Fyre's Completion Log

Wordplay is one of those games that I wasn’t sure I would ever complete. Though the Steam user tags call it a “casual” game, it’s got an absolutely brutal list of achievements, the requirements for which primarily come down to luck. My intention in buying it was really just to play it when I was bored at work. Also, as a big fan of Game Maker's Toolkit, I wanted to support Mark's journey as a rookie game developer. But even going in with casual intentions, I always kept the achievements in the back of my mind (I can't help myself). And with enough boredom, and some lucky runs, eventually the goal of completion went from far-off dream to reality.

The Easy Ones

The first set of achievements, which I'll lovingly call the "easy ones", I unlocked within the first month of playing. Many of these came from playing casually, achievements like "Incredible" - Spell a single word with 10 or more letters, or the achievements for completing the game on Easy, Normal, Hard, Legendary, and Marathon mode respectively. There were also a handful of achievements for engaging with the game's upgrades, like "Super Lucky" - Having 3 emerald tiles trigger in a single word, or "Hoarder" - for accumulating 20 refreshes. These took some time, but were nothing crazy.

Other achievements took longer. "Big Points" - Score 200 points with a single tile", required me to hold onto a single diamond tile until it maxed its score, then plug it into a score multiplier slot. "A to Z" - Complete the "Next Letter in the Alphabet" challenge, required not only getting lucky enough to roll the aforementioned challenge, but getting all letters A through Z to appear, in order. It took luck and a lot of refreshes, but I got it done. "Word Perfect" - Complete Ultramarathon, I only accomplished with the help of a tool developed by Steam community member Nyveon. These tasks came slowly; I only really earned one of these achievements every couple of months. But ultimately they weren't all that difficult.

The Big Ones

The final set of achievements were the real challenge. The first was "Stuffed" - Have 150 tiles or more in your letter bag. Given that you start with around 90 tiles, this requires almost doubling your bag size. Not to mention, most perks that add tiles add only 2-5 at a time, so getting to 150 is a painfully slow process. I spent months trying to get this achievement, re-rolling perks over and over to try to get lucky. I could pretty consistently get my bag up to about 130 tiles, but by that point I would inevitably exhaust my plays, and my run would reset. It was frustrating to say the least, especially knowing exactly how to accomplish my goal but not getting lucky enough to pull it off. Thankfully, in late spring rngesus finally blessed me, and I rolled two key modifiers. The first gave me extra points every time I added a tile to my letter bag - crucial to maintaining my plays. The second made it so every time I added any new tiles to the letter bag, it would add even more. While I of course knew these modifiers existed, I'd never gotten them in the same run before. With these equipped, I finally got "Stuffed." One impossible achievement down, two to go.

I next set my sights on "Mouthful" - Submit 3 words at once using + tiles. The problem was, again, running into the right perks. The plus tile was a legendary perk, and try as I might, I just couldn't seem to run into it. Not to mention, I needed two of these tiles for the achievement. It took a while, but this month I finally got the luck I needed. First came with obtaining the modifier that caused rare and legendary perks to appear more often (itself a rare perk, by the way). Next came finding the plus tile, itself a slow, grindy task. Then came the final necessary perk, an upgrade which can duplicate any tile. Then, it was just a matter of duplicating my plus tile, spelling 3 short words, and the achievement was mine. Now only one true challenge remained.

The final difficult achievement was "Beyond Incredible" - Spell a single word with 20 or more letters. This one was nigh impossible for multiple reasons. First, you only start with 16 tile slots on your board. While there are modifiers which increase your tile slots, you can only add 3 more. Second, while there are perks which combine multiple letters into one tile slot (Qu, ers, and ing), they once again require luck in rolling them. And finally, there are only so many words that are 20 letters or more. I discovered the hard way that most word-finders only go up to 15-letter-words, so even hunting down a word to aim for was a challenge. I eventually stumbled across exactly 4: counterdemonstrating, contradistinguishing, deinstitutionalizing, and reinstitutionalizing. Now came the luck part.

Run after run, I would roll for the right perks, add slots to my board, and fail to spell the above words. Grabbing wildcard tiles helped, but every time I tried I always ended up one or two letters short of what I needed. I eventually discovered perks that let me re-roll consonants and vowels as well, which brought me ever closer, but always one letter off. It was beyond frustrating, as I repeated these 4 words to myself over and over and over, burning them into my brain as I tried desperately to find the right letter combinations. Though, eventually I made a "small" discovery. Unlike the other 3 words, contradistinguishing has two sets of ing in it. Meaning, if I got two ing tiles on the board at once, I would only need 14 other tiles with the exact letters I needed. It was still a lot, but it was easier than getting 20 exactly. So I gave up on the other 3 words, and focused solely on contradistinguishing. It still took a lot of time, and a lot lot lot of luck, but finally, I got it.

Final Thoughts

With a little more cleanup for "Can't Stop Winning" - a grindy achievement that requires winning 50 games on strategic mode, I got the completion. At the moment of writing this, 3 of Wordplay's achievements are on my rarest achievement showcase: "Can't Stop Winning," "Stuffed," and "Beyond Incredible." Suffice to say, not many people are 100%ing this game. Honestly, I never thought I would be one of them. But luck and boredom were on my side, and I beat it in pretty good time.

Following my success, I even ended up making a guide for the "Beyond Incredible" achievement, detailing my method of getting it in the hopes that it could help someone else. I haven't written a guide in years (since 2019), but I figure if anyone else can benefit from my struggle, they should. Plus, that's sort of something I love about the achievement hunting community - our suffering brings us together. I never would have nabbed this completion if it wasn't for Nyveon's Wordplay tool, and maybe one day, someone will be able to say the same about my "Beyond Incredible" guide. Achievement hunting, while technically done solo, is a community effort. The early adopters figure out the complicated stuff through trial and error, then share their knowledge so those that come after might suffer a little less. Cheesy as it sounds, it's also kind of beautiful.

Intro

I know in my heart that David Cage is a shitty, problematic writer and director. His utter disinterest in writing or researching people of color, the wanton suffering he inflicts on all his female characters, and his inadequate handling of the mature themes he loves so much, prove that. And yet, he's a hell of a director, and I really do like his games. For all its flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed Detroit Become Human when I played it a few years back, and I went into Heavy Rain expecting the more outdated title to have some of the charm but all of the same issues as my previous Quantic Dream experience. And I was right, it did. But I also kinda loved it.

Heavy Rain has no notable characters of color, relishes in physical violence against its female deuteragonist Madison Page, and can barely handle its main theme of loss. Yet, I liked pretty much every character we met. Madison, though exploited, is also one of the only characters who can save Shaun and finish the final chapter all on her own. And while deaths are at times treated like jokes, in other moments the game considerately explores the grieving process and what it does to people. It's a walking contradiction that I can't help but enjoy.

I feel mostly the same way about its gameplay. At times the physicality of the PC controls helps put you in the shoes of its protagonists: spinning the mouse to pick a lock or mashing Q and E to keep your balance is a struggle that mirrors the experience of the characters in the story. At other times, it feels like the controls were chosen just to be trite and annoying. Why, for instance, do I need to hold the 3 key, D key, and then mash the E key to flip over a filing cabinet? I didn't know, and my fingers didn't appreciate it. But even so, I tolerated the gameplay enough to 100% the game, so clearly I got over it.

First Playthrough

My first playthrough of Heavy Rain was a delight. Normally doing a totally blind playthrough is a bane for completionists - after all, you're apt to miss at least some achievements that way. However, Heavy Rain requires multiple playthroughs and save states to 100% anyways, so there's no point in spoiling yourself the first time around. I played through on stream and had a blast. Not knowing what to expect made every fight exciting, and every decision painful. I ended up doing pretty well on my blind run-through: and I managed to nab "Nerd" - Find all clues using ARI, "Trial Master" - Succeeded in all of Ethan's trials, and "Saved the Kid" - Saved Shaun, with only a little bit of save scumming. When I rolled credits for the first time I got about 50% of the achievements in the game. With only 10 hours passed, I was feeling pretty good about going back for the 100%. Little did I know what a pain it would be.

The Mistake

Going back for achievement cleanup, I immediately made a major mistake. See, in order to get the "All Endings" achievement, the game needs you to have experienced every scene on one save file. That entails reaching an ending, and then reloading using the chapter select option, and saving progress. I, stupidly, thought I was supposed to start a "new game." So when I chose to start my new game in file 1, all of my previous clear data was erased. The achievements were obviously still on my steam account, but in the eyes of Heavy Rain, I was starting from scratch. Great.

Thankfully, Brachragon over on Steam made a phenomenal guide on how to 100% Heavy Rain from a fresh save, including all the most efficient places to reload. Using this walkthrough, I was able to bounce back in the most time efficient way possible. Though, it wasn't all easy.

The Achievements

Most of the achievements I missed were for doing specific, though not particularly difficult, interactions in each scene. For instance, the "Private Eye" achievement requires persuading Lauren to talk about her son using the dialogue Compassionate -> Convince -> Trick. Though I had used Convince and Compassionate on my blind playthrough, I didn't use them in that order. Other achievements were simply mutually exclusive, for instance the "Blunder" achievement for shooting Nathaniel versus the "Self Control" achievement for not shooting him. There were however, a few achievements along the way that required a bit of skill.

The first was the "Kamikaze" achievement for taking the best route during the Bear Trial. This involves doing 24 specific QTEs, which frequently involve one wrong and one right choice, without making mistakes. My first reattempt at this achievement, I misread my guide, and when a prompt that wasn't a left or right choice came up, I panicked and made a mistake. This was thankfully a quick fix, as a quit to menu put me back at the beginning of the trial. My second attempt I thought I had it, and though I missed one input near the end of the trial, since it wasn't one of the left/right option based inputs, I figured I was safe. I was wrong, which I found out too late, so I had to replay the whole chapter. Thankfully, my third attempt went flawlessly, and the achievement was mine.

The second skill-based section was the "I'm Not Scared!" achievement, for following your brother through the construction site without making mistakes. As it's a much longer, slower section than the drive for "Kamikaze", this was the one I was worried about. My first re-attempt was mostly just me trying to learn the route. I made a lot of mistakes, but quit to menu after each of them to reload right before. I figured the game wouldn't count this as perfectly performing the section, but I was just there for practice. To my surprise, after my very flawed practice run the achievement actually popped. Apparently the game didn't care that it wasn't all done in one sitting. Neat.

Normally there would be one more skill-based achievement of concern: "Invincible Scott" for not getting shot in Kramer's Villa. But I actually got this one on my blind playthrough. Chalk it up to those old Halo skills.

With the skill-based stuff out of the way, the only thing left was the grindy bits. Even with my trusty guide, I still ended up having to roll credits another 7 times. Though the endings were varied and interesting enough, I will say - if I have to replay "Chapter 51 Killer's Place" one more time, I might drown myself in rainwater.

Conclusion

Despite the grind, I really enjoyed my time playing and 100%ing Heavy Rain. Even with my major mistake, which I admit caused a rage quit, I bounced back quickly. Though the completion took 30 hours, the time truly FLEW by, and I ended up wrapping this game up in just under a week.

The Gif

Many of us have probably seen the attached gif floating around the internet. What at a glance might appear to be an Animal Crossing machinima is actually one from Rental, a free-to-play indie horror title released in 2024. If you haven't heard of it, don't feel bad, Rental itself is barely a game. The entire thing uses only the WASD controls plus space to interact, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't even have a pause screen. A blind playthrough only takes about 15 minutes, and a second run only half as much. And yet, this 15 minute experiment struck a chord with me. It's obvious I'm not alone, as the Steam community page is overflowing with artwork and community praise. But how could this free-to-play game by a no-name studio make such an impression on people, and why?

The most obvious answer is the aesthetic. It's easy to be enchanted by its adorable bunny protagonist, Umi, and the contrast between her sweet look and the apparent horror of her scenario. The attached gif going viral on twitter certainly helped, as anyone seeking to investigate its origin was led down the rabbit hole that is Rental. Plus, the intersection of the macabre and the cute (the macute?) is extremely under-explored territory. Titles like Doki Doki Literature Club and OMORI that have explored this emerging genre are regarded as groundbreaking. But mashing these two genres together does more than just make another good thing, it opens a door.

The Door

I am very very new to horror, as my anxiety prevented me from enjoying the genre for the majority of my life. But properly medicated and with lots of life experience under my belt, I've slowly begun dipping my toe into the genre. It was easier to start with horror movies; after all, if a scene scares me too much I can just cover my eyes until it's over. But horror games are different - the scenario doesn't progress until you press the buttons to make it happen. I've managed to make my way through a few more cinematic and puzzle-based titles like Until Dawn and Limbo, but when there's so many good non-horror titles to play, I hesitate to keep experimenting with these the genre. But Rental, and games like it, are the ones that encourage me to push that boundary.

I love Umi's design, and seeing her braving a clearly haunted house makes me feel like I can do it too. After all, I can't exactly relate to horror protagonists like Leon Kennedy, who literally backflips his way out of bad scenarios. But I can hold my head high and tough out a scary thing, like Umi with her candle. Plus, it's a free to play game, which means if I don't like it I can just uninstall it, no harm no foul. With this in mind, I launched Rental.

The Game

Ok so Rental is like, not that scary. Besides a few small segments where tv static fills the screen and a creature stands ominously in the distance, there's really not much "horror" going on here at all. I'd say it's more psychological or atmospheric horror than anything, where there's not so much gore and jumpscares as there is a feeling of being watched and general wrong-ness.

The game, and achievements, are also very straightforward. You search the home looking for various objects, and once gathered you use them in a ritual to banish the creature living there. About a third of the achievements are unlocked through natural progression, a third by interacting with objects and npcs, and a third for completion. As a side note, shoutout to AndresofAstora on Steam for this wonderful Rental map guide. It made the "Curious Bunny" interactable achievement, and the speedrun "Short-Term Rental" achievement a walk in the park. Anyways, with the help of guides, there was nothing too difficult about the completion of Rental. Which is kind of why I loved it.

The Gate

I'm gonna say something controversial here - we need more easy horror games. We need horror games that use bright, colorful aesthetics to lure people in. We need horror games that feature female main characters. We need more games that are macute (that genre I lowkey invented earlier). Because when I look at games like Amnesia, Silent Hill, Evil Dead, etc., with gloomy worlds, scenes littered with gore, and "strong" male protagonists, I think "wow, this genre isn't for me." But when I experience games like Rental, as short and simple as it is, I want to play more.

The vast majority of my completions are not epic tales of highs and lows like my experience with Hades 2. Most of the time, the games I aim to 100% are smaller indie titles, which I find generally more approachable for amateur completionists. After all, smaller games by their nature take less time to beat, and less time to 100%. Additionally, their label as "cozy" often means they lack particularly difficult achievements which require ] skill. A completion in games like these really just requires putting in the time. But the issue with time is that it leads, inevitably enough, to grind.

There was nothing difficult about getting 9,000 community points for the "Pillar of Community" achievement in Thrifty Business, the same way completing 13 customer stories for "Unpaid Therapist" was simply a matter of opening the store enough times. It just got a little boring.

I think Thrifty Business more than accomplishes its goal of being a cute and casual simulation game. It delivered entirely on its promises from the trailers, and had lovely music, art, and characters. As a cozy indie game, it was great.

Part 1: Doubt

My biggest enemy in rogue-like games is always myself. During the first few hours of play, when I'm inevitably losing runs over and over again, my first thought isn't "this is what's supposed to happen." My thought is "I'm terrible at the game." Somewhere in the back of my mind, I KNOW you're supposed to spend the first 10 hours or so learning the mechanics, the regions, the builds, etc. You're expected and encouraged to fail. But I always assume I'm doing something wrong, or that I'm "washed" and not the gamer that I used to be. This is the case with every rogue-like I've touched, and it was true again in Hades 2.

Thankfully, as the 2 in the title implies, this is a sequel. And back in 2021, I 100%ed the first game. So I figured, "if I did it once, I can do it again."

My first month with Hades 2 was all about failure. I died time and time again to Scylla and the Sirens, until I got fed up and fled to the surface. There, I died time and time again to Charybdis and the Yargonaut. I guess it's true to the "Fyre" in my name that ocean-themed bosses always give me a run for my money.

During this phase, my morale was pretty low. With a month gone and only a handful of achievements earned, I was hardcore doubting myself. But like Artemis says, when you miss, you take another shot. When you fail a run, you try again. So I tried and tried. I slowly made progress on the surface and underworld, while learning builds and unlocking weapon aspects that would come to make all the difference. Doubt followed me wherever I went, but so did that mantra: "Just take another shot."

Part 2: Victory, & What Comes After

The first time I cleared the underworld was during a run I was absolutely certain I was going to fail. My build was all over the place, I was missing a lot of key boons, and I simply hadn't practiced enough with Chronos' second phase to feel confident. But, through persistence, luck, and use of 3 death defiances, I did it.

My heart swelled, and my confidence soared. Not only because I proved I could do it, but I could now allow myself to fall back on God Mode.

God Mode, for those who don't know, is an accessibility setting brought over from the first Hades, which gives your character extra damage resistance each time you fail a run. Though I know some people look down on these kinds of difficulty adjustments, I'm personally a big fan of gamers being able to adjust their experience to their level of skill. After all, everyone is different, and where some people take about 20 hours to get their first clear, others will do it on their first try (true story, this was me versus my friend Troy with the first Hades).

Personally, I'm someone who doesn't shy away from challenge. However, I also don't want to struggle excessively. I like some friction, but not so much that makes me want to rage quit, or feel like I'm just wasting my time. Since I knew the rogue-like formula requires multiple clears to "beat" the game, I had decided while playing Hades that I would do my first clear on the default difficulty, then turn on God Mode afterwards to save myself time. This ended up working out well, so I brought back this tactic for the second one. And again, this proved a good balance for me.

God Mode didn't immediately make things easy, as I still failed my next 3 runs in a row. But progress came a lot faster. Within the next few days, I cleared the surface for the first time, unlocked all weapon aspects, and fully upgraded my grasp and arcana. Between the upgrades and damage resistance, I went from stagnancy and doubt to consistent progress.

Part 3: Fear & Chaos

Progressing the narrative and deepening my relationships brought a lot of fun back into the game. I started getting weird dialogue, trying out funky builds, and just generally letting the winds take me where they may. I quickly found new favorite characters in Odysseus and Hecate, and new favorite boons with Ares and Poseidon. Completion progress was steady, and I was earning about 7 new achievements each week (a far cry from my previous 5 achievements in a month).

On May 1st I rolled credits, and wasted no time starting on the postgame. Experimenting with fear runs and the alternate versions of each boss fight brought new challenges, and fresh excitement. I unlocked the first two gifts of night for 8 fear and 16 fear in quick succession. Though, once I got to 20+ fear and the alternate versions of the Prometheus and Cerberus fights, things got dicey. Thankfully, most fear runs past 16 are entirely optional, so I was able to focus on what would become the most time-consuming postgame tasks: story quests and chaos trials.

I had heard from another completionist (shoutout bestie Vik) that the all random Chaos Trial was the hardest achievement in the game. So, naturally, I procrastinated working on it and any trials until the very end of my time with Hades 2. Eventually, the time came that I could procrastinate no longer, and in I went. Thankfully, by this point I had built up quite a bit of damage resistance with God Mode, so the trials proved surprisingly easy, and even fun. It was only the final two that gave me pause.

The first barrier was the Great Chaos Below trial, which was an all-random item run at 20 fear. My first attempt at this trial went horribly, as I rolled White Antler (the worst keepsake - it limits your health to 30) and the Argent Skull. While I don't hate the skull, I also don't love it, and that combined with the health limitation killed my run at the first boss. My second try I rolled my favorite weapon, the umbral flames, and a Demeter keepsake. I also got lucky with my fear rolls, as I only got alternate boss forms for Hecate and Scylla, and even got the Luckier Tooth keepsake during the final boss. With tooth in hand I completed the trial and the "Chaos in Hell" achievement. But then came the second barrier.

The "Improbable Outcomes" achievement required succeeding in two all-random Chaos Trials back to back. I had just succeeded in the first one, now I just had to do it all again. But again, I got lucky, and rolled the moonstone axe and Charon's Keepsake. Even better, although this run was all random, it didn't have a fear requirement, so I breezed through the regions happily. With success came both the "Improbable Outcomes" achievement and the "Infinite Possibility" achievement for clearing 20 chaos trials. Which meant, all that was left for completion was story quests. Which should come easily...right?

Part 4: Cleanup & Final Thoughts

Nearing the end of my time with Hades 2, I had 2 story achievements left to finish: "Voice and Vanity" and "Haunted by the Past". The first required speaking to Narcissus and Echo, the second required speaking to Dora and Prometheus. While speaking to them was easy enough, I couldn't get them to talk about their damn problems. Run after run, characters cycled through different lines of dialogue relating to my progression in the main story, but never about their dang quest. While it was fun at first listening to Narcissus try and fail to flirt with Melinoe, after the 50th time encountering him without him mentioning Echo, I was starting to go insane. The same went for talking to Prometheus, who had a lot to say about the "fate of humanity" but REFUSED to discuss Dora night after night.

Procking these last two quests was exhausting, as over and over I would speedrun my way to the relevant regions, and either get irrelevant dialogue or have the characters not show up at all. It was all down to numbers, and I've always hated achievements that are locked behind rng. Because, you either get lucky, or you suffer, no skill required or relevant. So I suffered for another 5 hours, until eventually I got the dialogue I needed from Prometheus, then Dora, then finally Narcissus (fuck that guy). And thus came, "Voice and Vanity", "Haunted by the Past", and finally "Goddess of Nightmares", the achievement for getting all other achievements.

Besides some stupid rng, there was nothing particularly difficult about completing Hades 2. God Mode took care of most late game problems, so my biggest hurdle was, funnily enough, time. Building the skill and resources to succeed in the early game took time. Gathering incantation materials for every mid-game quest took time. And getting characters to say their specific story line during achievement cleanup took time. After 91 hours, I see why Hecate was so persistent in bringing Death to Chronos, and an end to time and its misery.