Slay the Spire (Steam)

Opening up with a strong one. I'm very late to Slay the Spire; so late that I had believed that it was much older than it was because just everyone had referenced it so many times and I still hadn't touched it I didn't realize it's only like 5 years old.

It holds up very well! A Rogue-like card game the plays a lot like Dominion but vs enemies instead of other players, with RPG elements to top it off. Despite having "beaten" it, I keep going back to it and I'm having a great time. It helps having played dominion before, as you have moments playing this kind of game where you realize core aspects of it. For example, taking all of the best cards every time you can isn't a great idea, as the more cards you have the less chance you have at drawing any one of them. It's better to have cards that combo well together, or with relics you've acquired, than to have a bunch of good cards that don't. It's best to stick to a particular aspect of your character, like focusing on whether you want to play The Silent as a machine gun that can rapid fire shiv the enemy dozens of time in a turn, or a tanky poisoner who can last for a long time to build up poison stack. It's much more beneficial to pick one while you're gathering your materials, than it is to say "Well attacking a lot is a nice and passive poison is also nice" and doing neither well.

It was also interesting having gone back and played this after having played so many lazy game projects or cash grab games that just did this exact style of gameplay and didn't make it interesting. I had no idea I was literally just playing Slay the Spire, but not as good.

Highly recommend it! It's a very fun game, and a good time to just play a round or two while you're watching a video.

Mail Mole + 'Xpress Deliveries (Steam)

This is a game I 100%'d!

Mail Mole is a linear 3D platformer akin to Super Mario 3D world, but you play as mole who digs underground and can combo dashing with jumping and good timing you can really blast through levels. You collect carrots instead of coins, turnips instead of green stars or giant coins, and each level has it's own time goals for bronze, silver and gold medals.

It's pretty fun! The jumping takes a bit to get used to as your jump happens when you release the button instead when you press, and your momentum from your dash carries over but only for a set amount of time after a landing dash. Overall the controls are easy to understand. With some practice and an understanding of how comboing jumps and dashes works, the game can feel pretty satisfying, if a little bit floaty, as you fly from platform to platform attempting to not fling yourself off the ledge long enough to make it to the end and get the gold medal.

As far as content goes, there's 8 "worlds" each with 4 levels. Additionally each world has a vs bot mode where you race 3 npc bots to the end of a level for an additional power cell, the game's main progression collectible. There's a significant amount there, and with the extra 'Xpress Deliveries levels it's worth its weight. I ended up with 7 hours on the game, which for an indie platformer is pretty good.

That being said, the game isn't necessarily very challenging. Jumps are pretty straightforward, with some rare exceptions, and if you just want to "beat" the game you can do so without breaking much of a sweat. The real meat of it is trying to get everything and do well in the levels to get those medals, which also isn't an extreme task. 100%'ing it took 6.7 hours, and I was never really stuck on a single level more than 2-3 replays after the intial run through the level

Overall, I'd recommend it to fans of laid back 3D platformers; if you've play 3D land, suzy cube, or other cartoony 3D indie platformers, you'll be right at home here

screenshot from The Cutting Room Floor

Mario Party 3 (N64, Switch Online)

This was one of things that I, as a child, had decided I would do someday, and then each time I played it over the years I kept thinking, "Oh I never did Get S Rank Miracle star in the story mode on Hard Mode to see if you get anything" and then proceeded to not do play it. I finally changed that!

.... It wasn't worth it. While at the time Mario Party 3 had a lot of uniqueness and charm, nowadays it's simply just been outdone, and the sheer amount of minigames in modern Mario Parties just outclasses it. Additionally, getting those scores is hard as balls, getting all the minigames requires a substantial amount of luck, and in true Mario Party fashion you can just lose everything very suddenly and that's just on you.

Nostalgia carries the N64 Mario parties pretty hard, and in a world where Mario Party Superstars and Super Mario Party exists it just doesn't hold up. Also Mario Party 2 is better.

The Citadel

What a title I have a cursed history with. anyway.

I did end up playing this for not very long. I have a long history with Doom and similar fast paced mindless shooters (Boomer shooters? is that what the kids are calling it?), so when I saw this game on the store a few years ago I shoved it on my wishlist. I finally picked it up, and it's pretty tough from what I've played. But I just quickly lost interest; didn't feel as satisfying or punchy as Doom does and I had other games to play. I haven't played this enough for a great recommending opinion, but my first impression is that it's just fine.

Screenshot from promotional screenshots on the game's Steam page

Pseudoregalia (Steam)

Props to my boy Keewy for streaming this and making me think "Huh I could try that".

This game's incredibly good. But obviously not everyone's cup of tea. You play as a tall rabbit goat woman who fights with a big cross baton and platforms using a variety of skills you pick up along the way. It's very much focused solely on the skilled platforming aspect within rooms. Like if Celeste was a bit slower paced, 3D, and had progressive upgrades in an open environment. I guess that's probably not a sensible comparison; It's more like if Metroid Prime was solely melee, 3rd person, and focused on platforming. It's hard to describe in text, but a quick look at some gameplay and you'll get it.

A key aspect of this is it doesn't take any time to explain to you what's going on, how to play, or even where you're at. You start out basically only able to jump, and through some well paced rooms slowly get the idea of how to attack, and a couple of hallways later your path branches out to a number of different ways where you can go and explore. There is no map, so you'll have to make note of areas you've not been able to fully explore before moving onto another area and trying your hand at that. The major upgrades all tend to be very well done, often giving you non-standard movement options that give you different ways of approaching jump situations that don't necessarily have just the one solution.

Most of the game consists of hallways and big rooms with an N64/ PSX aesthetic, with blocky geometry but gothic-reminiscent architecture and texture. The music does a good job of complimenting these areas, making the time you spend attempting to chain wall kicks and dashing slides to get to the next platform feel like you're wandering surreal, oppressive hallways but with a sense of curiosity and freedom given by the game's abilities.

I'm not sure if that made a whole lot of sense. But I collected everything because it was just really fun! Take a look at a gameplay video, and if you like the look of the gameplay the game delivers very well on the whole experience

Screenshot from promotional screenshots on the game's Steam page

Lil Gator Game (Steam)

I 100%'d this one as well:

Another 3D platfomer, but this time a very open world setting. Basically a very small version of Breath of the Wild where your main actions are to attack, jump, float, and climb. You play as a little gator, whose acting a out a legend of zelda style adventure with cardboard monsters and animal friends as NPCS with quest givers in order to inspire your Sister, who used to play these games with you, to join in on the fun instead of focusing on her college work.

It's a very simple game; you're never really going to have moments where you don't know what to do or feel stuck, and you can't even take damage because "kids can't die in video games." Instead, it's solely about roaming around, finding all your friends and doing their quests (solving their problems) so they will go back to the main hub area and build up the adventure town for your game.

It's a very chill romp, and I'd recommend it to anyone who just wants to turn their brain off and jump around with a cute little game with an adorable story and aesthetic.

Screenshot is a screengrab from a frame of the trailer on the game's Steam page

HAZAMA_QUEEN (Steam)

Another 100 % (though it only took 45 minutes)

I'm not sure how this one ended up on my wishlist; I probably saw it during one of the steam sales that encourages you to go through your discovery queues and thought "sure why not."

This was interesting because it took a run or two to realize what the game actually wanted. It's not a doom style game where you try and shoot monsters and progress through the level; it's a fast-paced runner game where you MUST kill enemies and run to the level in time before your health meter runs out. This meter is of c0ourse only filled more when you shoot enemies, so it's a lot of balancing between making sure you kill what you need vs moving past it to actually finish the level.

Additionally at the end of each level you get a choice of 3 cards, which can give you different weapons and upgrades to help you go through future levels easier. These cards can be quite vague however, as the game was clearly originally made in Japanese and contains a number of references to streamers and culture that I didn't understand. Alternative weapons are half "this gun is more powerful probably" and half "what even is this thing", and the while the games aesthetic has some charm in clearly being a small passion project only one or two people worked on for fun, it doesn't really carry it very far and things are more weird than interesting. Like if I did get it it wouldn't add that much to the experience.

Overall, it's a fun, very short and fast-paced game. At $5 it's definitely not worth it, but I'd give it a try if it ever goes on sale for like a buck or lower.

Screenshot from promotional screenshots on the game's Steam page

Spidersaurs (Steam)

I didn't want to touch this game after I beat it lol.

The purely fictitious group of people, fans of mine, will know that me and Wayforward go back. Even before Shantae I was playing Mighty Flip Champs, and am generally a huge fan of their offerings outside of Shantae like the remake of Ducktales, Mighty Switch Force, and...

*squints at their catalogue*

Oh I guess I do mostly just like them for Shantae.

Anyway, on paper this game looks fun. I was never a huge fan of Contra because I get mad very easily, but this looked very campy and like it had enough unique charm to look past that. In reality, unfortunately, it plays like Contra with some hand drawn cartoony aesthetics that WayForward is known for, and doesn't really have tight enough level design or gameplay to make me want to go back anytime soon.

There's a number of levels, bosses, and even just enemies that just don't feel right; nothing's particularly satisfying to accomplish and it's very easy to get frustrated when you accidentally scroll the screen too far and now you can't go back or die off the bottom. Enemy placement can be infuriating, and in an effort to keep you moving there's an enemy that comes out of nowhere and attacks you if you sit still for too long. That got me more times than it should've while I was waiting for a weapon I didn't want to despawn, or waiting for an enemy to come out of its hole so I can shoot it.

The art's good. I'll give it that. WayForward continued its trend of quality visuals and the character design it's known for, but that can't carry a game. I'd give this one a pass.

Screenshot from promotional screenshots on the game's Steam page

Monster Girl Manager (Steam)

So I don't think I've played Darkest Dungeon, but I feel like it plays similar to this but without a few mechanics around bonding with your monster girls and swapping positions. THe general crux of it is that you summon randomly generated monster girls with their skills and abilities based off of the kind of creature they are and their personality (all defined in typical anime tropes, ie tsundere, yandere, etc) and try and build up their stats so you can progress through a 10 level section of the dungeon.

The dungeons themselves aren't too complex. Traversing the map takes energy and you run into events that can either help or harm you depending on your squad and enemies with aa variety of different attributes. Like Slay the Spire, you can run into a number of relics that improve your abilities and can try and get them to compliment your girls' playstyle to progress further. On paper, it's a pretty solid loop and I did find myself enjoying some of the dungeoneering and crazy combos.

In practice however, it's a lot of grinding. Whenever you start a 10 level section you begin with no relics, so you have to re-find stuff and build up again. This runs into trouble when you beat a boss easily, but then the next block is too hard for your girls' current stat, so you have to pass time improving them by managin their motivation and telling them to work jobs throughout the week that will lower their eneergy and motivation, but improve a specific stat, again dependent on the girl's type and personality.

Again, that doesn't sound too bad, however there are many limitations that just make this frustrating. Specifically, your girls only exist for a number of weeks (I think like 10 or something) before they fade away. New girls you summon are back at level one, so now you have to use your winnings from previous squad arrangements to upgrade your facilities and gear to help them level up *slightly* faster so you can get further with them. This puts an unnecessary amount of stress and grind time on top of an otherwise decent gameloop, and after my first squad got Ship of Theseus'd I was over it.

I would avoid this one; it's pretty grindy and not all that interesting past the initial premise, though it could be someone's cup of tea.

Also, to be clear, it's not lewd. Just very anime trope-y

Screenshot from promotional screenshots on the game's Steam page

Quake II (Steam)

Finishing up the list is the remasted version of Quake II that unexpectedly released halfway through last year. Quake II wasn't one that I played when I was a small'un, mostly limited to Doom, Doom II, and Chex Quest, but I did play the original Quake as well and saw my dad playing this in those years so I decided to give it a try.

The updated graphics and controls are refreshing; a lot of the time when revisiting this error you have to argue with the game to get it to play in a way that works for modern sensibilities, but this redo holds up very well. Something I didn't realize is this melds more with Half-life style gameplay than it does with the single-level action that Doom and Quake were known for. While the game is still broken into levels, each level has a number of interconnected sub areas that each have their own oibjectives, enemies, and secrets to find before you can finish and move onto the next, and they can get surprisingly long.

This is a classic and now can hold up to the test of time with this release; I very much recommend it!

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So how do I end shorter ones like this? DO I say my favorite game I played during this period?

I guess it would have to go to Pseudoregalia. While I thoroughly enjoyed and continue to play Slay the Spire, Pseudoregalia's satisfying gameplay, intriguing world, and well done level design stuck with me a lot harder than another well-done rogue-like did.