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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
GTAV:
well it's....a lot.
i put in about an hour, honestly idk if i'll play more than that. there's a lot to do obviously, it's a dense map, but while i will always love GTAIV for the personal nostalgia factor, at the end of the day i really feel like the GTA franchise is just a worse yakuza game
The Guild 2: Renaissance:
looks really chill and fun honestly. i played about 45 minutes and got through all the tutorials - the idea is to start a family, start businesses, run for political office, and become the greatest dynasty in your city. everything seemed fairly straightforward but there are enough options to make it interesting
Guild of Dungeoneering:
it's cute! mechanics are fun! it seems really neat
except
i can't figure out what the point is? you're both setting up the dungeon and fighting your way through it, so i guess you're just trying to fight as much as possible and also survive? idk playing both ends sort of put things at odds for me. it's a game i'll have to think about more. i'd play it again though
gunpoint:
this one was a lot of fun!! a very self-aware stealth puzzle game with some really interesting mechanics. put a half hour in but will definitely come back to it
i'm at H!
Hacknet:
how to be a script kiddie: the game i guess? idk as a non-tech-person, personally 90% of my time in the terminal has been spent installing linux so that's mainly what it reminded me of (the other 10% was getting my old-ass macbook to do what i wanted it to while the GUI was lagging all to hell)
it was interesting though, and it's always fun to remember kind of how the internet works
Hand of Fate 2:
not sure if i'm just in a good mood or if i'm hitting bangers tonight but i had a lot of fun with this one as well
it's a card-based dungeon crawler with the tarot fool's journey as the overarching campaign. various events are shuffled up and placed on your path, and you deal with them by rolling dice, choosing lucky cards, or (if you choose to fight) a quick and relatively easy combat sequence. seems like a fair amount of replay value here and the concept and aesthetic is great
Heaven Will Be Mine:
i honestly have no idea what's happening but i'm into it
so far i stole a ship and also lowkey became the ship i think somehow? i just had sex with an enemy pilot and frequently exasperate my intel frenemy with my antics. i'm playing as Saturn to start. fun choice-driven narrative game
High Hell:
...eh. not my favorite style. i honestly tabbed out quickly to check if it was supposed to be a VR game.
it's sort of a puzzle-y shooter but it's really just "kick down the door and start blasting" and i only played 4 missions but the maps haven't had enough complexity yet to be interesting (although it seems like they're going in that direction)
HitchHiker First Ride:
i played this game for 23 minutes, just past the story about the traveler at the gate, and god it felt like it dragged on for hours
there was minimal interaction with the world, which i wouldn't mind if the story had been more interesting but it was full of the kind of dialogue that comes off super deep until you think about it and realize it's actually totally meaningless
probably won't come back to this one, not sure how much longer it would have been anyway
Hitman Go:
i had never played a hitman! but i have heard a bit about the series so i was surprised to load this up and find a puzzle game. i had a lot of fun with it though. the mechanics are pretty simple so far but the additional objectives meant i played each level through a couple times and was an interesting mix of challenges
Hive Time:
this was in the itch bundle and it's really cute! definitely recommend it. you run a beehive and collect resources and turn them into wax and honey. i played for about half an hour and got attacked by wasps among other adventures. the toughest thing for me was the population sliders - the bees have such a short lifespan that i really had to pay attention when my specialists died
HIVESWAP:
this was fun, a lowkey puzzle game. you live in a hoarder house with an absent father and your conspiracy-theory-obsessed brother and monsters come to eat you. the two of you are separated but have walkie talkies so you have to move through the house finding equipment and looking for a safe defensive position. that's about as far as i got, so far i have tap shoes, ballet shoes, and a flashlight so we'll see how that goes for me
Hollow Knight:
people talked this one up a lot, and i can see why, but wow i am so bad at platformers ugh
it's gorgeous, there's a cool feel to the world, the enemies are definitely each unique and interesting. i have no idea where i'm going or what i'm doing though, and i keep stumbling into bosses while i'm trying to backtrack. the lack of a map might be the point for some people (or maybe one shows up later on hopefully) but it wasn't working for me. gameplay was fantastic though
Hyper Light Drifter:
this was really cool! the settings menu was *before* the intro which i'm finding is so rare in games but so, so appreciated and it makes games more accessible so good job to them for that. there's no dialogue, the whole story is told in sounds and images and it has a very cool look. it's an isometric adventure/exploration/hack&slash kind of game in some kind of post-apocalyptic vaporwave setting. i'm definitely enjoying it so far
i'm on the (very short section) I's!
I, Hope:
this was from the itch bundle. it's....not exactly subtle. the islands are being ravaged by a monster called Cancer and you're a protagonist named Hope that has to fight the monster and heal the inhabitants. the combat is kind of clunky and the game is incredibly simple and forgiving, but apparently it was designed for kids to play in hospitals so that's pretty cool. i think it would be fun for its (definitely much younger) age demographic but i probably won't come back to it
Icewind Dale:
i actually played about 2.5hrs of this yesterday and forgot to post about it. i can see why it's a classic, i'm having a lot of fun with it. it's fairly punishing at the start, like reminding me to equip...anything before going to fight baby's first tavern quest would have been nice, but once i shifted my brain to that old-school RPG mindset it was a lot of fun. probably gonna keep playing it, might switch to story mode since i modeled all the party members after my friends and will feel terrible if/when they die
Into The Breach:
dang i knew this was from the same people as FTL but it is so unforgiving lol. i died a lot but i'm having a lot of fun actually. i'm still kind of having to learn the rules as i go, but the games (so far, because i'm bad) are short enough and easy enough to jump into a new one that i don't mind
because i can never decide how i want to run this (completely arbitrary and self-inflicted) challenge, i have once again found myself at the beginning after deciding that there were too many "The" games and sorting them alphabetically without the article
so we're back to the A's but luckily there are only a handful of games to get through before we make it back to I
anyway with that we're back to
The Adventure Pals:
this was clearly made for small children and is therefore finally a platform designed on my level! i still managed to die once when the concept of spikes were introduced but in my defense i didn't expect them. it's really fun honestly, you collect pals and stickers and cupcakes and rubies as you try to help your mom rescue your dad from some evil guy in a flying car that wants to turn your dad into a hot dog "for some reason." not the most depth i've ever seen to a game but the gameplay is pretty smooth and there are a lot of fun collectibles
The Alto Collection:
this was a really soothing snowboarding set where you collect llamas and coins and do cool tricks and avoid hitting rocks. i wasn't very good at it but zen mode was really chill. i almost wish it were less chill, like i'd love to have an in-between mode where you can collect things but still get back up when you crash, but overall this was a great zen game
The Bard's Tale (1985):
this was really fun! an early ttrpg-inspired RPG where you have a party of adventurers who fight and cast spells etc etc. it doesn't stray too far from its d&d roots and seems kind of straightforward and basic until you remember it's 35 years old. it's extremely playable and the few characters i've talked to so far have been interesting.
The Crew:
it's a racing game! i am *terrible* at racing games!
the tutorial/first race took me almost half an hour, there were lots of cutscenes but also i'm bad at game. it seemed okay as far as racing games go, there was a cohesive storyline which was unexpected and the game was kind enough that i managed to win on my third try. the map is an absolute travesty though - the UP is just labeled "michigan forests" which i guess isn't that far off but then the lower peninsula is basically 80% covered with a street map of detroit
idk if you like racing games this sure is one! i probably won't come back to it
The Fall of Lazarus:
trippy exploration game in space with a rogue AI. i played through the prequel? intro? it was a separate option on the main menu idk. it took about 27 minutes and was fairly interesting. i'll probably give the rest of the game a shot sometime
The Gardens Between:
a nice chill little puzzle game where you can move time back and forth. definitely enjoyed it
The Haunted Island: A Frog Detective Game:
omfg i love this game!!! it's very short, i ended up playing 45 minutes and finishing the whole thing, but it's hilarious. you're a frog detective that gets sent off on a case to investigate a ghost on an island where the sloth king had hired useless ghost scientists who could not find the ghost. definitely recommend if you want something quick and light and fun
ISLANDS: Non-Places:
this was pitched as an "interactive artscape" and i did enjoy the animation but i could not for the life of me figure out why it was interactive beyond just the 3D camera view. the point & click aspect added nothing to the experience for me and there didn't seem to be any particular point to it. it wasn't a puzzle, it wasn't a statement, it was just there because that's what makes it a videogame i guess. i'd definitely check out the artist's animation work but i probably would not go for another game/interactive experience by them
i'm baaack, with
Jotun: Valhalla Edition:
i've been looking forward to this one for a while! i went through and finished the first area. combat was good enough to not be irritating, and i love the mythology and the story here and the maps are beautiful. there's not a lot of depth to the gameplay yet but it seems like that sort of unlocks over time - the only power i have so far is healing
Just Cause:
i somehow have 4 of these games despite never buying or playing one so i figured i'd just go from the beginning and try out the first one. it definitely feels dated but a lot of the GTA-esque open world instincts served me well still so clearly this is a game that other games have taken pages from
lots of driving, lots of shooting. i put in about 40 minutes and got through the intro and two missions. the game seems fairly open, with me getting totally lost both times and still managing to find the right checkpoint eventually
Kabounce:
god i wish this game had a discernible scene! it seems really fun, especially seems like it would be fun in a live arcade setting, but i couldn't find a game so i ended up just playing against bots after the tutorial. basically you are a pinball, except you have some sense of control/direction and you're trying to hit the bumpers and gain points for your team. gave me a bit of a rocket league vibe in some ways. had a good time, would play again
The King's Bird:
i was really looking forward to this one and it was beautiful! the music/sound effects were incredible and i loved the visuals. but almost at the 20 minute mark i hit a spot i just could not get past and it was incredibly frustrating. i don't know if it was because i was on kbm or terrible at platformers or both but i had planned to dig into this game for a while and i really just could not get past this one point
if i ever manage it though it's a beautiful game and i would love to be able to play more of it! maybe i will plug in a controller if i come back to this one
Kingsway:
i had no idea what this was going into it and i'm still not sure i understand but i'm so into it
it's like a windows xp-esque interface with a fun little dungeon-crawler-ish fantasy game. you'll get pop-ups about monsters, your travel time shows as a progress bar, etc. your items and character are in separate folders and you can drag things between them. it was really fun! would definitely come back to this one
Knights of Pen and Paper 2:
i'm cheating, i haven't put in 20 minutes of this game but i'm going to!
i played the first knights of pen and paper on mobile and i had 2 from a bundle somewhere along the way. i started it up and honestly, a few minutes in i just realized it's better as a mobile game. i'm about ready to start winding down anyway so i'm gonna spend the dollar or whatever it is and pick this up on mobile instead. i really enjoyed the first one so i def don't grudge them the coins and i just think it'll be a better fit that way
HMMMM NOPE
apparently they went for microtransactions for this one on mobile so noooooooope
i got all comfy in bed so i guess i'll play dating sims and come back around to this one on pc. too bad, it was a good mobile game but i'm not watching ads/grinding daily to get this content, let me pay for it in a lump sum or fuck off
ok Knights of Pen and Paper 2 part 2:
since the mobile version is apparently just a microtransaction wasteland now i figured i'd go ahead and play the version i already have on pc
i'm sad it's not available in its full form on mobile because i played the first game on mobile and it was a great fit! the game on pc is still fun though, and it seems like the second game has a lot more items and character options which is great. definitely a chill little tongue-in-cheek way to pass the time
Knights of the Card Table:
this was fun, it's a deckbuilder roguelike sort of thing except you choose which order the cards appear in and try to build streaks. seemed a little basic at first but it got more interesting the farther i got into it
The Land of Glass:
this game looks gorgeous, really interesting visual design, seems to have the start of an interesting story, but i could not for the life of me figure out the combat
it's a deckbuilder with a real-time aspect where you try to defend, break through the enemy defenses, and also try to knock each other off the board. it seems interesting enough but there are so many elements to keep track of and the pace left me kind of just throwing cards out without really thinking about them
The Last Blade:
i'd never played this one before but it was really fun! i dropped the difficulty down by one (and honestly the AI didn't seem that tough to begin with) because i couldn't be bothered plugging in my fight stick. it had some interesting moves, the character designs didn't seem particularly distinct but it definitely had a fun vibe and made me miss arcades
Legacy of Kain: Defiance:
this seems like a sequel based on the backstory/intro but i'm not sure. from what i could gather i am a big scary vampire but i spent most of my time running into walls because the camera controls are atrocious. i think this is probably another game i should have plugged a controller in for? everything is done via the keyboard and it just seems like a bad port maybe
the game itself seems fun enough, did some hacking and slashing and blood-sucking. i think i have some of the sequels so i might jump to a more modern iteration at some point
Lego The Hobbit:
honestly amazed this was my only unplayed lego game that i own! it was, yknow, fine. probably a big part of why it was the only one is that i just don't tend to buy the lego games because they're. fine. the music was deeply soothing to me in a way that suggests i really need to build a blanket fort and marathon lord of the rings soon, but other than that it was pretty much what you'd expect from a lego game - hit things, collect bricks, go through rough outline of relevant pop culture storyline
Lost Winds:
another game that i can tell isn't designed for pc! took me ages to figure out the controls, still never managed to find a full settings menu. it was a fun concept - a platformer where instead of jumping you create a gust of wind behind you to get where you want to go. in practice it just ended up being kind of tedious but i like that they tried to do something different
Love Shore:
this is a VN from the itch bundle and it looked like some options were locked suggesting maybe it was a demo, but if that was the case it was really well fleshed out for a demo so ??
anyway there was some really interesting story/worldbuilding and i enjoyed the characters i've met so far - i only played about half an hour but it's definitely compelling
Luna:
this is a gorgeous soothing puzzle game - unfortunately the first thing i noticed was the mouse being *agonizingly* slow but once i was able to change my mouse settings i really enjoyed this game
it's got a very laid-back storybook kind of feel - you're a bird who sang at the moon and then a storm came and you need to find your way home by putting constellations back together. the art style is great and the way the sound/environment interact with your movements is cool. definitely putting this one in the zen category
and that's it!!! that's all my unplayed games that begin with A - L
i'm now allowed to buy new games and have a couple i've had my eye on, so i'll probably take a break from this and come up with a new stipulation for once i finish M - R
also gonna be using this milestone to shift over to rage.love so keep an eye out for those follow requests i guess
spooky ebeth
bentosmile🍱