Another backlog, successfully burned.

I'm kind of blown away by the number of games that everybody played this time around. I thought I was motivated, but I have been humbled! Major respect to those putting out 30+ games in one month! Now that's channeling the backlog burner spirit.

For those on Team Mellow, my former allies, I must commend your skills. What you lack in quantity has more than been made up for in your thoughtfulness and care. I concede now that there may be value in gentle reflection after all.

As for me and my backlog, I've since gone back and completed a few titles, and decided to officially drop others. Here's my final list.

I did actually end up playing more than I expected (leading to a bit of an, erm, betrayal). I was worried I'd be unable to participate, as I suffered some nerve damage in my arm earlier this year, so my ability to game has been diminished. Thankfully, I was still able to take part, though I focused mostly on controller-based games this time around. So lots of racing games and platformers. Hopefully next time I'll be able to mix it up a bit more.

But as always, it was a ton of fun, and I'm left with a smattering of games that I've newly discovered. I've been itching to get back into Hades and Tinykin, both of which I greatly enjoyed. I also may have added more games to my backlog from your excellent recommendations.

The rivalry this time around was a ton of fun. I love this event, and I'm thrilled that it's starting to gain its own culture. But whether motivated or mellow, I want to thank you all for participating.

And of course, my deepest thanks for our affable host and emcee, @kfwyre. You're a genuine treasure -- even if you did find me guilty.

Too bad I never got to any of the weird squares on my card, maybe next time so I won't elaborate on them just yet. The good news is my backlog really has decreased compared to the start of the year as I haven't bought any new games since December, and I'm hoping to continue that for the rest of the year and shrink it some more come November.

I had an unexpected trip in the past week so lost a lot of potential play time, but I'm still glad that this motivated me to finish three games that I really had wanted to get around to. FFIV, DDLC, and Transistor weren't just "game in my library that I haven't played yet" entries like a lot of others tend to be for me, and they're going to stick with me for a while longer.

I missed the first little bit after doing a bit of online detox and avoiding social media, but I found a fun way to participate. My stealth card went fairly well. I did have to edit the local storage to get it all to say Stealth, which is okay, I hope @Wes doesn't further develop things for this weird edge case.

I actually had a fair number of games that were similar in some ways, and their juxtapositions almost always left me feeling good about one and less good about the other, as is the nature of juxtapositions.

AI Antagonist

Sir, You Are Being Hunted and Hello Neighbour both have antagonists that are supposed to learn from your actions and adapt their strategies to try to catch you. Overall, I lean a bit towards SYABH as the superior game, but I think that Hello Neighbour is worth checking out, and I'm going to plan on trying out some of the other games in the series later. I do have to give the style points and the vibes more to SYABH though, I love the idea of steampunk gentlemen robots going after you fox-hunt style.

Frenetic Pixel Heists

Punchline: two nickels. Monaco and Serial Cleaner both had similar vibes, but it was a really unfavourable and maybe unfair comparison for Serial Cleaner. I think there's a good game in there, but it just did not connect with me at all with the interface feeling so janky to me. I really like the concept, and how immediately unhinged the game is - you're immediately get the "I love my job" vibes from the dude cleaning up dead bodies and taking keepsakes. It's a visual delight as well, but I don't think I'll get over the issues with the interface. I'm keeping Monaco to play with my kids some time and likely uninstalling Serial Cleaner

Parkour Stealth Games with Cool Worldbuilding

Styx, Shards of Darkness and Seven, Enhanced Edition both featured parkour and cool worlds in which to do parkour. Styx just caught me off guard with how funny the main character is; the introductory cut scene felt fairly serious, and it seems like it's going to be serious, and then the first time you die, there's a fourth wall break with Styx calling you an idiot, and I was so charmed that I'll be going back to this a fair bit. Seven had a cooler world, but the parkour wasn't as good. Actually, I reread what I had written, and I said it was a series of "not quites" and that is totally it. Everything is good but not quite great, and there were other games that had great vibes.

The Rest

The other games didn't have as many head-to-head comparisons. I'll get back to SOMA but I'm going to stick with Subnautica 2 for a while. I've put about 6 hours into Sub 2 and I'm really enjoying it thus far, and I will play it all the way through, probably twice, and all the subsequent patches and releases. Invisible Inc. was pretty cool - I like squad based tactics games, and adding in stealth mechanics and making it vaguely heist oriented instead of strictly combat oriented is pretty great. I'll plan to get back to that over the summer at some point.

The Best Stealth

I originally said that Subnautica 2 was tenuously related, but sneaking past the first collector colossus was intense. The best stealth mechanic in a game was probably in Hello Neighbour - you get an audible cue that the Neighbour is coming when he stomps around towards you. I think it was slick and polished. The game where stealth was the most important factor is probably SOMA because holy crap don't let the monster see you. Subnautica 2 gets an honourable mention there as well, because the best way to deal with leviathans is just not getting caught by them.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I was glad that I didn't completely miss this event, and I'm happy that my silly stealth entry worked out. @Wes and @kfwyre, you guys are great, love to you both, thank you for putting together a really cool event. And to everyone else who played, I did end up reading all of your journeys, thank you for all the writing about awesome games - I've got a bunch from my backlog now that some of you have played that I have installed to bring into next month... when I'm done with Subnautica for a while.

So in the end I guess I straddled the line. I started the month on Team Mellow, mainly because of my crippling Pokopia obsession. It was hard to pull myself away from it to play other games at first. But as the month went on I became more and more able to resist its siren call, and now I've been freed. And in the final week, I got put on Team Motivated because I managed to pull off two bingo's.

I really was in-between though. I still wanted to get a bingo, so I went with a custom card that allowed for duplicates, but followed standard rules rather than a blackout like a golf card. And I also used the Flux instead of Flow style, because I do find Flow easier. And I avoided ticking off too many squares for each game, though partially because I knew there'd be some overlap.

But it was pretty laidback compared to the last few burners I joined. I just played the games I wanted, and was pleasantly surprised to get multiple bingo's.

This month's standout games for me are definitely Analogue: A Hate Story and Hate Plus. I actually waited to post until finishing Hate Plus's harem route yesterday. They're admittedly more stories than game due to being visual novels (especially Hate Plus), but they're thought-provoking. And Hate Plus... Let's just say I saw some unexpected parallels to current American politics. Even without that, they'll both stay with me for a long time. (Actually kinda wish we could get another one exploring a completely unrelated ship's files with our AI assistant(s). Hate Plus ends on a definite "and the adventure is just beginning" note.) Thanks again to @cheep_cheep for giving me the keys to both during a giveaway!

(Also, a tip to anyone wanting to check them out: use a mouse with a scroll wheel for Hate Plus. I confirmed that the Steam Deck works with wireless mice, and that's the main reason I was able to finish it. Because without the scroll wheel, the interface scrolls through files one single line at a time. It's a pain to reread logs on other routes when you just want to see the other girl's reactions to the contents. So, yeah. Scroll wheel is practically a necessity.)

Overall, this was a good month for me. I broke free of Pokopia's choking hold, my main goal for this month, and can now live my life. I can read more fan fics, and leave the house more. Right now I'm still playing Little Known Galaxy, the game I started at the end of the month, and it's definitely a nice and mellow note to end the month on.

.......Though, while I have been told I will no longer face trial for being switched to Team Motivated at the end of the month due to forgetting Another Crab's Treasure is a soulslike and just wanting to play it for the crabs (and thanks to @kfwyre for that game!), I do still have my defense prepared for anyone who might accuse me:

It's all @Wes's fault.

He pushed me to keep playing Another Crab's Treasure without changing settings any further until I beat the Duchess, which was a key factor in the decision to switch me to Team Motivated. He (and whoever voted for his comment) then encouraged me to count AI copies of dead people as Zombies, which is how I got my third bingo. If you look at all the bingo's, there are a lot of duplicate squares involved. Hate Plus is the only game on the entire card with only a single square on the board. Well, and Dokimon, but only because I'd already played games that fit the other squares that could work for it. I had no intentions of marking any squares for Hate Plus.

I wanted a bingo, sure, but Wes was the one who encouraged me to act with more motivation! He even admitted to corrupting me! And I was too mellow to resist his corrupting influence and just went with the flow. I am just fortunate it was late in the month and I only had one game with potential motivation-adjacent gameplay on my immediate priority list.

So yeah. To sum up my defense: the switch is all on Wes. Beware his influence, fellow Mellows, or you too may gain a burst of motivation and find yourself swayed to the motivated side...

As always, thanks to @kfwyre and @wes for putting this together. Aside from just being plain fun, it is nice to have a reason or goal to play these games that’ve been collecting dust since I got them. I played two that've sat in my library for at least 5yrs.

Also, thanks for everyone's comments and reviews. You guys are very thoughtful and thorough. Definitely added more games to my wishlist.

For me, I played more games than expected. As Team Mellow, I was aiming for three or four, but I played seven. So, I'm happy. Pay no attention to the fact that, since the last Backlog Burner, I've picked up 18 games that I've yet to play...

My "sleeper hit" this time around was Halfway. I'm still playing it. Even played today, and I intend to finish it. I'm also still playing Tyrion Cuthbert -- which I honestly think is as good as any Ace Attorney game -- along with The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy and Coffee Talk Tokyo.

If you watched/skimmed/glanced at any of my Let's Plays, hopefully they were entertaining or at least gave you a good enough idea of the games. Thanks for checking them out.

Anyway, looking forward to the next event. In the meantime, may your backlogs get shorter each week...or longer, so that we'll have things to play for the next one!

Another Backlog Burner, another thank you to @kfwyre and @Wes as hosts. I followed suit in clearing non-steam games which led to 2 Switch, 2 PS4, 1 Epic, and 5 GOG games. I'm glad that all of them are cleared with no drops or still-in-progress this time (okay Fata Morgana and Mario+Rabbids still have post-game content and DLC for me to go through but still!) even if some if them were quite lengthy. Not exactly conductive for the standard bingo rather than golf, but hey, motivated towards game clearing, mellow towards the bingo.

I'm glad I got to participate even a little bit in this Backlog Burner. My time was a bit limited and split across other things, so I wasn't able to add another game to the bingo board last week. Despite that, I'm happy I was able to get a few games out of my backlog.

The not-far-enough explored to add to my board:

Thank you to @Wes for the invitation to participate, and for joining me in multiplayer for one of the entries. It was very enjoyable. You got a colossal stack of games done!

Thank you to @kfwyre for hosting this event, and your comment on my previous post, which I didn't get a chance to answer (Sorry!). (I don't think you're missing too much with your cursed copy of Layers of Fear. :D)

Hopefully I'll fit a little more in during the next event!

In the mean time, I may try to post in the "What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?" scheduled threads as I come across games I'm trying out, perhaps with the 3x3 bingo boards. Artificially limiting myself to certain games actually made it easier for me to just... pick up a game and play something.

My bingo board hasn't changed since week 4.

I did actually consider swooping in for a completion in the last few days of the month, but alas I ended up legitimately not having the time. The month being busy as a whole was the original reason I went mellow, so not surprising, and there is a sense of pride at obstinately not winning.

That being said, I had a wonderful time this month. I'll be continuing to work my way through two games (Wolfenstein and Strange Horticulture), and had singular experiences in the two games I finished (Nex Machina and Beyond Blue). More importantly, I challenged myself to write something each week that I'd feel proud of sharing. And each week was a firm reminder that writing is really hard! But I'm happy with what I accomplished, even if I wish I had time for another draft or two on each post!

As always I love reading everyone's game discussion and updates. I wish I could have been more involved in the discussion, but alas, time is short (and writing is hard).

Thanks to @kfwyre for running the event and to @wes for the bingo site which seamlessly doubles as a writing prompt generator! And thanks to both for all the great comments.

I can't wait to see what's in store for November!

Well, that was my very short-lived Backlog Burner run. I played two games in total and managed to beat one of them.

Due to concerns about fatigue and eye strain affecting my health, I had to step away from the event early. I explained previously how I was feeling and the steps I took to address it.

The good news is that I'm doing much better now. My tiredness has decreased significantly, and I'm regularly getting at least six hours of sleep in a row again. At this point, I can handle a few hours of gaming, as long as I don't fall too deep into web browsing, which is easier said than done, especially during the insufferably long Canadian winters.

I'm planning a month-long trip to Japan starting November 10, so I may not have much time for that month's Backlog Burner event. However, I'll very likely be back for May 2027.

See you next time!

J-Chiptunator's Final Progress Report

Continuing: Ape Escape
Shelved: Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom