Glad Blue Prince got an award at least. Crazy is wasn’t nominated for music though, I thought its OST was absolutely banging. I mean just listen to this extended version of History Suspended they just dropped.

I really hope they find a second specimen to confirm it’s not an artifact. Really cool discovery.

Looks very Doki Doki coded. How do they compare?

I’m a sucker for a gunblade, same reason I loved using the Bayonet weapon in Rise of the Ronin. There are some cool unique weapons in Enotria, especially in the second half. Warrior Deity having a longbow as a strong attack was pretty neat too.

(๑_๑//) I swear you manage to surprise me everytime. XD

I am definitely becoming somewhat of a gaming hipster aren’t I? I can’t deny I am enjoying playing games that are a little more on the hidden gem side and spreading the word about them.

Eventually I will disappoint you though, I have quite a few older mainstream blockbusters I own that I should try to get to at some point. I just keep adding new and interesting games to the backlog pile…

I loved Spaventa, super fun fight and the phase two was just so funny, loved the whole design and lore and everything. Probably my favourite boss in the game. Also did you try out the Blackpowder Banner weapon? That moveset is so much fun.

I don’t blame you, but man I was looking forward to hearing if you liked Withering Rooms as much as I did haha! 😅

I’m playing Death Howl this week. It’s a turn based Soulslike grid-based strategy deckbuilder (quite possibly the biggest genre salad I’ve played so far). It’s been okay so far. Love the art, it’s got a beautiful minimalistic but expressive pixel art in a very distinctive muted color palette. The story so far is fairly mediocre. It’s okay but it’s very obviously a story of a mother’s journey towards accepting the death of her child, with every major area of the game representing one stage of grief. It feels like it was written with the intent that the player doesn’t put this together, but I don’t know. It’s all fairly obvious. I mean, the big bad is called “Sorg” which literally means grief. So I am mostly bored with the main story and waiting for the penny to drop for the protagonist, but I guess your mileage may vary there.

Gameplay is fine, even though I have some issues with it. One major mechanic is that each region has its own set of cards, that you have to gradually unlock and craft by beating a bunch of enemies in that zone. Each zone’s cards also cost an additional mana if you try to use them in a different zone. On the one hand this forces you to keep switching play style and introduces some forced variety into the gameplay. But on the other hand your creativity is severely limited in deckbuilding. You basically have to pick one of the two archetypes offered by your area and then build that deck. It also makes the game fairly grindy as you need to regrind your deck every time you enter a new area. There are also a bunch of small QoL issues I have with it, and it can also feel cheap at times because you have no way of knowing what an enemy’s special attack does until you see it - there is no tooltip. So sometimes you just die because it’s the first time seeing an enemy. Chrono Ark that I played recently gave you all the information upfront, and I much prefer that.

Anyway it’s an okay time and the battles themselves can be pretty fun, although challenging. And it’s nice to have a slow paced game I can play relaxedly with a cup of coffee.

I don’t think I’ve played a 3D Soulslike I’ve been disappointed in yet - although I own both Steelrising and Flintlock after a Humble Bundle so either of those might be it. But I was a little disappointed in Blasphemous and GRIME I guess. Although I suppose it’s mostly a matter of taste. Both had much more platforming with instant kill hazards than I realised, and both had stuff like runbacks and limited fast travel that - combined with enemy placement deliberately made to waste your time - frustrated me a bit. GRIME I still haven’t finished - I have played like 9h total and whenever I pick it up I play for like 30 minutes and can’t get into it.

True gamers make do with a single mouse button. Mac is the ultimate platform.

That’s fair enough, but I really do recommend going into NG+ after too even if you start over from the beginning. It’s a really fun twist, and also streamlines things quite a bit so the NG+ run will be much faster than your first playthrough. And it has an exclusive ending!

I’m so impressed with this game, I can’t wait for the sequel.

Did you do NG+? It had one of the best NG+ implementations for me, so much fun. God I love that game. I really hope the sequel is a banger.

I mean, I love atmosphere to be clear. Several of my favourite games stand on the foundation of atmosphere, like STALKER, Cyberpunk, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Dishonored… Withering Rooms that I played recently was dripping with atmosphere, which is part of why I had trouble moving on from it.

Limbo does have good atmosphere but… its atmosphere is kind of one-note, like yeah it’s spooky shadows but that’s all there is. It’s neat, but it’s not really wowed me to the extent that it really elevated the game for me or anything. From what I’ve heard Inside has a bit more of a story to it, a which makes me hopeful I’ll like it better.

Artsy indie platformers can work for me, I really liked both GRIS and INMOST.

I really hope this doesn’t fall under the radar because of Pragmata. Looks like a blast. I’m tempted to day one it but I have enough on my plate recently, and I foolishly bought Death Howl recently so I should think twice about spending on a new game probably.

I think we’ve already been over it before, some time last year when I played Limbo. I’m not a huge fan of puzzle platformers in general so it starts as an uphill battle. There were one or two puzzles I liked (like the anti-gravity stuff was cool), but most I didn’t for various reasons. Most were either frustrating or forgettable. The liquid stuff was a bit overused. Towards the end it got a little too precision platformy and timed for my liking, some with really tight and unforgiving timing. Although I recognise that some people might enjoy that. Story wasn’t really anything either. It’s a cool mood and some decent looking scenes at times but apart from the graphics and art it almost felt like a browser game.

I finished Withering Rooms last week, and finally managed to tear myself away from it instead of doing a third straight playthrough. I’m still low-key obsessed with this game and am now waiting anxiously for the upcoming sequel. What a piece of art this game is. Beautiful art direction, beautiful music (all composed by the solo dev!), great gameplay despite the clunky combat and just such an interesting world and story, with some thematic throughlines of morality and responsibility running throughout. Possibly also a commentary on generative AI. It’s a super well made, super interesting and captivating game and I can’t recommend it enough.

Death Howl

I moved on to Death Howl as my next main game. It’s a Soulslike grid-based strategy deckbuilder (yes, that’s a mouthful) and so far it’s been… Decent but mixed, I’d say. I love the art. Beautiful pixel art in a very minimalistic but expressive style and a distinctive muted color palette. The story is okay but very very obvious and predictable, so while it’s a classic template and theme I am not really excited about getting to the next bit of story as I can already tell where it’s going, what it’s about and how it’s going to end.

The gameplay is fine so far, although the game is quite grindy which I don’t love. You need to do a lot of trash fights to grind out your deck for each area, and there is a mechanic that increases the mana cost of cards from outside your current area, which means you have to regrind a deck for every new area. It also means creativity in deckbuilding is restricted, as you really kind of are just limited to building one of the two deck archetypes provided by each area’s cards.

There are also some QoL features I don’t love, such as disabling fast travel while doing quests, which just means you waste enormous amounts of time walking. Overall it’s interesting but I don’t know whether I’d recommend it, outside of diehard deckbuilder fans who have already played everything else. It’s also fairly difficult.

Ninja Gaiden 4

I got derailed in my playthrough weeks ago, but have picked it up again and am probably in the final third now. I’m playing it in parallel for whenever I need something faster paced. Not much to add about it that I haven’t said previously. I have a ton of gripes with it, and it feels more like a half-brother to the older 3D Ninja Gaidens than a full blooded family member, but in isolation its combat systems are phenomenal, it’s fast and it’s fun and free-flowing and if you like action games you should absolutely play it.

It’ll probably be my next intermission artsy short game between longer titles. Did you play Limbo? If so how do they compare? I thought Limbo was only okay but I’ve heard people say Inside is a stronger game.

They did a pretty significant marketing push on Twitch for Crimson Desert, but in financial terms I don’t know if that is all that expensive, and certainly not in relation to 5 million copies sold.

I forgot that since I usually just check 6 months/1y/3y but they do huh. Even better!

https://isthereanydeal.com/ has 3 years of price history and tracks valid 3rd party stores too (not greymarket sites like G2A).

Oh damn I missed that in the OP text! -_- Shame on me for skimming. Happy birthday!