Thirith on 27/7/2025 at 17:15

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Yeah, henke, you also just got me interested enough to get the game. I hope you get a commission.

Renault on 28/7/2025 at 17:06

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I wanted a good 2D game for my Steam Deck, something to play while I was on vacation last week. I saw Renz pickup Master Key on a sale, and looked fun, so I gave it a whirl. Obvious Legend of Zelda clone, but really well done and a ton of content, especially for a first game by a solo dev. I'm 8 hrs in and still have a lot to do. Monochrome world, I guess kind of like a Gameboy game, but you can change the base color. One unique thing is that there's not a word of text written or spoken during the entire game, it's all visual. It's both challenging and frustrating, and I'm still trying to figure out what a lot of the symbols mean. It's definitely a game that doesn't hand hold, you have to figure everything out for yourself. Having a lot of fun with it, and absolutely would recommend to any Zelda fans out there.

[video=youtube;kFWINtKIgXw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFWINtKIgXw[/video]

Thirith on 5/8/2025 at 06:42

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Having finished Spider-Man, I'm hoping to return to both Returnal (I've never got beyond the third biome) and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 (which I played years ago on console). While both seem ideal for short stints, I know exactly that I'm not going to progress much in either if I don't persist at least somewhat.

I'm also thinking of replaying Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis for the first time since... the previous century, most likely. Playing The Great Circle made me want to revisit the O.G. good Indiana Jones game.

henke on 6/8/2025 at 14:06

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Stumbled across (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3281410/Ells_Tales_Chairbound/) Ells Tales: Chairbound, a small 2€ indie horror game where you wake up in an abandoned office complex tied to an office chair with a ticking 10 minute timer taped to your chest. You can only nudge the chair slowly forwards or backwards, spin around, and pick up any objects that happen to be close enough to your tied-up hands. Cumbersome movement has long been a staple of horror games and I like seeing novel physics-based gameplay being more and more used for this. Endoparasitic from a few years back also did a wonderful job at this.

The physics gameplay in this is a tad TOO rough around the edges tho. I had figured out what I was supposed to do after playing the game for about 1 hour, but it took me another 2 hours to get to a point where I could reliably go down the slopes without tipping over. After beating it I've played through it twice more and can now confirm that YES going down slopes is something that can be mastered in this game, tho I'm not entirely sure it's worth the effort. I mean, I liked it cause this is very much my kinda thing, but YMMV.

Anyway, if you don't wanna bother and don't mind spoilers here's my most recent playthrough.

[video=youtube;Fy3oYNVW3yI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy3oYNVW3yI[/video]

Thirith on 11/8/2025 at 08:42

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Having returned to Returnal, I finally managed to get to the end of biome 3 and beat the boss. Though, admittedly, I also deactivated cloud saves and copied the saves, so I wouldn't always have to restart my runs - which is the point of the game, I know, but it's also what would most likely result in me giving up on the game, because while the roguelike/roguelite loop is fun up to a point, I know that at some point I'd just become frustrated and bored and turn against the game. Most likely, I'll now play regular runs for a while, but once I've made it to a boss a couple of times, I might again backup my save and try from there.

But: apart from not being gud enuff to beat this game the regular way, I'm enjoying it a lot. The writing is somewhat too portentous for its own good, but overall I like how Returnal combines its gameplay loop and its storytelling, and the combat is fun and varied, what with the different weapon types, upgrades etc. The game just plays well: it's fast but not too fast, you can be methodical but only up to a point, and the way it combines traversal and fighting is great. It's very much a game I might launch for a quick 20-minute game, and 1 1/2 hours later I'm still playing.