Mae Burns Down Thedas

Soul of Sovereignty: Prelude - Visual novel. If you like visual novels and enjoy intricate post-apocalyptic fantasy + morally messy protagonists pleeeease play this. It's on itch. There's a free demo to see if it's your thing. But be warned that it's still currently releasing and the cliffhanger has me CLAWING AT THE WALLS.

Also: tutu.

Entropy demo - recommended by a friend. inverted camera controls are kicking my ass, please let me toggle them. otherwise grimdark fantasy that casually messes around with gender is very my shit, but I am terrified of companion permadeath.

Virtue and a Sledgehammer demo - recommended by the same friend by saying 'it's going to hurt you and I think you need to hit things' and he was extremely correct. will be buying it when it's out. already very heavy on exploring familial trauma, so be warned. also heavy on the eyestrain.

Radiotext demo - bounced off. wish it was more of an 'explore the os' type of game. may try again later.

Forbidden Solitaire - exactly what it needed to be. story is nothing to write home about but. as the game says. it's fucking solitaire! would play several more games like it.

You Shouldn't Be Here - a not-subtle vn/horror game about how society fails people. one of those games that feels like it was made because the dev needed to get it out. i could see it hitting some people as pretentious but one monologue really got to me.

Dragon Ruins (1 & 2) - calls itself an rpg for lazy people and basically is that. I'm a lazy people. Has potential but is currently a little shallow on the lore for me, which, to be fair, it doesn't try not to be. 1 is skippable, basically a $3 proof of concept.

Greenhearth Necromancer - should be my type of idle game, but... it's just not getting its hooks in. I think this is definitely a game for somebody, just not for me.

WATER WOMB WORLD - scientist goes to the ocean to find god. free! wish it was longer (like 20 minutes tops, I enjoyed running through twice for the dev commentary) but can't complain. net mechanic took me a minute to figure out.

Horripilant - horror-ish game hindered by being an incremental clicker. love the art style and kingsfield-dark-souls vibe though and i'm still playing it so that says something.

Vampire Crawlers - new go-to 'brain tired but needs enrichment' game.

All Hail the Orb - fairly short as far as idle games go, but to avoid overstaying its welcome I think it needed to be. kinda goofy.

Parallel Experiment - on the fence about this one. decent co-op puzzle game that doesn't really do anything new with the story. felt like a simpler/more straightforward Cube Escape/The Past Within.

Diorama Break (demo) - 4th wall-breaking RPG that decided to make it the core feature instead of a twist. liked it way more than expected. reviews complained about not enough combat, but I kinda wish there wasn't any at all lol.

broken reality - fun exploration game with pretty much every shortfall you would expect a 'distilled internet' game to have. especially one that leans hard into vaporwave.

Lost Wiki Kozlovka - my type of game but the depth just wasn't there. could have felt better if it built more atmosphere, maybe? won't be too hard on it because it was only $5.

The King is Watching - solid time killer. just enough strategy to be engaging while still throwing a movie on, which my adhd brain likes. I think i still prefer Loop Hero for this kind of thing.

TR-49: solid puzzle game. 90% reading. some solutions are half logic, half brute force. took me about 5 hrs but I got up in the middle to cook. didn't do anything super new storywise but it didn't really need to.

Forward: Escape the fold - more engaging than i expected for this type of card roguelike, but after an hour it feels like you've really seen all there is. which is a bummer, because there's potential.

Slots & Daggers - this only came out a month after cloverpit, but it feels like fantasy cloverpit lite. still fun.

Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road - the bullet hell+tower defense combo can be REALLY GOOD but something about this just doesn't feel cooked yet. still being updated, which is promising.

on that note, so far in 2026 I've played:

Jump the Track: bit on the nose, but I liked it. art was good.

Chronicles of Taldun - The Remainder: feels like this game was made in a lab for me specifically. difficult rec for that reason.

taking my Dark Knight girlfriend to the corner store: cute. short. clearly made for fun but not in a bad way.

L.S.Ds (Love Sucking Demons): interesting fictional account of stonewall - not a bad game but not for me. pov character being a fed felt odd. I get what they were going for but. yeah.

EXTREME MEAT PUNKS FOREVER: extremely heavy-handed, which is probably the point. endearing for the first few chapters, lost me in the last few due to pacing issues.

Mediterranea Inferno: feels like an arthouse horror film in both good and bad ways. very pretty game though.

also - one core mechanic is built around grinding to craft better armor, but combat is not actually difficult enough to constantly stonewall you if you don't do that. like. you will have to at some point, but you can clear decent chunks without planning that hard, until suddenly you do.