Again opting for a slower paced game after Sifu, this is a simple fishing game that I’ve heard good things about. The twist is that it’s also a horror game with distinctly Lovecraftian vibes. There’s no combat so the gameplay really is just about fishing or carrying things around in your boat but nasty things start happening if you stay out too long in the water after dark and you can die. It’s a short game and that’s usually a plus with me these days as that means it doesn’t force you to grind meaninglessly to reach its ending. I like it.

This is the kung fu fighting game that garnered a great deal of attention upon release but also scared many off due to its high difficulty and aging mechanic. I count myself among those who were intimidated and so stayed away. But then Epic gave it away for free so I was out of excuses. It took a great deal of focused practice but I did finally beat the game even if I had to cheese the hell out of the bosses so I’m here to report my verdict.

I’m terrible at platform games and terrible at roguelikes and this is both! I wanted to give this a go anyway due to its very interesting gameplay mechanics. It doesn’t look like much with old-school pixel graphics but that’s actually part of what makes it so special. Every pixel of the game world is physically simulated and so everything is potentially destructible with the right effects! The problem is that the environment becomes incredibly chaotic and combined with how little healing is available in-game, it’s a very difficult game. I ended up using a mod to give myself extra revives after dying just so that I could actually see more of the game.

I loved first game and naturally had this sequel on my watch list from day one. It was a fantastic puzzle solving experience combined with a very satisfying frame story. I thought that it had the difficulty at just about the right level for me. I never did get around to the DLC Road to Gehenna which is said to be far more difficult than the base game. This sequel naturally builds on the first game and the prologue even tricks you into believing that it is literally more of the same. Soon enough the real world opens to you and it proves that it is a worthy sequel indeed.

Satisfactory took way too much of my time so for a follow-up, I wanted something short and chill. This potion brewing game almost fit that bill except that it’s a tad too long as there is some grinding towards the end. It’s another crafting game but the crafting part is more than just selecting an option from a list. Here you brew potions by actually grinding ingredients and dropping them into the cauldron. The concept is clever and it uses familiar mechanics in a novel way to simulate the process of brewing a potion. It’s not a deep game but it’s not bad at all.

I’d skipped any posts about games for the past few months because I’ve been totally engrossed in this one and it took way longer than I’d expected to complete. I’ve since clocked up almost as many hours at this as Dirt Rally 2.0 and that’s a game I’ve been playing on and off for years! I’m kind of ashamed that it took me so long really as I kept doing things by hand for way too long and procrastinated over building large-scale infrastructure which would have saved me time over the long run. Still, this is very much the kind of game that everyone plays in their own way and by and large, I’m fairly happy with what I managed to build.

This was popular for a while when it was in Early Access but I usually wait until a game is finished before even considering buying it. Unfortunately this seems to be one of those cases when the finished game is worse than the work in progress version as the campaign is a real slog to get through and they even took out some ease-of-life features. The scenarios are quite difficult and they made an iron man style mandatory. It’s quite impressive how they’re not afraid of throwing absolutely massive hordes at zombies at you, but in the end it’s not worth the aggravation and I didn’t finish the game.