Unoriginal and Uncreative【Game Log: Post-August 2025】
An uneventful period with nothing of note.
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
I continued a bit on Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken. It's still an enjoyable game, and the blend of turn-based combat encounters and point-and-click puzzle solving is surprisingly elegant. There's enough character depth and interesting narrative to make it work too. What's less appealing is that "failed" dreams are replayed as if they never happened even if they had extensive plot development and long screeds of slow text, which is about as appealing as replaying any point-and-click adventure for the gameplay.
Openfront is a free browser-based Multiplayer strategy game. It's pretty simple, your blob of land grows spawns troops and expends a certain percentage (of your choice) when you click to attack an area, and if your troops exceed the oppositions you slowly take over the land. There's city building, dock building, nukes, etc. But that is the gist of the gameplay. What makes it work is the pace (a game is generally over in minutes), the player count (between 30 and 100 players per game), and the variety of maps and scenarios (free-for-all, small teams, large teams, etc.) There's not much to it, but there's enough there to return to it for a game regularly.
Mortal Sin is a fun first-person action game with both melee and gunplay. It has interesting environments and the varied enemies react to it, each other, and their various injuries. Weirdly though, the correct way to play seems to be to ignore these things and instead engage in the morally correct gaming moves of comboing at a wall vaguely near enemies, or executing a well-timed parry well before the enemies actual attack. Still fun. Ultimately too much grinding is needed to succeed.
Neyyah is an adventure game where you navigated pre-rendered hypercards akin to Myst, featuring Bryce 3D terrain and 3D guys wandering around you telling you to take a "jalood". It absolutely nails the aesthetic of a CD-ROM multimedia game from the 90s. The puzzles and interface though are somehow even more obtuse and clumsy than Myst was. Playing Neyyah is much closer to operating a DVD menu. If I were in the right mood I would enjoy this a lot more.
Kill The Brickman is a breakout clone where you fire bullets with assorted qualities at the bricks. Perfectly adequate at a surface level, it has a metaprogression grind that rapidly makes the game uninterestingly easy. It balances this by making you commit to an obscenenly long minimum play session (at least 40 minutes) to be able to save any progress.
A Symmetric Escape is a fantastic first person puzzle game. You navigate a small dungeon type area in first person, and solve "Colour in the area" type puzzles that gate progress in a manner akin to The Witness. The clues for the puzzles generally indicate a type of symmetry, thus the name. Almost perfectly sized at around 2 hours, with almost zero dud puzzles. Though I would call it slightly too short to make full use of some of the variations it introduces.
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
Corpus Edax is a first person stealth or fighting or shooting game of some sort. It's high in physics-engine qualities. Clumsy as it should be, but untintuitively so due to the controls entering certain "modes" with no notice.
From Glory to Goo is a rapid single player RTS. Seems fun and intuitive. There are three competing tutorials that each block each other at the start. Has a no-manual save mode that only supports autosave, but does not autosave on exit.
Beyond Sunset stylish GZDoom game with a sword. Invert y-axis option is hidden for some reason.
August Game of the Month
Deep Sleep - Labyrinth of the Forsaken
It's very inventive and really the only game I played a lot of (fully within August) that I enjoyed.
All Games Played
Automobilista 2: GREAT
Dwarf Fortress: GREAT
Deep Sleep - Labyrinth of the Forsaken: GREAT (Notable)
Openfront: Good
Mortal Sin: Good
Neyyah: Good
Kill the Brickman: OK
A Symmetric Escape: GREAT
Corpus Edax: Good
From Glory to Goo: OK
Beyond Sunset: OK
An uneventful period with nothing of note.
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
I continued a bit on Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken. It's still an enjoyable game, and the blend of turn-based combat encounters and point-and-click puzzle solving is surprisingly elegant. There's enough character depth and interesting narrative to make it work too. What's less appealing is that "failed" dreams are replayed as if they never happened even if they had extensive plot development and long screeds of slow text, which is about as appealing as replaying any point-and-click adventure for the gameplay.
Openfront is a free browser-based Multiplayer strategy game. It's pretty simple, your blob of land grows spawns troops and expends a certain percentage (of your choice) when you click to attack an area, and if your troops exceed the oppositions you slowly take over the land. There's city building, dock building, nukes, etc. But that is the gist of the gameplay. What makes it work is the pace (a game is generally over in minutes), the player count (between 30 and 100 players per game), and the variety of maps and scenarios (free-for-all, small teams, large teams, etc.) There's not much to it, but there's enough there to return to it for a game regularly.
Mortal Sin is a fun first-person action game with both melee and gunplay. It has interesting environments and the varied enemies react to it, each other, and their various injuries. Weirdly though, the correct way to play seems to be to ignore these things and instead engage in the morally correct gaming moves of comboing at a wall vaguely near enemies, or executing a well-timed parry well before the enemies actual attack. Still fun. Ultimately too much grinding is needed to succeed.
Neyyah is an adventure game where you navigated pre-rendered hypercards akin to Myst, featuring Bryce 3D terrain and 3D guys wandering around you telling you to take a "jalood". It absolutely nails the aesthetic of a CD-ROM multimedia game from the 90s. The puzzles and interface though are somehow even more obtuse and clumsy than Myst was. Playing Neyyah is much closer to operating a DVD menu. If I were in the right mood I would enjoy this a lot more.
Kill The Brickman is a breakout clone where you fire bullets with assorted qualities at the bricks. Perfectly adequate at a surface level, it has a metaprogression grind that rapidly makes the game uninterestingly easy. It balances this by making you commit to an obscenenly long minimum play session (at least 40 minutes) to be able to save any progress.
A Symmetric Escape is a fantastic first person puzzle game. You navigate a small dungeon type area in first person, and solve "Colour in the area" type puzzles that gate progress in a manner akin to The Witness. The clues for the puzzles generally indicate a type of symmetry, thus the name. Almost perfectly sized at around 2 hours, with almost zero dud puzzles. Though I would call it slightly too short to make full use of some of the variations it introduces.
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
Corpus Edax is a first person stealth or fighting or shooting game of some sort. It's high in physics-engine qualities. Clumsy as it should be, but untintuitively so due to the controls entering certain "modes" with no notice.
From Glory to Goo is a rapid single player RTS. Seems fun and intuitive. There are three competing tutorials that each block each other at the start. Has a no-manual save mode that only supports autosave, but does not autosave on exit.
Beyond Sunset stylish GZDoom game with a sword. Invert y-axis option is hidden for some reason.
August Game of the Month
Deep Sleep - Labyrinth of the Forsaken
It's very inventive and really the only game I played a lot of (fully within August) that I enjoyed.
All Games Played
Automobilista 2: GREAT
Dwarf Fortress: GREAT
Deep Sleep - Labyrinth of the Forsaken: GREAT (Notable)
Openfront: Good
Mortal Sin: Good
Neyyah: Good
Kill the Brickman: OK
A Symmetric Escape: GREAT
Corpus Edax: Good
From Glory to Goo: OK
Beyond Sunset: OK
pecet 🦒🇪🇺
Robyn
Absolutegamer Magazine
Rock Paper Shotgun
