of combat but two (traditional fighting and "negotiation"), it has relationships with NPCs, it has a somewhat more interesting story, it has more complicated combat rules, it has much more complicated cards, it has temporarily recruitable allies, it has more game modes, it even has a more complicated options menu.

But at the same time it lacks the charm of Gilgamech and that complexity means less accessibility to newcomers. The combat game mode is straightforward enough but the negotiation mode is just weird. The way they just had to pick random words that fit the theme of negotiation to replace e.g. defense makes it harder to keep track of and the scheme of "arguments" being active and being attacked is strange. You just have to ignore the metaphor and remember what the things actually do. But I'm sure after several hours you'd get used to that.

Didn't hit any problems with the game, it ran smoothly.

I'll probably revisit but I think it'll wait until after I revisit and tire of Gilgamech and then until I feel enough hankering for a deck builder to actually commit to it for a while. I think it'll take some commitment to fully get my head around the mechanics.