Evan HahnMy notes from May 2025 include a list of tech jobs for good, more problems with LLMs, and a sick C++ burn. https://evanhahn.com/notes-from-may-2025/
#tech #programming #jobs #LLM #AI #CPlusPlus #MazeMice #Zelda
Unoriginal and Uncreative【Game Log: Mid May 2025】
A low energy period with nothing specifically wrong with me. This is the chronic illness life.
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
I finished off the last of Promise Mascot Agency. The ending was pretty satisfying for the type of game it is. There are some token post-credits missions that are better than nothing, but barely worth sticking around for. Overall it's excellent though.
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III is a Strange Scaffold game that poses as a half-finished sequel to a fictional game series... with match three combat/puzzles. The premise is that you eventually hit an unfinished dead end and then collaborate with an NPC to do some debugging from within. The dialogue is the real star here, and genuinely hilarious. I found trying to discern the actual aim of the game to be more frustrating than it should have been.
I played Crusader Kings III game on whim, as a nudist Byzantine empire. I thought I should get more out of retaking the Vatican. Like all CK3 runs, it was 90% "This game is still great, why did I stop playing", and then 10% "oh right".
ZeroRanger is the shmup debut of System Erasure, makers of the incredible Void Stranger. It's super stylish, with a limited palette. And has a really neat hidden narrative, though it isn't as byzantine as Void Stranger was. It controls and plays really well too, though it doesn't give amazing feedback when you take damage. I expect to play more of this and I'm enjoying it a lot.
Salad Fields is another in the expanding field of "weird sokoban". The game is a series of small connected worlds with sokoban-like puzzles, interspersed with interactions full of weird queer NPCs with strange proclivities and vegetable obsessions. I'm not sure where the game is going but I'm enjoying it a lot. Starts of a lot harder than most block-pushing puzzlers, but that's probably a good thing.
Siralim Unlimited is a monster-collecting not-pokemon game. It's much more like a regular JRPG where your party is monsters than others in the genre. The game also seems more focused on synergies between passive effects, than just monsters having different magical attacks. I've played about 2.5 hours, not sure if I'll completely dive into it, but it is quite good.
Metal Garden is a 2-3 hour long first-person shooter set inside some sort of giant megastructure. The combat is pretty bland, but not completely throwaway. The story isn't groundbreaking, but is compelling enough to keep going. However the real star is the immaculate mood of the setting, all sparse plains and highway settings and brutalist architecture layered atop itself. The artstyle is really effective for something so minimal.
The Flayed Man is a very short point-and-click adventure game, where you play a skinless man in some sort of purgatory. It has two very annoying puzzles and then enters a metaphysical personality test stage that I didn't really enjoy. It's "Taking big swings" and doesn't really connect, but maybe worth checking out.
Make Ten Deluxe is a pico8 puzzle game. An expanded version of Make Ten, where you have a grid of numbers, and the goal is to drag a rectangle around a set that adds up to 10. This version adds a lot of different variants (such as spelling the word TEN out of letters). It's a pretty decent game, but it's not tremendously deep, nor frictionless enough for mindless obsession.
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
I tried to fire up Europa Universalis IV again and forgot how I ever managed to play it in the first place.
Sub-Verge seemed neat but somehow had myriad input issues for a text game.
The Bookwalker is a rad concept where a struggling author (in 3D space) has to enter books (2d space) to bring the artifacts within back to the real world. I liked what I played, but I got a sore wrist from constantly holding in left-trigger while navigating with left-stick. There's also no deadzone on the right stick in 3D space, which is very disorienting.
Neon Abyss is a dual-joystick platform shooter in the roguelike-adjacent non-roguelike space. My immediate reactions were "it's kinda fun" and "I'm not going to play as much as this game expects me to for anything interesting to happen."
Peripeteia is weird Polish Deus Ex, where you play some sort of anime girl robot thing. Makes no sense. I looked at a computer in a bar and everyone started shooting me. Perfect.
In Maze Mice you play a mouse in a maze, eating power pellets and waking up cats one by one, who chase you in a line like Pacman Championship Edition DX. You also power up regularly and emit assorted automatic attacks like Vampire Survivors, and time only moves when you do like Superhot. Kind of neat, but didn't grab me.
All Games Played
Cosmic Collapse: Good
Caves of Qud: GREAT
Promise Mascot Agency: GREAT (Notable)
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III: Good
Crusader Kings III: Good
ZeroRanger: GREAT
Salad Fields: Good
Siralim Unlimited: Good
Metal Garden: GREAT (Notable)
The Flayed Man: OK
Make Ten Deluxe: Good
Europa Universalis IV: OK
Sub-Verge: UNPLAYABLE
The Bookwalker: Good
Neon Abyss: OK
Peripeteia: OK
Maze Mice: Good
A low energy period with nothing specifically wrong with me. This is the chronic illness life.
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
I finished off the last of Promise Mascot Agency. The ending was pretty satisfying for the type of game it is. There are some token post-credits missions that are better than nothing, but barely worth sticking around for. Overall it's excellent though.
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III is a Strange Scaffold game that poses as a half-finished sequel to a fictional game series... with match three combat/puzzles. The premise is that you eventually hit an unfinished dead end and then collaborate with an NPC to do some debugging from within. The dialogue is the real star here, and genuinely hilarious. I found trying to discern the actual aim of the game to be more frustrating than it should have been.
I played Crusader Kings III game on whim, as a nudist Byzantine empire. I thought I should get more out of retaking the Vatican. Like all CK3 runs, it was 90% "This game is still great, why did I stop playing", and then 10% "oh right".
ZeroRanger is the shmup debut of System Erasure, makers of the incredible Void Stranger. It's super stylish, with a limited palette. And has a really neat hidden narrative, though it isn't as byzantine as Void Stranger was. It controls and plays really well too, though it doesn't give amazing feedback when you take damage. I expect to play more of this and I'm enjoying it a lot.
Salad Fields is another in the expanding field of "weird sokoban". The game is a series of small connected worlds with sokoban-like puzzles, interspersed with interactions full of weird queer NPCs with strange proclivities and vegetable obsessions. I'm not sure where the game is going but I'm enjoying it a lot. Starts of a lot harder than most block-pushing puzzlers, but that's probably a good thing.
Siralim Unlimited is a monster-collecting not-pokemon game. It's much more like a regular JRPG where your party is monsters than others in the genre. The game also seems more focused on synergies between passive effects, than just monsters having different magical attacks. I've played about 2.5 hours, not sure if I'll completely dive into it, but it is quite good.
Metal Garden is a 2-3 hour long first-person shooter set inside some sort of giant megastructure. The combat is pretty bland, but not completely throwaway. The story isn't groundbreaking, but is compelling enough to keep going. However the real star is the immaculate mood of the setting, all sparse plains and highway settings and brutalist architecture layered atop itself. The artstyle is really effective for something so minimal.
The Flayed Man is a very short point-and-click adventure game, where you play a skinless man in some sort of purgatory. It has two very annoying puzzles and then enters a metaphysical personality test stage that I didn't really enjoy. It's "Taking big swings" and doesn't really connect, but maybe worth checking out.
Make Ten Deluxe is a pico8 puzzle game. An expanded version of Make Ten, where you have a grid of numbers, and the goal is to drag a rectangle around a set that adds up to 10. This version adds a lot of different variants (such as spelling the word TEN out of letters). It's a pretty decent game, but it's not tremendously deep, nor frictionless enough for mindless obsession.
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
I tried to fire up Europa Universalis IV again and forgot how I ever managed to play it in the first place.
Sub-Verge seemed neat but somehow had myriad input issues for a text game.
The Bookwalker is a rad concept where a struggling author (in 3D space) has to enter books (2d space) to bring the artifacts within back to the real world. I liked what I played, but I got a sore wrist from constantly holding in left-trigger while navigating with left-stick. There's also no deadzone on the right stick in 3D space, which is very disorienting.
Neon Abyss is a dual-joystick platform shooter in the roguelike-adjacent non-roguelike space. My immediate reactions were "it's kinda fun" and "I'm not going to play as much as this game expects me to for anything interesting to happen."
Peripeteia is weird Polish Deus Ex, where you play some sort of anime girl robot thing. Makes no sense. I looked at a computer in a bar and everyone started shooting me. Perfect.
In Maze Mice you play a mouse in a maze, eating power pellets and waking up cats one by one, who chase you in a line like Pacman Championship Edition DX. You also power up regularly and emit assorted automatic attacks like Vampire Survivors, and time only moves when you do like Superhot. Kind of neat, but didn't grab me.
All Games Played
Cosmic Collapse: Good
Caves of Qud: GREAT
Promise Mascot Agency: GREAT (Notable)
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion III: Good
Crusader Kings III: Good
ZeroRanger: GREAT
Salad Fields: Good
Siralim Unlimited: Good
Metal Garden: GREAT (Notable)
The Flayed Man: OK
Make Ten Deluxe: Good
Europa Universalis IV: OK
Sub-Verge: UNPLAYABLE
The Bookwalker: Good
Neon Abyss: OK
Peripeteia: OK
Maze Mice: Good
Gamernews.it#mazemice #14maggio Topi, labirinti, bullet hell e roguelike... chi più ne ha più ne metta! Seguiteci nella recensione di Maze Mice per PC https://www.gamernews.it/articoli/recensioni/recensione-maze-mice-pc.php
#mazemice Al via l'Early Access di Maze Mice Pronti a giocare il titolo di TrampolineTales? https://www.gamernews.it/notizie/2025/05/08/al-via-l-early-access-di-maze-mice-19727.php
MagiWasTaken#MazeMice, the new game by the Luck be a Landlord developer just headed into Early Access and I'm already losing too many hours to it. Here's my review!
Liam @ GamingOnLinuxPac-Man meets a time-stopping survivor-like bullet heaven in Maze Mice out in Early Access
#MazeMice #IndieGames #Linux #SteamDeck #PCGaming
Pac-Man meets a time-stopping ...
Pac-Man meets a time-stopping ...
Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮Pac-Man meets a time-stopping survivor-like bullet heaven in Maze Mice out in Early Access https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/05/pac-man-meets-a-time-stopping-survivor-like-bullet-heaven-in-maze-mice-out-in-early-access/
Pac-Man meets a time-stopping survivor-like bullet heaven in Maze Mice out in Early Access
Maze Mice is the latest game from the developer of the popular Luck be a Landlord, and while many developers continue making their own form of Vampire Survivor-like, this is probably the most unique so far that truly mixes things up as it feels a lot more like Pac-Man.
Jake in the desertReleasing this week: Maze Mice is a bullet heaven arcade-style roguelite coming to Steam on May 2 (it works great on Linux, that's where I tested the Steam demo) and hopefully it'll eventually come to other consoles too. This one's fun as hell, easy to pick up, figure out, and go. It's kinda like reverse Pac-Man mixed with Vampire Survivors. Wild. Addictive. Just a blast. 🐁🐀
Steam link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3385370/Maze_Mice/?curator_clanid=4218320
#IndieGames #BulletHeaven #MazeMice #roguelite #roguelites #Steam #SteamGames #LinuxGames #SteamDeck #arcade
Luck be a Landlord dev's bullet heaven roguelite Maze Mice arrives May 2
#MazeMice #IndieGame #Gaming #Linux #SteamDeck
Luck be a Landlord dev's bulle...
Luck be a Landlord dev's bulle...
Luck be a Landlord dev's bullet heaven roguelite Maze Mice arrives May 2 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/04/luck-be-a-landlord-devs-bullet-heaven-roguelite-maze-mice-arrives-may-2/
