What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

I've been playing Outer Wilds after a Tildes thread where folks often said it was the best game they'd ever played.

I don't know how far along I am but I've been thoroughly enjoying it. My wife and I have gotten into the groove of having nightly play sessions. I don't know if this is the way it's "supposed to be played", but it's been very enjoyable and I can see why it was so highly praised.

I find myself thinking about the puzzles and storyline throughout my entire day, and excited for the next time my wife and I can sit down to play.

Obviously please don't spoil anything for me.

I have been looking for a game that could scratch my itch for a new game like Wario Land 2 or 3, so I picked up Beard Blade on the recommendation of a Steam curator page that listed it as a Wario-Like.

The only thing "Wario-Like" about this game is that they took the day/night cycle from Wario Land 3, saw how it majorly impacted two or three zones, and decided to pad the entire game around every stage having separate day/night versions, often with half the stage lazily cordoned off by blocks that activate/deactivate based on the time of day which utterly breaks the immersion of the game world.

Aside from the protagonist looking like a cartoon caricature of a certain disgraced YouTuber that had been accused of charity fraud (to the point where I genuinely had to look up if Jirard Khalil had any involvement in the making of this game), my biggest problem with Beard Blade is the movement.

Branson's controls are quite slippery and platforming feels imprecise. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the Beard Grapple move which you learn in the first zone. You need borderline pixel-perfect timing to even grapple a bar with your beard, and this makes sections where you need to use this move an exercise in frustration.

Quite a few collectibles are also placed in such a way that if you missed them on the first try, you'll have to outright restart the level - either because they're only reachable by jumping off a block you smashed, or because they can only be grabbed by an animal companion who doesn't respawn if you get knocked off of it.

I also picked up Star Fox and have mixed feelings towards the Lylat Wars remake. While I do appreciate the extended lore and brand-new cutscenes, everything about this version feels alien. Locking on doesn't feel right and the updated graphics really miss the mark when it comes to visual clarity. I especially cannot get over the voice they gave to ROB64 for this remake...

Maybe it's because it's been fourteen years since I played Star Fox 64 3D and have gotten really bad at video games since, but I managed to get medals in every stage in the N64 original and 3DS remaster, but the gameplay itself feels off in the remake.

I've had a lot of time to jump around games while traveling with the Steam Deck.

Was excited to finally dig into Factorio Space Age and... nope. Can not play this on the deck. I did get up to Blue Science hooking it up to a monitor and keyboard but the way I play is not conducive to controllers and small screens (and to play in planes since I tend to talk to myself when planning). Will get into it properly now that I'm home.

Another game is Sanabi. This is a 2D gimmick platformer by a Korean studio and the narrative plays hard into a sort of sci-fi K-Thriller/Action vibe and takes a lot of inspiration from Metal Gear. While the overall quality is above average, there are occasionally some amazing levels, art and character moments. However, like Metal Gear, there are times when narratives and cut-scenes can become a bit... much. To the point where I sometimes could get control after a scene, walk to the next room and immediately get another scene. The main gimmick is a grappling hook that is pretty intuitive to use but the main game is held back by forgettable combat and levels that can overstay their welcome. There is also a free DLC mission that puts you in the shoes of one of the more standout Bosses and makes for a fitting send-off.

Also played Super Meat Boy for the first time. Since I'm 15 years late to this particular party, all I can say is that it's a well made precession platformer that has plenty of little secrets and is a fun throwback to Newgrounds art style. But it's not nearly as refined as Celeste or interesting like Will You Snail.

Luna Abyss. This is a fun one and I put it down since it technically "runs" on the deck the same way a car can technically run on Nutella. It's British Hollow Knight. And if endearing bugs says something about the Australian psyche, then it looks like Brits have thing for charismatic gender-fluid people because so many of the characters here are just a joy interact with. The game is a first person platformer/arena-shooter in a post-post-collapse lunar colony where you are sent to serve out a 25 year prison sentence. And the game just throws you right in with an FPS that does some genuinely interesting things. Like they are not afraid to get crazy with the levels, color and contrast. Spaces are vast, dark and dead. It scratches the itch I got from Metal Garden for dauntingly large and moody level design. (Also please play Metal Garden. It's like $2 and 2hrs long and you can feel like this dev is onto something special). They also just give you an aimbot. None of the bullet hell parts left me thinking that it was strictly needed, but it has me excited for how hectic combat could get if they don't want you even aiming. The part I'm not to keen about is the main story. Like Silksong, there's a lot of religious (I think its Catholic) undertones, savior/Christlike figures and false prophets. I think it could have come together better if there was the option of Downtime and experiencing the wider world, outside of the oppressive underground. It feels like that must be here but I've done 2 levels and the game forces you to go to sleep and jump into the next assignment. Looking forward to finish this on a big screen.

Bounced between a few tower defense game but none really stuck. Idun feels like a Warcraft 3 TD mod with hero characters, but there's some weird F2P mobile game vibes in the staggering amount of resources/currencies, "filler" missions, and the way some things have pointless limitations.
Defense Grid - The Awakening, it's been well over a decade since last playing it, I have 20hrs in it and cant remember a thing about it. The game really shows it's age and feels way too rigid and streamlined.
Gem Craft - I have no idea what the hell is going on.
Tower Domination, Repel the Rifts, Mineral Defense - Three roguelikes where the only strategy at high difficulty is to just roll good paths that merge into overtune kill-funnels. Tower Domination probably tries the hardest to balance it out, but overall, there's just way too much variation and even the best runs can be killed with the wrong enemy spawning on the wrong path.

I've been playing Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise on my DS the past couple of days, it's been really fun!

For a month now I've been playing Lingo 2 with some people. (Over) a year ago it took us 88 hours to finish the original (true 100%). In Lingo 2 we're sitting at 41 hours, making good progress every time!

There are two significant differences in core gameplay between the original game and the sequel. In the original, the position and color of the surface each puzzle panel was mounted on conveyed something about how the answer was meant to be derived from the prompt. In order to chain rules, the game had to chain geometry, which was at times confusing. The whole thing was not colorblind friendly either and the rules were often fuzzed a bit and it was hard to tell when. In Lingo 2, all that is gone; puzzle panels are always on little lecterns and their color only conveys whether you can currently solve it or not. Inbetween the prompt and answer spaces, the puzzle panel then displays a string of zero or more symbols that function as operators, describing what kind of associations must be made to transform the prompt into the answer (all symbols are nonstandard so figuring out what they do is part of the challenge!)

Colors still have some meta gameplay use, but the game supports "skins" that can add texture to each material, making them more visually distinct beyond their base color.

The second key difference is letter collection. In Lingo 2, you must find and collect letters of the alphabet in the game's 3D world before you are allowed to use them in puzzle panel answers. This means you start the game with a very limited possible answer space, which expands as you complete more of the game's many hidden areas.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it provides structure to the game progression and encourages exploration. The game also tries to keep players from becoming completely stuck by providing a little visual hint for where each letter is hidden (you only have to use them if you want to). But on the other hand, it can be a little annoying when you have panels all over the place that are colored as unsolvable just because you don't have the right letters for it, even though you, the player, have figured out the answer. If you want to keep solving puzzles you have to revisit areas several times!

So Lingo's charm as a completely open word puzzle world with non-euclidean geometry and the organic feel of its design are somewhat lost, but the improved gameplay does mostly make up for it. We're enjoying it!

Previous

Well I beat Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a couple weeks ago and moved into my palette cleansers. I'll talk about those in a sec, cause I want to write a bit about E33 since I haven't been in these threads for a little.

I really liked this game and I'm honestly a bit surprised it took off as much as it did. The gameplay is not what I'd consider super mainstream friendly, so I think it makes sense that I've seen many people pick this up after all the hype and really dislike it.

There are things that frustrated me: the timing of the rhythm for dodging or parrying was sometimes--maybe even often--hard to identify the first time you saw an attack pattern. I wish there had been a little better telegraphing at points. Sometimes the camera angles were really atrocious in fights, especially with Monoco on the far right of the party, so I legitimately couldn't see the attack pattern whatsoever.

I also thought the combat system had like two too many layers to it, to the point where I barely paid any attention to how my reserve team played and just focused on learning my primary team.

But overall, like I said, very much enjoyed it. I found the story baffling for a long part of the game (which was frustrating me because it seemed like the characters were intentionally avoiding discussing some things) but then when it all came together, I thought the writers pulled that off really well.

I'd certainly welcome a sequel in this universe, which I think they can manage regardless of which ending you took.

Palette cleansers! If you haven't seen me write about these before, I like to sprinkle in a couple small/indie games (completely different in style from what I've been playing) between getting committed to longer games. E33 isn't nearly as long as D:OS was, but I'm still working through some of my backlog.

I played Pony Island, which is a game by Daniel Mullins who also was behind Inscryption (and some other games I haven't yet played). Much like Inscryption, Pony Island is a very meta deconstruction on making and playing games. In this, you're playing a very simple sidescrolling runner-like game, guiding a pony over gates and blowing away enemies. Except, this game has been corrupted, and you're trapped in here, and there are several different entities inside the game trying to get you to do things outside of the game to free them (and you). It's a very short game, which is good, because I'm not sure the concept really lends itself to being much longer than a couple hours. Good, but not as memorable as Inscryption.

I'm also working through Valiant Hearts: The Great War. This is a game from Beyond Good & Evil studio Ubisoft Montpelier, a 2D puzzle game set during WW1, following a few different characters whose paths intersect. It's very good, although some of the puzzles are frustratingly obtuse. I've been told the latter half of the game is a tear-jerker, so we'll see.

Also on the docket: The Case of the Golden Idol, Star Wars Dark Forces II, and then I'll move into Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

Wayfinder

It's 3.50€ on Steam right now and for this price I can heartily recommend it. This is a "free-to-play-MMO-turned-coop-or-single-player" and it shows in its design. I do not find it deterrent, but the game definitely has that kinda off "dead MMO" vibe. Important note: there are no micro-transaction: everything that was supposed to be monetizable is now included for free in the game.

The gameplay loop is divided between large open world areas for exploration with light quests and a bit of combat, and procedurally generated themed dungeons called "Lost Zones". Lost Zones get unlocked as you progress through the story, and can be spiced up with some risk/reward mods. You get to play your own style by mixing character archetypes, leveled weapons, "echoes" (stats/bonus gems), and passive stats. This combination can be changed for free at any time, and the only limitation is that each character gains XP individually.

As for the content, I'm 20 hours in, only at the end of the first open area, and I haven't unlocked all characters yet (but I like to take my time). I think unlocking all armor sets should take me a few hundreds hours at this rate... So it's not gonna happen, but that means I'll always have something new to look forward to.

All in all, it's a great game for shortish sessions and completionists.

Steam Deck notes:

• ⚠️-windowed as a launch argument is required. Some graphical settings (such as resolution) must be reset each time you start the game.
• Open areas are kinda straining, but dungeons are easily 50+ FPS.
• ✅ Can be put to sleep and resumed.

Cryptmaster

Finally finished this, and all the kudos, all the glory must go to this masterful game. What else can you say about a game that is nothing less than an unbridled celebration of language? It explores language in a way that gets you appreciating it so much more, and does so with its riddles, puzzles, and spelling, telling a story filled with mirth and quirkiness and yet subtly weaves a melancholic tragedy beneath its surface..

The interface of this game deserves special mention. This game talks to you; every single word you type can be repeated back to you by the game's narrator. Apparently, it's not AI or hundreds of hours of voiceover, but smart programming that builds the spoken word from the ground up using basic sounds. Because its difficult puzzles have you inputting multiple guesses at a time, the end result is the game continuously sneering, throwing everything you say right back at you, "Parsnips? I don't know what you mean..." Very impressive.

People say it's like playing with a Dungeon Master, but your choices are quite limited; you can't do whatever you want. This isn't dungeoneering at its most hardcore; you're not telling the DM to look for traps as you get your rogue to hide in the shadows, waiting for a backstab. It unfortunately falls short there. Neither is it good for grinding out dungeons (though you will be doing a lot of grinding if you're aiming to 100% it).

Instead, if you are a lover of language and crossword puzzles tickle your fancy, Cryptmaster is for you. There's so much to this game, all some of the riddles are outright impossible, requiring "outside of outside of the box" thinking, but whatever. Really hoping there is more of this in the future.

Woten

Ingenious little puzzle game. Instead of an action game requiring reflexes and timing, this sidescroller has you advancing its puzzle screens by specific actions: jump here, stomp that. Quite a lot of depth to this beauty.

This game is supposed to come out on Steam as Woten DX - Traveller's Dream, but has been stuck in development with no firm release date, something that has persisted for years. If you're signed up with Humble, you can play it for free as part of the Humble Vault, which I'm told may be shuttering. Don't miss your chance to play **Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball League" and A Short Hike for free without DRMs!

Gato Roboto

This comes courtesy of the fabulous @Recognition101 via the ongoing Game Giveaway, and it is everything I hoped it would be. It takes inspiration from sources as old as Master Blaster (remember Master Blaster?) and serves up fun with its take on the ol' Metroidvania genre.

Using a 1-bit art style is a smart choice: it keeps things nice and simple, matching the (lowered) stakes of a kitty cat charged with saving its idiot master by using a mech, so its Garfield via an inverted take on "I'm sorry, Jon", a dip into horror matched by the game's choice of spooky music and its evasion of anything cute that puts it in similar territory as its similarly influenced peer, Haiku, the Robot.

Gato Roboto trudges on very familiar territory. There's not much new here. Everything, including its person-sized beakers for saving/respawning to its contextual switch-up gameplay familiar to anyone who's played Titanfall 2 and had to run after their insanely powerful giant robot as it wriggles within the clutches of a giant crane, has been seen before. Don't ruin it for yourself: You're playing this iteration for its style and charm. Nobody is reinventing the wheel here. Just press the button for "meow" and knock yourself out.

Short undie games should not have anything to apologize for, but it seems that many go all in to embrace their limitations. Gato Roboto knows its short length will be at the end of so many "I could finish this game in x amount of time" discussions that it features a built-in running timer to facilitate speed-running, a fact no less emphasized by one of its achievements requiring satisfaction hunters to finish it in less than an hour. (Steamworld Dig had one too, I think)

Bonus Round: I am forgetting the name of that small undie game that is set up just like Gato Roboto. It's like a 2D(ish) pixel art top-down Zelda-like; you have a sword and an bow and arrow (can't move when shooting). It's a very small game, and there's a speed-running timer in it, just like this game. The game's title is very stylized.

It's not in my Steam library, I'll never find it. I can't remember, and it's bugging me. Anyone know the name?

Bonus Bonus Round: Another game not in my Steam library that eludes me is this crazy pixel art game where you're like a giant floating cat head shooting lasers at enemies (mice?) running in from the sides of the screen; there are different levels on this single-screen playfield; there are copious amounts of powerups, but you wind up spamming the shoulder bumpers when the enemies spam the screen. You travel to different planets and it's like ninja planet, robot planet, you get the gist. You do upgrades with a cauldron and it's a chore. The game is constantly meowing, and it's perfect for putting on to annoy your present company. The background fight music features the syncopated lyric

"Meow, meow-meow-meow Meow, meow-meow-meow Meow"

over and over again. Anyone remember the name of this game? It has a long, stupid, awesome name. I bring it up because it's my favorite cat game; Gato Roboto is good, but it's not stupid good like this game.

I have just completed my semi-annual "talk myself out of buying another handheld", and I'm now firmly enjoying the "rediscover that my phone can play all of my retro games" follow-up. I had purchased a GameSir G8+ on a previous iteration, so this week I dusted it off and jumped back in to my playthrough of Final Fantasy VII. I'm hoping to finish it this time. I just got the Bahamut materia while playing last night and I'm feeling pretty strong, so I'd say chances are pretty good that it'll hold my attention. When I don't have time for a full RPG session, I've been playing some Puzzle Quest 2 on my DS. I continue to be amazed at how resilient this little ~20 year old device is. It's completely stock hardware running with an R4 card, and still feels really good to play. I've actually had to mod myself (reading glasses) rather than do anything to the console. :)

I got Deliver Us the Moon since it's heavily discounted right now on GoG and Steam and it was listed as an exploration-based puzzler. It's fine. Doesn't quite scratch the itch I was hoping for... it's very linear and the puzzles so far aren't too challenging or interesting, and there isn't really any off-the-beaten-path stuff to explore that I've encountered so far, but the story at least is somewhat interesting so I'll likely finish it unless it does something annoying (overly-difficult timed challenges feels like something it might be building towards).

Most recently for me I've played and finished The Bookwalker, a point and click adventure game where each "level" is inside a different book.

Not too much to say really, found it enjoyable, puzzles found a sweet spot that for a couple I had to give them some thought, but not to the point of frustration.
The books that make up the different levels worked well for, with their own little twists on what each of them are based on.

All in all, enjoyable game that didn't overstay it's welcome.

Finished up getting all the endings for Pocket Mirror. Really loved the visuals for this game - the whole cute lace and ribbons meets horror aesthetic is great. The only downsides:

• The story is kind of obtuse and difficult to parse without seeing at least a few of the endings and unlocking some of the post-game content. I also didn't realise that this game was a sequel to Little Goody Two Shoes (which has an even more incredible early 90s VHS anime aesthetic) and makes a lot of references to the events in that story, so I probably should have played that first.

• In order to get the alternative endings, you'll have to play through the same chapters quite a few times, but there's not enough variation in anything other than the endings to keep that interesting and the fast forward button isn't quite fast enough to not make it a chore, since it only fast forwards the text and not the animations. The devs did add a new game plus feature which has a chapter select / flag selection that makes this a lot easier - I can't imagine how tedious this would have been before that, especially with how opaque the conditions are to getting the different chapter outcomes.

Dragon Quest XI S

Playing this in honour of SE table flipping the development for DQ12.

• This game is almost 10 years old at this point and is a PS4 game at its core, so it runs at a breezy 120fps even on my dinky GPU. Environments look a bit blocky by today's standards, but the characters and monsters all still look great and full of charm. It's striking how well stylised designs age.

• The gameplay is very linear and mostly consists of going to where the conspicuous purple NPC directs you to go next while slaughtering everything in your path, but I'm not going to fault it for that since that's what people are signing up for with Dragon Quest. The towns, dungeons and field are notionally 'open zone', but there's very little to do in them other than run around and loot things (which can be quite fun in towns with a lot of nooks and crannies to poke around in but is a chore in big empty fields). Quests are sparse and simple to resolve. Mobs in the field can be effortlessly beaten in seconds with the auto battle AI settings. In general, there's very little friction to just constantly moving forward.

• The only pain point is the terrible inventory system. For what I assume are historical reasons, every character has their own inventory rather than the shared inventory present in every other JRPG. This means that if you use a herb to heal in battle out of someone's inventory, you have to go into the menu afterwards and manually restock that character's inventory from your storage bag. If your thief steals some crafting materials, that stuff remains in his inventory to clutter it up until you manually move it out. It's incredibly tedious to engage with and baffling why they kept this in when streamlining so many other things (e.g. putting in a Persona-like one button 'just heal my dudes' feature instead of forcing you to manually go to the spells menu). I ended up just packing everyone's inventory with junk so that all new items would go into the storage bag by default.

Just started playing "Skin Deep". It's been on my steam list for a while and just went on sale.

In the future, space ships keep a security specialist frozen on board in case of pirate hijacking. That's you. Each level is a different ship. You thaw out, pirates have already taken everything over and you need to get the ship back under control.

However you seldom have any sort of real weapons. Instead you'll do things like leave banana peels on the floor, use sparks from damaged electronics to ignite flammable gases or suck the pirates out of airlocks.

The interaction between different objects and systems on the ship is pretty sophisticated. It's pretty satisfying when you do something like damage a fuel line to leak explosive gas, turn on a radio to lure a pirate towards it, then rip out some wiring to ignite an explosion.

The whole thing starts to feel like a cross between Loony Toons and Die Hard.

Splatoon Raiders is coming out next month, so I've been in a very Splatoon-y mood. I played through the entirety of Splatoon 1's story mode on my Wii U (and some online matches, thanks Pretendo!), and am now working my way through Splatoon 2's story mode and playing online matches in 3.
Since Raiders will be a Switch 2 exclusive I went out and got one, Splatoon 2 runs about the same but 3 is noticeably improved (thanks to the update it got last fall).

Got Mario Kart World with my S2, it's alright, definitely a mario kart title. Played the Donkey Kong Bananza demo and enjoyed it, so ordered that as well. Aside from Splatoon I dusted off my Animal Crossing island; my villagers helpfully informed me I haven't played in over 4 years, so I've been enjoying all the content the game has got since then.

I played Dicey Dungeons a long-ish time ago, but recently I decided to wipe all my progress and play it again from scratch. It's amazing. It's such a simple concept but with so much variety and creativity in it, the gameplay never gets boring. The bonus episodes (Halloween special and Reunion special) are particularly cool for anyone who has only played the base game. I'm now on an achievement-hunt. Just yesterday managed to get the 30 poison achievement.

Edit: and now the soundtrack is intrusively playing in my head. It's so catchy! Best music and sound design of any video game I've ever played.

Played the Breach of Trust DLC scenario for Frostpunk 2 and it was fun and a little challenging, albeit short. The premise of this scenario is that there are two colonies, the main colony built by a volcano using geothermal energy for heat, and another built by a frozen lake with effectively unlimited food, which are dependent on each other, but the last captain of the main colony was a bit of a tyrant so the food colony revolted and seceded, and then the captain offed himself, which is how you assume the position of First Citizen. Your job is to get the colonies back together, whether that's by peace through trading, or by force through war, while also managing the threat of increasing unstable geothermal activity.

The closest comparison would be to the Fall of Winterhome scenario in Frostpunk 1 where you start off with a messy situation and need to figure out how to stabilize it, though I would say this one is easier than Winterhome once you learn what the proper "solutions" are. The trading and war mechanics are nice new additions but feel a little underutilized, as does the volcano, and the scenario's very front-loaded as you'll likely spend most of the run in the first chapter, while the second is pretty quick and the third has a short time limit. I managed to clear it on hard difficulty on the same day it came out, and then cleared it on very hard without any deaths the next day. Fun, but I hope any future scenarios they add last a bit longer.

Also tried out the new class in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, the skitarii alpha primus (non-40k translation: they're techno-cultist cyborg soldiers). Some folks are relishing in the futuristic M1 Garand and ripping heads off with mechanical claws, I on the other hand have focused more on electrocuting everything I can in every way I can. Having a skill that's literally just aimbot is also nice since I can be lazier with my target acquisition and still quickly drop priority targets at a distance. Praise the Omnissiah.

I'm palying Outer Worlds - don't confuse with Outer Wilds! I have finished it years ago on Switch Lite and now I play on Steam Deck. It was kinda pain to get it running, as I want 30fps, 9W TDP limit and at least some graphics. I ended up in medium graphics and I live with say 25-30 fps with some drops here and there. But the game has to be played with at least medium graphics, low looks just straight bad because it lacks a lot of lightning and shadows. Enought technicalities...

The game is kinda Fallout-ish and in sci-fi/space theme. I went with intelligence and perception and I plan on playing speech and lockpick/hack oriented character which seems like a good choice so far, as there are many locked cintainers and many many speech related options.

The game plays a but like say Fallout 3 - first person, many NPCs, many stories, many conversations, many weapons and consumables and modifying/tinkering with your weapons and armor. The story is there, how good it is, I don't remember. Quests are plentiful, well made, some of them may have different outcomes based on your actions or which side you pick.

Overall it is a good FPS/RPG game set in sci-fi world with many options for the player on how to play. And it looks good on medium graphics settings and I imagine it would be stunning even after all the years on ultra. This game isn't all about graphucs though, it scratches that RPG stitch of mine.

Dune: Imperium

Love the board game, fav of all time. Combines Worker Placement and Deckbuilding in a wonderful way. Bought it on Android a while back, but it drains the battery quick, makes my phone hot, and isn't suited that well to a small screen. Had a board game weekend with some friends I don't get to see often anymore because they are married with young kids. One of them I got to introduce Dune to and he loved it. He plays the digital version of Root (same developer Direwolf Digital) and told us how it supports asynchronous play, and that's how he plays with his coworkers. So we play a couple games. Steam sale comes along and I decide to buy it again there so I can have a better experience. And I picked up a couple expansions (Rise of Ix and Immortality) in a bundle. The rest of the group got Ix for now. Uprising [re-implementation of base game] just became available (we'll prob wait for it to come down in price), I assume Bloodlines is a long ways off (as well as Conspiracy which is releasing IRL this fall).

Playing on a bigger screen is definitely a much better experience! There are a ton of single player challenges that change up the game and encourage you to think about some of the mechanics in a different way. I had played a few on mobile but I've been tearing through them on desktop. Thankfully, expansion purchases apply across platforms (via your Direwolf account), so I can get access to the expansions on mobile as well - which bring even more challenges, and progress is synced across devices. Cross-play is supported, so I can play a turn on Steam, then play a turn later on Android, against an opponent on iOS.

The async play has a few problems. 1, just from gameplay perspective, having many breaks in play makes playing long-term strategically really difficult. Sometimes I have to completely re-do my analysis of the game state a bunch of times. I might mess up and chase after some short-term benefit that messes up my long-term plans. It's also just frustrating sometimes to wait hours or overnight for your next turn...but that's what you sign up for. 2, technical perspective, resuming the game shows a ton of animations of what others did which is a bit tedious. There's a skip button but it then shows a loading screen where isn't not even clear how much time you saved. Presentation is flashy but a bit to the detriment of getting the info across. Then, sometimes the game will disconnect me and boot me from the game, when I'm not even taking a turn, for some reason. If you open the game and it's your turn, it will give you a button to jump right to the game which is nice. But if it's not your turn and you wanted to review or plan, it takes several clicks to get back to it. I wish there were a list of games and challenges you've joined/started right on the home screen.

Shin Megami Tensei V

I'm picking this one back up after a few years of leaving it idle. I had really, really enjoyed SMTIV and SMT IVA, and by comparison was pretty disappointed in how thin the plot was in V. That said, upon picking it back up I read a plot outline which helped a great deal, I suppose I'm just too dense to have put together the overall plot while I was playing it. Of course, it doesn't help that a bunch of the concepts are made up nonsense that you have to infer from context clues what they are, or very specific to shinto theology.

That said, it has a lot of charm. I love the mismash of pantheons, and the way you tend to grow your group of demons. Though I just this morning learned that the various damage mechanics are significantly different from IV so I've been playing sub-optimally the whole time.

So... other people seem to really like this one. I'd say it's not my favorite, I liked IV much more, but it's not without it's charm. Despite buying a whole bunch of games on the summer sale I'll probably stick it out and finish it, even though I have 20 minutes of gaming time a few nights a week, so that's probably 1-2 months.

I got Here Comes Niko! and Hot Brass from @kfwyre in the Games Giveaway! Much as the games didn't quite impress me, I did appreciate having something simple to focus on this week.

Here Comes Niko!

It is a 3D platformer that took almost 6 hours to complete. It's not a particularly deep game story, character, or gameplay-wise, but I needed to let my brain shut down for a bit and start collecting stuff. Niko ran away from home because their mom is vocally angry about wanting them to be "normal" which is how they signed up to be a professional friend. Basically this amounts to heading to a new island, completing tasks for NPCs and exploring while picking up collectibles on the side, then unlocking the way to the next island by paying the coins that the NPCs give for Niko's service. It's mostly the same NPCs showing up on new islands because Niko is fixing up the train service, but they don't really have a storyline besides appreciating Niko's friendship. The game also has two points, one on the final island, with a page of telephone numbers that Niko calls which causes more NPCs and activities to show up on the past islands, so that disincentives trying to 100% an island the first time which I had attempted to do.

I got all the coins for helping people, but that's about the only completionist thing I did. The only area I really liked was Gary's Garden which was a post-release area that had actual 3D platforming. As much as I would like to see the rest of the Bottled Messages that have Niko's thoughts, I don't have it in me to blindly secret hunt and consider this a completed lazy afternoon adventure.

Hot Brass

Top-down twin-stick shooter SWAT-like which took almost 7 hours solo. Non-lethal is practically impossible on a first playthrough as the taser is unlocked from a side objective in mission 9 of 16 and it is a single-load limited-range sidearm with 13 charges (26 when bringing an ammo bag). The ballistic shield is unlocked after the second to last mission and completing the final mission gives the beanbag shotgun and paintball pepper spray which all fight for the primary weapon slot. Up until those are unlocked, non-lethal requires bringing flashbang/stinger grenades (only 3 of a grenade, 6 with the ammo bag, and they use up the 2 tactical gear slots) against stubborn enemies who can't be shouted down into compliance and then running up to stun gun and arrest them. Unfortunately, this means that shouting at the enemy and shooting the moment they grab their gun/turn red is encouraged; trying to use the taser alone in live combat against multiple targets is impractical, the player dies very quickly even in heavy armor, and several levels have speed run challenges which are sped up from not having to arrest suspects or being physically slowed down when running past them. Ironically for the genre (or just plain sadly), getting a 5-star means one run is spent acting out a trigger-happy cop who runs in and gives a token shout to surrender and treating the whole thing as a twitch-shooter before even attempting an ideal no casualties run.

Aside from the above shout-then-shoot-first encouragement, new gear is unlocked from doing side objectives with the implication that the SWAT team is arming themselves with contraband that they've picked up. It gets really questionable when two of the weapons picked up this way are unlocked from arresting two targets who were using those specific weapons. Then there's the grenade description which specifically notes how rare it is for law enforcement to use because of their lethality. If it was presented as satire then sure, but the game is otherwise all "non-lethal is the professional standard" which makes my eyebrow raise from the contrast even if it's just a video game unlock mechanic.

Separate from the questionable ethics is how one of the gameplay stars is awarded for finding collectibles. These are just blueprints to pick up with no other purpose to them and you can just take your time finding/looking up a guide after a mission is done but before going into debriefing. Most people would put lore or at least reskin it as relevant evidence, but this here is just padding when the rest of the stars have gameplay relevance (complete the mission, no infractions, do the challenges, no casualties).

I did end up putting in the extra hours for 100% completion, but it was frustrating when trying to play the slow, tactical way as opposed to the game rewarding "lmao just rush".

Carrion

About 4 hours to complete the reverse-horror adventure. My biggest complaints would be the lack of map and how the different abilities are tied to each form which is tied to HP; both of these things lead to some tedium from having to wander around for progress and needing to raise/lower health as needed. Otherwise it did carry over the fantasy of being a vent-running monster diving out of cover to kill and eat all the humans after mashing them against the wall.

I was given a few games by @kfwyre in the Tildes game give away for June 2026 and while I've dipped my toes in all of them, I've been playing Doors: Paradox.

Just now I completed it. And I have wishlisted their next game Cages: Hidden Worlds - due in Q1 of 2027 on steam.

It's not a great game, but quite good. It's a puzzler with cute individual puzzles that tries to add an overarching story a little in the vein and tempo of Hayao Miyazaki but it also has a shallowness to the storytelling like I find in The Blue Prince.

The puzzles are fine, a mixture of logic and old school point&click where everything can be possible. Each puzzle is about finding the door on a small circular platform and they are all self-contained, but you have to solve one to unlock the next one (not a fave mechanic! Could at least give one or two extra unlocked imo).

Some parts where frustrating in a bad way, but I managed to abstain from using the in-built solver besides when I couldn't see anything but platform reasons[0] for me to not be able to solve a puzzle (I was mostly right, but I did slap my forehead a couple of times, well you know: a bakers couple!).

Overall a cute game, that kept me busy during work for around 15h.

Thanks again @kfwyre <3

[0] the game was released in 2022 for PC with mouse&keyboard controls in mind and I'm playing on a SteamDeck. A very few times I just couldn't do the thing, but with dome tweaking or possibly zooming it should work.