first time i made that yogurt drink i fucked up and used cups instead of tablespoons for the sugar somehow. disgusting af, made it again with the right amount and it was good.

jokes aside it's actually a good cookbook, you can probably find most of the stuff online but it's still worth checking out, just wish it had more recipes

7/10

I'm not fully sold on this one... Don't get me wrong, I think Fatum Betula absolutely nails the atmosphere its going for. The premise is utterly bizarre in a good way, the individual set pieces in the game are generally good and some are great (I'm a big fan of the kaleidoscopic 'Nightmare Cherry Blossom' area). The music and visuals are both pretty damn solid and, despite the absurdist and dreamlike nature of the game, the puzzles don't rely on too much moon logic to be solved.

But Fatum Betula really isn't much more than the sum of its parts. The game in general lacks coherence, and most things in the game feel like they are just there because the dev wanted to make them rather than for any greater purpose. The only real universal thread in this game is a theme of existentialism, but the game really doesn't have a whole lot of interest to say on this theme and comes across as a little obvious and shallow.

Also, a minor complaint, but why are the loading times as long as they are? This game looks like it's optimised to run on a baked potato, so why is there a 5-10 second loading screen whenever I move from one small area to another? This doesn't sound like a lot, but a couple of the secrets in the game are based around objects which have a random chance to spawn, and constantly reloading areas to try and force these ends up being deeply painful. To be honest, I think having randomly spawning entities in a game like this is a massive misstep, but the coupld of instances of it here are late enough into the endgame to not have much effect on most of my playtime.

I dunno, maybe I just don't get it (see also How Fish is Made), but overall Fatum Betula felt too random and tonally disjointed for me to really get into this like I did with, say, Yume Nikki. I certainly didn't dislike this or anything, and I'd say it was worth it just for the unsettling vibes and trippy visuals alone. But despite that, the lack of depth here means I probably won't remember this one for too long.

What have we done wrong as a community to always expect a reward for everything we do? 



Listen, I've read lots of people complaining about how pointless this game is and how it doesn't really do anything for you to keep playing. You plant seeds in order to grow Pikmin, then feed them. Those Pikmin will leave a trail of flowers behind you when you go for a walk. That's it.



But Pikmin Bloom is not a game about taking advantage of pikmins or about making your walks more exciting. Pikmin Bloom's sole purpose is to fill the world with flowers. Together, as a community. Whether you want to participate or not is up to you. If that's not one of the most beautiful things to ever happen in videogame history then I don't know what is.