Mar. 9th, 2026 02:45 am

Steam Next Fest March 2026

October to March is the longest gap between Next Fests and yet it felt like this was a really short gap. I'm surprised I played this many demos in such a short period. I'm also surprised that I found so many games that I liked, considering the first couple times I looked at the landing page I only found a couple things that caught my eye.


Added to Wishlist

Annihilated

Playtime: 43 minutes

A roguelike game where you use limited-durability weapons to fight enemies, and are accompanied by one of four? (three in the demo, not sure if just an incomplete preview) characters who lost part of themselves and need the protection of the protagonist. Each character has benefits and disadvantages to bringing them on a run, probably. The combat is timing-based, where you need to hit the attack button on certain spots on a bar. Overall I thought the story and combat have neat concepts and the art is great (also everyone except the Mage is male, so I really like the character designs). I'm definitely bad at timing-based combat but I'd like to at least keep an eye on this.


Evocreo II

Playtime: 77 minutes

Apparently this debuted on mobile last year, and they're getting around to the port (like the first game). Like the previous title, this is basically Pokemon. Not even just creature collection. Every bone in this game's design feels heavily derived from that series. It does have a hefty amount of QoL - some of them from later 3D Pokemon games (more streamlined Pokemon centers/marts, general separation of creatures from overworld moves), some of them independently added (free ability to lock evolutions, free swapping of moves, multiple abilities per creature). The artstyle, especially the battle backgrounds, are nice to look at, and the creo (noncapitalized like a proper generic term, lol) generally look pretty decent. I got through a decent enough chunk of the demo to get a feel of the gameplay and I like the flow of combat and the ability to self-sustain. I'm interested, though I'll also admit I'm not as much of a creature collector person nowadays and I already have a backlog of Pokemon games to get through. At the very least, making it a paid product outright is better than dealing with microtransactions (it's still a paid product on mobile…).


Factory 95

Playtime: 71 minutes

I'm usually not super into automation games since they tend to focus on building up increasingly complex factories and optimizing at that level stresses me out immensely. However, this game falls into more of a puzzle-type game, where each objective can be separated into its own "level," even though technically you could use a prior objective as a starting point. And suddenly automation games are much more appealing to me.

In short, I enjoyed this one. It could use a bit of QoL like better module movement, undo/redo buttons, and an easier way to manually draw arrow paths (autopathing is fine in earlier tasks but later ones have tight maneuvering), but generally it's pretty good.


Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery

Playtime: 17 minutes

I'm really looking forward to the full release of this one. I like the loop of investigating the environment, finding evidence, and also correcting the recounting of events as well as the fill-in-the-blanks report. Also, I like the cat tree in the detective's office. The main thing I'm worried about is how long the full game will be? My impression is that this is a single event arc, but I don't know how much content is within that. If it's a reasonable amount for a reasonable price I'll definitely pick it up, though.


Little Chef: Cozy Cooking

Playtime: 29 minutes

A physics-based ingredient combining cooking game. The demo is one level long, but it looks like there are more independent levels as opposed to being a single sandbox. It's pretty fun, though the stove pot does take a bit longer than I'd like to cook. I would have preferred if repeated combinations had a shorter cooking time, but in general this hits the same kinds of mindless fun that something like Little Inferno satisfies and I might pick up the full game if it's reasonably priced.


Lost Wiki: Kozlovka

Playtime: 16 minutes

A rather interesting detective game based in a wiki/database environment, about investigating the truth behind a set of disappearances in a town. There's a rather eerie and unsettling aesthetic that it's going for with the black+white+red color scheme and the retro CRT-horror vibe, but as far as I'm aware this game isn't actually horror and only uses it for setting up the atmosphere. I really enjoyed what we got in the demo and I'll likely grab it once it releases.


Romestead

Playtime: 25 minutes

Another one of them Open World Survival Crafters. The gimmick behind this one is that you can pick certain things up to use as building materials or to interact with the overworld. It's… definitely a gimmick. The difficulty curve at the start is extremely steep (good luck doing anything at night if you don't have full barricades or a house up, good luck getting materials or crafting if you didn't do it beforehand) and the whole undead gimmick is thrown at you at full force because undead mobs have infinite chase range, and seem to spawn specifically to aggro on you. That kind of difficulty can be balanced out, though, so beyond my issue with the curve, it is an interesting enough game. The setting of a post-apocalyptic Rome is interesting, and I'm at least somewhat interested in the altar-centric system. Plus the tool gathering is extremely generous and for the most part feels good to use (you can mine and chop and use a weapon at the same time if everything is in range).


Scriptorium: Master of Manuscripts

Playtime: 44 minutes

An art design simulation game. it kinda reminds me of Sticky Business, but with a medieval manuscript aesthetic instead. Which makes this a fantastic game already. I especially love that it is not a business management simulator (as far as I'm aware) - you're just given assignments and have flexibility over how you want to solve them. Currency is used for decorating and for upgrades (once those are added). I just wish you could rotate components by dragging their corners, but that's honestly a small thing.


Shantytown

Playtime: 28 minutes

If Islanders is a cross between a city building tile puzzler and a diorama sandbox, Shantytown is one step closer to the diorama. While there are objectives to complete and combos to synergize, progression is tied mainly to completion itself and less so efficiency, making the order of placing objects a bit arbitrary. The game's levels also seem to focus on creating handcrafted scenarios, at least in the story mode, which I think provides better mileage than the typical fully-generated nature of these kinds of games. I like it! I like the sandbox mode as well, even though I only got a limited view of it. I always appreciate when a diorama sandbox gives me an "on-foot" camera angle, basically letting me make reference photos from their game. I'll definitely keep an eye on this.


The Piper of Dawn

Playtime: 66 minutes

I'm pretty sure this is a farming/production management sim. I didn't get to the automation part, though, so I only have an impression of the farming side, which felt about on par with a browser farming game (in a good way). I do like how the clock runs both actively and when you do tasks like cleaning the garden.

My big complaint is that I would enjoy this game so much more if it wasn't constantly huffing its own fumes. There is so much verbose and navel-gazey dialogue. The prologue takes 15 minutes to get to gameplay. Every day is interrupted by another five minute cutscene. The worst part is, this game is proud of its dialogue. The emphasis on "rich storytelling" is in the game's blurb. I put it on my wishlist because I like the art and the gameloop I saw, but it might stay there because it's just so insufferable and I don't see it getting better.


Walk the Frog

Playtime: 20 minutes

Another one of those puzzle games where the map is split into pieces and your goal is to rearrange them back together. I thought this was… pretty ok. Not great, but ok. It feels like a lot of the puzzle is essentially just piecing an image back together, and there was only one solution for each map. There's a stronger narrative to back the gameplay up, but it was only moderately engaging in the preview and I'm not sure if it gets any better. I'm not sure if this game will add on more gimmicks. I'm interested enough to put it on the wishlist, but I might end up passing on the final product unless it really surpasses my expectations.


Yuma Nest

Playtime: 62 minutes

We have the modern Maplestory artstyle at home. But seriously, despite the artstyle, the 2D sidescroller environment, the extremely familiar UI, and the general feel of the gameplay and upgrade loop, this is not actually a Maplestory clone (as much as I'd like a modern singleplayer clone). There's a bit more of a focus on tower defense-like aspects and things feel more balanced for a game where you aren't the main source of damage… but the demo also feels a bit like it's having an identity crisis, because there's just such a heavy focus on you fighting bosses yourself. I'm willing to keep an eye on this game, though. I think it has potential, even though it feels a bit like a ripoff and also has a narrative tone that doesn't resonate with me at all. I would keep playing around in the post-demo content but apparently the game stops saving once you upgrade to a class, so there's really no point in it.

Also I swear the left character in the banner is using the 2015 Hayato art as a base. It's distinct enough on its own merits that I wouldn't say the whole of it is tracing, but the basic pose and hair is extremely similar.


Everything Else

Budgie's Bug Shop

Playtime: 42 minutes

An incremental game about catching and selling bugs. I find it very funny how absurdly overpowered the upgrades get in the bug catching minigame. It does start out rather difficult, but by the end each round is almost perpetually self-sustaining just because of all the synergy procs going on. The game does advertise itself as a 2-3 hour experience, though, so this felt about right, honestly.


Chef Knight

Playtime: 46 minutes

A rather solid incremental game. You go into dungeon stages to defeat food monsters and collect ingredients that you use to cook meals that you then sell to buy upgrades. I will say the "aim to attack in that direction" thing doesn't vibe for me on kb+m, but it should be resolved by using a controller. The upgrades also feel reasonable. At the final stage, I felt pretty powerful, but the basic attacks and bonus attacks didn't feel excessively overpowered. On the other hand… it only really garners a demo's worth of interest from me.


Coffee Talk Tokyo

Playtime: 44 minutes

The moment Vin went on their explanation about spoons I had a flashback to Tumblr-style AO3 mental health tangents. Like this is futuristic 2026 Tokyo but the writing is set in 2016. It's stuck before the release date of the original Coffee Talk… Anyway, it's okay. It's written by different people than the first two games and apparently people are taking issue with the writing, but I can't voice any judgment on comparative quality. I have the first two games through various means and I should get around to playing them before thinking about this one.


Hozy

Playtime: 75 minutes

Yet another clean-and-organize game in the general approach of Unpacking, Organized Inside, Whisper of the House, etc. This one has fancy graphics like 3D models and ray tracing (I think; I noticed a lot of light scattering) and semi-realistic physics.

Despite my weakness for this genre, I didn't really like this. It feels a bit like a fancy asset flip. There's a minimal sense of cohesion with the furniture, if I'm being honest. I noticed exactly zero duplicate items, even when duplicate items would make sense (like chairs). And that's honestly really frustrating. I would rather play Unpacking again, where at least I got stacks of identical plates.


Isekai Bistro

Playtime: 24 minutes

Where is the isekai in this?? The backdrop is literally just a generic anime fantasy setting with monster girls. I will give them props for leaning into the monster portions, though. One of the girls is actually a full furry wolf (with paws!) instead of just having the ears and tail, and the harpy girl's first scene involves egg laying.

Oh yeah, this is a porn game. You play minigames to unlock scenes; each character is associated with its own minigame. They're not too difficult and I think there's no consequences to losing, so honestly this is a game played with one hand lol.


Microwave Simulator

Playtime: 31 minutes

My obligatory dosage of wtf game, I guess. In this game you buy items to put in a microwave for a fictional stream, and viewers send in donations in response because I guess some guy destroying things in a microwave is monetizable. There are also timed lootboxes and some side events, I guess. I was incredibly unimpressed by what feels like effectively an asset game. There's really not much to the game and I didn't expect anything from it anyhow.


Outbound

Playtime: 102 minutes

This game has the vibe of a wannabe open world survival crafting game, but it fails the open world aspect by tying you to an RV. It serves as your base, but restricts you to roads and flatter, more open areas. I see the general gameplay loop - collect resources to upgrade tools and your vehicle, drive around to unlock blueprints, ultimately create a self-sustaining mobile hub. However, as mindlessly enjoyable as the demo was, I'm not sure how well this extends into a full game. I just don't see an end goal that feels worthwhile. There's no overarching narration and seemingly no long term non-collection goals. The closest I got to a sense of pride and accomplishment was when I found enough blueberry bushes to put them in the planters, thus giving myself a fairly sustainable source of food (aside from collecting water)… which was quickly negated once I got to the treehouse and found a bunch of mushrooms growing around that area. Perhaps this feels better as a one-off multiplayer game.


Ride the Dragon: The Awakening of the Dragon Tamer

Playtime: 44 minutes

It's a… bullet heaven? A survivors-like? With a porn game attached to it. It's fine. I haven't played much in this genre aside from the origin of the genre but this seemed about on par. The bigger issues are that I don't really like this POV, the designs don't appeal to me, and the protagonist is pretty annoying. Also, AI generated backgrounds where they didn't even try to make them look good. I at least gave it a try, though.


The Ratline

Playtime: 64 minutes

Hmm. Apparently I found a game in the investigation subgenre that I don't really like. There was just a bit too much friction that prevented it from really being an enjoyable experience, from the way the evidence is kinda hard to read especially when you're crossreferencing multiple things, to how the rolodex is essentially just a narrow list of names with phone numbers with no ability to highlight the one number you need, to the general lack of supplemental tools that would help the player highlight important information (even just highlighters for text would be nice). The solution checking also doesn't tell you what you got wrong, only how many, which was especially frustrating with the third case - I went through every hint before realizing the error, because I was apparently mistakenly under the assumption that a nepo CEO would keep her last name after her second marriage. Overall I think this is a game I will pass on for now, and if I encounter it again because it gains a good reputation I'll consider it.


Whisker's Wish

Playtime: 32 minutes

I found the combat concept interesting, at least. It's basically pool in that you aim and launch your team of cats at the opponents. However, it limits the amount of strategy you can really do when it's basically impossible to set up combos across multiple turns. You also take damage every time you get hit on an enemy turn, and you're helpless to do anything when it's not your turn. Also, I feel like the boss was too difficult when the leveling system hasn't been implemented and I ended up skipping it.


Witchspire

Playtime: 37 minutes

Open World Survival Craft but like, give it a magic and familiar-summoning backdrop. This game felt… incredibly janky and unfinished. I'll forgive the default fonts and the bad UI layout, but there were so many bugs. You can relocate hearths for free but old locations stay on the map and only your first location can be teleported to (not even your current hearth). The UI has zero tangibility to the point of being disorienting, from upgrades to inventory organization. I still don't know how to build that log house I apparently unlocked, or use the new summons I apparently collected. Combat feels overly unforgiving, with monsters attacking too quickly for charge attacks and dodging iframes being way too narrow for such aggressive attacks. And the movement just generally felt floaty.

It also really doesn't help that the protagonist keeps making quippy comments. I don't understand why this is still a thing when the backlash against this happened years ago at this point.

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Mar. 7th, 2026 06:15 pm

Month in Review: February 2026

New games -

  • ATLYSS (started 2/19)
  • Botany Manor (started and completed 2/22)
  • Squeakross: Home Squeak Home (started 2/7)

Games continued playing -

  • A Little to the Left
  • Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
  • Hytale
  • Little Witch in the Woods
  • Organized Inside
  • Terraria

Demos (outside Next Fest) -

  • ATLYSS
  • Find Matt's (Hidden) Cats


The last few days of February were fully occupied by Next Fest. February is short anyway. In terms of raid, we got our first clear of M10S and I got mistaken for a dps again. I took… half the month off from independent M11S prog due to snow and then Next Fest, but I've been working on my mitigation plan and I think I have a pretty good layout for main tanking when I get back into prog. Considering the later mechanics, I'm not super optimistic about the static's ability to get through M11S before 7.5 rolls around, but I think I'm reasonably on pace to potentially clear on my own before the end of March (if I lock in and provided pf cooperates) haha jk I forgot I'm losing half the weekends in March, at best I can lock in for enrage. I've already laid out what gear I need and what I can upgrade with nuts in 7.5.


ATLYSS

Played the demo on recommendation from a friend, then immediately bought the game after enjoying it. The game is surprisingly fun. Then again, it's a dungeon-plus-connecting-overworld game, so it hits a gameplay loop that I enjoy in a number of MMOs. The combat and movement feel very responsive and the gear and level grind are surprisingly fun to engage with, even when it is a bit of a gear grind slog.

It's definitely furry though. The character designs are obviously by people who are deeply into a specific subset of furry fandom. It's also really obviously a game that originally only had female playable characters, though I do appreciate how feminine you can make male characters as a result. If it weren't for the excessively massive chests on the female models, most males with chest sliders turned up would be indistinguishable, especially kubolds with their generally large chests.


Botany Manor

It took me about 2.8 hours to do the story from start to finish and an additional half hour to go back for the rest of the achievements.

The primary goal of the game is to grow nine flowers to fill out a herbarium written by the protagonist, though there are a few other environmental puzzles in order to unlock areas, both to get necessary items and to access new areas. Even though the game ultimately only has 9 flower puzzles, I thought they were well designed. I particularly appreciate how, despite all five chapters taking place in a single manor, each chapter was a standalone region - all hints for a plant were found within the area. There was one exception, that being the geneology tree used for the library lock puzzle, but that was also a puzzle between chapters.

If I have a complaint on the gameplay, it is the implementation of the hint system. I really would have liked if we could reference hints through the book, instead of being forced to look at the actual hint if you forgot the information on it. Some hints are just kinda difficult to find again. On the other hand, the hints are designed to pretty loudly repeat info. It's honestly… a little bit much in some places. The most egregious of these was the nightbloom - I feel like the storybook wasn't necessary when the fairy painting and the letter already existed.

Accompanying the overall narrative arc (completing the herbarium) is a heavy depiction of the experience of educated women in 19th century Britain. There is so much belittling of educated women, from the rejection from one college because Arabella is a woman, to minimizing the contributions of women to botanical studies and upholding men as the only gender worthy of academic respect, to the constant reminders that Arabella should be seeking a husband and focusing on domestic labor. While there were some men who work with Arabella and seem to give her the attention, respect, and opportunities she is cut off from solely due to gender - like her uncle (who, idk, is suspiciously unmarried on the family tree), who gives her access to university resources and tells her to give them his name if they question her, and the professor, who seems fairly genuine in bringing her on expeditions - as well as fellow educated women who also grapple with navigating their society, the game definitely succeeds in creating a stifling, sexist atmosphere. And I thought that the ending, while disappointing, was brutally realistic and gives the player food for thought (Arabella clearly makes several new scientific discoveries, and yet her book is once again rejected for publishing because she refuses to let a man take the credit - but at least she also has the avenue to pass on her knowledge to students, in the hopes that one day the contributions by women will be recognized properly). It's honestly a shame that the wokeness rating group doesn't seem to have this game on their list. I really want to know what their judgment on it would be, ie. whether they possess media literacy and can discern when a depiction is meant as a criticism.


Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time

Sometimes I am normal, and then I fall into the trap of a fun, somewhat mindless grind, and Fantasy Life i is once again a fun mindless grind. I will say I kinda miss the touchpad of the first game - the quick slots aren't as intuitive to open. The ability to freely swap between jobs is so incredibly nice. No more having to run back and forth through the same areas just because I wanted to gather and level multiple jobs! The expanded companions and the way non-combat jobs can travel with you and provide their own benefits is also super nice.

I'm currently taking a breather, as these games tend to warrant, due to the sheer amount of items. I know there are fairly robust inventory filters, but going through it is still overwhelming, especially when I also have to consider gear on current and future party members. At least equipment tabs have 999 slots each, so I'm not in a great hurry to get rid of old gear.


Find Matt's Cats (Demo)

I played this before Next Fest. I've been keeping up with the development of this game for a couple years and I'm glad it's finally coming out and that the demo is very good. Do I think it adds a revolutionary concept to the genre? No… but it is a solid addition to it. The hints types are solid and the way you gain currency for them is nice. I really like the sound design, and how basically everything is clickable with its own sound.

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Feb. 4th, 2026 02:25 am

Month in Review: January

I'm going to try a new approach where I commit to doing a writeup every month, posted at the start of the following month/at the end of the year for December, covering anything I played the prior month. I'll include some more details on some games as I think of them, but focus on covering my progress in longer games. I will still try to do the general overviews I did in 2025 for completed games as well.

Also, I think it's pretty wild that the Steam Replay doesn't count any games played during the last half of December, when those two weeks are exactly when I have the most time to play. So that gets wrapped into this month.

December 15-31:

New games -

  • Loddlenaut (started 12/26; completed 12/27)
  • Little Witch in the Woods (started 12/23)
  • A Little to the Left (started 12/28)
  • Final Fantasy XV (started 12/27)
  • Fantasy Life i: The Girl who Steals Time (started 12/24)
  • Kemono Teatime (started 12/30)

Games continued playing -

  • House Flipper (briefly, for some of the holiday maps)
  • Granblue Fantasy: Relink

Compared to my usual track record of buying games and then letting them collect dust in my library for at least a couple years, this one had a very rapid turnaround. All but one of these games I either bought during the Steam sale or received from someone. Granted I still bought several games that I didn't play during this period, but it's still better.

Of the games I played these couple weeks, I only finished Loddlenaut, but then it was the only very short game in the list, and it lends itself well to the "space out and do a mindless task for several hours" approach. Kemono Teatime is probably shorter but it involves reading and a narrative.

January:

New games -

  • Arknights: Endfield (started 1/22)
  • Hytale (started 1/19)

Games continued playing -

  • A Little to the Left
  • Dragon Nest
  • Final Fantasy XV
  • Kemono Teatime
  • Little Witch in the Woods
  • Terraria

I didn't really play much outside of FFXIV, mostly because of savage. On top of raiding with the static we also went in on several occasions for clears outside it the first couple weeks, and then I've also gone in on my own for M10S prog. Basically all of my free time is occupied by savage. Though, I did finally clear M10S, so aside from wanting to get some better parses/relic paste beyond reclears, I'm only really interested in hopping into M11S on my own for a blind lockout.

My goal for February is to finish Little Witch in the Woods and Kemono Teatime, and get back into progressing FFXV. I'd also like to play a couple more experimental games that I picked up in a bundle recently. But mostly, I want to chill out a bit!! I've been in savage all the time and there are other games I want to play, and other things I want to write.

Onto some miscellaneous thoughts…


A Little to the Left

The actual campaign for this is about 3.5-ish hours long if you're fine with skipping levels you're stumped on. There are a few more seasonal and themed puzzles as well, but they didn't take much time to solve either. However, some puzzles are just utterly perplexing to solve. It felt like most were intuitive, or made sense after looking at the hint, but others seemed to use some inscrutiable pattern of logic.

I'm currently just working on the 100 day daily achievement, as long as I have the motivation. After that… idk. I guess I can try my skipped levels again, just to finish the chapters. I'm not exactly going for 100% completion though.


Dragon Nest

There's a new class?? Arta??? I feel like the last one before this must've been from a decade prior. I made the female version of the class because the male version looked like he has the personality of wet cardboard, and didn't match the aesthetic of prior male classes either. I have to wonder whether his characterization would've been different from the female verison, or if they kept the naive and childish personality.

Anyway, the state of the game now is absolutely wild.

First is the fatigue system. You're telling me that you are meant to play a maximum of 4 dungeons per day at endgame. The fatigue system was a pain back in the early days, and that was when running a dungeon took like 10% of the stamina bar. Now it's just a frustration to deal with, especially if you want to do dimensional portals, which also take 1500 of your 6000 fatigue to enter. At least during early game your fatigue refreshes per level up, so you're not limited to a whole 4 dungeons per day during leveling.

Second is the scaling and stats, and the general rate of progression nowadays. Every starting character gets a free set of costumes with gear good enough until endgame. On top of that, you're given basic gear for reaching level thresholds, so unless you willingly abstain from using the costumes you don't even need the weapon drops, the only thing you don't get for free. There also seems to be some stat squishing or generic buffs, since dungeons are still extremely squishy. And at endgame, the numbers are absurdly large. There's an event that grants free gear for Arta characters, and it gives me hp and dps in the hundreds of millions. Honestly just absurd, and to the point of breaking the UI. Leveling progression is also especially egregious with Arta, since the quest exp seems to be paced so you hit level 100 by Saints Haven, the level 24 city. I just miss my reasonable numbers and leveling experience. I miss doing dungeons with other people.

Third is the translation. This was already the case when Eyedentity took over the game (and when I lost my old account, because they only honored transfers for like a year), but the English is so bad. It has to be MTL, but I don't get how they got the rights to the English voice acting but not the script? At least it seems they may have hired an editor for Arta. It's stiff and charmless but at least it reads ok.

And fourth is just how dead the game is. Maybe the game is doing better in other regions but in NA the population is all but nonexistent. I saw one other person in Mana Ridge doing early game content, and the few people I saw elsewhere were afk. I've heard that Dragon Nest Classic is pretty active in SEA and I'd like to see a NA equivalent, but I don't know if this game will survive long enough. I don't think it's a Mabinogi, where there's a large enough population outside NA that NA's servers ride on the profit coattails. This isn't a large company. Which is a shame, really. Beneath all the terrible decisions is a genuinely fun 3D dungeon game, and I still yearn for the old game.


Final Fantasy XV

I'm playing this on Steam Deck. Performance itself is ok and graphics are on par with a low-end computer, which doesn't bother me too much (I was tangential to the fandom for years, the muddy graphics don't bother my mental image of them). However, people were right when they said the text size doesn't play nice on there. It's pretty awful. The thin text really doesn't scale well to the Deck's screen, and the menu button is borderline unreadable. I think commas don't even render. On the bright side, I can actually play this kind of action game on Deck. A lot of action games rely on button mashing combos, which is too much when handling the weight of the system. While there is some button mashing here, the basic attacks are handled on a single button. It also helps that this game recognizes that trigger buttons are hard to press and the default layout puts lesser-used commands on them. I did have to manually swap A and B to make it easier on my fingers, though.


Hytale

Hytale is one of those games where I can definitely see the foundations of what it's going for. I can also definitely see its origins as a Minecraft mod as well. A lot of QoL seems to be in direct conversation with MC mechanics -- from simple things like block reach and better jumps and combat flow to crafting and building materials. You have actual dedicated roofs and windows! I also appreciate the lack of a hunger system and how food just heals directly, as well as how they fundamentally are buff-based. I think this creates the base for a more magic and other status effect-based consumables system, if not in vanilla then through mods. One of the bigger disappointments I've had with Minecraft is its simultaneous bloat of food items and lack of any depth in it (cows, pigs, and sheep all drop different meats yet all you can do is cook them) so hopefully Hytale can have more freedom with it.

On the other hand, there are a number of improvements I'd like to see. Item type-based crafts (ex. "any log") should let you select which one you actually use, and you should be able to lock chest items from being used in crafts. You should be able to manually set how many crafts you want instead of only 1, 10, or all. I'm playing on arachonophobia mode and I think there should be better distinction between the spider crab model and actual crabs. The server-based worlds are good for mod sync, but the desync and rubberbanding even in singleplayer is really disorienting and needs finetuning. Weapon ultimates imo should only reset when you hit an enemy with a different weapon, not just by swapping off it (even to place a torch, which seems like a bad penalty).

Also, the multiplayer functionality really needs some finetuning. The P2P connection is incredibly fickle and demands configurations so specific that it took a friend and I an hour to set it up, and we didn't even manage to do it via the intended methods (share code or direct connect). We used Hamachi and I found his world in the local search. That should not be the requirement for opening multiplayer.

In its current state it is a working product, and I'd like to see where it goes. Aside from the world gen overhaul, it's supposed to get a more focused story mode, which I'm looking forward to when it hopefully eventually happens. It appears to be going more in the direction of a 3D Terraria (ironic…) with its concept of zone-based progression. Hopefully they keep up the momentum and can deliver on a finished product, even if it takes years. There's honestly still an unfilled niche in the realm of Minecraft derivatives that focuses more on adventure and exploration without making it overly hardcore like Vintage Story.

And as for their choice to release in an alpha state now and off Steam, and people apparently taking issue with that, all I have to say to that is lol. Lmao, even. Lest we forget that Minecraft was a paid product for years before it had an ending sequence. I understand why they released it on their own platform instead. This was nonnews back during Minecraft's release. Hell, even in the Vintage Story days it wasn't expected that indie devs release their games on Steam (idk when the greenlighting program transitioned out). So I think it's hypocritical that people are so pissy about early access not being on there. It's their game, there are certain expectations that come with releasing a game on Steam, there's a total lack of control over, say, the mob of people who would buy and refund the game with a negative review just because they want to compare Hytale to a game that is a decade older and isn't even on Steam without judging it on its own merits. And they can always join Steam, but they can't leave it afterwards. I would hope they'll provide early access players (or at least higher tier ones) with a store key if they do decide to release on other platforms, but idk if that's something logistically possible.

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Dec. 31st, 2025 09:24 am

2025 Year Retrospective

Hmm. I started doing writeups this year because I thought it would put pressure on me to play more games. That only somewhat worked. I did play more games, and I did write on then, but I didn't necessarily keep up with my goal. I certainly didn't get to play, not to mention finish, as many longer games as I would've liked. The only long games I actually finished were Witchspring R, and the base story for Guild Wars 2, which took about 80 hours due to me getting sidetracked a lot. The rest were all short games.

I felt like I was getting caught between wanting to play more but not wanting to start long games, because I would have a long turnaround from starting the game to actually writing on it. I've also been very burnt out creatively and struggle to actually finish anything, so that hasn't helped in the slightest. On the bright side, I think I played more games overall than I have the past few years? This is an incredibly low bar to clear - you can sum up the majority of my playtime every year since 2020 as either Genshin Impact or FFXIV, with bonus appearances from Minecraft and Guild Wars 2, and a few months of Zenless Zone Zero.

Honestly, the bigger reason why I've played more in 2025 was because I got a Steam Deck and a new PC that can run basically anything I'm interested in (as a medium settings gamer). It certainly also helped that I bought a dedicated controller for desktop so I no longer need to reconfigure my Switch's Pro Controller every time. I mean, the circumstances around me getting a desktop weren't great (laptop screen broke, FFXIV barely ran after Dawntrail), but it was for the best overall.

Next year I'm thinking of instead committing to doing a regular writeup, rather than sporadic ones when I know I completed a game (which is a difficult measurement for a lot of games without a traditional start-to-finish narrative). I can still do the end-of-game retrospective, but having a more regular schedule might alleviate the pressure I felt to choose games that I knew were short enough that I could push through even if I didn't like it, because it would be another game I could say something about.

Also, it's pretty wild ngl that the Steam Replay doesn't count the last half of December. That happens to be when I have the most time to play games.

Anyway, onto a review of what I recorded this year…

According to my Steam Library, I completed 24 games through 2025. 10 of them have at least 5 hours of playtime; 5 have at least 10 hours of playtime. The longest game by a significant margin was Witchspring R at 55 hours, and the rest were below 20 hours.

I think I turned on my Switch this year? I may have restarted Xenoblade Chronicles 3 early in the year? But I haven't really played anything to any notable degree, and even for XC3 I didn't get as far as I did my first playthrough. For the most part I just cleaned off the dust.


Games I started this year and still intend to play:

  • Beloved Rapture (started 11/10/25)
  • Chillquarium (started 7/1/25)
  • Fantasy Life i: The Girl who Steals Time (started 12/24/25)
  • Final Fantasy XV (started 12/27/25)
  • Granblue Fantasy: Relink (started 12/11/25)
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 (started 10/16/25)
  • Kemono Teatime (started 12/30/25)
  • Little Witch in the Woods (started 12/23/25)
  • Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (started 6/7/25)
  • Scribblenauts Unlimited (started 6/27/25)

Ongoing games:

  • Final Fantasy XIV - If you told me a year ago that I'd become a savage raider, be capable of progging savages through party finder, and even be pretty ok in my role at that level, I would be surprised. But the Chaotic and M5N were just so much fun that I couldn't not dip my toes in savage. I've also gone from being satisfied after pushing for blue parses in extremes to getting purple parses fairly easily, which is pretty nice. As for the story… I've always liked Dawntrail as a whole. It's not as "hype" and existentially scaled as ShB/EW, and isn't slapping you with the power of friendship and hope every 5 seconds, but the themes of legacy, memory, and mortality were evident from the base story, and really resonated with me in a way that, as much as I like EW and ShB, those expansions don't quite achieve. Arcadion was a ton of fun in every way, from the story to the fights to the music, and in general the fights this expansion have been fantastic. Honestly, the weakest point has been the alliance raid story -- getting to see an actual interpretation of Prishe's crystallized darkness was fascinating, but overall it's a lot of missed opportunity so far because they're arbitrarily limiting the crossover to the Promathia arc (despite Iroha's canon transport into Eorzea, and how the story has been "complete" for a decade). This is certainly an unpopular sentiment, but between my enjoyment of the themes and the fight content, Dawntrail is a strong contender for my second favorite expansion, only following Shadowbringers. This has been my opinion since 7.1.
  • Guild Wars 2 - As usual, I guess. It's a nice casual-friendly game that doesn't demand high levels of commitment (aside from rewards during seasonal events), at least where gear and most progression is involved. I like that endgame players still loop around to old maps. I did finally stick to one character long enough to complete the base story. It just took playing a profession that continued to be visually and mechanically interesting (Mesmer) and actually keeping up with upgrading leveling gear lol. Unfortunately I really want to go through the story in order, and Living World feels like busywork when I want to reach the expansions and unlock masteries, mounts, and the Skyscale grind. I'm working on Living World season 1 and will do season 2 before moving on to Heart of Thorns, and it occured to me that of course these things are going to be long when they're individual paid episodes, but it's still frustrating just how long the instances are. The final instance of episode 1 takes like an hour. But I am working on it. Slowly. One of these years I'll reach Heart of Fire proper and start unlocking new mounts…

Games I started/returned to this year but have likely abandoned:

  • FRAMED Collection - Not a fan of the panel gimmick, actually. It's unique, sure, but I don't like it.
  • LEGO Bricktales - Might return, but would need to continue on PC. Steam Deck is definitely not ideal (for mouse controls or the horrible text scaling). It's also a kids game, and I need to satisfy my brain on some complicated games lol.
  • Maplestory - Very briefly. Just before they overhauled the UI. I… deeply hate the new UI. It's so white and grey and has so much empty space like it's a mobile game. I was playing during the burning event the couple weeks before that update because I wanted to grind out more Legion levels, but now I don't want to do anything with those levels. The v111 (and then v117) server I was in at the beginning of the year apparently crashed and burned, which… I honestly kinda expected, and I encountered issues there that make me extraordinarily reluctant to look for another private server, so I guess I quit the game again.
  • Station to Station - I got 7.4 hours in and halfway through the levels and then lost momentum. Open to returning, but the point where I stopped is rather difficult to pick back up due to complexity of mechanics.

Games I started and put on hiatus but I haven't abandoned (yet…):

  • Blue Prince - I expected a more actively puzzle-heavy game. I'll get back to it at some point, I just need to recalibrate to meet the game where it actually is at.
  • Moonstone Island - I'm not really clicking with the early game's rate of progression. There are very few healing items as far as I can tell and swapping my party out is tedious when I haven't found an electric island yet and I'm fully at the mercy of rng to find one.
  • Tales of Vesperia - Very dated combat system with a weird perspective that I didn't click with when I'm also struggling to play it on the Deck. I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss Berseria's more open combo system. It doesn't help that I really don't like the English voice acting (that's what happens when you play a late 00s Japanese game), but at least they include the Japanese voice acting (…the Japanese voices aren't that much better tbh). I would like to keep going, but it's a steep uphill battle right now.
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Dec. 29th, 2025 03:35 am

Game Impressions: Escape Simulator; Paperbark; Access Denied: Escape; Loddlenaut

Escape Simulator

Began: 9/17/2025
Completed: 12/1/2025
Playtime (all base, extra, and free DLC levels + Magic DLC): 12.7 hours
Base game purchased as part of the Fanatical September 2025 Prestige Bundle. Magic DLC purchased as part of the “Pine’s Big Sale.”
I missed doing escape rooms and wanted to scratch that itch, and this… sort of helped? It fits the general concept of solving multiple puzzles set within a single room, and the progression of both collecting multiple puzzle hints/solutions simultaneously and unlocking additional spaces as you proceed through the escape room. As a whole, it does essentially convert a physical game space into a digital version… but it still felt like it missed the mark slightly. And I'm guessing it's simply because I feel escape games are fundamentally a cooperative activity, and I played this game in singleplayer. Which makes this a problem entirely outside the game's fault.
On the game's own merits, it's pretty good. I did feel its approach of splitting each non-bonus map theme into multiple 15-minute parts detracted a bit from my ideal experience, where you get multiple puzzles to deal with in any order, but it worked well enough, I guess. There was never any particularly strong risk of losing to the timer, as long as I didn't get completely lost, and I appreciate that there was never any consequence (besides personal shame) to using the hint system… though I felt like the diagrams could be overly vague sometimes, which wasn't super useful when I needed specific pointers towards the next step. The physics system and interactability with fancy and expensive-looking objects (such as moving objects, and even a film screen at some point) was also something I appreciate in a medium where things typically have to be idiot and thief-proofed. I got to break so many vases and topple so many objects, it was great.
I might grab Escape Simulator 2 at some point. I played the demo level and I felt the scale of that was reasonable and even more in line with what I prefer in escape rooms, in terms of room length and puzzle linearity. The extra levels, which I think released after the base game but weren't split into DLC, felt like predecessors for ES2's longer pacing. But I stg I really need to play some more non-puzzle games.

Paperbark

Began: 11/30/2025
Completed: 11/30/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 1.5 hours
Obtained as part of the 2020 Humble Bundle Australia Fire Relief bundle.
It's immediately an extremely Australian game. When I hit the bushfire section of the game I wondered if the reason I had this game was the Australia fire relief bundle, and that was indeed the case.
A short walking sim about a wombat who then gets caught in a bushfire. The game is really more about visual and auditory immersion than about the story, and has about the narrative depth of a children's storybook. Which is fine, it wasn't actually aiming to be any more complex than that. I thought the watercolor visual style and especially the "drag to reveal distant objects" concept was interesting, portraying the wombat's limited visual acuity and how we focus it to sense beyond that, as well as how ineffective that is during the fire portion.
My first run through took about 40 minutes, and the rest of the playtime was to finish gathering collectables and the other achievements. The book and cicada collectibles, while more involved than the other collectibles, were made slightly easier because of proximity sound effects. The devs also broke down how many collectibles were in each level in the chapter select (but not in the level, oddly), which was a nice QoL feature. I'm also glad they never patched out the exploit that lets you obtain the 18 minute timer achievement by skipping chapters, especially considering the any% world record speedrun of this game is 15 and a half minutes.
Would I recommend it? Ehh, it's not bad by any means, but I don't feel it's worth the full price. Maybe if you're handing the game to a young kid to wander in, then $9 is a good price for a digital interactive storybook, but for an adult? Nah. It's also not in my typical genres, and if not for me already owning it and playing for the sake of playing through my library, it wouldn't have been on my radar.

Access Denied: Escape

Began: 12/15/2025
Completed: 12/20/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 1.4 hours
Purchased as part of Fanatical's Summer 2025 Build your own Triple Pack.
A short puzzle boxes game of very middling quality. I didn't think the box gimmick added anything particularly worthwhile to the game, other than making it a bit more difficult to see each level. My favorite puzzle types here were the "connect the color lines" puzzle, the multi-code input puzzle, and the puzzle where you follow a specific starting shape until you find an end shape corresponding to a number. I also thought the digging and snail maze minigames were unusual for puzzle games and took advantage of the game's future-tech aesthetic.
Sure, the narrative doesn't really hold together under scrutiny (why was the highly secure way of splitting dangerous components… locking them in little puzzle boxes, why did he need a professional to solve these puzzles, how was a sentient machine capable of locking a human being up in the first place when the lab seems otherwise untampered with), but hey, it's the narrative justification, it doesn't have to make total sense. It's an okay use of an hour and a half and worth the entire dollar I spent to get it.

Loddlenaut

Began: 12/26/2025
Completed: 12/27/2025
Playtime (100% achievements, 100% cleanup): 7.6 hours
Received as a gift.
I remember seeing this game from the NYU Game Center showcase! I want to say I played the demo they had back then, and I vaguely remember seeing a presentation that included it. I'm glad this one made it to the final release and was popular, this was one of my favorites of the games shown that year.
It's such a cute game, from the artstyle to the animations to the dialogue. The art for each loddle type is adorable. And "feeling goopy" is such a mood. It's also not a particularly difficult game - the oxygen bar is pretty generous, and you can actually just bring a Recharge Ring to deploy as you need it. You have ample amounts of inventory space too, with the upgrade just being a nice QoL. I think my only complaint in that regard is that there's no return beacon, or something like that. It would've been nice to get back home quickly if I'm in the middle of nowhere, but then the map isn't too big.
I didn't actually mean to go for 100% cleanup. I aimed for 100% achievements, which involves filling all habitats to maximum capacity, but that meant waiting for the loddles to lay eggs and redistributing them so each habitat filled at the same pace. I decided I may as well go around cleaning up while waiting for the loddles to do their thing, and managed to complete both at around the same time.
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Nov. 29th, 2025 11:46 pm

Cattails: Wildwood Story; LUNA; Witchspring R (Epilogue); Hidden in My Paradise; Organized Inside

Cattails: Wildwood Story

Began: 8/18/2025
Main Story Completed (31/60 achievements): 9/15/2025
Current Playtime (main story complete, 38/60 achievements): 17.4 hours
Obtained via Humble Bundle’s 2024 Down on the Farm bundle.
This game is… neither how it describes itself, nor how reviewers describe it. It’s not really “Stardew Valley with cats,” unless you conflate the existence of various systems while ignoring the depth of each of them. On the Harvest Moon to Stardew to Rune Factory scale, I’d place Cattails as between Stardew and Rune Factory. On the triangle scale of farming/colony sim/RPG, I would place Cattails as leaning slightly more towards the colony sim and RPG corners. And if I compare it to one specific game, I’d place it somewhat close to Rune Factory 4's gameplay loop, with a more involved management system and a less complex combat system.
To describe Cattails on its own merits, then, it is mostly an RPG with some colony management. You go out into the map and collect herbs and catch prey, which you consume (there’s also a hunger meter), donate for colony upgrades/buffs, and submit to recruit more cats to your colony. Recruiting cats unlocks classic fighting-and-puzzles dungeons, which progress the plot. Every day you can also send out your own squads of cats to fight the shadow cats, claim territory (afaik you must participate in battle to seize territory), and collect resources from your territory.
Overall, pretty ok. It does a lot of things, and most of those systems feel a bit shallow. Despite the rival marriage system and the large cast, there’s not much in terms of character interactions, and there are so many characters I had to choose who to focus on based on surface level impressions. The festival games are creative, but there’s only two per festival, and only one festival per season. Combat consists of one attack button and skills, and is a simple cycle of using charge attacks, dodging, and using skills. Everything about the colony is self-sufficient and ultimately requires no input from you except for upgrades. It does not scratch that “play as a Warrior Cat” itch by any means, but that’s honestly more an issue of me playing the wrong game — the first Cattails game and their older Warrior Cats Untold Tales game are probably closer to what I’m looking for. Plus the former Roblox game (not the official one). It is still enjoyable on its own, and I liked just hoarding resources and capturing territory.
Technically I’ve finished the main game, but I’m slowly grinding at the achievements. I don’t quite have the stamina to finish all 3 mines (I finished one) and I probably don’t feel like doing the invasion relic, but otherwise everything seems relatively attainable. I’m most of the way there on territory, and I’m slowly working on all the relationship achievements.

LUNA

Began: 9/25/2025
Completed: 9/30/2025
Playtime (main story perfect ending, 10/18 achievements): 8.7 hours
Bought during the release sale.
This is a surprisingly sweet hentai game. I bought this game because of the noncon, and there certainly was a lot of noncon. But behind the initial vibes is actually rather involved worldbuilding, and a plot that doesn't feel dialed in. I also found it surprising that none of the main villain characters were actually evil. Yeah, tragic villains traumadumping on you is a common trope, but these ones act in ways informed by their trauma, and when their goals align with the protagonist's they support the protagonist instead. I think there was only one h-scene that actually involved the actual antagonist group, and it was presented as a deeply traumatizing event. The endings definitely have a "this is the good ending, these are the bad endings" vibe to them, but the bad endings are fun mindbreak scenarios so I'm not really bothered by that.
There was also a large amount of yuri. Including one budding couple, and a lot of menacing yuri vibes. I'm a bit disappointed that it goes from Luna being menaced to the one doing the menacing, but whatever. I was a bit concerned that any yuri would be exclusively for fanservice, but if it is fanservice the writing is also genuinely invested in the emotional dynamics.
Gameplay-wise, it's pretty unremarkable as a card game. More involved than a visual novel, certainly, but you can make your deck strat as soon as you can customize it and then use it for the rest of the game. Personally, I went for a multihit+drones+bleed build and modified the deck as I progressed, and that worked fine for every fight, even the ones with the mininum damage shield (bleed is extremely overpowered). Even though the game wasn't overly difficult, it was engaging enough to be a nice reprieve from the visual novel aspects.
As some reviewer said, I came for the "plot" and stayed for the actual plot.
…Granted, I also stayed for the "plot."

Witchspring R: The Follower's Fall (Epilogue)

Began: 10/24/2025
Completed: 10/28/2025
Playtime (7/7 epilogue achievements): 9.7 hours
Free DLC for Witchspring R. This adds an epilogue (as a separate, data-transferred mode), which includes several hours of additional content. There's a fairly substantial amount of story and lore, especially revolving around Jude and the temple lords. Apparently transferring to the epilogue also unlocks NG+ content, so I suspect all the new non-story and sidequest superbosses were from that.
I suppose this was the expected outcome of doing a post-game story for a game where you're expected to max out your levels before the final boss and where every level gained is a substantial upgrade, but I felt this was a very boss-oriented story. Sure, there were several sidequests, and a long new map, but any difficulty from the story itself came more from adjusting to the fight gimmicks, and less actual difficulty. The puzzles were relatively easy (except for the one where I missed what the goal was and did the opposite solution), and the bosses were decent in difficulty. The reprisal of the ignore defense boss was mostly an annoyance because I was fully in a magic build at that point and just brute forced the fight. The most fun boss was the "normal" final boss of the epilogue -- I really enjoyed that it was mainly a cinematic fight alongside the temple lords. The most difficult fight, and the only one I restarted multiple times, was Ludina. For once I actually couldn't use my general purpose (dark magic resistant) arsenal, and had to change my gear and actually customize my abilities to maximize my damage output, and that was a pretty novel experience. The post-post-epilogue was the least fun in terms of actually reaching the fights. Whoever thought "the boss trigger is in a random spot on a pitch-black map with no directions" was a good idea missed the mark completely.
Speaking of sidequests, I really liked them. There was a lot of stuff about seeing how people were doing after the game. I was particularly fond of Alfredo's story, and seeing how Vavelia and Lalaque were doing. This wasn't connected to an achievement, but I really liked the bonus conversations with the temple lords, since they didn't get much screentime in the base game. Overall, it was enjoyable, and wasn't even that difficult to get back into compared to other games even on hard difficulty, perhaps because I had already completed all relevant stat growth beforehand (I was tempted to turn the difficulty down for Ludina but I beat her before I gave up).

Hidden in my Paradise

Began: 11/18/2025
Completed: 11/23/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 4.1 hours
Purchased as part of a Fanatical Build your own Cozy Games Bundle.
A short hidden objects game with a cute artstyle, made by the same team that did A Tiny Sticker Tale. Finding hidden objects is only one aspect of gameplay - you can also find fairies by moving certain objects and recreate pictures. The pictures are honestly more involved than the hidden objects.
I thought the difficulty of the pictures varied immensely from "pictures almost complete from the start" to "drag a dozen objects together," which was a bit annoying. What was more annoying was just how fickle the conditions were, where it requires all objects to be in frame and stacked on the correct object. The error for failing the photo conditions is a generic "something is missing," which was greatly unhelpful because sometimes nothing is missing and it's a different issue - I really would have liked a "something isn't positioned correctly" error, or some hint highlighting what object isn't being registered correctly (considering they already have a system to automatically recognize objects).
I spent a disproportionately large amount of time in the sandbox mode creating a level for the last achievement. The playerbase of this game is really small, I knew I ought to make something nice instead of throwing something at it. the sheer amount of variety in decorations you can use is nice, though it felt a bit silly that you can't actually unlock all objects just by 100%ing the rest of the game, including the seasonal levels. I believe 100% the regular and seasonal levels gives you enough gacha tickets and coins to fully unlock the base game's object shops, but you need to grind coins to get absolutely everything. At least the game is generous with giving you bonus coins every time you enter a level and click on an animal. That wedding level gave me around 100 coins each load.
Apparently this one is also getting a sequel? I'm… honestly probably not getting that one, unless it is part of a bundle again. The game was fine, just not anything so spectacular that I'd keep an eye on the sequel, but then this isn't typically my genre of game.

Organized Inside

Began: 11/23/2025
Completed: 11/28/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 5.2 hours
Bought during the initial release sale.
Another Unpacking-like game. This game's narrative focuses on a handful of characters, and a black cat that wanders between them being a cute nuisance as the characters go through life changes that require cleaning and organizing. This one was 20 levels long, with 3 hidden objects in each level unlocked by performing certain interactions.
This iteration is actually even more "pure" of an organizing concept than Unpacking. Whereas that game had a few levels where you squeezed in objects around existing objects you may or may not be able to move, every level here was full organization freedom. There was also one level of the inverse, packing up a room instead. It also featured the concept of storage objects, like document folders, tool boxes, and purses -- a few of them like purses allow for anything that fits, though for the most part they only fit specific objects and in a fixed configuration. I was a bit tired of the gameplay by the end, since there just wasn't that much variety, but it hadn't overstayed its welcome.
I guess my main complaint is how objects are initially laid out, as greyed out, collisionless objects until interacted with for the first time. It felt a bit like the devs were dissatisfied with how Unpacking did object reveals (with the boxes) and decided to have all objects be visible and ordered how the player wants, but didn't quite think through how this would feel in practice. I appreciated the sentiment but the fact that uninteracted objects blocked viewing space made it so I ended up just grabbing every object to move out of the way before actually organizing. On the bright side, that wasn't too tedious, because you can place objects out of bounds instead of awkwardly fitting things on the floor.
My secondary complaint is that the levels felt a bit too small. By that I mean, the dimensional space to place objects felt a tad cramped. This was particularly egregious for the food truck level, and a lesser extent the animal rescue store and camping levels. I couldn't quite make things fit the way I wanted, because there were just too many objects and not all could be sufficiently combined.
As a whole, though, this was a very enjoyable experience. I even went back (beyond my playtime here) to replay a few levels to try and improve on them.
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Oct. 28th, 2025 07:25 pm

Game Impressions: Is This Seat Taken?; Whisper of the House; Rusty Lake: Roots; Paper Trail

Definitely slacked a bit on games the past few months, and on doing writeups. I did a lot of event organization in the meantime, but I've also just been constantly fatigued outside of work and raid. I feel like I've exhausted most of my puzzle cravings, though. Maybe I'll be able to diversify my pickings by the end of the year. Still, my genres are somewhat limited — while I can sneak in some gaming time during lunch breaks, I'm still struggling when I play action RPGs on the Deck, and on PC I'm largely using my limited gaming-while-sitting stamina to play MMORPGs.

Is This Seat Taken?

Began: 8/8/2025
Completed: 8/11/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 5.9 hours
Bought during the release sale.
A puzzle game where you place ilttle shape people in spots depending on their desires.
I played this on the Deck with touchscreen and it worked relatively ok, with the caveat that I felt touchscreen made it slightly more difficult. You can't really hover your mouse over a shape to see their conditions, so you have to swap shapes instead, but at the same time shapes are all the same color and tend to blur into each other, and I lost track of which one I was holding on occasion.
Other than that, it was a pretty good game. The narrative integration was fun, and I liked the gimmicks they pull out as you progress through the game - I particularly liked the "place me with/near furniture" levels, and the train car levels with the luggage mini puzzles. I also really liked the bonus levels, how those consisted of one big level, and how the bonus themes were always unique (though I wish there had been more variety in the regular levels). I also appreciated that you didn't need to 100% every level to move on to the next world — the stars were just to unlock the bonus levels.
Overall, good experience. Not overly difficult but it didn't need to be. I felt this was $10-15 worth of content, so $9.99 is actually a perfect price for it.

Whisper of the House

Began: 8/28/2025
Completed: 8/31/2025
Playtime (100% achievements and a bit more): 9 hours
Bought during the release sale.
Yet another Unpacking-like game. I'm not going to complain about getting more indie games in that genre… that much.
Like the original Unpacking, this game involves a combination of unpacking objects from boxes and organizing existing items. Unlike Unpacking, it doesn't follow a single character, as you play as a housekeeping service and interact with several different characters across a traversible map. And extremely unlike Unpacking, the narrative is not grounded at all -- there are fantasy elements everywhere, and the core of the "story" surrounds aliens and people living in a simulation.
Honestly, I felt there were a lot of missed potential and half-baked ideas here. The game itself was long enough and decently fleshed out, but there were a lot of things that felt disjointed or too shallow. I thought the whole "time travel" thing that appeared in the demo would be relevant beyond the one level, but it wasn't, despite the entire UI they designed for it. There wasn't really a followup to the secret room in the first house. They designed an entire mechanic with synergizing objects, but it didn't really matter outside of the one puzzle and technically the plant-growing post-game. And most of all, the narrative honestly didn't really make sense. I had the feeling that the narrative we got was the remaining scraps of ideas rather than a cohesive story.

Rusty Lake: Roots

Began: 9/6/2025
Completed: 9/14/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 4.1 hours
Obtained as part of the Fanatical War Child Charity 2025 Bundle.
Always a fan of the Rusty Lake games ever since they were flash games, and this time the narrative was long enough that I gained substantial knowledge about the series lore! I’ll admit I typically don’t play these games frequently enough or in order to pick up on the story between games.
It’s the quality I expect from Rusty Lakes, not sure what else to say. Smooth gameplay, interesting puzzles, subtle atmospheric music, very nice voice accents. I played on my Deck and that kinda took from the experience, and tbh I’m not sure why I did this for a point and click game. I accidentally double tapped a couple times during dialogue as well — which is unfortunate considering there’s zero way to go back a dialogue screen, and the game autosaves progress. Other than those minor inconveniences, it was pretty much like a mobile game.
I had to replay like a third of the game to get one missable achievement, though, which was a bit frustrating. Interestingly, the game not having Steam Cloud was actually a good thing here — it meant that I could replay the game on my PC to get the missable achievement and not worry about losing the progress on my Deck, where I hunted for the rest of the achievements.

Paper Trail

Began: 9/27/2025
Completed: 10/2/2025
Playtime (main story, all origami + all secrets, 32/35 achievements): 5.8 hours
Purchased as part of the Fanatical Best of Platinum Collection (Summer 2025) bundle.
I remember enjoying the demo and the paper folding gimmick, and the full game provided several more hours of a good concept executed well. It's an interesting gimmick, having to figure out how to fold two sides of a level together to solve puzzles. They did a good job of introducing additional gimmicks. Each full world introduced a new gimmick, but unlike some other games, didn't just abandon old gimmicks, instead integrating and even adding on to previous gimmicks to create more complex puzzles. I especially liked the block matching, light bouncing, and portals gimmicks.
By the end, I… still didn't have a great feel for what the underside looked like before folding. That was fine, though. Because folds can't overlap, there's ultimately a rather finite number of potential answers and you'll figure it out eventually. And if you don't, the game has a neat hints section that provides the answer folds. I thought that was a neat variant on the typical hint structure.
My petty gripe is that the game completely freezes when you tab out, and boots you to the pause menu whenever possible. In general the auto-pause feature can be useful, but 1) this is a puzzle game with zero reflex challenges, and 2) the auto-pause happens anywhere. This includes loading screens. This includes the ~5 seconds between when you click to exit the game and when the game actually closes. You better not tab out of the game thinking you're safe just because you told it to exit. Other than that, though, the game was enjoyable, and definitely worth the handful of hours and couple dollars I ultimately spent to buy it.
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Oct. 28th, 2025 03:08 am

Steam Next Fest October 2025

I didn’t get to play that much during this Next Fest. That’s due to a combination of me being busy, and me not being impressed with the demos on offer this time. I tried to look through the RPGs more, but my focus was already on games in my library or on my wishlist… so ultimately I basically hovered around the charts and browsed in the general lists. I also wasn't that impressed with I did get to play, so I’ve split them into “Great” and “Everything Else” rather than a more comprehensive rating system.

Great

Starsand Island

A life sim game in the style of… I suppose Animal Crossing is a good starting point, but it has a “do everything” vibe that feels increasingly common in life sims. There’s life sim crafting, farming, animal husbandry, fishing, dungeon exploration… apparently there are also boss battles and more involved fights, though I don’t see how the slingshot combat is really scalable. Otherwise, I see how these systems interact with each other.
There are a lot of QoL features that I really appreciate here. You get a faster travel method relatively early. The NPC tracking system is very welcome, even if the minimap could be more zoomed out (I take issue with most minimap scales tbh). I deeply appreciate any stamina-based game that lets you rest to regain stamina, whether that’s like this game, where you can sit and directly exchange time for stamina, or other games where you can nap to a set time. And I like that you can talk either to the NPC or to a kiosk to open up the shop menu, rather than track down NPCs who may or may not be in the shop during store hours.
There’s a lot that could be improved on, though. Plenty of collision issues on the skateboard, lots of texture clipping (like grass growing into tilled land), no grid snapping option in the layout editor, an audio glitch when opening the quest log where the sound effect plays several times and just blows out your ears. The ranching NPC stopped working for me, which blocked me out of an entire mechanic as well as several other quests (including the crafter promotion quest), and since no one else mentioned that glitch, I guess it’s just a thing that can happen anywhere to permanently brick your game. Also, the translation needs a ton of work. Yes, they do warn that they just did machine translation for the demo, but I hope they improve on it a lot for the final release. Confusing information, repeated lines, jumbled grammar, and even some untranslated lines abound.
This is a game that, theoretically, appeals a lot to me. I like the character designs, I like the freedom of the layout editor (you can add and move individual components like stairs and railings, and you can save custom layouts), I like the amount of stuff that you get to do. I love the idyllic island aesthetic. But I’ll definitely wait to see how the game develops, and especially if they get a proper translation team. The writing is very stilted right now and is a constant negative presence in an otherwise enjoyable demo.

Winter Burrow

I first heard about this game during one of the recent Nintendo Directs and had an eye on it because it looked cute and cozy. It is indeed cute and cozy. It’s a survival crafting game, but there’s a lot less focus on the surviving part - your home is always safe, resources regenerate whenever you reload the map, and despite the warmth/chill and hunger mechanics, it takes a while for it to be a problem.
I did think there were a few flaws — such as how easy it is to get lost trying to get home, even if the actual urgency is relatively low, and how the “learn from auntie” quest wasn’t really helpful at giving you directions despite the detailed quests before that point. But overall I think it’s a nice game and worth keeping an eye on.


Everything Else

CiniCross

A picross game except roguelite. In each run, you proceed down a set of picross grids, collecting artifacts and items by solving grids before confronting the boss. Bosses always come with some gimmick, and are essentially a stamina gauntlet as you complete grids to deal damage. You are also limited by hp and a timer - mistakes and running out of time cost hp, and you gain time by completing picross grids.
I have very mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, I put three hours into the demo, including an endless run that lasted an hour. On the other hand, this was not that enjoyable of an experience. I don’t like how loud the artifact skills are, especially when I’m relying on the sound effects to intuitively say when I put down an incorrect tile. I really don’t like that there is such a high chance of getting a “nothing” drop for artifacts, even on early floors. I don’t like the “you can’t put down crosses” boss gimmick and feel like that’s just a run ender at higher difficulty bosses.
Most of all, I don’t think this is a scalable game. The numbers for 20x20 grids are outright difficult to read, and this doesn’t even consider how your timer has increased to x3 or worse by the time you reach these maps. The game is just exhaustingly difficult at this point.

Creator Chronicles

Well, if you want a game that throws its systems at you to figure it out, but in a relatively manageable way, this one does it. This is a combination of an idle and management game, where you set up buildings and production, hire members to produce things, earn gold by selling items you make, and send out members to fight dungeons for levels (which unlocks new item recipes) and gear (which improves their dungeon skills). It’s sort of like a colony sim, except you don’t have any worries about a losing state because there are no resources to upkeep.
However, the sheer amount of AI art is really revolting. The store page claims “some” art assets are AI generated… but honestly, it’d be easier to ask what parts *aren’t* AI. And that would probably be the character sprites and maybe the overworld tiles. Maybe the equipment sprites were by a human, but taken from an asset pack considering how generic they are. Character portraits? AI. Item sprites? AI. Dungeon backgrounds? Almost certainly AI. There’s just a distinctly foul aura surrounding so much of the game. It doesn’t help that the translation is incredibly poor, on top of the tutorial quests also being generally unhelpful until you go try things out yourself.
Even if it used assets created by people, though, this isn’t really a game for me. At a demo level, I’ll play it, but I don’t really have any urge to play this kind of genre into the endgame.

Familiar Findings

An idle desktop game where you summon creatures, then fuse them into new forms. On one hand, the amount of involvement this requires works well for me. On the other hand… that’s a really low level of involvement. There isn’t much that happens other than “wait for resources to generate.” I’m not sure that I would want to have this as a full game. The art style is cute, though. If it’s cheap I might think about it, though I’m not currently in a position where I end up using my computer for an extended period of time, where having desktop companion apps would benefit my focus and workflow. That’s a separate conversation I’ll get to at some point.

On-Together

This is a neat “social productivity game” concept - essentially, you create or join a server room, where you can roam around, chat, play minigames, and do focus timers. On top of the regular and pomodoro timers, you also have todo lists, calendaring, and journals. I think it makes for a nice “study room” vibe, even though the setting is an island.
On the other hand… there is way too much distraction potential here? Like sure, you can use the focus tools, and minimize the space that the game takes up on your screen… but you can easily just spend a lot of time chatting or playing games or otherwise messing around in the overworld rather than actually being productive. It really doesn’t help that the game defaults to fullscreen, and has no true “windowed” mode, only two snapped overlays and a mini mode that isn’t that mini at all, considering it shows your full avatar’s size and there’s no option to hide the model entirely. The design feels counterintuitive to its goal. Also, if it were up to me, I’d implement more options for server setup - most importantly, chat options like slow mode, local chat only, emote only, or maybe even disabling chat entirely.
Looking at similar games did expose me to gogh: Focus with your Avatar, which released its multiplayer update relatively recently and seems to include a similar set of productivity features, However, the multiplayer focuses more on designing and hanging in the same space rather than seek to actively take up your time. It only has limited communication features, but I might look into that one instead.

PowerWash Simulator 2

Well, what can I say. It’s Powerwash Simulator… 2! Granted, my only exposure to that game is via a speedrun I watched once, the collab in Escape Simulator, and the demo of a game obviously riffing off the “cleaning objects” concept. Navigating my way to the first map was incredibly confusing because I closed the menu, and I honestly had no clue what I was doing with the tools until I finished the first map (and I still don’t really understand the difference between the blue and the red guns, since they seem exactly the same to me). Other than that, I found the game relatively easy to understand, granted that I already had some exposure and knew how to use soap to get rid of certain stains on the second demo map.
Honestly, my greater issue is just with the concept. I know there’s a certain level of catharsis in this kind of mindless cleaning game, but… I honestly just found this boring. And, quite frankly, I was constantly aware that I felt more fulfilled by actually cleaning in real life. When I clean in the game, I feel like I should be using that time to clean in real life instead. Which is great for my own productivity, but bodes poorly for any desire to play the full game or the predecessor.

Servant of the Lake

Another game in the Rusty Lake series. I was mostly curious as to how they’d handle a demo of one of their games, and it was by giving the player three series of puzzles to solve. It’s a premium game and thus has a wider narrative.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed by two of the puzzles. The first was fine as a tutorial, but the next two were essentially “find objects and then perform tasks on a list.” I know the full game will become more difficult over time, but it’s a poor start when I really like the environmental puzzle storytelling of their past games.
I don’t really go out of my way to buy games in this series, but if it enters a bundle or something I’ll get around to it. I got Rusty Lakes: Roots that way.

Shana - Priestess of Tona

Porn autobattler. Unlike the other porn autobattler, this one is actually reasonable in difficulty and also isn’t p2w gacha PVP lol. It’s pretty unremarkable as autobattlers go, though. Battles emphasize use of active skills a lot, which I’m not sure is common or not, but it is more engaging than a full autobattler. It does use a roguelike format, where you get randomized buffs each fight, and earn artifacts used in that run or equipment for future runs. Also, I guess it’s neat how you unlock porn CGs by winning midboss and boss battles? Even though I kinda wanted a more noncon premise, but whatever.

Witch Potions - Craft of Lust

Bold decision to release the demo of a porn game and not only have a single porn CG presented with zero context, but also only be a tech demo. Like good job, they put together the potion making system. There’s nothing to do with it. You can’t even turn in the one quest given to you, because they haven’t implemented the quest turn-in system… and yet the demo is 3.2 gb. What is that space going towards. It’s a 2d sprite based game.
Even the potion crafting system is sort of confusing. I figured out how to get the recipe reference window up, but I still wasted several items because, for whatever reason, you have to drop the ingredient above the cauldron to add it in, but you have to hold the potion bottle over the cauldron to fill it, or else you destroy that item. I don’t see why this is even necessary, except to be a frustration.
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Aug. 5th, 2025 12:03 am

Game Impressions: The New Flesh; My Confounding Cat is Criminally Cute!; A Tiny Sticker Tale

The New Flesh

Began: 6/26/25
Completed: (Original) 7/6/25; (Expansion) 8/3/2025
Playtime (100% achievements, post-expansion): 2.4 hours
Free on Steam.
A walking sim/”interactive music video” based on Red Vox.
I enjoyed it! It basically provides visuals for a lot of the Red Vox songs and sends you on a fetch quest that lets you explore and collect various songs across their discography. However, it is something where you need to be at least somewhat tuned into Red Vox, if not the Vinesauce community injokes, to get the full experience.
I had two frustrations. The first was replaying the game to complete the collection - most things were fine, but the ability to progress maps is inexplicably based on waiting out songs. There’s also a time limited album for some reason - you have to access the area after the sand dunes spawn, but before that entrance turns into another map, which I found an utterly perplexing choice and cost me several minutes and a look at someone’s playthrough of the game. The second was trying to figure out how to find the Gameboy camera filter’s final room - I struggled to find it even with a video guide, because the area doesn’t have landmarks and getting up to the potential areas (multiple) is more tedious than an easter egg should be. Other than that, really neat experience with a good looking pixellated art style. I sat in some areas to just enjoy the ambiance.
The free expansion was also neat, and I thought it was cool that they have an exclusive song. Nothing related to the expansion was in the main game, either, which I also appreciated. I’m not a horror person and am extremely not a fan of “collect items and outrun the horror” type games, but the silliness of the bonus minigame actually made it not scary. “Run or he will knock your ass out” and then when he catches you he does in fact punch you in the face and knock your ass out.

My Confounding Cat is Criminally Cute!

Began: 7/6/25
Completed: 7/18/25
Playtime (100%/Completed Story): 3.5 hours
Bought during the 2025 Steam Summer Sale.
A short BL visual novel about a potion-making wizard and a guy cursed to be a cat. It’s really, really short — the 3.5 hours I have in my playtime is actually overshooting it, because I accidentally left the game open a couple times.
It was pretty decent. I do see why people criticize how “light” it feels on the BL, though — pretty much the entire story is about their developing relationship and them getting together, and the other challenge they’re facing is resolved by them getting together. In the post-script notes, ebi-hime discussed how this was one of their lighter works both in tone and in worldbuilding, and I absolutely see that, even when this is the first visual novel I’ve read from them.
However, even though I generally look for more substantial stories, I don’t fault this one for its flaws. It’s honestly kind of what I needed right now - I’ve been going between so much academic and work reading and writing and also sort of in a rut creatively, so this was a good touchstone for something I’m familiar with… because it reminds me heavily of fanfic. Specifically the “getting together” subgenre, with a moderate slow burn. There’s just a narrative flow, scene setting, and general tone of writing and POV detail that feels so incredibly fanfic-y.
The one big complaint I do have is that Blaise (the guy cursed into being a cat) doesn’t keep his cat ears or tail once the curse is lifted. Boo, keep the catboy features.
I played this on my Deck and it was a good experience. Default keybinds hit the necessary buttons and I had plenty of options to progress text.

A Tiny Sticker Tale

Began: 8/1/2025
Completed: 8/2/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 2.8 hours
Bought in a recent (still live when I played the game, actually) Fanatical build-a-bundle focused on “cozy” games.
I played the demo for this game during a Next Fest however long ago and really enjoyed the gameplay concept, but I felt $10 was a bit too much money and was waiting for it to show up in a Humble Bundle or other bundle with other games I found interesting. Fanatical holding that cozy games build-a-bundle was perfect (they had several games I was interested in grabbing), and the amount I ultimately paid was more than worth it.
I can appreciate a game that lands on a solid concept, explores the depth of that concept, and then doesn’t waste your time further playing with other gimmicks. It’s definitely a short game at under 3 hours for a 100%, but I didn’t feel like it was setting out to waste my time, and I appreciate that more than a game with a longer playtime but lots of filler. I found the puzzles light but neat, the way some stickers interact with the world really interesting, and the way it absolutely indulges the hoarder in me very satisfying. If messy. This poor tent has like 50 stickers stuck in the borders forever because outfits and seasonal/non-carpenter decoration items don’t count towards achievements.
I would’ve liked to have a shortcut to the shopkeeper, and the map could’ve come during the first “region.” I also wish the game would provide a few more hints for stickers you haven’t collected, especially in post-game — I spent more time than I should have collecting them, because I wasn’t consistent about collecting the NPCs. Even a little sparkle icon for uncollected objects while in sticker mode after finishing the story would’ve been nice. It’s also really easy to accidentally interact with NPCs and story scrolls multiple times, though at least you can skip cutscenes.
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Jul. 26th, 2025 01:21 pm

Steam Next Fest June 2025

I played some Next Fest games last month, and then promptly got busy for a while. I have a bunch more still downloaded but I just haven’t had time to play. Most of what I did get to were puzzle games.

Great

Strange Antiquities

I played the first game and really enjoyed it, and the sequel’s demo certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s more of the first game, except this time you’re analyzing artifacts. There’s more variety in shapes and materials, and you get four different analysis measurements.
I really liked the QoL of seemingly removing the cooldown for exploration. There wasn’t really a reason for the cooldown in the first game, so cutting it out entirely is nice. Another QoL/feature I’m liking is the description index - in the first game I remember having to flip through the entire book a couple times because I forgot which plant a keyword referred to, so the index cuts out something that wasn’t “difficulty” but just a hassle.

Organized Inside

This is another game in the Unpacking-like organization subgenre, though this one (like various others in the subgenre) adds cleaning as well. I really like the art style, and I also really like that I can immediately tell the devs’ ethnicity. Dark soy sauce? Mung beans? I know who you are… and I am shaking their hands vigorously. I also really like that there’s flavor text for each object! It’s not necessary at all but it’s a neat touch and solves the minor “what the heck am I looking at” issue I had with Unpacking. I’m keeping an eye on this one even though there are plenty of games just like it, because I like the grounded approach and how relatable the cultural influence is to me.

Undusted

It feels like Powerwash Simulator, if you scaled it down into single objects per level. The gameplay is pretty neat, if very Powerwash-esque, and I like the artstyle of both the models (pixel/voxel style) and the story art. Detail cleaning is just relaxing to me.
What’s less relaxing is the story - there’s only so much you can glean from a demo, of course, but my impression is that this is about a family falling apart because of a sudden death and I really cannot deal with that. I especially cannot deal with that kind of story when it takes place in retrospective.


Good

Box Bakery

…Why does this game feel like it was originally a low-budget mobile game? The ui is arranged to feel like a mobile game, it has daily quests and daily “supply” boxes, the furniture store has package deals and a rotating selection with a refresh icon that looks like a “play ad” button… even the “heart” currency feels like something you’d be able to buy with real money, considering how named-NPC-exclusive it otherwise is and the “premium” bag wrapping and furniture you can get.
Anyway, other than the vibe I’m getting, it’s a pretty chill and casual game. I like it well enough.

Cast n Chill

Fishing game. The pixel artstyle is amazing. Like, revelation-inducing amazing. Basically no one uses that level of detail for pixel backgrounds or portraits and the fact that this one does, without also turning post-processing effects egregiously high, is amazing.
Unfortunately the actual game is a bit too… slow? The actual process of waiting around for bites is a bit too extended for me. Otherwise, fantastic aesthetic.

Gecko Gods

Huh. I thought this game came out years ago, but apparently I was just thinking of the announcement. It’s a cute game with a nice aesthetic. You can make the gecko yap whenever, and it’s cute when it intensely eyes and opens its mouth wide when near a bug. It seems to have more of a focus on puzzle solving than platforming (which I like), with some collectables as well. I like the gimmick where you can basically climb any wall and move anywhere, even upside down. I did have some framerate issues, and the camera tended to bump into the ground because your player model is so short, though.
Would I buy it? Uh… probably not, honestly. This game is still sort of a platformer, enough that I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy it when I have so many other things in my backlog. But if I happened to own it via some bundle or free giveaway and was in the mood, I’d play it.

Mahou Shoujo Escape

I don’t actually remember whether this demo is part of Next Fest or if it’s just something I encountered. Anyway, it’s an escape game except there’s a timer on solving the puzzle. I guess it’s also unusual that it seems to have a narrative plot? I’m a bit concerned about how this affects its ability to be a fleshed out escape game — typically in escape games (both digital and real life) you encounter a bunch of clues while you’re solving puzzles, but here you don’t have much time before you fail the puzzle.


Meh

Little Rocket Lab

A contraption and automation game. I’m not sure how close to Factorio this game is but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the inspiration. It’s pretty good. I’m not really that much of a builder/automation game person (I get really stressed when the entire game is optimizing large procedures) but this one was pretty intuitive. I’m not a huge fan of isometric perspective when there’s so much building involved, but I did like how well they implemented building, with a mini “builder mode” that gave you full customization over orientation instead of having to guess, and even let you place down multiple conveyor belts at once.
However, I didn’t really like how it also wants to be an RPG with turnins but forces you to do inventory management on automation. If I have 50 heat sinks and I want to build a single starter machine from that heat sink, I shouldn’t need to walk over to the storage bin and take out the heat sinks. I should be able to just craft the item. At least the game is generous with inventory space… even if the stack count is really low for an automation game. I should also have the ability to turn off a machine without having to tear things apart.

The Trolley Solution

A collection of minigames deriving from the classic trolley problem. I was mildly amused by the premises of the trolley problem variants and the minigames are somewhat interesting, but it’s not like I would want to play a full game about trolley problems. I wouldn’t want to pay for one. Also, I didn’t really like how small the hitbox is for clicking the track lever. It was reasonably ok for the static pages, but the second minigame where you change a lot of tracks on a scrolling screen was rough to track.
There was another trolley variants “game” where you made your choices of increasingly absurd scenarios and the website would tell you which percentage chose one way or another, and that one was more interesting to me. The trolley problem is a social experiment, after all.

Ratatan

I really want to enjoy this game. Another game in the Patapon aesthetic is very welcome, especially with the 1+2 remasters, but playing this is frustrating. You’re entirely at the mercy of the rhythm timer for both attacks and the ability… and if you fail one command out of the “rally” your units just sit around doing nothing… and boss attacks do not remain aligned with the rhythm timer. I see the target reticle on the ground below my units. I rally them. They still get hit because either I messed up a beat or because they just didn’t move fast enough after rallying or I was trying to do another command and should’ve been guarding in the corner. And sometimes because of how the rhythm locks you into commands, I’ll start a command, realize I need to move or dodge an attack, and resign to my fate because I just can’t react at all.

Ship, Inc.

In this game you receive boxes to unpack and orders to fulfill by repacking boxes, labeling them, and sending them out. I feel like this, specifically, is a genre. It worked okay, I guess, but there’s a timer and a bill quota you have to outpace and I honestly just don’t like the gameplay loop.
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May. 25th, 2025 05:56 pm

Game Impressions: Pixel Restorer, Epic Battle Fantasy 3

Pixel Restorer

Began: 5/5/2025
Completed: 5/25/2025
Playtime (24/24 free pictures): 11.4 hours
Free on Steam.
Visually, this game kinda looks like picross, but it’s not picross. You’re given a grid, where some squares have numbers in them, and the numbers indicate how many are in its (regular) shape; you then drag to form the shape, which helps you solve other shapes.
This game absolutely overstayed its welcome, and that’s because frankly it’s too easy. Even though the total end picture is huge, you’re never given more than a small segment to solve, so it never really challenged me mentally. It challenged me physically, though. Since I played on Steam Deck I tried using the joysticks and/or touchpad, but inevitably I found touchscreen worked best. Click-drag controls are really draining otherwise, and this is an issue unique to this game specifically, because regular picross isn't like that.
Giving the player bigger spaces to solve would’ve been better, but more importantly would’ve been the ability to create partial shapes. When I’m solving picross puzzles, part of my process is to mark down “guaranteed” fills. There are similarly guaranteed fills in this game too, but if a number says 7, you must fill 7 squares exactly, which means you can't just mark the guarantees, you have to guess at the full shape and location. Not being able to do partials fundamentally limited how difficult the game could ever get while remaining playable, I think.
Basically, I spent over 11 hours playing this game only to get the one achievement and most of that time felt like a battle against my own stamina and patience. I’m not playing any of the paid packs. I’m done and I’m free!!!

Epic Battle Fantasy 3

Began: 1/27/2025
Completed: 2/19/2025, but apparently didn’t post until now.
Playtime (normal difficulty, 51/60 medals): 9.4 hours
Free on Steam; I originally began on the Flash version via Flashpoint before learning it was on Steam for free (which is why I swapped).
I’ve had EBF 5 in my Steam library since before the v2 update but haven’t really played it. I thought I might as well, and then I thought I might as well go through EBF 3 and 4. Those games were a hallmark of my childhood - they’re a big part of why I love turn-based RPGs now.
EBF 3 embodies the best of the turn-based RPG genre. By the end, even on normal difficulty, it highly encourages strategic play - buffing your characters, keeping up regen, dispelling buffs on bosses, utilizing and adjusting to weaknesses and strengths whenever possible. The last two bosses operate best as stamina battles, playing things safe in order to ensure I stay alive and in good condition. I did wipe to the dragon one time though before really focusing my approach. And best of all, debuffs are actually useful. The last two bosses have poison absorb (to some degree; the dragon has only one head that regens to poison) and resist siphon, but earlier bosses, and boss adds, could all be poisoned - which meant that investing in those spells and building up poison stacks was a viable strategy. And I just appreciate games that give you status effect moves and let you abuse them. Stacking a full 10x poison on the desert boss and then surviving was a fun battle of attrition.
I also found it very helpful that you regen hp and mp just by walking around the overworld, and that, not only are all enemies shown on the screen, the ones blocking required paths don’t respawn while the optional ones do, allowing for easy backtracking. Plus, there’s no penalties or rng for running from battles. They’re just nice quality of life features.
In general, the game is just really impressive for a single dev and does come off as someone who understands RPGs and common game mechanics and made something based on what they wanted to see in a game. It got me to scrounge around on his Bluesky and it seems he’s working on a hidden objects game, and also technically hinted at the eventuality of EBF 6, which is neat. I’m happy to see that he’s still developing games.
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May. 21st, 2025 02:16 am

Game Impressions: Witchspring R

Witchspring R

Began: 4/10/2025 (but most progress made 5/11 onwards)
Completed: 5/21/2025
Playtime (62/65 achievements): 44.8 hours
Purchased during the Autumn 2023 sale.
Going into this, my impression was that this game is like the Atelier series. I suppose aesthetically that’s true, but there’s more a focus on stat growth (and character growth as part of that) and less item creation.
The game… is cute. Pieberry’s voice gets kinda grating once you get to the point where you’re running around grinding items via quick hunts, but that’s kind of my fault for getting to that point. I like the art and model style, the story was sweet and I’m glad it has a happy ending for almost every character. I can absolutely see where it connects to the other games in the series. (I’ve seen people who dislike the romance subplot because of the character and how he acts at the beginning, but now that I’ve seen it what I’ve concluded is that those people are moral purists and they better not have been wrong or rude or mad ever in their life.)
The combat was also a lot of fun! I played chapter 4 onwards on hard difficulty (and before that normal for mobs, but hard for bosses) and while it still wasn’t difficult, I liked how much complexity you could glean out of it, from the spell modding system to weapon swapping to hp attacks and blessings and skill effect chaining, and Black Joe’s item mechanic (I also liked jacking Peanut Shark to 285% attack and dropping nukes on my enemies). I also enjoyed the pet summoning system and how that opened up even more combos, even if the whole “knock to 30% hp and mind control” thing gets a bit frustrating due to how the game also encourages stat growth.
I guess my main issue was how underwhelming difficulty felt. In another game, Normal difficulty would actually be Easy. Hard feels like the “intended” difficulty — that’s when you start getting more complex attack patterns and (may, didn’t need it for the final sequence lmao) need to use some defensive strategies. Also, it felt like hp was by far the most impactful resource. Not only was it just easier to obtain than defense and agility, the other two “defensive” stats, a lot of bosses, especially early on, felt like they required a minimum amount of health that couldn’t equivalently be overcome by investing that time in another defensive stat. If an attack dealt 800 health, it felt more worthwhile to hit that threshold than to reduce that damage. But maybe that’s just me.
I’m still missing 3 achievements for the White Wood weapons as well as Weapon Master. I’m not really sure what I’m missing for Weapon Master — it could be that NG+ exclusive weapon, or it could be getting the other two achievements? I’m not sure if it’s possible to have all 3 weapon paths even on NG+. Supposedly 10% of those who played the game have this achievement though, so I’m not sure what I’m missing, and even the forums aren’t much help. Oh well, I’m not a 100% completionist anyway… but I might do some NG+ at some point. The game is fun enough to earn a return.
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May. 11th, 2025 03:09 am

Game Impressions: Poptropica Adventures; GNOG; Strange Horticulture; SKYE

Oops. Oops. I started typing a set out a couple months ago and just never got around to finishing it. Also, I joined a static for the savage this FFXIV raid tier, which is eating up a chunk of my gaming time. Not that I mind, I really am enjoying the experience, but yeah, that kind of commitment is really affecting my already-tenuous will to play other games. 7.25 is releasing Occult Crescent and the Mamool Ja quests in a couple weeks and that’s also going to eat into even more time. Oops. Anyawy.

Poptropica Adventures

Began: 3/7/2025
Completed: 3/7/2025
Playtime (all museum exhibits): ~2 hours
Played through Retroarch for the achievement integration.
I mean, it’s a DS game of a kids game, the expectations are somewhat in the floor here. It’s really short. There’s only “four” islands, but in reality one is a hub so there’s only actually three of them. And those islands are also short. I have a better feel for the length and scale of Poptropica islands than when I was a kid, and I actually did replay bits of Poptropica semi-recently, but even then these islands are really short and mostly get their filler from the handful of minigames. Every island also has a museum exhibit, and you get 100% completion there by completing every sidequest.
The minigames weren’t that good, either. The most tolerable one was the “racing” minigame, where you basically just jump and duck to dodge obstacles. There’s also a climbing minigame where you also have to dodge obstacles from the top, and a pipe maze minigame, and those were unremarkably fine. My absolute least favorite one was the one where the NPC throws out objects and you have to either dodge or intercept them to win, and you can only miss so many times before you lose. The movement was so incredibly floaty that I hated every moment of it. Then there’s the maze, where you use the touchscreen to drag your boat/ship/whatever to the edge and avoid both obstacles and the walls. That one wasn’t bad… except that Astro Knights Island had you complete the minigame every single time you went between Earth(?) and the planet hub, and vice versa. And you were required to do that multiple times. I think I had to play it 8-10 times? Really not fun. And then if you’re trying to go for the 100% RetroAchievements set you have to beat the high score for 5 minigame arcades in the postgame, and I gave up because I do not want to do the dodging minigame ever again.
Overall… I don’t recommend it. Maybe if you’re under the age of 8 and are a kid in the late 00’s and are at the end of the licensed GBA/DS shovelware era, it’s a neat little distraction, but that’s kind of a small niche now.

GNOG

Began: 3/22/2025
Completed: 3/22/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 1.7 hours
Bought via the Humble COVID-19 bundle in 2020.
A little game about solving little boxes. The puzzles themselves are fairly simple and straightforward, with only a couple things that were a bit confusing. I mistakenly thought this was a platformer for the longest time, until I was going through my list of owned games and marking what genre they were and learned this was a puzzle game.
Honestly, I feel like I didn’t play this the way it was intended. It calls itself a “tactile” game, but I played it with a mouse which inherently doesn’t provide tactile responses, and I imagine a proper controller could have used vibration or that thing on the DualSense controller where triggers have some resistance to being pressed. I also noticed there was VR compatibility, which probably would’ve gone further for making the game more appealing visually.
Even aside from that, though, I thought it was lacking. I got the impression that this is more of a toy than a game, something more about showing off the capabilities of a technology than a game strong on its own merits. It’s like the tech demo aspects of Astro’s Playroom. …Except that I didn’t engage at all with the technology. Also, I didn’t vibe with the aesthetic style, which is fine, but it also felt… childish? Like it’s focused on providing mental stimulation but not providing depth. Which is approximately the opposite of what I want from a puzzle game, but then maybe this wasn’t intended to be a puzzle game.

SKYE

Began: 5/1/2025 (technically 6/22/2020)
Completed: 5/2/2025
Playtime (11/17 achievements): 2.3 hours
Free on Steam.
A chill flight exploration game. I originally played this in 2020 and stopped after a few minutes because the performance was really bad on the laptop I had then.
The story is pretty much just an excuse to have a couple objective-based flights. The game is really all about flying around. And it is some nice flying! It’s still nothing compared to the likes of Wii Sports Resort, which has a lot of visual variety - the island here consists of grass plains, a few villages, and a couple landmarks - but it is still pretty good. The painting-like artstyle is nice, though it means the graphics needed to be set to the max to look good. I’m not good enough at making sharp turns for the two races, but flying on a more casual basis was fun and pretty relaxing.
Though… I’m missing 1 each of the telescopes and the targets, even though I’ve spent a good half hour just flying around trying to find the last ones. I really just don’t know where they are.
Overall, pretty neat. Doesn't completely fill the void shaped like Wii Sports Resort Island Flyover, but at least does something.

Strange Horticulture

Began: 4/15/2025
Completed: 5/11/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 7.1 hours
Bought during the Spring 2024 Steam sale.
A puzzle game about identifying plants based on customer demands and plant descriptions, and unraveling a story surrounding Undermere and the appearance of a woman in a jade mask and a monstrous creature that embodies death.
Ultimately it’s a rather short and not that difficult game, but I really enjoyed it. The whole concept of closely evaluating plants to try and match them to their descriptions was a lot of fun. Same goes with the day hints pointing towards specific map locations that unlock plants essential for pursuing different endings. There are 8 endings in four pairs of two, which are unlocked by making a specific decision on the second to last day. Two sets are simply variants of a certain action on the last day, one relies on a longer-term decision, and one is the default. I believe you can unlock every ending path in a single playthrough but I didn’t do that the first time around.
Something I noticed narratively was how immensely limited your perspective is. Sure, there are the day tarots and the accompanying narrative there, but that’s it in terms of “external” perspective. You are limited to the knowledge you glean from others’ gossip and the things they want from you. Because of that, you’re less getting a comprehensive understanding of the world around you and more responding to events as they happen. It’s an interesting approach, but I think the worldbuilding suffers a bit as a result - it wants to evoke the feeling that I’m really “there,” but I still don’t have a great grasp on the world or the motivations of other characters, especially Thea, because I don’t have the lifetime of knowledge that someone truly living in it would. Hopefully the upcoming sequel will at least provide more insights into the setting.
Also, when I think of this game I recall that “woke games” list and how this game is apparently bad because a character’s mother took her daughter and fled from her abusive father. Like, wow. That’s all I need to know about those kinds of people and their ideology.

I’m still slowly playing through a different puzzle game, I swear. I promise the fact that I haven’t played it since mid-March doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned it.
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Mar. 24th, 2025 01:03 pm

Steam Next Fest March 2025

Next Fest ended weeks ago but I wanted to finish a couple more games and then got busy for a bit. Oops. I think this time I intended to look around the RPG and Puzzle offerings, but in practice I mostly ran into the “decoration” subgenre, and also cooking RPGs. I saw the word “cozy” thrown around a lot as this year’s “chill” or “wholesome.”
Overall, this was a rather mixed outcome. Nearly all of the games I thought were great were puzzles or organization games. Granted, I didn’t get around to the Solasta II demo despite downloading it first, so maybe that would’ve been the demo to save the RPGs from the clutches of inadequacy.
However, the demos I did like I *really* liked. Followed and immediately on the wishlist great. Great enough to get their own category.

Fantastic

Is This Seat Taken?

A logic game about placing shape people where they want in various scenarios.
I liked this one a lot! It’s my favorite demo of this Next Fest. The game is very well polished and incredibly lightweight (a ~160 mb demo is peanuts considering I have a 26 gb demo). The concept of reading people’s requests and placing them appropriately, and possibly having to move them around in later parts, is enjoyable and executed well from the 6 levels available. They weren’t particularly difficult but I can definitely see how the difficulty will scale with request complexity. Usually games I wishlist during Next Fest languish there forever (unless it gets bundled somewhere) but if it’s reasonably priced for the amount of levels I might grab this on release.
The little dialogue segments and complaint quips are well written (and “A kid :(“ for someone going >:( is really funny) and convey information effectively while just being enjoyable to read. I am extremely invested in the little drama these shape people have with their tastes in seating neighbors. There’s a cute little story as well with Nat and Alexis.
If there’s any complaint that I have, it’s that it would be nice to have different shapes be different colors as well. It’s a bit hard to see which person I’ve picked up or am swapping on the fly. If color comes into play later though then the single color makes sense.

Kemono Teatime

I installed the demo because of the cute cover art and the promise of catpeople. This in the same “visual novel-cafe” subgenre as Coffee Talk. Most of your time is spent reading conversations, sometimes picking dialogue, and fulfilling tea requests. However, Tarte, who you play “as” for tea segments, is a full character with her own motivations and thoughts, not all of which are revealed to the player.
Kemonomimi pandemic… From what I can tell, there’s a pandemic where anyone who starts becoming a kemomimi has a limited amount of time before they either die or turn into a kemono, a beast that only has animal instincts. And this has apparently caused the death of 80% of the world population within a year? Which on one hand is terrible, but also, for a brief period of time you can have animal ears and a tail, so really how bad could it be.
I will say, though, it’s kind of peculiar that the game gives you the ability to select what items you want to get from Quiche and Scone/Jam but not only are there obvious right answers (ex. lemoncane needed in day 2, lemoncane and honeybee balm needed in day 3, pretty sure you needed berries+adept cookware for day 3, that anti-aging herb for day 4), Quiche’s options are randomized as well. My guess is that this is meant to give the game replayability? Like, fulfilling people’s orders perfectly unlocks more dialogue and might change the routes.
Also, there are ages in the character descriptions and I am just going to fully ignore them. There’s zero way Macaron is 12 years old. There’s no way Quiche is 17. I am mentally adding 5 years to everyone. Please do not have the 12 year old fully in charge of the kitchen and all the meals.
But yeah. The game is cute, has a nice artstyle and aesthetic, and has great sound design and worldbuilding. And then also throws in a heap of tragedy. I do not see this game ending in any way other than bittersweet, considering the 21 day time limit. I was a bit concerned about why there are so few NPCs, but now that I’ve completed the demo (5 days) I might know what they’re going for. Definitely keeping an eye on this.

Whisper of the House

The mouse controls are weird. I do not like having to pan with the mouse wheel held down. Hopefully the full version lets you change the controls.
Other than that, though, I really enjoyed this. It’s another Unpacking-like interior organization game, except that you’re not following the same person and instead operating a housekeeping service. You also get stuff to decorate your own house and display rooms that supposedly you’ll be able to share online. Basically it’s kinda like House Flipper but with less cleaning (so far). It plays fairly well, too - the room movement could be faster, but being able to rotate some objects in 4 directions provides a lot of versatility.
There’s also a twist in that you also gain access to time travel - you use it to go back in time and help unpack an elderly man’s belongings so the present day so he doesn’t pass away, and you prevent someone (you helped move in) from leaving her apartment (and then her friend moves in with her!) by catching the squirrelguy hoarder landlord living in a secret room. I think this is a neat mechanic with great potential.
Apparently, in a previous version, the hidden room in the first house belonged to the landlord, who hid in there to drug, forcibly dress up, and most likely sexually assault the female tenants living in the apartment - and which led to the disappearance of the girl you helped move in. They changed it into a hoarding squirrelperson for the version I played, and I agree with the change. The original goes too far for a cozy game. Like, “the person you helped move in was possibly sexually assaulted before you went back in time to stop the culprit” completely contradicts the tone. Even a content warning at *minimum* for “landlord who rents to women with the express purpose of violating them, including the woman you directly helped” would be utterly bizarre for the tone and raise people’s defenses, since cozy games often fill a purpose of escapism, and that is extremely far from being escapism. Squirrel guy is fantastical enough to break from reality and not evoke the same vibes. Still wary about future “hidden stories,” though, considering this apparently blindsided the dev.


Great

Cats in Cozy Rooms

Despite following the “X in Y” naming scheme of those hidden animal games and activating my fight-or-flight response to the flood of that genre on Steam, this is not a hidden objects game. This is an interior decorating game with a cat theme.
It’s a pretty basic and casual game, and very easy at least for the two levels given in the demo. The budget is more than generous enough to go 15 objects above the requirement. The art and aesthetic style is what really carries it - I think the art is well done and detailed, and the approach of it being cats is arbitrary but cutely done, though I think it should embrace the theme more and have more cat-focused furniture. I love me a cat tower.
The level select screen is really creative - I really like the approach of having the level screen be a set of the houses you’re designing, though it took me a moment to find where level 1 was. If they add a bit of ambient sound and more animation (like shadows of cats in completed buildings) I think it’d be even better.
The controls could be a bit more responsive, though. Wall objects should automatically turn to snap to a wall, and you should be able to rotate selected objects even if it’s not in a valid space. The ability to change colors on placed objects would also be nice. Some objects couldn’t be moved at all, but that seems to be a glitch.
Overall, cute. With some polish I think it’d be a good game, even as a very casual experience.

Einstein’s Cats

Another placement logic game but with cats. Here, your hints are listed out on the side and has things like “cats with collars like to be left of orange cats” and “Fluffy doesn’t like being down low.” There’s an additional puzzle if the game is referring to a cat by name - sometimes you don’t know for sure which one it is, and you can label the cat if you figure it out. There’s also a nice QoL feature where most relevant hints are highlighted when you pick up a cat. It helps narrow down what to keep in mind, and for when I mix up the fur coats or wonder whether something counts as a cat color. Very importantly there’s also a sticker mode where you can make little scenes.
I found this to be a little harder in both difficulty and navigation than Is This Seat Taken? - whereas that game generally could be approached one by one and has multiple solutions, there’s exactly one solution in Einstein’s Cats, and I felt like taking an overview approach and then finetuning when I inevitably mixed something up was more effective. Also, considering each cat has one spot they want, I’d like a (maybe toggleable) feature where, once every cat is in a spot, the response popup shows whether each cat’s preferences are fulfilled instead of all of them at once.
That’s not to say the game is bad or anything. I liked it, but they have distinct differences in how they play and are approached. It’s cute, though. I put this one on my wishlist, but this one I think will languish there.

Seeds of Calamity

Typically I consider the scale of farming sims/RPGs to be from Harvest Moon (no combat, relationship building) to Rune Factory (heavy combat focus, relationship building), but this game drops the relationship building altogether. I’m not sure if the dev intended the game to focus on combat, but they should, imo. It’s the strongest part of the demo, to the point where I felt the point of farming is really to fund combat runs.
Combat is like a common card battler setup - you get 7 action orbs per turn, and use orbs to cast spells. You can also unlock more spells with gold, and hopefully there’s a system for upgrading spells and orbs (considering the base water and lightning spells are essentially identical). I really liked the whole synergizing elements thing. I find it fun to puzzle out, and it works well with the dungeon setup where you progress by passing into different rooms that have different content like fights or mining spots or puzzles (kinda like Hades, and not like Stardew’s floor system). I also appreciate that healing via eating food is seemingly a free action.
In terms of farming, though, it’s as close to a Stardew Valley clone as you get except that the NPCs are there for their utility. Even donation restoration is practically identical. I do like the QoL of having all the tools be on hand at all times and not take up inventory space, though. It’s a bit disappointing that there’s seemingly no relationship metric, and that characterization comes largely from quests and daily dialogue (I appreciate that they all congregate in one spot at night to get your daily dialogue in, even if a lot of it is stock lines) but if the game’s focus is the combat then I’m okay with that.
Overall, I really like the combat and dungeon approach. It’s creative and works well from what I’ve seen. I’m interested in seeing how this one develops.


Good

Dragonkin: The Banished

26 gb demo. I have full games that are a fraction of that size. It’s not even like the endgame dungeon preview has a bunch of random dungeons, it’s literally just the one. If this is how much space a demo that should have only limited assets takes up I’m rather concerned about the size of the full game?
This is a Diablo-like top-down hack and slash, though you only have the choice of four (three currently implemented) “classes” - on the other hand, each one has a wider variety of skills, which you choose from as you set up your Ancestral Grid. Progression is measured at both the character (level, stats, gear, etc.) and the city level? The more you develop your city, the more features you can access. There’s fast travel within the city that works without fading to loading screens, which I appreciate, considering you’re teleported to the location to access merchants/services.
I quite like the approach of the tutorial - it shows off every playable hero and gives you their backstory while you fight as an overpowered version long enough for you to get a good feel for their gameplay. I definitely also appreciate that they open with the options menu and that they default to subtitles enabled, unlike a certain other Diablo-like game that doesn’t have subtitles on by default and throws a full cinematic cutscene at you…
It’s all downhill once you get to the city, though. There are three main things I was interested in knowing about the game: the Ancestral Grid system, character customization outside that system, and how characters interact in multiplayer. Character customization I did get to see (and I like that you can freely change your stats in the city), and while I would’ve liked multiplayer I understand that it’s not their focus until late early access. However, the preview for Ancestral Grid is woefully inadequate, and bad where I did get an impression. At a basic, not-just-a-demo-issue level, you can only have one grid setup and there’s no way to save layouts. Despite the system being the exact case scenario for needing to save a lot of sets. The grid consists of both your character’s skills and wyrmling skills, but there are four wyrmlings with their own sets of skills. Node passives can synergize with active skills and each other. However, only having one pre-filled grid makes it incredibly difficult to mess around. Not only that, you don’t get additional nodes to experiment with out of the gate. You get three nodes for another wyrmling element (a wyrmling has five skills), and that’s it. Ideally, I would have preferred if there was a way to save grids, and if each character had 3+ grids saved - two endgame builds and whatever the level 1 build is - to demonstrate the variety available for each hero and also give the player the ability to freely make their own build from scratch and see how the grid interacts from the ground up. At the very least I wanted more nodes without having to go through all of a dungeon for RNG.
The game itself plays ok (once I swapped to WASD movement and make the cursor large because grey-brown on brown isn’t visible). It’s about what you expect for a Diablo-like, though it needs work. I felt default attacks are too weak and mana is too limited and getting stuck in place for default attacks when hitting mobs is how you regain mana faster is really counterintuitive. Overall I see the potential and like the hero-city integration and the tutorial was great, but there were just so many roadblocks on actual gameplay, plus my concerns about the lack of saved grid sets, that I couldn’t really enjoy it.

Fellowship

Comically, even though there’s a mandatory queue to log in, you can still get rejected from the server immediately after passing the queue because the server is full. Like, what’s the point of the queue at that point.
If you took an instance-based dungeon MMORPG and left only the part of running dungeons, you’d get Fellowship. It’s a condensed version of what an instance dungeon MMO is. You have the trinity, you have PvE dungeon maps with a boss at the end, you have a bunch of trash mobs to kill along the way. The way the game phrases terms makes me feel like it’s like a hero shooter. A hero MMO? It’s… not wrong.
My biggest issue is just that it doesn’t feel fun to play. Movement feels weightless, especially when you get hit by a knockback and go absolutely flying. Your hitbox is very big, so being a caster feels sluggish and you still get hit by things because your toe is a hitbox too. The UI is very minimalistic (also the text is small). The target health box doesn’t show cast bars, so while I like that you can see interruptables above all enemies, it’s hard to tell whether you’re interrupting the right target. I’d also like scaling and transparency options like what you get in FFXIV’s similarly nearly-full UI customization. Also, I get that there are going to be gaze mechanics, but I wish there were an option to face the target automatically when using skills (the lack of auto face and the absence of “weightiness” on skills makes it really easy for me to drop attacks because I’m facing the wrong way). FFXI didn’t have auto face either and I take issue with it there too, but the perspective is much closer, skills are generally slower, and you’re typically targeting one at a time anyway. There’s a reason why auto face is a recommended setting in FFXIV.
In terms of dungeons, they’re pretty much what I’d expect. Maybe a bit less. 3 adventure maps are basically hallways with some splits in it and a couple dead ends, and a boss at the end. Wyrmheart is wide enough that even linear pathways have optional packs. Empyrean Sands breaks from the hallways in the beginning, but what replaces it is a big open field. The only “side objective” for not taking the shortest route possible Is to fulfill your kill score (I think for the leaderboard), since your only loot is the boss chest. The paths just blur together and are effectively the same. Basically, take the complaints about hallway dungeons and send it here, because this game runs into the same problem. I didn’t get a chance to go into the dungeons but those seem to be FFXIV-style dungeons with the 3 bosses.
The problems I have are a shame, too, because it has a bunch of QoL features that are probably ripped from WoW plugins really work in an MMO style game. The big chunky health bars going horizontally across the screen make tracking hp very visible (maybe too visible, would like to tone down the transparency). Combined with mouseover target heals for both the model and the health bar, it’s just easy and satisfying to soft target a heal. Both tanks and all (available) DPS having an interrupt is also very nice, since there’s a guarantee that 3/4ths of the party have the button.
So, overall… I wish I liked this one. I wish it felt better to play. I think there’s a dearth of cooperative PvE games where, like in MOBAs and hero shooters, playing with randoms is expected at the casual level. I still think it has potential and is made by people who have an understanding of the common issues in MMORPGs, but it would need a lot of improvements to actually feel good to play.

Grimm Kitchen

Perplexingly, the game has utterly zero graphics or control options. You can’t customize the control scheme, the resolution is locked at either fullscreen or max window size (can’t tell because ctrl+enter doesn’t do anything), there’s not even an option to turn down the camera sensitivity. Unfortunately, what this means is that the game became too nauseating to play after half an hour. The mouse sensitivity is just way, way, way too high, there’s motion blur that kicks in if you dare tap your mouse, and whatever post-processing method they used is very demanding - as in, it has my GPU chugging worse than in games where I expect the high demand - and lags my game whenever it fades an object from the camera.
Which is a complete and utter shame, because otherwise the game is good. The combat is simple and generic mobs don’t pose a challenge other than as hp sponges (which is fine since they’re for gathering ingredients) but there’s a little bit of strategy with dodging boss mobs. I can’t really have a full opinion on this since I was trying my best not to move the camera. What I really enjoyed was the restaurant management. It’s a bit too much without a full staff, but once I had that for the second day it was pretty enjoyable to run around tossing flyers and serving dishes and cleaning tables. It’s hectic but fun!
So yeah, if I were to compare Grimm Kitchen to the similar Dragon Song Tavern I would prefer Grimm Kitchen, because it drops any “cozy” appearance the moment you step into the restaurant. I just wish it had actual graphics options and the camera movement wasn’t so nauseating to play.

Sorting Inc

Ah yes, a sorting game. You get five objective stages plus one endless stage to try out in the demo; four of them are about sorting color pieces, and one is sorting different sized nuts. Objects can be stacked up to 6 times (there’s no bonus but feels more efficient) and slide a bit when “thrown.”
It find it nice to clean off the desk by organizing the pieces, but that’s only present in the first four levels - the endless mode throws ~20 pieces at you and always gives you more pieces when you sort them into slots, and level 5 moves on a conveyor belt. At the very least I wish endless mode gave an option to give you that big pile of things to organize and let you refresh it manually.
Also, the stacking mechanic could use some work. I appreciate the mechanic, but it lets you stack different objects together. You can unstack, but it uses a queue structure - last in is last out when you click to undo. Good luck with that, especially if you have the misfortune to accidentally grab the wrong object at the end of the stack and have to click to separate the entire stack just to get it out. Combine that with the sliding toss mechanic and the close proximity of objects, and it just becomes a needless frustration.
Generally the game just seems simple and mindless enough to be unremarkable? It’s not that it isn’t well made - because it is decently put together and mostly works as intended (pieces sometimes teleport if they hit the wrong sorting slot) - it’s just so insignificant in my mind that I can’t even call it great. It feels like the best use case is as a destressor where I don’t have to think at all.

Urban Jungle

Apparently I played an older version of the demo for about 10 minutes back in the June Next Fest. The essence of the gameplay remains the same - you select plants from a randomized selection, then place them while fulfilling their ideal preferences to progress. It’s a neat little puzzle to figure out where and how to place them to maximize the scores, though imo it feels like in a realistic scenario you would not want to be clustering plants in random places like I was doing. There are also additional side objectives, like effectively unpacking the protagonist’s belongings in stage 3 and generally cleaning and organizing things. I liked the part where I organized stuff more than the plants, oops…
The game also unlocks a “Creative Mode” once you finish each stage, where you can fully decorate the rooms with seemingly no limits on furniture (you can use anything from completed stages). This feature I think is really neat.
All in all, I think this one is… decent? It’s definitely also evoking Unpacking vibes with the whole decorating part and the stages with story background, but also has its own twists with the plants and side objectives and more focus on organization of existing furniture/props, and especially the Creative Mode. It’s definitely more unique than the multitude of clones directly ripping off Unpacking. Unfortunately I have zero interest in its main gameplay and the main gameplay is how I’d get to the part I like, so it’s kind of a hard sell.


Meh

Animal Spa

What I learned is that this is way too much activity on the bottom of my screen even at the smallest size and it’s genuinely too distracting. There are things I need to do when I’m on the computer and my eyes would rather look at the little critters chilling in the bath, and I think I can’t do desktop idlers at all.
Which is a shame, because I think it’s otherwise cute. It’s a chill “management” game without any stress about actually managing or failing to satisfy customer’s needs. Just decorate your spa however you like. My poor singular staff member struggles to keep up, rip.

Dark Land Chronicle: The Fallen Elf

Obligatory smut game, I guess. I’m always on the search for smutty RPGs that have some substance to the RPG side.
Honestly, this one feels more like a proof of concept than anything. I like the concept well enough as an isometric RPG, but there was just the one mandatory combat encounter (if you don’t want to go murdering nonaggressive NPCs). Also, despite it being a porn game, I only encountered two sex scenes, though there are other erotic or suggestive scenes and a set of explicit diary entries. Also, because of the extremely limited resources you have, I think ultimately right now you can only ever just softlock yourself if you’re not careful.
The scenes that do appear are all based on noncon, though, and there is ample amounts of implied monsterfucking, so I guess I’m interested in that sense at least. I guess I’ll follow its development in hopes that it gets some more substantial content, but I feel it’s going to take a long while.

Dragon Song Tavern: Cozy Adventures

I swear there’s a game extremely similar to this one where you go out and collect ingredients to run a cafe and there’s a baby dragon and the title is Dragon Cafe or something.
The part of the game I played was pretty much what I’d expect from a “store management life sim” - you plant crops, fish, and buy ingredients to make ingredients for your dishes, then manage your tavern by ferrying dishes to them. You can research and experiment with making new dishes with a hint system, which was neat, but I got stuck trying to figure out what it wanted by a “affordable fish with flaky flesh” when the fish descriptions don’t discuss texture. The shops (and game description) suggest you will also go out and explore areas, and that there is combat, but I didn’t reach that point.
And the main reason why I didn’t see any exploration is because of the controls. They feel… floaty? The character moves slowly, interacting with NPCs during tavern management is difficult (the angle you need to hit is far too narrow), and the way planting movement snaps to the grid is a bit too strict. It doesn’t help that interiors feel too big as well - the shops are massive rooms where you only talk to the shopkeeper. Your tavern Is massive too, but at least that can be explained as having room for more furniture/food options.
Also, the way they do buildings and props in the overworld is to have them as 2D images imposed in a 3D world. It’s a neat stylistic choice, but there’s absolutely no give to the sprites, so certain camera angles make objects look distorted as you walk by them. I’m not sure if there’s an easy perspective solution to this, but it is unfortunate.
Overall, rather disappointed. It looks nice, but plays poorly, and as another one of the overt “cozy” games I’m also not particularly enthused about the pacing of the game. There are a lot of them in this genre and this one just doesn’t stand out.
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Feb. 15th, 2025 07:23 pm

Game Impressions: Monster Souls - Chains of Chimera (v0.3.5)

Monster Souls: Chains of Chimera (version 0.3.5)

Began: 2/13/2025
Completed: 2/15/2025
Playtime (0.3.5 - Chapter 3 complete): 5 hours, not including reloads for alternative scenes
Demo played via itch.io. There's a Steam page but the demo isn't uploaded there.
This game is really close to my ideal of a porn game. Entirely M/M, minimal on the furry (particularly the “bara furry visual novel” style, which isn’t my thing) but comparatively heavy on the monsterfucking, and extremely enthusiastic about the noncon. Not only does it encourage you to lose to the transformation monster at least once, it's actually expected that you do so because it unlocks new classes for the protagonist earlier than the end of the chapter. There's just not a lot of variety-M/M-noncon porn games out there and I’m glad something as good as this one exists.
The art style and designs are also really great. The background art is incredibly pretty. The protagonist's armor is revealing but not overly so? The bottom is kind of a garter belt setup and his ass is entirely exposed, but his top is mostly covered. Several characters point this out. I just think the design is hot, and the way everyone sexualizes him is really hot too. Ash also has revealing cutouts in his outfit but people don’t really point that out. But I appreciate him.
And on top of all that, it's a decent RPG with a great art style. The UI could use some more work but the fundamentals of combat design are there. There are also several fights you are intended to lose for the sake of progression, and while it’s used a bit too much in Chapter 3, that one's also still a work in progress and the nature of the game kinda necessitates “completing” the chapter before circling back and filling out content and polishing things up.
If I could list out things I want more of, it would be 1) a romance system with the party members, 2) more (repeatable) sex scenes with party members/Caspian/others, 3) more characterization surrounding Lyric, 4) more polish surrounding some of the later sex scenes, and 5) maybe more loss/surrender scenes for some monsters so you have a reason to lose to them again. Most of these I think are coming anyway. My particular gripe is just with 3 - Lyric doesn’t get much interaction with the hero or Ash, and there's very little dialogue from him in general, so his dynamic especially falls flat when he’s available for a scene at the end of Chapter 2 (he just came off as overly pushy when we hardly know anything about him or his character). Also, if possible I think it’d be neat if the chimera forms unlocked new sex scenes with characters that leaned on the monster aspects, but that’s something for later down the line and I’d rather the dev prioritize a basic romancing system first.
In general, I just really enjoyed the experience and look forward to seeing more updates. The dev is doing some great work here.
Also there are catboys and the catboys go nya. 10/10.
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Feb. 13th, 2025 02:28 am

Game Impressions: Frog Detective 1; A Short Hike; Yu Crossing Animals

Frog Detective 1: The Haunted Island

Began: 2/7/2025
Completed: 2/7/2025
Playtime (100%): 0.5 hours
Bought as part of Humble Bundle’s Australia wildfires bundle back in 2020, and in usual fashion it sat in my library unplayed for years. Played through Steam.
A silly game about a frog detective who solves the mystery behind some mysterious noises heard around an island. Despite what the name of the game and the protagonist would have you think, there wasn’t a particularly notable amount of detective work going on. It’s mostly fetch quests and wandering the island looking for a couple easter eggs and things that distort funny under the magnifying glass. The magnifying glass isn’t even technically required to beat the game and was mostly me amusing myself. I definitely felt out of the “ideal” age range for the game considering the lack of complexity in the gameplay and text.
Aside from that, the presentation was good. The models and lighting hit a good spot between being simple without feeling low quality, the animations felt like they had care put in them (they rigged multiple dances), the textures were silly and had plenty of visual jokes. The music was really great! And there was a point where the dev popped into the game to give an Educational Warning Fact Checking The Validity Of A Character’s Opinion, which I found amusing.
Overall, nothing particularly outstanding or life changing but it was a decent use of half an hour.

A Short Hike

Began: 2/7/2025
Completed: 2/8/2025
Playtime (16 feathers): 1.8 hours
Received for free via Epic Games Store; I also have a copy from the itch.io BLM megabundle back in 2020. Played through Epic Games to track playtime.
I really enjoyed this! It’s a cute little game about taking a hike up a mountain, and there’s also about a dozen side objectives you can do as well. The movement feels intuitive and enjoyable, and by the end I was flapping around on 16 feathers and the silver feather and just that was a lot of fun. The dialogue and character interactions are also well written - they’re pretty short and to-the-point overall, but still have plenty of personality. I enjoyed seeing some characters make repeat appearances.
The music was also great! The track that plays when you take the updraft from the very top was especially nice, but in general I thought the soundtrack really fit the atmosphere and just naturally flowed into each other.
My only complaints are that playing on mouse and keyboard (really just keyboard) was kind of painful. You only have the 8 directional keys and that works fine overall, but it definitely would have been better with full directional movement. Also, the camera was also finicky to deal with - it changes perspective automatically, but doesn’t seem to be fully consistent about when/where it shifted. This didn’t make it unplayable, but it did detract a bit from the experience.
Overall, the game definitely didn’t overstay its welcome - I scoured the map pretty comprehensively and that still took less than two hours. I also looked up the (in-bounds) speedrun and the 100% feathers speedruns and those were 2 and 10 minutes respectively, so yeah, it can be a really short hike if you wanted. I’m not really someone who replays singleplayer games, but this is the kind of game I’d be willing to return to at some point - it’s short and uncomplicated, nice to look at and listen to, and apparently the dev even added a skip-through-dialogue option so you can go directly back into exploring.

Yu Crossing Animals

Began: 2/12/2025
Completed: 2/12/2025
Playtime (100%): 1.4 hours
Free porn game on Steam. There are 7 sex scenes (plus the “sprint” buttplug, home masturbation art, and a couple bonus sketches). The sex is entirely F/F (several characters have cocks) and largely focused on masturbation and anal; there is one scene with vaginal penetration (it’s also reused in the minigame) though it’s effectively masturbation on a mechanical dildo. A couple scenes involve worm-like things and oviposition, but otherwise the kinks aren’t particularly out of the ordinary.
Fairly short overall, but pretty good. I liked the artstyle a lot. There are a couple spots that obviously feel like there could have been additional scenes, and the town itself feels a bit too empty, but the game is free so I won’t complain much about it ending so abruptly (though it really does).
The 100% is pretty easy with one caveat - one of the achievements is to *have* 10,000 gold at once. You need more than that to finish the game, but it’s split into multiple purchases that you can make as soon as you have the money. Don’t do that. Get the achievement first or else you’ll have to grind out the only minigame like 10 more times. It took me 20 days to hit the 100%, but that was because I spent all my money and had to start from scratch; without that, I completed it in closer to 12.

Currently working through a couple longer games, one of which I’m basically two fights away from completing but I’ve been putting it off because I wiped on the first of them due to a silly reason. Unfortunately I hear Against the Storm calling my name and that will suck me into a completely different type of gameplay completion metric (playing until I get bored of it and shelve it).
Also, I should circle around and put down my thoughts on FFXIV 7.1 at some point. I enjoyed it and I enjoyed the base expansion, but I need a touchstone to look back on in retrospect.
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Jan. 9th, 2025 02:53 pm

Game Impressions: Venba; Doors - Paradox

Something I want to do this year is 1) play more games instead of just the one MMO, and 2) write up my thoughts on them. Not necessarily reviews, but more my impressions. Partially because writing this down will help me remember these games, but mostly because I also want to write more this year and this helps me pad out my word count lol.

Venba

Began: 1/1/2025
Completed: 1/1/2025
Playtime (to base completion): 1.5 hours
Purchased on Steam via Humble Choice December 2024
A short narrative game about a immigrant family from India who settled in Canada. The general advertising and the demo focused more on the cooking, but the main focus is really the story. Across the 7 chapters, five I’d call “true” cooking puzzles, one is really a plating sequence, and one chapter doesn’t have cooking at all. I do appreciate that they added recipes and music tracks in a later patch - both because yeah, that food looks tasty, and because the content you get felt a bit sparse otherwise. I wish we actually cooked the plating sequence, since that was half a dozen dishes and we did none of the prep work.
In terms of story, I particularly enjoyed Kavin/Kevin’s perspective. The whole “rejection -> guilt -> reexploration” narrative is just something that feels really personal. This kind of cultural struggle, alienation, and rejection tends to get overlooked when portraying experiences of diaspora, and the game even alludes to that, with Kavin’s coworker wanting fully positive and accepted cultural diversity in the scene they were working on. And I mean, it’s really nice that there’s even enough people to provide those sorts of positive representations, and enough conscientiousness for that to be desired at all. And if I had to choose one kind of representation, of course I’d choose the positive version. But this sort of complicated, messy relationship with identity, and having to grapple with that in a society that has become more accepting than how I was as a child, resonated a lot with me.
Also, the way the game handled Tamil in both perspectives was also really neat! With Venba’s perspective, you had different colored text when they spoke in Tamil vs. English, and there were also “splotched” text boxes from Kavin when he used more complicated English words. And with Kavin’s perspective, I really, really appreciated how the cookbook appears in Tamil and Kavin has to translate it line by line and makes mistakes along the way. I liked that we revisited Venba’s restored cookbook at all. It was just a really sweet moment to see her work, and for Kavin to continue it too.
The ability to scroll through the text messages in a couple sequences was also something I appreciate from a game design perspective. This kind of flavor texts with ambient narratives is something unique to video games and other interactive mediums, and would’ve been omitted or heavily truncated in other mediums simply because it would take up precious space.
Overall, I enjoyed it! I wish there were more gameplay aspects, but the story (and art, and music) were great. Probably not going for 100% achievements, since getting the remaining achievements involves going through the chapters again and there’s no way to skip directly to the food portion.

Doors - Paradox

Began: 1/7/2025
Completed: 1/9/2025
Playtime (100%): 5.7 hours
Received for free via Epic Games Store
An escape room puzzle game. The game consists of three chapters, with about 40 levels total. Each level has two gems (blue and red) plus a story note, and if you collect all the gems of each particular color in a chapter you unlock an extra level.
I did not particularly love the puzzles. They range from incredibly easy to frustratingly glitchy to things that weren’t even intended to be puzzles but are just obtuse because of the way the game works. Thankfully, there is a free “skip puzzle” button, and admittedly I did use it a couple times. A couple puzzles that I otherwise knew how to solve were too glitchy to complete; one of them straight up did not respond. I almost used the button for a physics-based puzzle but then the physics glitched out and let me solve it. I don’t know how you’re intended to solve that one.
Frankly, a lot of the difficulty just came from how the game functions at a base, non-puzzle level. There’s a lot of spinning things and trying to figure out what camera angle you need to be in and where you need to drag an item for the game to accept it. And sometimes this becomes a puzzle on its own. For instance, in Chapter 1 Door 8, the “solution” to the three valves “puzzle” was actually “just keep turning it until you completely move the rods.” The rods moved so little that I was trying to find a particular configuration the valves were supposed to be in. Oops.
There were a couple interesting bits, though. The one puzzle that had you fitting in pieces with colored circles on them to match an image was different (and reminded me of another puzzle game). The puzzles that have you panning around an image to find clues were neat. The targeting mechanics for the extra levels in Chapter 2 was neat. And I generally just really liked any level that utilized the background in any way (this was mostly Chapter 3). And the art design itself was pretty interesting.
The story is present, I guess. It takes the form of notes you find in each level, and each note is only a sentence long statement from a cat guide. The first chapter was basically telling the life story of a character but I did not vibe with the severity of the tone. The tone of the second was also too severe. Chapter 3 was fine though for being far sparser and more conceptual. Honestly, the devs could’ve just omitted the story and imo it would have improved the experience, especially when they advertise it as a “relaxing” game.
Overall… fine. I was generous and gave it a 6/10, but I could’ve gone lower (and maybe should have). It does not make me willing to play the sequel. In fact, the whole reason why I played this game now was because the sequel is in the January Humble Choice and I wanted to see if it would justify continuing my subscription (the only other game I was interested in there was Against the Storm, and a friend was willing to gift that one to me). I canceled my sub.

I have my eyes on a number of different games I want to play next. For the time being I’m more interested in knocking out some shorter games to establish a bit more consistency in my game time, but this means more narrative and puzzle games. This is an excuse to play that Nekopara catboy game.
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Jun. 19th, 2024 10:56 am

Steam Next Fest June 2024

It's been a few days since the end of Next Fest, but I needed some time to get through the last of the demos I already downloaded. I haven't run into any issues with demo access, though. I remember the days when Next Fest ended and suddenly my library was full of useless files...

I wasn't looking for any particular genre this time. I guess I wandered around the RPG, puzzle, and casual spaces for things that caught my interest and wasn't too heavy on my computer. Overall I managed to play 14 games, including a couple that technically aren't Next Fest demos for one reason or another (and excluding one that I just couldn't understand). Six of the games I'd call great and definitely keeping an eye on, five that were good and may or may not be something I'll follow, and three that I'll just give a pass. I'd say that's a pretty good selection here.

( My thoughts on each game: )

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Sep. 7th, 2020 02:46 am

Ode to Natter: The platform adopted by the roleplayer

It is the year 2015, the month November.

Twitter is getting on its legs in mainstream social media, but Tumblr is still by far the most prominent social media platform for fandom. If you need a casual chatting service, you probably use Skype, because Discord barely exists at this point.

Homestuck still has yet to end and is fact in yet another hiatus, the Omegapause. Toby Fox has released an obscure little indie title named Undertale, sparking the sudden skyrocketing of a massive fandom even larger than the monolith that was Homestuck fandom, and which heralds a new association of the term Megalovania with the funny skeleton man and not Vriska Serket.

The scene of fandom drama was in the middle of its transformation into the one we see now, but still wasn't nearly as pervasive.

This post is not about Homestuck, or Undertale, or fandom drama, or Vriska Serket. This post is about a now-twice-defunct social media platform named Natter.

------

( Read more... )

Group edit of natter's Persona roleplayers

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Sep. 6th, 2020 11:56 pm

Introduction

Hello.

I am Mysterytoast, also known as Toast or Rein. I tend to respond to any other variation of my username as well. Pronouns are they/them. I'm located on the east coast of the United States.

As it turns out I've actually had this Dreamwidth account since 2018, but never posted with it. I use this platform already for AO3 gift exchange letters, but that one is organized under my AO3 persona, which is as separated from this persona as I could manage. Plus, I want this one to be more personal.

In short, I'm becoming active with this account because I am in desperate need of a platform that supports writing on a personal level. I’ve been desperate for one since Tumblr’s 1) change in content policy and 2) development and acceptance of a type of fandom culture I strongly oppose. I've been waiting for a replacement social media site since then. The supplemental sites for Twitter don’t appeal to my desires, because I like Tumblr's organizational tags and ability to easily see older posts.

I will still, of course, be active on Twitter and whatever other social media platform ultimately replaces Tumblr. Dreamwidth is merely the newest addition to the endless array of social media that constitutes my online presence.

This journal will not be overwhelmingly fandom-based. What I need is a space to publish longform, relatively informal writings in a non-professional setting, because I do have thoughts outside of what I do for a living that also isn't fiction and don't want to let them pile up in private eternally.

When I'm not focused on work or academia, I still like to write fiction, which is even more evident if you can find my AO3, and I also draw on occasion. I play Dungeons & Dragons (5e) on a pretty casual basis. I like to read about mythology (esp. Greek/Roman), folklore, and transitional periods of history. I like JRPGs, colony sims, hack-and-slash, point-and-click, and puzzle games, and I'm an avid appreciator and wanderer of MMORPGs, though my main one nowadays is FFXIV with a lot of others on the side (GW2, Maplestory, Mabinogi, FFXI, Eden Eternal, POE II, just to name a few). My taste in tv shows, anime, and manga swing from extremely dark fantasy to iyashikei, but I always appreciate depictions of food - examples include Delicious in Dungeon, Dorohedoro, Made in Abyss, and Hannibal. Learning about the small background details of a world and how it was constructed, both in and out of universe, is something I am always fascinated by and I always like lore and artbooks.

Opinions warning:
I follow the Three+1 Laws of Fandom, and the extended guidelines for fiction (Depiction does not equal endorsement, Fantasy is not reality), and am an advocate for comprehensive tagging and other curation systems, as well as the discretion to respect such boundaries. See the Fanlore wiki page for more detail on the Three Laws (+Tag Your Shit). The more you disagree with these opinions, the less worth you'll find from this journal.

You have been warned. But if you want to continue reading, welcome.

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