i went back to the beginning on this again!

got a free game and the VN itch bundle (i know, i know, no more games) and also reorganized the list a little bit to remove sequels and DLC that i'm not going to play until i get to the first game, so now i'll be able to click right through the list

so i went back to the top with half an hour of aer memories of old:

it was pretty and vaguely soothing, the flying took me a bit to get the hang of but once i got it i had fun. none of the puzzles seemed particularly new or interesting but i really appreciated that the "fly through these hoops and a door opens" puzzle wasn't timed. love the story-through-exploration thing but the number of floating islands actually made the world feel a bit empty - i kept landing on islands and realizing there was nothing there besides a few rocks and maybe a tree. if you're between this and "a short hike" i would say go with a short hike but free is a great price and i had fun with the bit of it that i played

#gameing

ok gotta be honest i only gave BDSM Boys side story about 2 minutes and i regret it

i'm not familiar with the original webcomic, and also it's 1pm and i'm sober, but the writing was terrible, i wasn't into the art style or the look of the guys, and the sex scene (which started a minute and a half in at best) came with this awful old-school porno music that made the bad writing even worse somehow

i'm not opposed to sexy games, BDSM, or necessarily even yaoi/slashfic but absolutely nothing about this game appealed to me. it was in the same bundle as ladykiller in a bind, which i loved, so i figured i'd give it a shot but....nah

#gameing

crest an indirect god game:

i really liked this one! played an hour of it. it felt a bit like reus but you can't directly affect the world - you put out commandments and your followers choose whether to follow them, decide how they feel about them, and sometimes misinterpret them. you can also hop down to the underworld to talk to your dead followers and see what went wrong and how you could have tried to save them. it's a neat premise and there were some funny moments

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cromwell:

it was ok i guess. i honestly thought it was a precursor to reigns and was gonna say that i'm glad reigns ended up adding more depth and becoming less linear, but then i found out it wasn't the same people at all and was actually sort of a knockoff educational kind of deal. i liked the custom character designer but i'm not sure how or when that shows up in the actual game - i didn't see my custom character at all but i only put 20 minutes in

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darksiders:

finally made it back around to where i was on the list before the giant bundle purchases!

i actually kind of really appreciated the fact that darksiders just drops you right in the middle of the shooty stabby part. right off the bat, you know what kind of game it is! not that i don't love a long backstory cutscene but sometimes it's kind of nice to get mechanics first and ask questions later

that said i wasn't super interested in the snippets of story i saw. the stabby stabby was fun, combat felt good. will probably have to remap a lot of the key bindings though if i go back to this one. looks like the different items and abilities have the potential to get really interesting and fun

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deadlight, director's cut:

honestly almost didn't even install this one because i'm so bored with zombies, but it's actually kind of a neat concept. i like the platformer/puzzle vibe a lot more than the typical zombie survival thing

that said, i'm so bored with zombie. put in 23 minutes and probably won't go back to it any time soon unless i'm really feeling it

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death squared:

really cute puzzle game with blocks that is definitely supposed to be co op

i put in 20 minutes controlling both boxes and the puzzles were still a lot of fun! but i definitely think it would be a lot funnier and more chaotic with another person. unfortunately i have exactly one person to play couch co op with in this pandemic world, and he's busy today, so i'll have to shelve this one for another time

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deathtrap dungeon:

holy shit this game is old. like, pixelated bikini armor old. it probably had some neat and possibly innovative concepts for its time, but i found it really hard to navigate even after remapping basically every single control key. i managed to push a few levers and open a couple doors, but it's incredibly clunky. probably won't come back to this one.

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desert child:

this was an absolutely delightful surprise of a game! i'm not very good at racing games and not usually into them, but the racing in this one is sort of beside the point. i built up enough money on earth in the 28 minutes i played to make it to mars and explore a bit and there's a LOT to do, lots of ways to upgrade, stats to keep track of, it's an incredibly detailed world for a pixel racing game. the soundtrack fit really well, the art was fantastic, nothing but good things to say, really. i don't think i'm good enough or versed enough in racing games to say if it's a good racing game or not, but it didn't punish me overly harshly for fucking up and i enjoyed it a lot. probably gonna come back to this because i really feel like i just scratched the surface - i found a seedy bar with a whole range of options that i haven't even touched on yet, for example.

#gameing

dream hard:

literally had no idea this was a robert yang game until the end! it was a cute little beat 'em up where you punch fascists with the help of pop stars to the sound of "big booty bitches." in the end, once you've defeated the CEO with the help of madonna, it gives you a nice little message of hope and transitions into a dance club scene to "i'll make a man out of you" from mulan. doesn't have a ton of replay value (only took me 14 minutes, and every time you die you get resurrected "in solidarity" anyway) but it made me smile

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driftland the magic revival:

this game seems really cool and it's kind of a shame i tried it out at 1:30 am after several drinks, but such is the alphabetical lottery. i just got through the tutorial (with a few tab-outs) but the focus on exploration was a nice draw. UI looked great and mostly intuitive, with some exceptions (the right-click options not having a spot on the menu was a little odd to me, but they're all location-dependent so it kind of makes sense). no idea how resources balance in a real game but i like the idea of shifting between magic and physical resources. there's a campaign mode, which i definitely intend to explore at some point - i doubt i'll ever have the apm to care much about the multiplayer, if it even has a multiplayer scene still

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dubwars:

ok this game is really fun and i'm incredibly bad at it

it's basically geometry wars, except you don't control the weapons. your ship shoots out various lasers along to the music and you just have to dodge around and try to aim them appropriately. huge potential for sensory overload (electronic music, flashing lights, lots of movement) but i can see this occupying basically the same space for geometry wars for me, which is "game i'm awful at that i keep going back to for some reason"

#gameing

dungeon siege:

it's another really old game, but this time it's shockingly playable. i can see a lot of modern RPG concepts in it. the story seemed fairly cliche, although it may have been more interesting in its time (but i kind of doubt it - so far it's simple farmer's friend dies and farmer has to go save the world from evil fantasy race). spells, combat, inventory etc seemed intuitive. a really cool thing is that you can move around in the expanded map mode which was really helpful for me, a person who gets lost every five seconds. i don't know if i'll play through the entire game, but i can tell the people who made some of my favorite games have played this one

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ellipsis:

another beautiful puzzle game that doesn't tell you anything about how to play. like, i get it, the mechanics are part of the puzzle i guess. the problem is it's just not that interesting. you dodge around obstacles that kill you in order to collect star pieces. i honestly probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if it hadn't been alphabetically so close to dubwars, which i just found a lot more interesting.

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errant kingdom:

this is a VN that seems really well-written and, at least so far, has a lot of depth and ~intrigue~ which i love. according to the description some of the LIs are also poly which is also super cool. it seems like the three character choices also have a lot of variety - i went with the nomad to start because i'm a huge sucker for rogues. can choose he/she/they pronouns for your character, and there are a couple nonbinary characters in the game. also demons and fae and a disgraced knight and political turmoil and yeah i'm definitely coming back to this one #gameing

oops i've been doing this without the recaps

anyway eselmir and the five kingdoms:

i don't know if i didn't give it long enough of if it's just not that deep but the point and click aspects really didn't go anywhere for me - my next moves were always very obvious which isn't really what i want out of a point&click. there's a depth to the lore but i wasn't really drawn by the story either

#gameing

ethereal:

it's again, a very pretty puzzle game. i'm really not 100% sure what the rules are though, even after playing through multiple levels. you're a little arrow navigating around a big color-coded maze, but the rules of where you can go and when never really clicked for me so i was just sort of pressing arrow keys hoping things worked out. the color matching and getting through the portals was all well and good but i didn't feel like i had a grasp on the navigation at all

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fahrenheit - indigo prophecy

look i saw this game billed as "psychological horror" but i didn't realize that meant "terrifying videogame version of david cage tries to discuss your mental health"

anyway the story seems pretty overwrought but the split screen effects are actually kind of cool

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far cry 3 - blood dragon:

it's fine. shoot things to jaunty music. then shoot things stealthily. so far all i've really done is shoot robots but that seems to be most of the game from what i can tell. chain kills are fun i guess

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fatal fury special:

only put a couple minutes in and realized i absolutely need a controller for this lmao. old-school fighting game. maybe if i get through this unplayed list i'll start a separate run through of all the arcade games i have - for now i'm gonna shuffle it off to that list because i don't feel like setting my controller up

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first job:

a very short VN where you're an incubus trying to have sex with people. there's really not much here - you go visit someone, say either "hey let's hang out" or "hey let's have sex" and then make your way through a short badly-written scene and receive a CG either with or without genitals (i opted for without). only put in a few minutes and that was enough to get me through all the routes. tbh i'm not sure why i even went through all the routes but here we are. honestly you can probably skip this one on the itch bundle list

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the first tree:

this game is pretty and being a fox is neat. i was really into it at first, but unfortunately the map is just so huge and empty and the narration is so sporadic that you realize pretty quickly that the story is just a guy getting free therapy from his girlfriend about his mildly shitty childhood. i'll probably finish it - apparently it's short, and the puzzle-y aspects are fun enough even if it takes a full minute of holding W in silence to get between them

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flora's fruit farm:

i suspect this is actually a children's game but idc it was very nice and i gave people large sparkly fruits and it made them happy so there

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flux:

little pixel art typing/rhythm game. i'm awful at rhythm games but good at typing so it was nice to have different modes. there's enough dialogue and characters to make it not feel empty, but i'm not sure how in-depth the plot goes - what i played didn't have much story to it, but maybe it expands as you go. the game seems pretty forgiving as well, to the point where i sometimes wasn't totally clear on whether i was doing things right or not

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fool's fortune:

very short tarot-based narrative game. you draw three random number cards for stats, then draw from an oracle deck for encounters. you have 2 options to deal with each encounter, and they can affect your stats. it was a pretty neat idea and i had fun with it, although the encounters seem somewhat limited - i think i ran through it 3 or 4 times in the 20 min i played and it was starting to get repetitive

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football drama:

i love this! it's half dialogue-based/actions-have-consequences narrative game and half soccer sim. i thought the games went a bit long, especially considering you really only have 2-3 things you can do per "turn" but i love the concept. as the coach you train players, play games, interact with your manager, the press, and other characters

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football manager: yeah it was as good as i thought it was going to be

i love love love the scouting database that's essentially why i play this game it's so much fun

anyway if you love spreadsheets or being a huge soccer nerd, yeah, it's very good

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FRAMED: this was very cute! a visual narrative game where you run from the cops by putting comic panels in order. i had a lot of fun with it. noir aesthetic, fun soundtrack, fun art style

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gabriel knight: sins of the fathers:

a sierra point & click, i'm deeply suspicious of its storyline revolving around "voodoo murders" in new orleans but the mechanics were kind of fun (choose how you want to interact with an object from a list of icons rather than just clicking on everything once) and when i looked it up after putting in 20min i found out the voice cast is STACKED which is....honestly, kind of weird. tim curry, mark hamill, leah remini, michael dorn....like what

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went a little out of order but

GALAK-Z:

this game was really really fun! i saw the title screen and honestly just assumed it was from the late 80s/early 90s and was incredibly impressed with how polished the gameplay was, but it turned out to be from 2013. they nailed that arcade-style aesthetic though!

it's a space arcade shooter with an overlying plot, rebel vs empire kind of thing as far as i could tell. i've made contact with the base, rescued an ally, retrieved some currency, shot some imperial drones. solid 25 minutes of entertainment, and i'd be happy to play it again sometime

#gameing

Ganbare! Super Strikers:

this is a really cute soccer simulator! i was worried the games were going to be too long but they were actually pretty quick. the moveset is very simple and i haven't seen a way to set tactics/starting formations (at least not yet) but your players have individual stats that level up and the story seems cute so far. also i was able to give the striker (me) teal hair (like me). i actually put a solid 50 minutes into this one before leaving for dinner

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GalCiv III:

only put in 20 minutes because 1 i'm pretty sure i've played this actually? on a different pc platform i guess and 2 brad wardell can get absolutely fucked

as far as i can tell there's no reason not to play stellaris instead. i (if i'm remembering right) enjoyed this game a lot when i played it before, but brad wardell can get absolutely, unquestionably, completely and totally fucked

as a final note, fuck brad wardell

#gameing

garden match:

it's pretty! i didn't see much to set it apart from any of the other countless matching games out there, but y'know. it's soothing and free so that counts for something

#gameing

gataela:

a cute little RPG where you're a steampunk kid who runs a food bank. i haven't gotten much into the story at all but it seems neat

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goetia:

spooky point & click. great atmosphere, fun puzzles but not overly punishing so far, already made a pact with a demon so things are going great. solid halloween vibes

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golf peaks:

honestly i wasn't looking forward to it because i hate golf but it's basically just a puzzle game with golf imagery

i was irrationally annoyed that you pull the arrow *towards* the direction you want to go instead of back from it because like, golf?

but it was fun. not infuriatingly challenging but after 20 min i was definitely starting to hit some trickier puzzles

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GoNNER:

this one honestly just did not land for me. i'm not great at platformers and i was annoyed from the beginning about the game's refusal to tell me how to do anything - yeah, it said to play with a controller but you'd think since it had the keyboard option and cute little graphics highlighting a meaningless fake key they could at least say which key to press when?

the platforming itself seemed fine, i had a big gun and a double-jump and a wall climb and a whale friend. personally i wouldn't choose it over ori or they bleed pixels or whatever else

#gameing

GRIS:

slightly out of order because i have a thing coming up soon and i didn't want to dive into GTAV just yet

anyway GRIS suffered from the same issue of not just *telling me what to press* like i get that a lot of these indies come out on consoles/are usually played with a controller but come ON

but i figured it out and had fun with it. the art style is gorgeous and the music is really nice

#gameing