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Unoriginal and Uncreative【Game-Log: Mid-September 2025】
The Adelaide Crows (men) may have crashed and burned. But there are always video games. This was the month Critical Reflex went from "Can do no wrong" to "The majority of their games that I have played are not fun" within a week.
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
Alfred Hitchcock(tm) - Vertigo is a game that is neither by Alfred Hitchcock, nor much to do with the 1958 film of the same name. It is Pendulo Studios' 2021 attempt to make a psychological thriller adventure game, using the Quantic Dream style of gratuitous quick time events. The plot starts with the world's least-likable protagonist watching his family car driving off the cliff with his wife and daughter (who seemingly never existed), and his (already dead) father commit suicide. And it only gets weirder from there.
Despite the seemingly cynical branding, Alfred Hitchcock(tm) - Vertigo clearly does take a lot of inspiration from Hitchcock's work. There are approximately 4-5 twists per second, which was always just enough to keep me playing through the entire 10 or so hours. But never enough to make me completely ignore the clumsy systems and controls, and especially not the game's clumsy handling of topics well above its pay grade.
(Note: An associate of mine worked on this game.) Letters to Arralla is a low-stress game set on an Australian island inhabited by living fruit. Your job is to deliver the mail on the island, which instead of addresses uses (often cryptic) visual depictions of the intended destination. This is enough challenge in this to keep the game interesting, but never so much that the game feels difficult or stressful. There's lots of fun characters, and a lot of dark humour. A strangely large amount of hidden things for such a small island too.
Easy Delivery Co. is like one of those "I found a spooky retro game" youtube channels if it were an actual game. It is a driving game set in a freezing snow covered mountain region filled with animal people. The player drives a small kei-truck around delivering parcels from one location to another. The vibes are sufficiently eerie, and the narrative and questlines keep the game interesting. The only real let down is the conclusion of the narrative and ending, which is kind of clumsy and easy to mess up without knowing it.
Ostranauts is still fun. But I feel like the inventory update is a step backward. And there seem to be more bugs than ever.
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
In Troleu you play a tram ticket collector. Collecting tickets and kicking off disruptive passengers and fare-evaders with the power of physics. And also avoiding the ticket inspector, who hates you for some reason. Most of the game is fun, but it's also kind of broken and both my attempts to play the game with me something like me having collected the 10 fares and issued 10 tickets to 10 of the 10 passengers on the tram, which the game interpreted as meaning there were more than 0 unticketed passengers.
No I'm Not a Human does not offer an inverted y-axis option, it felt like staggering down a hall drunk as a result. I did not play any more of it.
Goblin Cleanup is a game I backed on Kickstarter a while ago. You play as a goblin maid cleaning up a (still potentially fatal) dungeon after an adventurer has travelled through. It's kind of fun, but there's not that much there yet (still in early access). Yet to play it single player would require a feat of mental endurance. Dressing up your goblin character is fun.
Eclipsium is a first-person exploration game that feels the need to explain with words that you can use the mouse to look around, but explains nothing else and no other mechanics because it seems to want to surprise you with the fact that you open the first door by "interacting" with a pair of scales, which causes your player character to cut off their tongue. I walked around in a surreal forest for a bit, then fell off a bridge and died. Could be great, could be terrible. The intended graphics are low-res and pixelised in a headache inducing way.
All Games Played
Automobilista 2: GREAT
Dwarf Fortress: GREAT
Ostranauts: GREAT
Alfred Hitchcock(tm) - Vertigo: Good
Letters to Arralla: Good
Easy Delivery Co.: GREAT (Notable)
Troleu: OK
No I'm Not a Human: UNPLAYABLE
Goblin Cleanup: OK
Eclipsium: Good
The Adelaide Crows (men) may have crashed and burned. But there are always video games. This was the month Critical Reflex went from "Can do no wrong" to "The majority of their games that I have played are not fun" within a week.
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
Alfred Hitchcock(tm) - Vertigo is a game that is neither by Alfred Hitchcock, nor much to do with the 1958 film of the same name. It is Pendulo Studios' 2021 attempt to make a psychological thriller adventure game, using the Quantic Dream style of gratuitous quick time events. The plot starts with the world's least-likable protagonist watching his family car driving off the cliff with his wife and daughter (who seemingly never existed), and his (already dead) father commit suicide. And it only gets weirder from there.
Despite the seemingly cynical branding, Alfred Hitchcock(tm) - Vertigo clearly does take a lot of inspiration from Hitchcock's work. There are approximately 4-5 twists per second, which was always just enough to keep me playing through the entire 10 or so hours. But never enough to make me completely ignore the clumsy systems and controls, and especially not the game's clumsy handling of topics well above its pay grade.
(Note: An associate of mine worked on this game.) Letters to Arralla is a low-stress game set on an Australian island inhabited by living fruit. Your job is to deliver the mail on the island, which instead of addresses uses (often cryptic) visual depictions of the intended destination. This is enough challenge in this to keep the game interesting, but never so much that the game feels difficult or stressful. There's lots of fun characters, and a lot of dark humour. A strangely large amount of hidden things for such a small island too.
Easy Delivery Co. is like one of those "I found a spooky retro game" youtube channels if it were an actual game. It is a driving game set in a freezing snow covered mountain region filled with animal people. The player drives a small kei-truck around delivering parcels from one location to another. The vibes are sufficiently eerie, and the narrative and questlines keep the game interesting. The only real let down is the conclusion of the narrative and ending, which is kind of clumsy and easy to mess up without knowing it.
Ostranauts is still fun. But I feel like the inventory update is a step backward. And there seem to be more bugs than ever.
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
In Troleu you play a tram ticket collector. Collecting tickets and kicking off disruptive passengers and fare-evaders with the power of physics. And also avoiding the ticket inspector, who hates you for some reason. Most of the game is fun, but it's also kind of broken and both my attempts to play the game with me something like me having collected the 10 fares and issued 10 tickets to 10 of the 10 passengers on the tram, which the game interpreted as meaning there were more than 0 unticketed passengers.
No I'm Not a Human does not offer an inverted y-axis option, it felt like staggering down a hall drunk as a result. I did not play any more of it.
Goblin Cleanup is a game I backed on Kickstarter a while ago. You play as a goblin maid cleaning up a (still potentially fatal) dungeon after an adventurer has travelled through. It's kind of fun, but there's not that much there yet (still in early access). Yet to play it single player would require a feat of mental endurance. Dressing up your goblin character is fun.
Eclipsium is a first-person exploration game that feels the need to explain with words that you can use the mouse to look around, but explains nothing else and no other mechanics because it seems to want to surprise you with the fact that you open the first door by "interacting" with a pair of scales, which causes your player character to cut off their tongue. I walked around in a surreal forest for a bit, then fell off a bridge and died. Could be great, could be terrible. The intended graphics are low-res and pixelised in a headache inducing way.
All Games Played
Automobilista 2: GREAT
Dwarf Fortress: GREAT
Ostranauts: GREAT
Alfred Hitchcock(tm) - Vertigo: Good
Letters to Arralla: Good
Easy Delivery Co.: GREAT (Notable)
Troleu: OK
No I'm Not a Human: UNPLAYABLE
Goblin Cleanup: OK
Eclipsium: Good
Tomas Ekeli
Allen but one of the good ones
Karsten the EUCWolf
Becky
Ann-Mi
Rock Paper Shotgun