Wow, what an event! The contributions are always great, but I feel like the bar was somehow raised even further with this one. There were so many utterly brilliant comments made by all of our contributors. I loved reading all of your thoughts, impressions, personal anecdotes, and even backstory/development history of some games.

I failed to send in any highlights this month, since I was so focused on finishing my own task on time, so I'd like to offer a few shoutouts now.

• @J-Chiptunator, for some seriously impressive write-ups across a range of platforms.
• @JCPhoenix, for playing a ton of games, only some of which were detective-themed! The Let's Plays were great, and add so much richness to your first impressions.
• @Evie, for showing us the platonic ideal to strive towards.
• @dannydotcafe, a big welcome to a new face who nailed the assignment.
• @CannibalisticApple, for lulling us in with sweet stories of Animal Crossing and Katamari before converting us to a strange new religion.
• @kfwyre, for a non-golf blackout with some of the strangest classic titles and indie picks around. Thank you as always for emceeing these threads for us!
• @aphoenix, who snagged a blackout win while also leaving tons of replies/interaction. I really appreciate the added liveliness you bring.

There is of course more, but I'm trying not to embarass everyone! I promise I've read every single comment you folks have shared.

November was a crazy month for me. I played 32 new games, and some of them I even finished. I set out with the plan of doing rapid-fire game sessions and write-ups, but found I naturally migrated back into my overly-loquacious habits. Whereas in week 1 my writeups averaged 200 words per game, by week 4 they'd ballooned to well over 500. Whoops! Task failed successfully.

I think I'll set more reasonable goals for myself in the future, but I'm also super proud of making more than a dent in my backlog this month. Even better, I found a bunch of games I enjoyed and will get to continue playing.

I'll include the four cards I completed this month, in checklist format for easier reading.

Since my write-ups, I've now completed Manifold Garden, and put another three or four hours into Carnivores. I'll bag that T-Rex yet.

My pick of the month goes to Venba, which came as a complete surprise to me. It was a heartfelt story that really resonated, and gave me some cultural awareness that I really appreciated. I don't know that I'd ever have tried it if not for rolling the letter "V" by chance, but I'm glad I did. That's one thing I appreciate about the bingo card system -- it can turn us onto content that we'd never have experienced otherwise.

Other picks also left a lasting impression for me, including I Expect You To Die (superlative VR experience), A Bird Story (decidedly poignant), and Doki Doki Literature Club! (uniquely disquieting).

I plan to return to The Forgotten City next, where I'm excited to resume my investigation. Tails of Iron and Wuchang are also both waiting for me afterwards.

It's been an intense, yet fulfilling month, folks. Thanks for helping to make this event what it is. I'll see you all around the site, and for our next Backlog Burner in May!

Not much to update on my part since my last post in week 4, other than the fact that I am utterly, hopelessly in love with Darkest Dungeon 2.

When I first bought it and started it about two years ago now, I really didn't like it. I felt like it very much didn't live up to the original game and I just wasn't having fun in the slightest over the 12-hours I played it. And now? I'm so glad I restarted it. At this point I've put 30 more hours into it and I feel like I'm constantly discovering new things to tweak about my party builds and new ways to play the game more effectively. I just started a new run a day or two ago and I was feeling very unenthused with the party build I chose; it just didn't feel like it was going well at all and I was just sort of stumbling along.

So I decided to change up a few skills to address what I felt were some weak points in my Party and suddenly, we're just utterly kicking ass. It helps that my Heroes got a couple of positive relationship buffs, but I've also just figured out how to more effectively play them with the different skills I chose and again, they are just absolutely crushing it. I have somehow made it to the final region before the boss battle (in the second act) and I have also managed to do something apparently challenging in nearly completing the quest for the Crusader in a single run; I just need to make it to the Quest boss in the next region and I'll be golden. Only problem is, I'm notoriously bad at the bosses in this game and I've only ever won one boss battle in the many, many times I've tried.

At any rate, I've pretty much dropped everything else. I do finally want to go back to Cultic and see if I can make it past the part I got stopped-up at, but I think I'm otherwise done with Pacific Drive. As far as Advance Wars goes, that's one that I'll return to eventually, but I am feeling done with for right now. I didn't complete anything on my list nor get a bingo, but I'm happy with what I accomplished which is to find a game in my library that I'm content to stick with for awhile.

Well, unfortunately I got completely buried this month. November is the busiest time of the year for me work-wise and always has been, and though I was still able to get to a number of games and finish some long write-ups last November, this one was busier than most. But although it's technically too late now, I did get to a couple more games since my last writeup in Week 2, so I'll go ahead and post my thoughts on them for posterity.

Ender Lilies (PS5)--I tend to play a lot of Metroidvanias and so do my friends that I regularly talk games with, but although I've had this one installed on my PS5 for like two years and my friends raved about it, I never really got to it until this BB event. I did finish it, but kind of rushed to the "A" ending (one of several) because I literally completed it on 11/30. So I definitely missed some content, mainly The Abyss, but I'm told it's reminiscent of the Path of Pain from Hollow Knight so I feel kind of okay having skipped it. I might go back and play the extra content at some point but if I don't, I'm content with the 12 hours I spent with it.

The world of Land's End is being overtaken by the Blight, which corrupts everything and turns its inhabitants into zombies and other bizarre creatures. You are Lily, a young girl and member of the order of White Priestesses and possibly the last one, as many of your sisters were killed or corrupted into hideous monstrosities. You yourself actually don't have any attacks as you're a heckin' smol bean and completely defenseless on your own. Fortunately, you have the ability to contain and use the purified souls of the boss characters you come across as you progress in the world. A few act as your basic melee attacks, some are attack spells like fireballs or magic javelins or force pushes or poison clouds, others are defensive in nature (your only method of blocking).

Navigation is your standard Metroidvania cell-style of map, and the map is pretty significantly large--after 12 hours I think I only completed about 70% of the total map, including the hidden areas or alternative exits. Fortunately you have fast travel, but I noticed that although zones have names like The Stockades or Cliffside Hamlet or Catacombs, the map does not visually specify which zones are which and that can be a little annoying in the late game when you're trying to figure out where you need to backtrack to in order to find something. Once you unlock around 50% or more of the map, you can easily find yourself wandering around between locations trying to remember where the hell that high ledge was that you can now make it to since you just unlocked the flying dash capability. Granular exploration is usually a value-add in Metroidvanias, but it can get a little tiring here. Not so bad that I didn't have fun, but I guarantee you I would've finished the game in 8 hours if I'd just been able to annotate the map.

The art style is fantastic...when it's not moving. Everything is originally hand-drawn and the overall vibe is beautiful and haunting and creepy. Unfortunately the animation suffers a lot, and character movement--especially on very large bosses like Guardian Silva--looks like it was tweened in Flash. Lily's own character animation is actually pretty good, but enemies give off a paper-puppet type of stiffness that is a little jarring to watch. Music is a standout, being largely mournful piano melodies, and sound design in general is solid throughout. All of Ender Lilies has a beautiful and compelling visual/audio style that it's really a shame that the animations are so oddly deficient.

All that said, I give this game a thumbs-up and I enjoyed my time with it. However, I will note that my only true complaint about the game was that it was billed as Dark Souls hard, which I found it to be and beat my head against several zones and bosses and just assumed it was meant to be that way, and did not realize that I was underleveled throughout almost the entire game. I was essentially doing a "OneBro run" because I didn't know I'd missed a bunch of upgrade materials so I was fighting almost all of the late-game bosses with the same sword at the same power level I'd started the game with. That was a bummer to learn, as I think I would've enjoyed this game even more with a bit less of the frustration I had in instances like the Catacombs or Dark Witch Elaine.

Tails of Iron (PS5)--One of my favorite comics is Mouse Guard. A frankly kind of absurd premise (Mice! Camelot-ish! Weasel War!) taken absolutely seriously and succeeds as a result, and ends up being really imaginative and enjoyable. So as a result I was all in on Tails of Iron, which is not the same IP but the same idea. You're a rat knight, a minor prince, and the Frog Kingdom lays waste to yours while you're still figuring out who you want to be as someone who's not first in line for the throne. After the destruction about 20 minutes in, you're the only one in the royal succession left standing, so it's time to take the kingdom back.

It has a heavy, medieval-gothic line art style that I like a lot and while it doesn't look precisely like Mouse Guard, you can tell immediately that it was a direct inspiration, almost to the point that I'm surprised they didn't get a letter from Petersen. Unfortunately that's the best I can say about it. The art is great, but almost nothing else is.

This is also a 2D side-scrolling melee combat game that uses the phrase "Dark Souls" in its sizzle copy but the joyless slog it starts off as never changes. Gear is limited and not that meaningful. Enemies, even trash mobs, are damage sponges and even basic fights feel like they take forever. Trek to Yomi from my previous writeup could have some basic fights take a while, but when that happens they feel like proper duels with skilled opponents that you have to pay close attention to, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment to win. In Tails of Iron, there's no real sense of give and take or timing, just repetitiveness because enemies absorb so much damage, and some have crazy i-frames moving around the screen (archers in particular) that gets incredibly annoying in short order. Combat is swing, block, dodge, repeat, and that's it--there's little of the variation that makes games like Dark Souls or Trek interesting enough to experiment until you find what works for you.

I really, really wanted to like this game but after several hours I'm leaning on "joyless slog". Maybe if I powered through there would be more meat on the bone there but I gave up after maybe 4 hours. Damn shame. Only makes me want a proper Mouse Guard game more, done better.

My final card, a 9x9 blackout:

I ended up with no games that I didn't like, and had two games that I think I 100%-ed, those being The Room 3 & 4. I got back into some word puzzles - I used to be an avid NYTimes Crossword-er, and actually just yesterday borked my 22-day streak for all the NYTimes games (ah well). I picked up two games that will very likely stay in my rotation in some form as go-to games - Curse of the Dead Gods and Death Must Die for a dungeon crawler and a bullet heaven respectively. They Are Billions really scratched an RTS itch in a way that I didn't know I was missing. I'm looking forward to getting back to Inscryption and SCP: Secret Files at some point, but for now I think my game of the month is Subnautica. I don't know why I never really got into it before - too similar to too many other games that I have played, I guess - but I'm glad I've gotten into it now. My underwater base is expanding a lot, and I'm enjoying stabbing bone sharks in the face. I have to figure out how to take on a reaper leviathan... can I take on a reaper leviathan? I don't even know.

@kfwyre Sorry I did not pre-send you a highlight. I did read all the writeups and there were some great ones from everyone, but my highlight of the whole month was @Wes blacking out a card every single week. That's crazy!

I'm very glad I was able to take part in this event! Despite limited time for games, I managed to officially play and write about 9, 3 of which I went on finish.

A few other games I played didn't make the cut for different reasons, but here's some scattered thoughts about those.

My goal wasn't to play a certain number of games, but just to write a bit about games each week, which I accomplished. It was challenging but I enjoyed it enough that I hope I can keep it going between now and the next backlog burner. Speaking of, I'm already thinking about what bingo variant I might try out. I also hope I can spend more time reading and discussing everyone else's updates, as that's the one thing I felt like I never had enough time to do!

Let me think of some highlights off the top of my head:

• Realizing Point & Click Adventure games are bad, only to subsequently re-realize they're good actually.
• Bumping into Geralt of Rivia in the most unexpected of places.
• Reminiscing about the dawn of Steam for Linux and the Golden Age of Humble Bundles.
• The great review score fiasco of 2025.

Thanks again everyone, especially @kfwyre and @Wes

So I didn't end up adding any more games after the Week 4 post. But that's OK, because I am plenty happy with the 16 games I did this year! This time last year (I skipped May's round), I finished 11 games. So that's an improvement. Not that I need to do a full card or anything (Idk how you guys do it...).

On top of trying those 16, I did finish two of them: Nine Noir Lives and MAKOTO WAKAIDO's Case Files. And I'm still active playing another three: Murders on the Yangtze River, Eastward, and Intravenous.

I think my favorite game this round has been Eastward. There's something really cool about this game that I can't put my finger on yet. Because it's not normally a type of game I play, action-adventure types. But I get such strong nostalgia from it. Maybe it's the Earthbound/Mother 3 vibes. Idk, but I'm having fun with it regardless.

Anyway, I'm glad to have completed another Backlog Burner! Definitely time a for a break. Here's a BTS spoiler: I play and record and write and post on one day each week and it's a lot and it's kinda tiring by the end of the day, lol. I could just not do that and do like one game a day like a smart person, but that's how I do. So back to just normal vidya game playin'.

Thanks to @kfwyre and @wes for arranging this as always! Hope anyone who watched my mini LPs enjoyed them. And thanks to all the other participants and your posts and reviews. I've certainly added some of the games you all played to my backlog! Along with a few other games I purchased last month. It never ends, does it? 😅

See you all next year and around the site!

I had plans for the final week or so but they didn't pan out, and as a result I didn't add anything or end up with a winning card.

Finished (1): Coffee Caravan

Still playing (1): Hades II

Shelved until later (7): Super Robot Wars 30, Afterlove EP, Wander Stars, Civilization VII, Super Fantasy Kingdom, Wanderstop, Prodigal

Dropped (2): Devilated, Fabled Lands

Really the "shelved" section is for things I want to get back to but aren't a priority at the moment as I'm focused on other things through the end of the year. I was debating on whether Fabled Lands should go to "finished" instead since I felt satisfied with the time I put into it, but I didn't get especially far into the story.

Overall I had fun and found a number of games I liked even if I didn't end up putting much time into them yet, maybe next year I'll make a priority of finishing games I started in previous events.

I'm just happy to be able to tag along with a very minimalist approach while my time is so limited. When my time frees up, I look forward to bombarding you all with text and getting into new Bingo game modes. Thanks all and see you next time!

Final Bingo card:

During November's Backlog Burner, my plan was to sample 25 games in 20 days or less, spending up to a few hours with each one and using a 5×5 bingo card of genres as a guide. The card kept things varied enough that everything wrapped up two days early, which left the rest of the month open to breathe a bit.

That extra time went into some relaxed Kirby Air Riders sessions, finishing Portal's main campaign, and playing all of Tales from Toyotoki. That last one was quite a surprise: what looks like an unassuming coming‑of‑age boy‑meets‑girl story ended up hitting hard enough to make a usually stoic grown man tense up and cry, particularly during the final stretch.

Playing 25 games in 18 days didn't leave much room for deep writeups, so most of the writeups are short impressions with a bit of personal experience or historical context. Often, it took a round of online research just to fill in the gaps that a few hours of play couldn't cover.

That pace still works well for giving a broad overview of each game, but it inevitably flattens the nuance, especially for anything longer than five hours. Most of those titles in particular ended up with writeups that felt a bit more like rough, low‑budget Wikipedia summaries than insightful commentary.

Next time, the plan is to cut the number of games way down to make space for more detailed coverage. There will be a twist to go with that new approach, but that will have to wait until the next Backlog Burner in about five months.

Standouts (6): Animal Well, Hypnospace Outlaw, Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch, Untitled Goose Game, Tetris Attack, Enter the Gungeon
Good enough to continue (14): The Witness, Hyrule Warriors, Cuphead, Rune Factory 4 Special, Liberation Maiden, Grand Theft Auto V, A Short Hike, Resogun, Crimson Shroud, Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, Long Puppy, WitchSpring R, Pokémon Ultra Moon
Shelved (5): Splatoon, Vegas Stakes, Weapon Shop de Omasse, Metroid Prime Hunters, Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game - Complete Edition