I'm not exactly a shmup guy, but this was pretty great, and I could reach the end so I guess they did a good job into making it pretty accessible. The music is super hype.

It's cute and pretty fun to play for a few hours, but even though it has a bunch of animals to ride and different biomes, playing doesn't really feel different. As a result, runs quickly lose the excitement of discovery, and even though I don't think the game is bad, it is just really easy to lose interest.

2022

I played the demo of Tunic and even though I loved the concept I found it a little too difficult for me, delayed my playthrough until now, played on "Reduced" combat difficult and have no regrets.

The puzzles and discovery are definitely what I'm here for. I love the concept of discovering this instructions manual, which is actually very interactive with really cool touches. The little hints of the previous owner scribbled on it. Unveiling the neat hidden stuff in this world little by little, and reaching the culmination as you get the last page you are missing.

The game is full of amazing and heartfelt moments, try to play as much as possible without looking at guides, it is very worth it.

Picked this up just because I like Remnant: From the Ashes a lot, I wasn't expecting much but I left really impressed with how the foundations for the lore of the world from Remnant are all here.

I also enjoy how a lot of gameplay concepts that were improved for Remnant are already here. The unique weapons, traits, some secrets and puzzles, I can see how this game evolved into the next step.

The gameplay feels a bit clunky, felt like sometimes I was mostly bruteforcing my way through combat, and you can also see the moments thought out for VR and it can feel weird at times in a flat perspective.

I enjoyed the level design and exploration a lot, and playing it as a fan of Remnant, the insight into this piece of the past is a fun experience too.

20 Minutes Till Dawn is one of the many new Bullet Heaven games. It is more close to a twin stick shooter as you do aim and press a button to shoot, so it isn't as automatic as others in the genre. The basic loop is there, choose upgrades, find synergies (some things scale of move speed so you'll chase move speed upgrades and so on), and it feels great to see your power growing and obliterating enemies on a good run.

But as with other games in the genre, an important piece is the meta progression outside of each run and more on a global level. The game does have increasingly hard difficulties as "Darkness" levels, but most other unlockable features are based on currency, and they are mostly characters and weapons, so while there is a variety of options to go for, they are almost all available to unlock immediately, and there is not a lot of variety on upgrades during the run, which makes it feel unsurprising very early.

Also something minor but that really bothers me: if you have two options in the UI and the difference between the two is just that one is red and the other is white, I won't really know which one is selected playing on a controller. it works on mouse-over, but for controllers it really doesn't.

So in summary, it is fun to play, but meta progression feels unrewarding and I started to feel the fatigue very early, still worth it for the four to five hours I played, but I'm not inclined to sink more time.

It is really insane how many times this game can keep building up on the mystery and twists in the story every chapter. For sure one of those "the less you know going in, the better".

Just a small note though, it feels to me less of a puzzle game and more of an adventure or visual novel. A lot of the stronger points for me are the narrative and style, the puzzles are fun and there are some really creative situations but overall I feel like they are simple enough to support the story without getting the player "too stuck" for being overly complicated, which is probably the better choice for the style of game it is.

I don't play League of Legends, but I loved Moonlighter (from the same devs) and the game seemed interesting enough for me to check it out, but it really isn't grabbing me.

Nothing seems especially wrong about it, but if I had to say what exactly made me give up, it was an encounter with multiple creatures were there wasn't any opposite elements for me to engage with the main mechanic favorably for me. At that point I felt like the game wasn't trying to make it interesting for me and just putting barriers, it didn't feel fun.

2022

It's actually been a while since I played it, and I never truly "finished" it but I'm considering it as much for the time I spent with it.

I love the flower breeding aspect of Animal Crossing, and this feels very much like it, but with bees. Getting the perfect matches and stats you want can be very time consuming but it feels great when you get the results.

The menus can be a bit convoluted, and I do wish some processes were more passive/automated because I don't really care about manually extracting honey, but I can see some players might enjoy the economy management more than me, I was just in there to combine the bees though.

I enjoy games with crafting and base building so I decided to give it a try, could never get much into it. Strangely, I feel like the NPCs take me out of it a bit, I would have liked to see how the game progression played out before NPCs were added.

But overall the combat is definitely my biggest hurdle, I feel like there is some kind of server lag or something going on, damage detection feels majorly off and I can't deal with it.

2020

It is an interesting tool, and it is somewhat impressive that it can mix all these songs, but the game part is for sure missing, there is not a lot to engage with aside from enjoying weird mixes.

It's simple but quite addictive and the little fish do have some pretty beautiful and unique patterns. It is something great to leave idle as you do other stuff and check every few minutes.

For how simple it is, Vampire Survivors already has a lot of depth, but the new map does add some interesting wrinkles. Mt. Moonspell is more designed as a stage, with regions and different monster spawns for the locations, it certainly adds more and could be something to explore further in the future of this genre.

Otherwise, it is more Vampire Survivors, some cool looking characters and also fun weapons to add to the arsenal, nothing groundbreaking but still a lot of fun.

I wanted to give another MMO a try because my only frame of reference for the genre is Final Fantasy XIV, but nothing here is grabbing me all that much. I wanted to give it more time because I know sometimes the starting experience is not the best, but the combination of feeling indifferent to many systems, from combat to crafting and even my appearance, I don't think my impressions can get better enough to stick with it in any way.

My first Katamari game was Beautiful Katamari on the Xbox 360, and I had never played the originals until the remasters, and while the idea between them basically stays the same, I can't help but feel like the jump in hardware let them realize the vision of what the game was meant to be.

The idea behind Katamari is fun regardless, and the interactions between the King and the fans are hilarious, so the game is still loads of fun. There is just this feeling that even though the remasters were touched up, the realization of rolling up from the small room up to the galaxy seamlessly in later iterations does make the old ones stick out as old, even after being remastered.

Interesting way to handle the map progression, but I have conflicting feelings about some of the later parts, it is still a very good addition to Vampire Survivors.