Time for probably the last roundup post of things I've finished recently for this year (edit: definitely the last, because I held back on posting it just in case there were any more last minute additions, which there were). The actual year end post is still delayed because I'm still sick and still haven't fixed my computer, and I'm still in no mood to write and format something that long on my phone. Anyway, these range from kinda meh to pretty ok.
Piczle World of Puzzles: I'm beginning to think that Piczle Cross Adventure being good was a fluke, between this and the other Piczle game I played this year. They're fine, and this does continue the tradition of having lots of good QoL and accessibility features, but it never makes it beyond just being fine. The lines puzzles continue to be uninteresting and tedious, but the color nonograms are handled reasonably well. Aside from the color palettes, that is, which are sometimes hideously ugly and sometimes have color combinations that could cause accessibility problems for some people. Also the achievements are top tier bullshit and seem to expect you to spend 7000 hours playing the game, which I will not be doing.
Keep on Mining!: A very ok incremental game. It's pretty short and has just enough variety in upgrades to be vaguely interesting most of the way through, but only some of them are visually interesting enough (or even visible enough) to feel like they're actually doing something. I'm not sure they know what lightning looks like. Or how to spell plasma.
Incredicer: A slightly less ok incremental game. Way too many of the upgrades are just the same thing the previous die/tier had but with bigger numbers, and the tiny handful of ones that are different have almost no visual impact unless you disable enough other stuff that you can even see them at all, and even that's not really an improvement because they have no sauce. They are bland and sauceless. Or I suppose "juice" is the word Rami Ismael popularized like a decade ago. I'm not sure they know what "active" means.
Feed the Greed: Finally a pretty decent incremental game (I sure have been playing a bunch of them while sick and having no brain). The pixel art is much more charming, and the variety in upgrades and amount you can interact with stuff kept me from getting bored waiting around for stuff. I actually liked it enough to keep playing for a bit after 100%ing it to try to do something silly with it just to see if it'd let me, and it did, so that was nice.
Nurikabe World: It's been many years since I've done any nurikabe puzzles. The 90s into the early 00s was a wild time for logic puzzles created in Japan escaping to the rest of the world via the internet. Lots of stuff we take for granted now like picross/nonograms or sudoku came out of that wave, and this was one of the not quite as popular or successful ones. Anyway, it's still a fun type of puzzle in smaller doses, and the presentation they used works well with plants and buildings sprouting on completed islands. I wasn't sure how I felt about it in the demo, but after playing more it's handled surprisingly well, with just enough of a delay to not be intrusive, while also serving as a subtle but effective way to draw your focus away from the finished parts of the puzzle and toward the incomplete sections. The number of daily puzzles needed for the last achievement vs. the number of daily puzzles per day is a bit uncalled for though.
CARROT: This one is just delightful. Great vibes all around, and it's a perfect example of what I mean when I say I'm tired of realism. Give me more games that look like paintings and have like three frames of animation for each action. It's really busy visually, but in a way that's still easy for me to process, unlike a lot of stuff that pushes hard for more realism. And bonus points for being queer and non-white in such a matter of fact way, like that's just who these people are. Super curious to see what's up with the rest of this person's games now, which seem to be equally bite-sized from what I can tell.
Tesla Force: I really wanted to like this one, but despite all the stuff added to it compared to the previous game, it just kinda feels like a less fun version of Tesla vs Lovecraft. I just don't love it as a roguelite as much, and while I know if it's anything like their previous game it feels a lot better as you get more upgrades, I'm not invested enough to stick with it until that point. Also one million years dungeon for whoever decided that dashing/dodging through items doesn't let you pick them up anymore.
Pinball Spire: I was genuinely having a pretty good time with this one for a while and probably made it a bit more than halfway through and was considering that I might like it more than Yoku's Island Express, the other pinballvania I've played. It started getting pretty fiddly with the things it expected you to pull off at some point though, and it was getting less and less fun for me. I don't know if it'd help if some of the abilities would kick in a few frames faster or what, but I kept feeling like my timing was slightly off. Maybe I just have bad reactions these days.
CARROT: Pancakes and Waffles: Like the original CARROT, this also looks and sounds great, but unlike that one, this has no story at all and is entirely vibes-based. I didn't like it quite as much, and it was a bit clunkier to interact with, but I still enjoyed running through it a couple times. The walk animations feel a little out of place though because they're a little janky, while pretty much everything else looks great.
Square Logic: That would be Square Logic (shikaku), not to be confused with Everyday Genius: Square Logic (kenken). As the disambiguation says, that's what kinds of puzzles it has. It's not one of the harder puzzle types to begin with, but these felt particularly easy, like the first 150 of them took me 100 minutes combined, and I wasn't even in a hurry. The 15x15 ones are much better and a good balance between easy enough for when no brain but taking just enough thought to stay lightly engaged with it. It could stand to be slightly more polished for stuff like better indication of what's currently selected in menus, but I'd also like to highlight the controller cursor movement while I'm here. The delay before quickly moving more than just one space and the speed it moves match so perfectly with what I expect and prefer that I don't think I could've done a better job myself. The little musical blips it makes when zooming across the screen are a nice touch too.
