May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion
The blaze has officially ignited!
(and May has officially mellowed, for those going the chill route)
- Quicklink: Backlog Bingo
Etiquette:
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It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week.
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It is also fine to respond to your own posts.
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If you are playing Backlog Bingo, you can share your table either by markdown or through screenshots.
Gameplay guidelines:
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Goals for this event (if any) are entirely individual and self-determined.
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Playing Bingo is optional and not required.
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You do NOT need to finish games unless you want to. The point is to try out games and have fun, not force ourselves to play things we're not interested in.
Backlog Burner FAQ
What exactly is the Backlog Burner?
Your "backlog" is all those games you've been meaning to play or get around to, but never have yet. This event is an attempt to get us to collectively dig into that treasure trove of experiences, scratch some long-standing itches, and knock a few titles off our to-play lists.
It runs every May and November. New discussion topics will go up once a week during those months.
You do not need to sign up in advance -- the topics are open to all. If you would like to be included in the notification list, comment in this topic to be added.
How do I participate?
- Choose some games from your backlog and play them.
- Then tell us about your experiences in the discussion thread for the week.
That's it!
Optionally: you can play Backlog Bingo which is a fun way of cutting down the choices you have to make and playing games you might not have normally selected on your own.
Do I need to finish the games that I play?
Nope! Not at all.
There aren't really any requirements for the event so much as this is an incentive to get us to play games we've been avoiding starting up, for whatever reason. Play as much or as little as you like of a given game.
Try out dozens for ten minutes each or dive into one for 40 hours. There's no wrong way to participate!
Can I make multiple posts in the same topic?
Yes! Each discussion thread stays live for a full week, so feel free to make multiple comments in the topic as you play different games. This isn't considered noise -- it's considered valuable participation in the event!
Backlog Bingo FAQ
Important: All data for your Backlog Bingo card is stored on your device, not the server. Clearing your browser data will delete your card. You can use the export feature to make backups or move your card between devices.
I'm a returning player. How do I reset my previous card?
If you've already created a card and wish to start over, click the Settings button in the header to access your card settings. Then click the Reset button, and confirm the prompt. This will irrevocably delete your present card, allowing you to start fresh.
Where is my data stored?
All data is stored by your browser in local storage. There are no accounts, and nothing is sent to the server, so it's privacy-friendly by design. This does mean that you are responsible for not deleting any browser data on wescook.ca, either manually or through automatic cleanups performed on browser close.
Backlog Bingo is open-source, and licensed permissively under MIT.
What is the difference between the "Standard" and "Golf" modes?
In Standard Mode, each square on the bingo card corresponds with one single game. Duplicate games cannot be entered into different squares. A winning card would have a row of five different games that each filled in one square.
In Golf Mode, duplicates are not only allowed -- they are encouraged! The purpose of Golf mode is to try to find a single game that will fill multiple categories at the same time. For example: Stardew Valley might fulfill You got it on sale, A solo-dev project, and Has romanceable characters all at the same time. A winning card would have all twenty five squares filled, but possibly only six or seven different games.
What is the star space in the middle?
That is the "wildcard" or "free space."
In Standard Mode, there are no requirements to fill it. You can choose any game you want! Anything goes!
In Golf Mode, it does not need to be filled. Because Golf is all about stacking up categories on a single game, any game used in Golf would fill it automatically, meaning it has no real function. As such, the square will be pre-filled for you if you play in Golf mode.
The new Free list defaults to having this space turned off. Because you already have full freedom in how you fill the squares, having a free space is redundant (though if you miss it or just like the aesthetics, you can certainly turn it back on!).
Can I create custom bingo categories for this, or other events?
Absolutely! The Backlog Bingo app reads in simple JSON files which define the available categories. We've created a couple prebuilt lists for this event, but you're free to tweak our categories, or create completely new ones. You could even use them for books, anime, movies, recipes -- anything!
If you are interested in learning more, you can find documentation on the wiki, and use an example JSON category file. You can also ask for help in the topic!
Time✅ Strange Horticulture
My bingo board
(which I'll post later tonight when I can get it from the browser tab on my other computer)gave me possibly the greatest theme I could imagine for a backlog burner month, be it Mellow or Motivated. The game is pretty cool too.Musings on Time (Strange Horticulture)
"Must be nice to have that kind of time." I still feel a wave of anger when I remember the condescending tone of this phrase. While this has usually been a petty attempt to dismiss as frivolous the things that I enjoy, there's a real question lurking in the background. Are there better things that I should do with the time I have available? As I've settled into the latter part of my 30s, became a parent, and developed healthy habits around cooking and exercise, the amount of time available for anything else seems to keep shrinking. Obviously the answer to the question is that I do spent most of my time on more important things.
Games are special though. I love playing games, reading about games, thinking about games, and thinking about writing about games. For me they're worth making the time, even though it might just be an occasional hour a few times a week. The scarcity of time adds some pressure. I need to choose games I'll maximally enjoy, right? Or worse, I need to compress the games to fit my time, play as fast as I can. Then I get to the next one in the queue faster, right?
Obviously this isn't my philosophy. I know some people like games as systems to break down, understand, and ultimately defeat. I'm the contrary. Games are a place where I can exist, be part of a narrative, or construct my own in a virtual space. When I was a kid I played Age of Empires slowly, more interested the ever-unfolding story of my civilization and its citizens than I was at attaining any win condition. When I discovered custom campaigns on the internet, I realized other people played this way too. Later I would come to love Bethesda games for how dense they are with little environmental details. Things you only notice when slowing down and taking the time to live in the world.
This brings me to Strange Horticulture, a game about running a plant shop in a setting I might describe as low-fantasy Victorian. Each day you fill customer orders for plants from your collection. Knowing which plant to sell involves an in-game guidebook filled with descriptions that are sometimes obvious, but more often require guesswork. You can leave your shop to seek new plants throughout the world, via a map with locations that when selected provide a text vignette describing your experience. This is a game about existing in a world of dusty libraries, mystical forests, and villainous towns best avoided. Yet this is all done so minimalistically, with essentially one screen and a Papers Please-esque interface. The game's music is ambient, almost meditative, but it has a sinister edge. The world is dangerous, its telling you, but your shop, with its vibrant plants well-worn wood furniture is a refuge. It all feels beautifully balanced.
All games use magic tricks to convince the player that they are more than just art and text and code. Once you see through the artifice; realize how the systems work, the illusion falls. At the moment I'm still completely under Strange Horticulture's spell. I know it won't last forever. The game is probably steering me through a linear set of events, I may not have any real choices at all. But for the moment I can stop and listen to the sound of rain while I read a letter, arrange my plants on a shelf for no other reason than aesthetics, peer through a magnifying glass at the names of tiny villages on a map, and feel, just for a few minutes, like there's no hurry. I have all the time in the world.
Pinging all Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: the event has begun!
Notification List
@BailerAppleby
@Bullmaestro
@CannibalisticApple
@dannydotcafe
@Durinthal
@Eidolon
@J-Chiptunator
@JCPhoenix
@kingofsnake
@ShroudedScribe
@sotix
@Wes
If you would like to be removed from/added to the list, let me know either here or by PM.
Here is my
Flowcard, using the seedAnything But Steam.I'm also super busy this month, so I plan on doing Mellow May as well and taking it easier rather than trying to get a full blackout.HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT
I'M BURNING IT ALL UP
BLACKOUT OR BUST
Style✅ Assault on Proxima
Absence✅ Vartio
Increment✅ Aris Arcanum
Simple✅ Donna: The Canine Quest
Tradition✅ Blue Maiden
Primary focus: Indie Pass games
Primary+1 focus: Humble app games (I forgot about this)
Secondary focus: Direct downloads/abandonware
Tertiary focus: GOG games
Quaternary focus: itch.io games (I've bought so many A Very Bad Thing Happened megabundles that I have thousands upon thousands to choose from)
Genuinely don't think I need to have four separate focuses, but I'm keeping my options open. If previous BBs are any indicator, I'll get a week or two in and then just hard pivot to something new because whatever my original plan was feels stale or played out by that point.
Eek, a Motivated May participant! Take cover, my fellow mellows!
I GOT NO CHILL BUT I SUPPORT ALL OF YOU IN YOUR EFFORTS TO TAKE THINGS AT A MORE RELAXED PACE
MAY YOUR GAMING WATERS FLOW GENTLY AND THE TIDES OF YOUR LIBRARIES EBB SLOWLY
Donna: The Canine Quest (played via Indie Pass)
This is a solo dev project, with the main character, Donna, being based on the dev's real-life dog. Also, all the other characters in the game are based on real-life animals the dev knows. Cute!
The game itself is a simple small-scope open-world action RPG. It feels it could be something out of the 90s, where game devs hadn't fully optimized RPG mechanics in games across different genres so they existed in a nacent, preliminary state. It also feels like a robust flash game from the 00s that you would load up in your browser and dive into for a few hours here and there.
Playing it actually reminded me of a game I played way back in the day and had completely forgotten about: Well of Souls.
In theory, I really like this game for its simplicity. It's satisfying to run around, fight enemies, cast spells, complete quests, and level up. All the basics are there.
Unfortunately, it suffers pretty badly currently from what I believe is an entirely fixable issue: combat is flat out bad -- not due to design issues but due to technical execution.
There are three factors that go into this:
You can choose which stats to upgrade, but they feel infinitesimally incremental at best, even when dumping lots of points into a single stat. This means that low-level enemies remain threats even when you're severely overlevelled. I was getting killed by enemies around level 5 while my character was over level 30. Not individually, mind you, but when there were groups of them, which is a result of...
Given that it's an action RPG, you're controlling your attacking and positioning live, hoping to dodge enemy attacks while landing your own. Unfortunately, when an enemy attacks you, you are immediately susceptible to another attack.
I think that the enemy attacks are on cooldowns, so a single enemy can't attack you repeatedly (note: I could be wrong about this). So like, there's a balance there, but when facing a group of enemies, you can get completely destroyed instantaneously when they all rush you and each one successfully lands an attack.
Even single-enemy fights aren't great, specifically because of...
Imagine a polearm. It's meant to attack things at length, but it's ineffective up close, when an enemy is at, say, optimal dagger range.
This is exactly how combat plays out in the game: if an enemy gets up close to you, you cannot hit them, but they can hit you. This happens often, as a lot of enemies in the game have a rush move where they leap directly at you.
This doesn't feel intended from a design standpoint. As in, Donna isn't carrying polearms and meant to keep her distance from enemies -- she's got swords and the game is meant to be simple: run around and hit things.
I played the game for three hours, hoping that the combat would get better as I leveled up, geared up, learned new spells, etc. I really, genuinely wanted to like the game because it's clearly made with love and because I have a soft spot for solo dev projects (and an even softer spot for pet tributes).
Unfortunately, those three hours showed me that the great equalizer of all RPGs (grinding) couldn't offset the clumsy combat on account of the stat returns being so very low. My hopes of just getting so powerful that I didn't have to worry about hitboxes or i-frames never materialized.
In looking up the game to link, I found out that it has been released on Steam and has 15 reviews currently. All of them are positive, with none of them mentioning the issue I ran into, which almost makes me think that maybe the Indie Pass build is the wrong one or something? Maybe the dev uploaded a beta build by mistake?
If the issues with the combat were fixed, I would genuinely like this game. It's an otherwise cozy, short, low-stakes, palate-cleanser RPG -- the kind of thing you could relax to after a stressful day at work.
For some reason, I assumed that games on Indie Pass were going to be exclusive. I guess that would be a bit unfair to indies though, who already have an uphill battle to fight. I expect it's still good for discovery, and might be a good way to find which indies you enjoy most later on Steam (or elsewhere).
When I had Xbox Game Pass, I treated it almost as a Blockbuster. I'd "rent" games to try them out, often not finishing them on the service. I guess it was hard for me to square the idea of a subscription with investing time into the games as if I owned them. I recognize of course that Steam and similar are only "ownership" in the loosest sense, but my brain is happy to believe otherwise.
Anyway, Donna looks really cute. I'm a sucker for an art style like that, which really wears its personality on its sleeve. Shame about the combat, though you gave a good description of the issues.
e: Typo
I'm not sure if there are any platform exclusives, but I guess I'll find out as I continue to play different titles on it. So far, every one that I've played has been published by indie.io (the company who runs Indie Pass). They also publish on Steam, so I assume most if not all have Steam releases too.
I'm wondering if indie.io is hoping to get other indie publishers on board with Indie Pass, or if it's intended to essentially be a launcher for (most of) their catalog (there are some games they published on Steam that aren't on Indie Pass, though it's possible they are saving those for later).
Blue Maiden (played via Indie Pass)
This game is another horror walking sim, though it's much more upfront about that than Vartio. It's got all the tropes you expect: dim environments, maze-like corridors, a flashlight, unsettling sounds, jumpscares.
Plot wise, it focuses on a tradition that happens every 25 years where the blue maiden ritual must be completed in order to not enter the red purgatory (not the exact name, but I can't remember what it was).
Unfortunately, this one left me cold.
I feel bad for criticizing it, as it's another solo dev project and I want to encourage those, but I found the whole game to be unfulfilling. The exploration and puzzles are rudimentary and the lore is sparse. I saw it through to the end given that it's quite short (maybe an hour and a half?), but I don't feel like that paid off for me.
Vartio (played via Indie Pass)
This is a short, minimalistic horror walking sim. You can finish it in under 30 minutes.
To talk about why I put it in the absence category would effectively amount to spoilers, so I'll simply say that I thought it did a decent job at being a slow-burn, atmospheric horror. I generally like something that tries to build up creepiness over time rather than relying on jumpscares, but I think this game actually does it TOO slowly. It gets a little long in the tooth in places, which feels weird to say about a game with such a short runtime. Boredom started to creep in for me.
The game's sound design is its standout. If the game's graphics are minimalistic, the game's sound is understated maximalism and does most of the lifting in the game. The game opens with synthesized speech that automatically put me on edge and does a great job of immediately setting an unsettling tone.
I wouldn't exactly recommend the game, as there isn't a lot of meat on its bones, but I do think it's cleverly executed and goes for a more understated horror than most, which I can appreciate as someone who likes to be unsettled but doesn't really liked to be scared.
Assault on Proxima (played via Indie Pass)
On a Flow card, it can sometimes take a lot of thinking to figure out where to best slot a game.
Not so with this one. It was an immediate lock for STYLE.
The game looks GREAT -- flat polygonal environments with expressive colors and lighting. Think: Borderlands aesthetic meets System Shock vibes with Halo game feel. It's hard to overstate how much I'm into it.
The game is meant to be a co-op FPS, although Indie Pass has a disclaimer on the game page telling you that it is single-player only on Indie Pass and that, if you want to play multiplayer, you need to "visit your preferred digital games storefront."
The game definitely suffers from being played solo. I don't think it's balanced for it, so you are quite vulnerable and die very easily. That didn't stop me from throwing myself at it over and over again, hoping to lock in the next checkpoint before dying so that I could progress through it bit by bit.
As I was doing this, I realized that the game has a design aspect that kind of kills it for me: enemies continue to respawn indefinitely. I want levels I can clear out and areas I can make safe, but in this game it'll just keep throwing baddies at you indefinitely. During a 4-player co-op session this probably keeps things lively and isn't too much of a problem, but during solo I grew to loathe it.
This ended up being a perverse incentive for how I played the rest of the game. If the enemies are constantly spawning, then killing them doesn't really have an effect. So, what I ended up doing was just rushing the objectives in each level, killing enemies only when I had to secure a point briefly or when the game throws a boss at you.
I then realized partway through this that I was effectively speedrunning the game, and I wanted to see what the times for it were like. So, I checked in on speedrun.com leaderboards only to find out that the game isn't even listed on the site. For a brief moment I thought I was possibly the first person in the world to have speedrun the game, but that illusion was shattered when I checked in on the game's Steam forums and saw that other people had clued into the "just run past everyone" strategy I was using.
That said, on the extremely rare chance that any speedrunners are reading this: the world record for this game is currently up for grabs! No times have been posted at all! It could be yours!
Outside of the aesthetics, I'll also say the levels impressed me with how robust they were (except for the first one, which isn't good). They get bigger, better, and more exciting as you progress through the game, almost as if the level designers were skilling up as they developed it and you can track their mastery via the campaign.
I could see this being something fun to drop into and finish in a few hours with friends. I don't think there's a lot that would keep people coming back to it -- it's got that old-school design of "play through the levels and you're done." No leveling up, no upgrades, no unlocks, no seasons, etc. Sometimes you just want something to be done though, instead of being constantly on the hook through dripfeed incentives, and this is a good fit for that.
Aris Arcanum (played via Indie Pass)
This one hurts a bit, as I think this game has the potential to be quite excellent, but I also can't keep playing it because it consistently soft-locks for me at the first boss. The game doesn't hard crash, but I get tossed into a black screen with a working cursor and sound effects.
Aesthetically, the game is gorgeous. Think "Art Deco Hades". Lots of gold, strongly geometric. Altogether beautiful.
Gameplay-wise, it also takes nods from Hades and probably follows it a little too closely in terms of design. If the game were made with less care, I would think it was simply trying to be a cheap cash-in or fast-follow, but it's clear that this game was made with love.
Instead of weapons, you get spells. There are a few set base spells, of which you can get up to four. Over the course of the run, you unlock modifiers that make incremental changes to the nature of these spells. No one modifier is that significant on its own, but you can stack them up to make some pretty powerful builds in the way that incremental changes can snowball with the right accumulation.
Or, at least, this is the promise of the game. I didn't get to follow through fully on it because of the aforementioned softlocking. I initially thought it was just a coincidence, but I've now done three runs to the first boss, each of which ends up in the same black screen.
Similar to what happened with Donna, none of the game's Steam reviews mention this at all, which makes me wonder if the Indie Pass build isn't up to date.
Also, given that I've now had technical issues with two games, it makes me wonder if there's something up with Indie Pass itself? Like, maybe these builds were tested on Steam and worked there, but when run without Steam, something gets mixed up? I don't know enough about software development to know if that possibility even makes sense.
I'm certainly a strong conclusion to draw from very little evidence, I just find it odd that it's happened twice so far.
Oh man, that stinks. I'd probably give up at that point too.
Yeah, it's definitely possible -- especially in this case. As one example, some of the assets might be packaged differently for the standalone release than for Steam. When the game attempted to load them, it might have thrown an exception and caused a softlock or crash. That could easily be missed if the person porting the game didn't test it all the way through.
It's a little harder to guess what might have gone wrong with Donna. The issues there seem more like game design complaints than technical errors, so I think you might have just disagreed with the crowd in that case. Though considering the small number of reviews, I wonder if a good percentage of them were friends or family, and willing to look past some design flaws.
Good to know!
And it’s quite possible that my issues with Donna were simply a result of me being bad at games. I’m legitimately terrible at most of them.
I'll admit this is the first I'd heard of Indie Pass. There's some aspect of channel surfing obscure games, essentially panning for gold, that deeply intrigues me. But yeah, that's a floodgate I don't need opened at the moment, I'll stick with my much more finite Steam library and wishlist. It does look like they have noble intentions, so hopefully they can resolve some of these issues (if they are indeed platform issues and not just bad luck!)
I went ahead and did the A-Z card and filled in some backlog entries that looked the most interesting to me. All of these games I've either never played, or put in less than 15 minutes. I had to cheat with one of the letters and put in two "Y" games instead.
Not sure yet how I'm going to consider completion criteria... maybe giving these games at least 1 hour? Then I could at least mentally move them from "unplayed" to "stalled"!
ShroudedScribe's Backlog Bingo Card
Super
Joy
Principle
The Nonary
Games
CEO
and Paper
+1 Edition
Age
Ascent
Rebirth
the
Breach
Kitty
Psycho
at Parking
Chasing
Shadows
Museum
Heights
I’m familiar with a lot of these! Some good deep cuts in here.
I actually played Roundabout myself for the last Backlog Burner.
I also still listen to the Electronic Super Joy soundtrack despite not having played the game in probably a decade or so? If you try it out and you find that the game’s, uh… unique take on sound effects isn’t to your liking, know that you can toggle them off in the settings.
Good evening, gaming Tildoes!
Here's my card for the month:
Went with Flow for the first time to make it easier to slot games in. Also, 100% participating in the "Mellow May" variant of the Backlog Burner. Just gonna go at my own pace; no goals. Just keep the flow mellow and smooth. Like a good cigarette...(am I allowed to say that?)
Though, I do look forward to Kfwyre's descent into madness to get a blackout!
Very interested to take part in my first one of these. Here is the bingo card that I drew using just the regular setup:
Bingo card
On first glance, this looks quite doable, so if I finish using regular rules, I'll try to continue to complete the rest of the card as best as I can.
My inspiration for this event is to take on the sizable bounty of Steam games that I have accrued during my time here at Tildes. I sorted them into their own folder and they are many; I've already played many of them and talked about them in the weekly "What are you playing" thread, but many remain out of my grasp.
The other allowable condition for inclusion in this event is that the game must be already be installed and that I have been playing it, or that it meets the conditions set by the bingo tile (e.g. "is one of the oldest games you own"). I don't know if I will play the game to completion to mark it as being done; if not that, then the game will need to be played enough hours for me to give a write-up about it.
Planning it out, I think my strategy to winning five in a row may be this path:
Path one
Or this path:
Path two
The bingo card to date (complete and incomplete games added, the latter marked with '..'):
Bingo card
Focuses on relationships✅ Hatoful Boyfriend..
You have to tinker to get it running✅ The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibia..
From a genre you don’t normally play✅ The Shapeshifting Detective..
Known for its real-world drama✅ Not Tonight 2
Is beatable without killing any enemies✅ Atmasphere
I am very pleased to say that my switch to the new control scheme and a bit of relearning has led to some snappy progress with Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibia. I've managed to beat the nun mini-boss in the convent, something that was an impassable roadblock before. The problem is, even though I'm no fighting the controls, Textorcist is a hard as balls game. Even though there's a book-dropping mechanic that allows you to take hits indefinitely, this remains a difficult bullet hell game -- and I'm notoriously bad at this game. It seems like I'm less than halfway through the game, so this will not be a game than requires completion. I feel like my breakthrough with this game is with the controls (a godsend considering I was hurting my hands before), so this has been added to the bingo card.
I'm not one of the crowd that wants video games to be more like movies. Cutscenes aside, I am firmly of the belief that games should be games. They need a level of artifice to them. They need persistent UIs, numbers going up that appear in thin air, and stupid dialog that bring the necessary levity. This is one of the reasons why I don't like FMV games. I want a level of abstraction to my games. I don't want to play a movie.
Daring myself to push the limits past my safe boundaries, I decided to give The Shapeshift Detective a try, a game generously gifted to me by the magnanimous and buoyant @kfwyre, making this one of the many games from him/her that I have had the pleasure to play.
My first impressions quickly satisfied my preconceived notions. The game contained a janky narrative flow inherent to most interactive fiction. Lighting and makeup looked bad. Performances were amateurish and hacky. And, very relevant to our discussion, your interaction with the game was largely clumsy and obtuse. You'd run through dialog choices until they were exhausted, asking the usual interview questions of who, what, where. Your choice of lines were largely short, snappy questions that were somehow able to provoke deep, long-lasting introspections of your interviewee, making a case that "But why?" is some kind of checkmate-enabling, board-flipping retort that is somehow assertive enough to mark the end of an act in some back-alley Rashomon retelling.
But then the title happened. Distilled into its most effective elevator pitch, The Shapeshifting Detective features the game concept where the player gets to inhabit different roles, but retain the same perspective. Smart enough to avoid explaining why, the game quickly jumps into this premise, allowing the player to interview the same suspects as different people, thereby getting different responses from them. I gotta say, the game opens up a lot by doing this, making previous transgressions forgivable, as are the numerous game-breaking bugs I encountered (the game often freezes in between sections when playing on Steam Deck; may have to shapeshift my device in order to continue).
Will continue to see how this goes, and will try playing it to conclusion, but maybe not.
On the other hand, Hatoful Boyfriend, a game to which I owe my gratitude to the generous @cheep_cheep, has been a joy to play from the start. I'm not big on visual novels; I honestly believe genre fans get the majority of their satisfaction not from the story but from being able to advance the story one push at a time. I also don't understand many of the popular Japanese fiction subgenres. But it doesn't matter with this game that does such a good job with satire that it makes everyone in on the joke.
It's all there: High school drama. Teen heartthrobs. Stereotypical archetypes. Stuttering denoting awkwardness. A daily cycle of choosing classes and clubs to join. All that, but in a world populated by birds. At a school populated by birds. With a plucky female protagonist who falls in love with a bird. It's fantastic, amazing presentation, not an amateurish bone in its feathered soul. Anybirdy can see that the dev has an incredible eye for VNs, reveling in the limitations they set for themselves (no animations or facial expressions) while directing the narrative flow with aplomb -- every transition, every fadeout, every screenshake, every sound effect, every background music choice -- everything is so well done, the story just moves along at a bouncy clip, making for a frictionless story experience.
From my short and incomplete playthrough, it seems like the game is a boyfriend simulator that allows you to date all the birds you meet through the choices you make over a recurring routine that takes you through the second year of a coming-to-age young hunter-gatherer lass looking to find her wings in this world of hard landings. I can tell there's a lot of replayability as different choices will unlock different story elements, requiring you to pay attention to specific story beats.
Not sure which came first, my admiration or my recommendation, but I'm glad to crow about it. Can't wait to continue this delightfully pheasant game, no need to egg me on.
I'm so glad you've been enjoying Hatoful Boyfriend! I agree with you totally about VNs generally - I like the genre and I like being able to pursue different branching paths, but a lot of the stories that fans love are either totally bland ("slice of life"), the characters are weird and unlikable, or the stories and characters are overwrought and unbelievable. None of that is true with Hatoful Boyfriend (for me, anyway), and there are layers upon layers to the game. There's also interesting background lore in terms of why the player character is at a bird school, but you don't need it to enjoy the story. If you really love the game, there's also abundant and well-made merch, with pretty frequent sales!
To me as a mostly neophyte to VNs, playing Hatoful Boyfriend is like someone watching the reverse episode of Seinfeld as their first episode. You get to enjoy all the cliches and tropes without the need to become familiar with them through hours upon hours of play. It's a fantastic deconstruction that remains true to form all while staying true to heart, avoiding the cynicism and jadedness that often accompanies satire. Thank you so much for letting me play this! I would have likely missed this game if it weren't for you.
That's the best news I've heard all week! Enjoy, and you are always welcome to any future keys I have available for giveaways :)
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I've decided to post as the month progresses so that there isn't any pressure to finish the game, which I actually want to do for some of these. So these are my impressions of the month's games at various points of progress.
For the "It’s already installed" bingo tile we have Not Tonight 2 as generously provided by @CannibalisticApple. It's a politically charged game about the current state of affairs in the U.S.A. that has only become more relevant over time with its uncanny precience. For a game released in 2022, the devs somehow had the forethought to predict government-backed kidnappings of US citizens that are whisked away by black vans and airplanes to a gulag in Florida for the crime of protesting at a demonstration.
More of the game's fiction looks to be on the cusp of becoming true: the U.S.A. has fractured, devolving into a civil war between the coasts and the south; NYC is underwater from global warming; and sure to manifest into reality this July 4, the White House has turned into a colorfully lit, entertainment destination. They say you can't make this stuff up, so these days it's important to get out your satire quickly lest you be criticized for being a lazy plagiarist.
Not Tonight 2 follows the "job-as-a-grind" gameplay of the seminal Papers, Please to devastating effect. You play as a bouncer that performs crowd control, but have little control over the awful events going on around you. Still, the game has some inspired moments like a short duration in Canada-controlled Montana where residents are treated to free healthcare and bowls of poutine ("Pout-in to Help Out", I love it).
I've only completed the first of three story campaigns. The difficulty is high for players like me not accustomed to pressure gameplay tactics, so I had to restart many times; because you need a certain amount of money to make it to the next stage, I just figure at this point to go for perfect and get the achievements since replaying levels is a thing. Really enjoy the polish of this game; the voices do the "no words, but inflections"-type of voiceover that VN aficionados will recognize as the typewriter sound when reading text.
I'm enjoying it. There aren't enough politics in video games, frankly. Hardspace: Shipbreaker and "Terror of Hemasaurus** are not shy at all about their politics, baking their viewpoints into their games that are only better off with the inclusion.
For the "Is beatable without killing any enemies" bingo tile I've been playing Atmasphere as generously provided by @kfwyre. It's a fun, mom & pop indie game I can honestly recommend for being an enjoyable chillout experience.
The responsive controls are the main reason for playing this iteration of the Marble Madness/Super Monkey Ball roll-a-ball genre, but it's the presentation that really shines here. Described as a "medieval world" in its marketing, the game takes place in a secluded, dark forest devoid of any distractions. Turn off the awful music, and turn up the Rain slider for an awesome, relaxing, ASMR experience.
Cozy purists will complain that the gameplay mechanics and fear of falling make this game an inherently non-cozy game. But this game is totally chill vibes all the way through, making it a case where the environmental polish completely lives up to the packaging on the tin.
Just started this one, I'm sure it will get more difficult. But it seems there are no enemies to defeat, so Atmasphere will occupy this bingo tile, or it will be "You have to tinker to get it running".
It's funny that we're barely into Day 2, and we've already seen two ball rolling games submitted. The other being Marble Mayhem by @1338.
I've always sort of liked these games for their simplicity. They're honestly kind of trivial to make, if you already have a physics engine, but they remind me of playing the physical ball rolling mazes which were popular in the 90s. I think that specific experience could likely be better replicated on a modern smartphone with its accelerometer, but I like seeing the different interpretations of it.
Now you're selling me on it!
To me, Atmasphere is the antithesis of modern gaming, as far away as possible from the slot machine, lots-of-numbers esthetic. Its you (the titular heroic steel ball) in a natural world of wood, leaves, and dew. Dew everywhere. This is the uncluttered, non-technological, "medieval world" atmosphere suggested by the game.
One weird thing about it, though: Atmasphere has 107 achievements up for offer. So although it may have a minimalist UI and presentation, it's difficult to relax and not be distracted when the achievements are popping off left and right.
The bad news is that I don't have any new games to talk about. The good news is that I have completed both of the games I had brought up before! Not only finished, but 100% achievement completion as well!
Moving forward, I am not sure if all of my bingo entries will be finished games with 100% completion; it's not realistic, and it was never part of my original goal. I did so with these two games, and may do so again, but won't make it a hard and fast rule.
Housekeeping update: I have changed the bingo tile for Not Tonight 2 from "It's already installed" to "Known for its real-world drama" because nothing else in my list of contenders fits the criteria -- hope that's okay. (will fix in the next bingo card update)
About the games:
There is not a more important game you can play right now than Not Tonight 2. You can play games that are more fun with better polish and presentation, but you can't play a game that is more relevant to our times than this game. That's because no other game has so effectively predicted the utter and total collapse of the Empire of the United States than Not Tonight 2. Released in February of 2022, Not Tonight 2 had the nerve to accurately predict a U.S.A. in which border guards test new arrivals on their allegiance to the governing regime. Many cloudwatchers have made their own doom-and-gloom predictions about the stormy days to come, but for those of us into the vidya, this is it: this is the most important game you could be playing right now.
To make the distinction again: "important" doesn't mean "best" or "most fun" or "most popular" or anything like that. Not Tonight 2 is a sleeper indie game based on the Papers, Please formula that makes the most of its limited resources. It tells a fanciful tale about a fractured U.S.A. in which so much has gone wrong, and where things like a U.S. President replying to criticism with a meme is a fiction made real in our reality.
As it were, the "importance" of this game really comes into play when we consider much of its dystopic has not yet come to pass. NYC is not under water. Cults and pandemics have not taken over huge swathes of the mid-West. The "Wall" is not a realization of a campaign promise that now serves as a barrier to keep desperate Americans in the country, preventing their chance at a better life. It's important that gamers play this gem of a game now rather than later, if for just the reason that these things have not yet come to pass.
And yet, we have yesterday's New York Times headline America is Officially an Empire in Decline. We have the news that the evacuation of the City of New Orleans must begin now before it is reclaimed by the ocean. We have a political machinations in the U.S.A. that could possibly put an end to the elected leader that has effectively put an end to the shining city on the hill, but don't, leading to the inevitable change necessitated by the spin of RPM.
We live in interesting times, and you get to play them in Not Tonight 2. I have no idea why this game is not more highly regarded. In recent Steam reviews, ones where the reviewers are see the same things happen in real life and in this game, are most blaise with no understanding of the watershed moment this game is documenting.
It's mostly fun, it's kind of interesting, the gameplay can be difficult. But you should play this game. It's like playing Medal of Honor if they had Xboxes in 1943.
Meanwhile, Atmasphere is the most difficult game I've beaten in a dog's year, and that's without the walkthroughs that I used to cheapen the discovery of Not Tonight 2 (it was difficult, progression is tied to specific choices, I chose to do it).
For the longest time, Atmasphere is just a chill physics engine enabler with cool rain and lighting effects. Then, near the end, the difficult ramps up exponentially, causing you to doubt your role in this existence. Why am I doing this? Why do I keep torturing myself? Why am I playing this game when I am so bad at it? Why do I persist when my hands are cramped, my resolve is broken, and I remain no closer to advancing in this level?
Because: That's how what is perceived to be impossible becomes a winning challenge. Because if you don't try, you can't succeed. Because games don't finish themselves. I thought I was good at slow, patience-punishing games like this and Radical Relocation; now I see that Atmasphere may be my limit, making me very proud of this 100% completion.
Am not really looking forward to Atmasphere 2. My nerves are at an end.
When you first mentioned Atmasphere being chill, I was like... "should I tell them?" I didn't want to harsh your truly wonderful mellow, but I definitely have memories of it that match the difficulty spike that you described. Of course, this also means that I can share in appreciating just how much that 100% completion means! Fantastic job!
Your writeup of Not Tonight 2 is excellent and makes me want to play it, though I only have it on Steam and I've sworn that off for the month, so it'll be one that I have to come around to later. I only hope for this country that it is less salient and relevant when I finally do (though I suspect it'll be the opposite).
Also I'm seconding Bendy on the choice. It's got a cool art style, and we can't leave @Wes hanging!
I totally stand by Atmasphere being a chill and mellow game. Yes, the difficulty spike is enormous. Yes, you will paint your room white and chain smoke cigarettes as you question your existence in a dull monotone. But it remains that Atmasphere is a chill experience that doesn't have time limits or sirens blarring in your face.
You get to play this game at your own pace, go as fast or slow as you want. You be you. Of course, there is gravity and the whole dying to have your progress erased to that point, but lives are infinite, kind of like how your patience is tested. What's more, this all happens in a lush, secluded forest with the gentle sound of falling rain lapping at your ears. It's a lot like life: as long as you don't mind dying, you won't have any problems.
This would be a good time for me to admit that I find Radical Relocation a chill game. You know, that rage-inducing impossible game about moving homes with all of your furniture balanced on the outside of your car like a slow-moving portable Jenga game. I love it. That's so chill. No urgency. Go as fast as you want.
At this point, I'll take any recommendation for super slow games that require monumental patience but infuriate normal people. I see a trend happening here...
You heard 'em, @kfwyre. This victory goes to Team Mellow. You and your rowdy bunch of motivated gamers will have to find some other game to claim.
Gah, foiled again!
I must redouble my efforts and somehow find a way through the impenetrable armor of measured calmness.
Soon everyone will see the clamor of my ways and yearn for franticness. Everyone, I say!
I feel averse to playing heavily politicized games right now, in the same way that I disliked playing contagion games during the pandemic. Sometimes, I've had enough of reality that I don't feel the need for a second helping. That said, I do like your comparison of playing Medal of Honor in 1943. I hope it doesn't come to that level, but I see what you're going for.
I will say, well done on fully completing those two games despite the difficulty. I've commented before that difficulty is one of the things that drives me to play games -- I suppose in the same way that spite can be a powerful motivator.
As for providing recommendations, the only one I've played before is Proteus, which I believe you've already seen my comment on. I may need to pass this one forward to somebody more practiced in the ways of backloggery.
I did grab Bendy on Android, but of course, haven't yet started it. You could complete that one vicariously for me, should you wish. ;)
I don't think Not Tonight 2 is for everyone. Even for smart, well-adjusted, backlog-fighting people who may be agreeable to its message. But I do think that no other video game in existence is better made for the current events of 2026, especially one made from 4 years ago. It's so of the moment that it risks becoming quickly outdated with its zeitgeist-touching narrative, but it also doesn't because some of the things it talks about are nigh apocalyptic: A physically divided U.S.A. wracked by civil war. A NYC submerged by rising oceans. Destroyed economies where everyone fights over rare commodities like water and REDACTED GO PLAY THE GAME.
Because it straddles the line between the present-to-pass and the present-to-come, Not Tonight 2 is definitely the game to play at this point in time before waiting to tackle it in your backlog it once the world has ended. As I said, Not Tonight 2 is an important game first, not a great game, although it has a lot going for it in terms of humor and presentation. The balance of hand-drawn art and pixel art with shaders (if you know what I mean) really come together to present this world that has not yet come to pass. I'm just losing my shirt over how none of the Steam reviews can see this game being the it game of our era.
No one needs to play Not Tonight 2. Then again, no American needs to exercise their democratic rights. Why vote and fulfill your responsibility in upholding a democracy when you can chant "U.S.A.!" and shoot guns instead?
And thank you for the recommendation: Bendy it is.
For anyone reading this, please recommend one of these games for me to play:
*Octahedron
*Mouthwashing
*Proteus
*Bendy and the Ink Machine
Your suggestion will help me fulfill the bingo tile "Chosen for you by someone else".
With two games completed, I've been searching for a new game and started playing The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibia again, a game I received courtesy of the gracious @phoenixrises. I had written before in a weekly "What games have you been playing writeup" in which I praised this typing-cum-bullet-hell mashup for its innovation, but lamented that its poor control scheme greatly enhanced its already lofty difficulty.
Well, no more. I'm pleased to announce that this game is my latest entry to the bingo tile for "You have to tinker to get it running". That's because I kept changing the control scheme and have finally found one that actually works and doesn't hurt my hands.
For anyone interested: Don't use the arrow keys for movement and the letter keys for typing. Instead, you want your hands in the same position so you can can type words or move at will. Change the control bindings so that, in conjunction with pressing down the Shift key, make these custom bindings for movement:
I had tried it with WASD, but you'd need to change hand position. I also tried shifting it one over to the right (i.e. ESDF instead of WASD) but it didn't feel natural since I was accustomed to WASD. So, I flipped controls over to the right hand with the given bindings. So far, it has been fantastic; it's much more natural without causing stress or discomfort to the hands.
And here's where it gets weird. I know to progress in this game, I'll need to train using this new binding with which I'm not familiar. I'll need to practice before it becomes natural enough to take on the actually difficult bosses in this game. But as I love typing games and love the supernatural/tough guy priest premise, this charming pixel art fusion mashup makes it not a chore to keep practicing.
Will let you know how it goes, and how Bendy works out after I install it. Thanks for all the support, everyone! I've been wanting to tackle my backlog of Tilde-gifted games, and really hope to accomplish that this month.
I just have to say that you're so close to reinventing vim keys! If you're going to train anyway, this will give you an extra skill for the next time you SSH into a container with nothing but vi to edit a config file with!
My story about Ray Bibia: for years I'd had an idea floating around in my head to prototype a game with a combat system based around words. I iterated a bunch on the ideas but never got around to actually building something. Then I played the Textorcist, and it was a point-at-the-screen moment. They'd actually made exactly what I'd been trying to come up with. Its encouraging at least that I got pretty close design-wise to what they implemented. Ah well, one of these days I'll actually follow through with an idea.
You don't go into detail about your game idea, but if it's anything like Textorcist, you should totally follow through on it. I love what they did with it, but there is lots to explore here as they don't fully explore the concept. Typing games need invigoration; most games follow the "type words as they fly past to kill enemies" which is tedious and nothing like typing; we totally need more games like Textorcist that bring innovation to a stagnant genre.
I don't know what SSH is, but if it pays well with benefits I'm down for anything.
SSH Job Interviewer: Please tell me about your relevant past professional experience with SSH.
Me: Have you heard about this game called Textorci-
SSH Job Interviewer [interrupts]: Say no more. [makes a giant checkmark on his noteboard with an oversized, Donald Trump-approved grip-appropriate Sharpie pen]
I wish I could force my company's IT team to play Textorcist with HJKL keys! Just kidding, I love those guys (I write from my work computer).
Aside: I just looked at my notes from when I played this a year or so ago, and I wrote "Switching back and forth for movement and typing is hard. Should try with vim or emacs keys." Never got around to trying it, but fun that I basically arrived at the same conclusion as you did!
My game idea was really pretty similar to Textorcist, in the sense of typing out words/sentences to fire them at an enemy while dodging projectiles. I wanted to poke fun at internet arguments and say something about the persistent idea that political debate is some gold standard of discourse. The player character is a master of winning fights on reddit, deciding to change the world by speaking truth to power. Of course, not all words can be available from the start. "You're literally Hitler" is a top tier line that one-shot ends arguments, but obviously requires a hero's journey-esque ordeal to be able to wield. I was playing around with implementing logical fallacies too, maybe a high-risk high-reward move (because they hit hard, unless you get called out on them). All just thoughts of course, rough ideas that I might be able to mess with at a game jam or something.
Unfortunately, my game dev experience is limiting to messing around a bit with Godot every couple of years, and I don't have it figured out intuitively enough to be able to throw together prototypes with any sort of efficiency. But designing is still fun, even if I never do anything with it!
While I'm about to start one of two picks, you still have time to vote for up to five games from the list below. Reply to this post with those to make it count.
Voting closes on May 5th at 11:59 PM EDT. The three most-voted games will be guaranteed spots in my playlist, while the remaining titles will have their chances increased based on votes (1 + number of votes).
For more details on how I'll tackle this month's Backlog Burner, feel free to check the linked reply.
Let the games begin!
My Backlog Burner Pool
ActRaiser
Bio-Miracle Bokutte Upa
Blazing Lazers
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
Choplifter (SMS)
Contra (NES)
Contra (Arcade)
Contra: Hard Corps
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble
Donkey Kong Land
Dr. Mario 64
Final Fantasy III (Final Fantasy VI)
Fire Emblem (GBA)
Game & Watch Gallery 4
Kato-chan & Ken-chan (J.J. & Jeff)
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 7
Mega Man X
Mega Man Zero 1
Mega Man Zero 2
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (GEN)
New Adventure Island
Nobunaga no Yabou: Haouden (3DO)
Pac-Land (NES)
Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
Road & Track presents: The Need for Speed (3DO)
SD Gundam GCENTURY (SAT)
Shadow Dancer
Sonic 3D Blast (GEN)
Sonic Spinball (GEN)
Star Fox 2
Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES)
Streets Of Rage
Streets Of Rage 3
Strider Returns: Journey from Darkness
Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly-Paradise
Super Punch-Out!!
Super Tennis
Sword of Vermilion
The Ignition Factor
The Mysterious Murasame Castle
The Revenge of Shinobi
Top Hunters (Neo Geo)
Treasure Hunter G
Ufouria: The Saga
Wario's Woods (NES)
Wiz 'n' Liz (GEN)
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium is an absolute gem. You won't waste your time with that one. That said, it's long and will run down the clock.
I'd suggest to do it after playing other games high on your list or you know you can finish quickly.
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom
A trip through a world of anthropomorphic fruits and veggies to kick off my Backlog Burner journey? It's not VeggieTales, but it's definitely a premise you don't see every day.
I first heard about this game when Corbie Dillard reviewed its Wii Virtual Console release on Nintendo Life back in 2010. It seemed charming, but not enough to justify spending my limited Wii Points at the time.
It wasn't until news of the Wii Shop Channel's closure that I started grabbing a bunch of notable Virtual Console titles that might never return. Among Jeremy Parish's recommendations in an old 1UP article was Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. I bought it... and then let it sit untouched for years.
That changed after I finished The Secret of Monkey Island last holiday season. Curious, I booted up Princess Tomato on my MiSTer FPGA, played a few chapters in about an hour, then dropped it again. I only came back to it this month as one of two games to start my Backlog Burner run.
This time, I kept a walkthrough handy, cutting down on trial-and-error. Even so, after roughly four hours total, I reached the credits feeling mostly apathetic.
The game is a text-based adventure where you navigate as Sir Cucumber and the baby persimmon, Percy, using a fixed set of commands. Unlike Monkey Island, there's no cursor; just static screens and text descriptions. Since the NES lacked a keyboard, everything is handled through a menu of 14 verbs:
Progression often depends on using the right command at the right time, but puzzle quality is inconsistent. Solutions can feel more obscure than logical, and sometimes you're forced to retry the same actions repeatedly. Without a walkthrough, brute-forcing options is often unavoidable.
The "Percy" command (added in the NES version) gives hints depending on your location, sometimes with a bit of humor. It's a helpful addition, but not always enough to smooth out the design.
Combat comes in the form of "finger wars", a twist on rock-paper-scissors. You must both pick the winning hand and then match your opponent's facing direction. Lose the hand, and you must instead face away from their chosen direction to cancel their win. It's a clever idea, but heavily luck-based.
Most enemies follow patterns you can learn, though one late-game fight is purely random. Oddly enough, that didn't frustrate me as much as expected. My workaround? Rapidly mashing the same direction on the D-pad; my second attempt succeeded much faster than my doomed first attempt. So much for the definition of insanity.
There are also a few simple, pseudo-3D maze sections. They don't add much beyond showing off what the NES could do technically.
Between the obtuse puzzles, RNG-heavy combat, and unremarkable mazes, the game tends to drag despite its short runtime. Even with a forgiving password system and minimal punishment, it felt longer than it actually was. Was it worth it? Maybe.
That said, the game's quaint, nostalgic absurd charm is undeniable. The concept of a produce-filled kingdom, combined with its cartoonish character designs, gives it a unique personality. The humor, often tied to wrong command choices and quirky characters, lands more often than not, and there's even a classic Hudson Soft cameo.
The music is another highlight. The chiptune soundtrack has a mellow Mega Man-like feel; less complex, but adaptable and pleasant, as long as you don't linger in one area for too long.
If you're curious about Princess Tomato, I'd honestly recommend watching this two hours longplay instead of playing it yourself. You'll get most of the charm without the frustration, along with some that I didn't catch on.
I know I've said this before, but I love your commitment to screenshots!
Also, I definitely do NOT miss the days of having a dozen (or more, in this case!) verbs in games, especially because those days overlapped with games having moon logic. It turned getting stuck in a game into a horrible combinatorics problem where you had so many different verbs that you could activate on so many different spots with so many different items, etc.
Half the time I'd stumble onto the right thing to do, I wouldn't even realize I what the correct solution was because I was just autopiloting through options. Wait, did I look at the door while holding the stick? Or was it the frying pan? And was I speaking to the door?
Was the verbage surface area sprawling in this game, or was it tighter and easier to progress through?
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom uses a context-sensitive verb system, but in a fairly simple way. Your character usually stays in place, performs the selected action, and then returns to their original spot. There's no combining verbs like in The Secret of Monkey Island, so the overall complexity is lower.
Most commands, Look, Check, Talk, Take, Buy, Hit, Fight, and Praise, let you choose a specific object or character if multiple options are present. Meanwhile, Use, Give, and Dump open your inventory menu within the text box.
One odd quirk is the Give command: if more than one character is on-screen, you need to talk to the intended recipient first before giving them an item. The game never explains this, which can make it seem like the command isn't working properly.
Nearly every command is required at some point in the game, except Item, which just displays your inventory. Some verbs are used frequently, while others only come up in very specific situations.
When entering a new area, or revisiting one after unlocking something, it's generally a good idea to try Look, Check, and Talk on everything. In some cases, you'll even need to repeat the same command on the same object or character multiple times to progress.
Overall, the verb system seems simple, and it works fine when puzzle solutions feel logical. However, the game's lack of consistent intuitiveness can make navigation feel clunky, turning menu interaction into a bit of a chore.
It's no Donkey Kong Country, but I'm willing to allow it.
I've said it before, but I love the screenshots you include in your write-ups. They add a lot of texture to your descriptions. It feels like I too saw that The End screen and released a vicarious shrug.
The game definitely looks charming, and I like a lot of the character art, but yeah, clicking around in that LP, I don't think it actually looks that fun to play. Though as I mentioned in the Monkey Island thread, I'm not really an adventure gamer at heart. I did listen to and enjoy some of the music tracks. They have an upbeat impishness to them that seems to compliment the rest of the game.
Anyway, now that this distraction is over with, you can get back to working on Donkey Kong Country again. I'll leave you to it.
Well, I forgot to mention that I've already beaten Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 ages ago, so these aren't in my scope for now. 3 is the only one I haven't beaten despite being more than halfway through it.
Given the votes I've accumulated between the Backlog Burner announcement and Week 1 thread, Donkey Kong Country 3 is definitely leading the pack with 2 votes. At the rates the votes are coming in, that game might as well be the next I'd play starting after the deadline has been met. And on a brand-new file instead of my 15+ years old save file at that, just so to refresh my perspective.
I'm of course being a bit cheeky, but I really do like DKC3. I feel like the stage design isn't quite as strong as the second game, but I love the overworld and stronger story elements.
It's not an extremely long game, so I think starting over shouldn't be a problem. Completing 103% does add a fair amount of time though, since it requires finding all coins and secrets in the stages.
The voting period ended yesterday, and the results are in!
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble came out on top, barely, with just one vote ahead of a 9-way tie. Since I can only allow two additional community picks alongside the top choice, I had to randomly select two from the tied titles. Here's what I ended up with:
As for the games that didn't make the top three, each one will receive an extra entry per vote. Here are those titles:
These will be added to my Backlog Burner Pool, while the three selected games will be removed to prevent the randomizer from picking something already decided.
There weren't many voters this time, so no game received more than two votes. I might consider using a StrawPoll next time (yes, it did make a bit of a comeback in the 2020s) to make voting easier than typing out responses.
As for a hint about the next game: it features monkeys, but not from the Donkey Kong series. Donkey Kong Country 3 and the others will follow afterward.
:-)
>:O
SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 1/25)
Connection✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Life suckerpunched me during November so I didn't have the energy to join then (and also some new games popped out during then), but back to the burner we go. I see the non-steam direction, so I'll try to pull from the hand-me-down Switch, PS4, GOG, itch, and Epic freebies.
Connection - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
13 Sentinels is comprised of 98% VN Sci-Fi thriller that's about 13 Japanese highschoolers raised in 5 different time periods (1945, 1985, 2025, 2065, 2105) who end up in the "main" era of 1985, the last remaining zone unattacked by kaiju, to pilot Sentinel mechas in humanity's last stand against the swarm. Each of the 13 have their own story route which takes place in the weeks before the final fight with a drip feed of revelations as each protagonist's tale provides more details and context to the overarching saga and the sheer scope of everything. While it'd be easy to look at the different stories and call it a change of Perspective, it'd be much more fitting to see the Connection between everyone. The cast shows up in each other's stories, whether as key players or background bystanders, but not everyone is aware of the kaiju threat or even each other until the time of the final battle. To help keep track of everything, the game provides a chronological order timeline of when each scene takes place along with a glossary detailing key events relating to each person.
Connection also shows up in how everyone is motivated by love; some platonic or familial, but mostly romantic. The cast is mostly highschoolers though, so a lot of the romance amounts to them falling in love at first sight with not much reasoning into why they're in love or any further development to their bond. As such, the only couples I could take seriously were the adult couples and Ogata with Kisaragi because they actually have scenes showing where it comes from or even just hanging out at all. This isn't helped by two of the characters, Yakushiji and Shinonome, being schoolgirls who are motivated entirely by their romantic feelings and thoroughly manipulated because of it. Hijiyama isn't manipulated, but he becomes Okino's willing goon after falling in love with his girl disguise at the start of his route and having lots of gay panic moments (Hijiyama being from 1945) and Okino just teasing him back over it. I guess it's just a big case of telling instead of showing with more emphasis on the reveals rather than the character buildup.
To that end, I think I consider the game compelling, but not resonant; that I spent the weekend binging it, but have no desire to engage with the bonus levels or pick through the full timeline after the credits rolled. The game is held up by having reveal after reveal to hook the player in through the information delivered through each story, but what happens after? The conclusion is already stated at the beginning of the game: that the 13 pilots will fight the kaiju. Once all the cards are laid down, that's it. Having 13 protagonists and related side characters makes for much differing levels of focus between them which leaves a haphazard narrative once all the pazazz is taken out. Heck, two of the stories aren't even about their protagonist, but the person they're hanging around with instead. I guess I just feel unsatisfied from a character standpoint. That said, I guess the characters I liked would be Ogata (delinquent with a heart of gold underneath), Takamiya (ditto), Minami (for being proactive and fun when she thinks her story is playing out like a sci-fi movie), Kisaragi (for being outspoken and surprisingly important to everything), and Shinonome (her storyline involving her continuously waking up in the nurse's office with amnesia and trying to piece together what she knows).
I do also have to complain about the game requiring the player to keep mashing A for the characters to exhaust all their dialogue during a scene instead of just... playing all the dialogue. Ditto for having to go through all the thoughts in the thought cloud before new dialogue pops up.
The remaining 2% of the game is real-time tactics with pause when a unit is taking their turn. I highly doubt anyone's playing the game primarily for this, it's just mostly to gate the story content while going through what little gameplay there is. The levels amount to kill all kaiju (or defend the terminal for 2 minutes on non-boss missions, but all the kaiju should be dead by the 1 minute mark at the very latest) using 6 of the 13 pilots. Units are forced to rest after going on 2 missions to encourage rotating through everyone. Despite one of Vanillaware's signatures being their sprite work, the graphics here basically amount to 👾 for everything. I could say more about it, but I honestly do not feel compelled to.
This game was entirely new to me, so I looked it up and it’s, quite oddly, only on the Nintendo Switch and PS4.
I’m used to something being exclusive to one or the other, but both at the same time? Seems odd that they would go through the trouble to port it but only for one system.
That said, I’m admittedly not nearly as in tune with console releases as I am with PC releases, so maybe this is more common than I think.
Your writeup is great, by the way! I went from knowing nothing about the game to feeling like I have a really solid handle on it because of how well you described everything in it.
Great write-up. I've never actually heard of this one before, but I kind of love the framing device used. I think there's something really interesting about seeing stories of disparate people, knowing they're going to come together in the end, but not quite knowing how. It feels like more of a literary technique, often used in longer novels like The Stand, but I love the idea of applying it to multiple gaming protagonists.
Day 1:
I'm starting with a list of 439 games in my steam unplayed backlog. Hopefully this time that number decreases.
My first game is Marble Mayhem: Fragile Ball, purchased December 2016 as part of the EQ Games Puzzle Pack for $0.30. It's a simple game where you rotate a platform map with your mouse with the goal of getting a ball to the destination. There's not much more to it than that. Some levels have a bouncy ball, others you explode if you hit the wall too fast, and some have spikes you have to avoid. It's the perfect time where having a button to adjust your DPI/sensitivity is useful, some levels you need to make fine tune adjustments to avoid going fast while others you need to swing fast so you can fall "up and over." I played several levels before I got bored of it. The graphic design is abysmal, it's of course simple 2D graphics but it's bad clip-art with next to no attempt at being aesthetically pleasing. But it's pleasantly simple and focused.
Welcome back, 1338! I still have fond memories of you absolutely beasting your way through the May 2025 Backlog Burner.
Also, playing a game from a 30 cent bundle from 10 years ago is like, the platonic ideal of a Backlog Burner choice. Love it.
Day 2:
I tried out Polarity. I purchased this the same day as the previous game, but it was in a Developer Alliance Bundle for $0.45. It's an indie Portal-like where the main mechanic is toggling your affinity between red or blue states, which controls whether you can walk through red or blue walls. It had some potential, unfortunately I hit some control bugs where jumping would only work randomly a fraction of the time and my aim would suddenly jump. Those bugs made the game pretty unplayable and the discussion shows other people with the same issue going back years (comments suggest it could be solved by lowering refresh rate, but mine was already low).
Day 3:
After a couple decade-ago games, today I tried out a game I bought a year ago: The Pedestrian. It's a puzzle platformer with really cool design and mechanics. It seems to be a really short game, if I'm reading the menu right I got through a third of it. It's not very deep mechanic-wise but it's super polished and well designed. It must have been fun to make. I'll probably finish it.
Day 4:
"I'm not sure I like this sub-genre of automation game" and then suddenly it's an hour later. I gave shapez a try today. I bought this in June 2023, at the same time I bought My Time in Sandrock (which I've put over a hundred hours in), so I guess I got a bit distracted. At first I thought shapez was going to be just quasi-puzzle where you figured out how to make a thing and things aren't very additive, but when I realized the map was huge (if not infinite) and you weren't going to be taken to another level after working through the 4 resources near the hub... things clicked a bit. While I don't think shapez is ever going to displace Satisfactory in my factory game heart, it's definitely an enjoyable experience. I do find the controls a bit wonky, specifically trying to place the conveyor, but it's the type of wonky I see myself getting used to. I can definitely see myself playing it more... and then getting the sequel.
I'm pretty sure automation games are #2 on the list behind ADHD for causes of time blindness. Not sure what it is about them specifically that does it, but I think everyone who's played one has had the same experience of looking up from the game at a real-world clock and going "wait, it's WHAT time now?!"
Day 5:
I needed a game that wouldn't use much VRAM, so I decided to go with DigDigDrill. It's fairly basic graphically, just 2D sprites. It's a mining/digging game a la motherload. There's no story or anything, you're just a mining robot. This one is fairly chill/peaceful, with no combat or danger/HP to it -- there's not even gravity so no fall damage. You can't even really run out of fuel, instead using "batteries" simply fills up your inventory (which is conceptually bizarre) and if you exceed your capacity, you move slower.
The neatest part is around the upgrade mechanisms. Instead of the ores you mine only being sold, there's a system where you craft drills, with strength and bonuses driven by how you combine the ore using a shape/mold filling system. You can unlock new features based on max depth reached, so it seems it probably expands that mechanism over time.
The English translation is not great but usable, a few points confused me but only momentarily. Overall I quite liked it, it beats some of the more ambitious mining games I bought at the same time, such as Wall World.
Day 6:
Today was definitely the first time I played it on Steam, but I'm not totally certain if this is the first time I ever played Death and Taxes. The whole time I played it I had low-grade deja vu, but whether that was from playing the Headliner games during last year's burner, watching someone play it on twitch years ago, or actually from playing it on playstation or something, I can't decide.
But this time around I got exactly halfway through the month, killed a bunch of people, and gave a cat a toy hamster to torture. All-in-all not a bad time. I only got far enough to get a sense for the background narrative, which is much more subtle than Headliner. But the design and writing/humor side of D&T is top-notch.
This is yet another game niche I know I enjoy, though I'm less sure what to point to as the genre archetype for this compared to the earlier Portal or Motherload descendent games.
Earlier you coined the term Portal-like, and I feel like we're also bordering on a new pseudo-genre for these resource digging games. There's older ones now, like SteamWorld Dig, but it also seems like there's a bunch of new ones: Wall World, Dome Keeper, Coal LLC, Drillionaire, and the aptly named, A Game About Digging A Hole.
While maintaining the ever-important principle of "number goes up", these also introduce the brave new concept of "earth goes down".
Oh ya, that's definitely a defined game niche. When I bought DigDigDrill I bought a bunch of other mining games at the same time: Galactic Mining Corp, Mining Mechs, Super Mining Mechs, Wall World, BORE BLASTERS, Ad Fundum, DigDigDril -- I think steam might have been doing a genre sale on mining games at the time.
Hello kindred spirit!
I too have a thing for mining games, so believe me when I say that I have played literally every single one of the games on that list. XD
To me, they’re the ideal relax-after-a-long-day, play-while-listening-to-an-audiobook genre.
I actually played DigDigDrill recently and did it entirely while walking on my treadmill.
Portal-likes is the genre that I want to be really good, but unfortunately, kind of isn't. A lot of these games end up nailing the visuals, but miss some key aspect of the formula. Multiple times I've been excited for games like Quantum Conundrum or Q.U.B.E., but they just didn't end up landing for me. And those are, honestly, two of the better examples.
That said, I do think some of the games that struck out to do their own thing have delivered better. Superliminal was quite good, despite being short (which I actually don't mind). The Witness also made wonderful use of perspective. So perhaps the problem is just that leaning too heavily on the Portal aesthetic sets a false expectation, and makes it harder to evaluate objectively.
In any case, it's too bad that Polarity didn't work out. What's most frustrating is that sounds like a fixable issue, but was likely the result of "Works fine on my PC".
I thought Q.U.B.E. was okay but Q.U.B.E. 2 was genuinely excellent.
The first game feels like a proof-of-concept for the second, which feels like an actual, full-fat game with great puzzles and less frustrating execution.
That's great to hear. I did finish Q.U.B.E., but never checked out the sequel. It actually seemed to pass me by completely. I'll have to watch to see if any good deals drop for it.
I played this one way back in the day! I don't remember much about it, except that I had to essentially sequence-break a puzzle because the game was having issues letting me solve it the intended way.
I can't remember exactly what I did, but I think I was able to hop up on a wall and over a barrier or something?
Durinthal's Undiagnosed ADHD (Custom, 2/25)
Finally Fantasy Four✅ Final Fantasy IV
Most Recent Purchase✅ Ravenswatch
One of the themes here is unfinished business with a few cards targeting specific games rather than picking them on a whim, and that's where I'm getting started this month.
Finally Fantasy Four — To disappoint anyone expecting one of the weird cards to start, it's unfortunately just Final Fantasy IV... which some of you might have remembered me playing in a previous Backlog Burner event. Well, this Steam guide has been open in a pinned tab in my browser for nearly two years as I always meant to get through the rest of it... but I never did.
I finally sat down and played through the rest of it and had a good time doing so. I don't have too much to add to my comment from before, other than reiterating that the quality of life features in the pixel remasters are something I greatly appreciate these days. When I was younger I didn't have a problem taking my time with the random encounter grind but I'm glad I could get through the entire game in under 13 hours without much in the way of filler, though there are some side quests that have you running back and forth across the world a few times. Turns out I was right about halfway through the game where I left off in terms of time, though a lot of the back end is focused on lengthy dungeons in contrast with getting acquainted with a wider variety of characters earlier.
Oh wow, nice work on finishing off a prior entry. JRPGs are no joke when it comes to time investment - second only maybe to MMOs - so that's a big one to cross off.
To my gaming shame, I've still never actually played a Final Fantasy game. I think I've always been intimidated by the huge number of them.
I'm close, though. I recently bought VII on Steam (the original), since it's the big one that people always speak fondly of. I also just downloaded XIV, the MMO, since they bumped up the amount of content in the trial. I was going to jump into that before realizing that the Backlog Burner was right around the corner. So I've placed a small moratorium there.
Congrats on finishing the title, and finally clearing that pinned tab from your browser.
I'm looking forward to eventually playing VII for the first time myself, though I think I'll keep going in order and revisit V and VI first which are the two I'm most familiar with so definitely not this month.
I have friends that wanted to drag me into XIV but I wanted to understand more of the references to what came before first, so it'll take me a while to get through the earlier mainline entries (aside from XI which is the other MMO).
Most Recent Purchase — One of my personal goals this year is to not buy any new games and so far, so good. So the most recent purchase for me is several games at once during the winter sale in December, among them Ravenswatch.
I don't remember how it caught my attention, I think it was some trailer along with "action roguelike" so I decided to pick it up. The best comparison I can think of would be calling it an isometric Elden Ring Nightreign, which I haven't played but have watched and seems similar. You run around a randomized map killing monsters to get experience and hitting points of interest for bonuses, earn ability upgrades upon leveling up with the usual pick from three options, and then after a time a boss spawns at a point on the map and you fight it and powers up the longer you avoid confronting it. Repeat the cycle for three bosses and... I dunno, I didn't make it that far.
Each hero you can play as has a different style so I can see getting hooked on a favorite with everything themed after classic fairy/folk tales. Scarlet is based on Little Red Riding Hood and is the rogue that transforms to a werewolf at night (there's a day/night cycle and the boss appears after a few days), Beowulf is a traditional sword-wielding warrior with more defensive abilities, and one I found interesting but hard to play initially is the Pied Piper, who has rats as disposable weapons along with music notes as projectiles.
This seems like the kind of game that would be fun with a group but I'm not that kind of gamer, so I'm putting it down after a couple of hours though I enjoyed my time so far. I might come back to it later but it's the kind of thing that doesn't necessarily have an end so I don't want to sink too much into it just yet.
Here we go, folks. I'm casually easing myself in with a new Flow card. No sudden moves, now.
Wes' Mellow May - Week 1
Isolation✅ Hades
Chaos✅ Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
Maybe I'll mosey my way on over towards a bingo, time permitting.
Hades
A gentle trip down the River Styx
I finally tried Hades! I picked this one up a few months ago with the intent of playing it soon, but you know how that goes.
I feel like a bit of an impostor. I've always considered myself a fan of Supergiant Games, but if I'm being honest, I've probably spent more time listening to their games than playing them. Hades has been their major breakout title, and I'm really glad they found success with it.
Hades is a roguelike through and through. It still has the beat 'em up quality of their earlier titles, but the combat here feels much tighter and more punchy. There's a certain flow to the fight as you dash around and pummel baddies.
I'm still early enough that I can't comment too much on the meta-progression, but it feels like it plays a fairly significant role. The damage boosts you get from each upgrade are considerable, and I've noticed after just half a dozen runs that things are already getting easier.
There's also a fair amount of new content introduced after each run. You meet new characters, areas open up, and new systems are introduced such as shops and upgrade mechanics. It helps to soften the blow of losing your run as you get to unlock new things.
The game is thematically on point. It uses the Greek pantheon of gods to provide differently-themed boons to augment your run. In that respect, it does feel like a "build"-focused game, as many boons compound to benefit certain styles of play.
In my best run so far, I received a chaos effect that massively reduced my max health, but gave me regeneration on hit. Pairing that with a boon that granted temporary invulnerability, I made it all the way to (who I assume is) the final boss... who proceeded to clobber me. Still, not bad!
Every bit of dialogue has voice acting, which really adds character to the game. I was also impressed by just how adaptive the dialogue is. Characters constantly comment on your recent actions, who you've met, and even which enemies doomed your last run. I can only imagine how much dialogue is included in this game.
At first, I was a little disappointed that the soundtrack didn't seem to have any of the moving lyrical tracks that I've come to know Supergiant for. No "Build that Wall" or "The Spine". That was until I met Eurydice, and got to experience her beautiful song. I'm sorry I ever doubted you, Supergiant.
Hades is a blast, and I'm confident I'll return to this one to beat up more bad dudes soon.
My friend's wife doesn't really game at all, but she does love Greek mythology.
On our encouraging, she picked up Hades for a quick run while we were hanging out together.
The next time I saw her, she had a dedicated Hades notebook where she was tracking all of her progress through the game, trying to 100% it. She got fully sucked in.
The game does a lot right, but one of its best features is that you progress on like, ten different fronts at the same time. A lot of other games have a single currency for metaprogression, so you just go back to base, pick something from the upgrade list, and then dive back in with that one thing being the only real change. Hades, on the other hand, dripfeeds you progress through boons, items, characters, story. It's sort of a masterclass in embedding a reward schedule in a game that feels organic so that it does its job of hooking you without ever feeling cheap (or, like many other games, predatory).
And yeah, Supergiant always crushes it with music. Like you, I've listened to their soundtracks far more than I've played their games. I still go back to the Bastion soundtrack, and I've probably heard that thing 100+ times in my life.
My friend's wife is currently working on Hades II with an equal gusto to the first. In fact, her not being a gamer led to a very funny conversation with her husband that we got to witness back when it was released in Early Access.
She's the kind of person who puts a lot of stock in a "release" of something, staying up until midnight to stream a new album or going to the store as soon as it opens to get a new book she wants. Also, she was itching for more Hades after she did complete the first one 100% and filled out everything in her notebook.
Because she's not really a gamer, she had no concept of what Early Access was, so the conversation went something like this:
Her: "So Hades II is out."
Him: "Yes, but you won't want to play it right now."
Her: "Why wouldn't I want to play it?"
Him: "Because it's not finished, and you'll get frustrated by not being able to complete everything."
Her: "But it's out."
Him: "Yes, but it's not done."
Her: "Why would they put it out if it's not done?"
Him: "So that they can work on things, fix stuff, add new content."
Her: "Why wouldn't they do that before they release it?"
Him: "Because that's part of how they work on the game?"
Her: "But don't they work on it before they release it?"
Him: "Yes, but they're also working on it now."
Her: "So, let me get this straight: the game is out, I can buy it right now and start playing it, but it's not anywhere close to finished. Instead I should just wait until some undetermined point in the future when it’s finally actually done to buy and play it, even though I could go ahead and buy it and play it right now?”
Him: "Exactly."
Her: "THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE."
I'm not saying this to make fun of her in the slightest. I thought she actually made some great points!
If you compare game releases to any other media, Early Access doesn't really compute, because a book or movie or album releases in a complete, final state. It's really only with games that we end up in that situation, and it truly is baffling from an outside perspective.
I've noticed web novels sometimes act as a rough draft for something that gets cleaned up and published later, but that's different from in-place updates that games have. You might have some typo fixes or occasionally a new edition of a novel, or a director's cut of a film, but those are treated as separate entities that exist alongside each other that games have been tossing aside more recently outside of niche use cases. It's kind of funny thinking of speedrunners as looking for a first-edition volume because it's missing one word in a specific paragraph that lets them skip a chapter.
I see it as video games being the youngest medium of the ones listed and the most complicated in execution, so in the transition to the always-connected world they were the first to leap to having updates roll out to end users for bug fixes then content additions (expansions and DLC). Early access, depending on the game, is more like test screenings for a film being open to anyone that wants to opt in and give feedback on it with the understanding it's not the final cut.
I also have some unfinished business with them with a different game, will hopefully get to that soon.
That's why Hades was the first roguelike I tried that clicked for me. I didn't really get the appeal of trying the same thing again, shuffled, with the only goal being to get to the end. Hades made me want to see every character repeatedly to find out what happens next with their story, and each round of venturing out into Tartarus was the way to advance that. I eventually did come around to enjoying it for the sake of the gameplay as well and just having fun with each weapon, but it was the characters and story that hooked me.
Bastion's "Setting Sail, Coming Home" is probably still my favorite from what I've heard of the lyrical songs but I do greatly enjoy what's in Hades as well.
Oh, the duet -- I love that one! It feels like such a perfect culmination of the rest of the album. I just adore Bastion's OST.
You and @kfwyre both touched on great points about why it feels so good to finish runs in Hades. There really is a constant stream of unlocks and new content. Last time I unlocked the spear, and got whiffs of a weapon upgrade mechanic. It makes me want to jump right back in to keep going.
As someone who played Bastion once in 2016 (and admittedly loved it), but has constantly listened to the soundtrack ever since (even buying the vinyl release), I can say that listening to Supergiant games is a completely valid way to experience them.
But also I really need to get back into Hades.
Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
If it's yellow, let it mellow
This is the most frenetic, overstimulating title I've played in years. Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is constantly on. There's just no stopping it.
The humour is not unlike that of Goat Simulator, where maps are filled with assorted miscellanea, missions are complete non-sequiturs, and NPCs are placed just to be sent flying as you crash through them. The difference is that Yellow Taxi has actual gameplay to back it up, meaning I didn't get bored after the novelty wore off.
As absurd as it sounds, this is a driving platformer game. Using flips and ramps, you maneuver your taxi over houses, up mountains, through tunnels, and under the sea. There's no dedicated jump button, so you use whatever terrain is available to plot a course.
Despite there only being two controls (gas and flip), these actually cascade into quite a few different "moves". You can cancel a flip to gain a small amount of vertical air, and repeat that to perform a double jump. Accelerating at the right moment after a flip produces a sudden burst of speed, which can be used on a ramp to gain rapid height. You have full air control at all times, which means you can drive forward or back up to control your fall.
It's madness, but once you get the flow down, you can develop a fair amount of control over your crazy little taxi. And yes, this game does feature some copycat gameplay from Crazy Taxi in a few specialized levels.
The writing lays it on pretty thick. Morio, the Italian plumber, needs your help. It seems the dreaded Alien Mosk of Tosla Corporation has done something or other, and you need to go on a collect-a-thon adventure to stop him. I did smile at the evil Bomb Car on top of the mountain, which was a clear homage to Bobomb Battlefield.
I don't think I'll 100% this one, because I just don't have the energy for collecting thousands of trinkets anymore. Though I do plan to play through every level at least once, honking my horn happily as I go. Beep beep.
It's probably the game that has the most misleadingly high skill ceiling that I can think of. It doesn't seem like the kind of game that would have considerable movement tech to it, but not only does it have it in spades, the later levels also demand that you use it to its full extent.
I wandered in wanting a fun, cartoony collectathon, and I ended up stopping the game because I wasn't sweaty enough to master the complex sets of precisely timed inputs required to do everything it was wanting me to do.
Great game, though. I don't fault it in the slightest for being better than me.
I had the exact same thought. I wanted to look up what kind of mad things speedrunners were doing. There have been times where I've been stuck on a hard jump, and then accidentally nailed the trick and ended up flying way higher than I expected.
It feels like you could completely break this game with enough experience, and moreover, the game encourages you to do so.
Beep beep.
A romhack or total conversion mod✅ Pokémon Kanto Expansion Pack
Has a third-person perspective✅ Pokémon Kanto Expansion Pack
So joining on day six! As I said in the announcement thread I've spent the past two months living in Pokopia. Yesterday (well actually on Monday), I finally forced myself to save and exit Pokopia and launch a different game for the first time since its release last month.
I'm keeping the Bingo a bit more mellow this time. Not going by blackout rules, but a traditional Bingo. Also going for the original Flux format rather than Flow... But I'm also allowing duplicates, so that I can more easily get a bingo and not feel pressured to prioritize certain games over others I want to play.
So far I've marked off two squares. Details in a comment!
So as said, on Monday night I finally quit Pokopia and opened a totally new game before bed.
And... I still have that game open and unplayed because yesterday was busy, and before I knew it there was like, an hour before this Vtuber's stream (Uzuki Tomoya for the record) started last night. I didn't want to start a brand new game only to pause, and this guy's streams tend to have smaller crowds and thus more casual chats with the chat. So I wanted a game I knew I could easily split my attention and participate in chat.
So! I took the opportunity to get back to a game I played in a previous Backlog Burner, the Pokémon Romhack Kanto Expansion Pak. Marking off Romhack and third-person POV, though leaving off the "played in a previous Backlog Burner" because would feel like cheating to include a game I played. Made even better by the fact he was playing Pokémon FireRed last night, and coincidentally our saves happened to be near the same spots.
Rambles about the game and watching a stream
For those unfamiliar, Kanto Expansion Pak is a Gen 1 Romhack that adds a bunch of new features like newer-gen evolutions, all the cut Beta Pokémon, minor QOL improvements like running, and some cool new areas... While still keeping most of the Gen 1 jank intact. Pokémon have their original Gen 1 typings (so plain Electric for the Magnemite line, and Jigglypuff and Clefairy are all Normal), moves also have their original typings (Gust and Bite were normal type moves), and the interface gives us no information about moves besides their names!
So watching someone play FireRed while playing a Gen 1 game made for some really interesting comparisons. I and another viewer ended up talking a bit about the Gen 1 jank and how much has changed, since Tomo hadn't played any of the older games. It was kinda surprising to realize that finding Missingno and Fire-type Pokémon while surfing on the right side of Cinnabar Island isn't really as well-known anymore. Those glitches used to be legendary, but they've long faded from modern Pokémon discourse.
One other not-quite-janky bit, but something that did change: Bug-type is weak to Poison in Gen 1, which threw a wrench in my plans to challenge Koga because Butterfree was my primary Psychic-type member. And also, his gym's first trainer had an Umbreon and none of my team were equipped for that.
So most of the night was spent grinding Pokémon, and while Tomo reached Cinnabar Island and completed the Sevii Islands side quest, no gym challenges were made on my end.
One fun theory we developed that I want to share: Nurse Joy might be a Mew clone from the same program that made Ditto. She does have pink hair, and the first movie DID have Mewtwo use a Nurse Joy as his human representative. Makes sense he'd go for a cloned human. And Officer Jenny may be the shiny version, since they're more rare and have blue hair.
Though now I kinda want to make a romhack that explores the Nurse Joy conspiracy....
Me: Hey, I sent you a link to a Pokemon romhack. Someone on Tildes played it, and I thought you might be interested.
Husband: Cool, I’ll take a look!
::one minute later::
Husband: So, can you put this on my Steam Deck?
(He spent all of last night playing it, by the way, excitedly telling me about the Pokemon that were added from the SpaceWorld Expo (I think?) and the extra evolutions and whatnot)
Woo! Glad he's having fun with it! There's something just super cozy and comfortable about playing old games, maybe because of the nostalgia but also maybe just because the atmosphere is so different from modern games. I'm still discovering what "new" Pokémon got added and having a blast with that!
Welcome to Team Mellow. We continue to grow slowly but steadily.
Pokemon games live in such a strange place in my head. I have a vast fondness for them in memory. They were one of the first games I played that we'd now describe as "open world", and I loved the sense of exploration and discovery. I also really liked the idea that we were taming these wild monsters and turning them into allies. I mean, that's still a cool concept.
Nowadays though, I do have a harder time looking past the jank and older design. The random battles that end up constantly interrupting you, unless you have constant repel upkeep. Losing legendary Pokemon forever because you missed the capture. Or even worse, tracking down the "legendary dogs" with their random spawns. Managing the IVs/EVs to get optimal battle stats. And later, the introduction of apricorns felt like it added more busywork. These frustrations do hamper my enthusiasm to do replays.
Admittedly, my experience is still with the earlier generations. I did finally play Pokemon Black recently, via PokeMMO, and was impressed by a number of the 3D effects in that game. I'll also give it credit for having a proper storyline that exceeded my expectations.
While I feel in my heart that Black is a newer title, a traitorous Google search tells me that it's actually 16 years old. So presumably, other advanced have been made since then... It's quite possible that my complaints have also since been dealt with.
While I don't revisit the series very often, I do give it a try every 4-5 years. And since I had such a positive experience with PokeMMO, I might continue my previous playthrough there to check out some of the other campaigns I've only briefly played (like Emerald).
Also, to set the record straight, Missingno is 100% a real Pokemon, and I believe in the mythos of the Mew under the truck. Pikablu turned out to be real, after all.