This is the famous visual novel that outwardly resembles one of those popular dating simulators but is actually a horror game. That’s hardly a spoiler as you need to wade through some pretty serious content warning messages before you can start playing and the game is so well-known. People reference it so often that I thought I should just get around to completing it myself. It’s free anyway and very short.

I’m in no hurry to get through the games in my backlog as usually production values are so high now that they’re just as good whenever I get around to them. But this is one case where I might have left it in the oven for too long. Playing a 2017 game in 2024 is kind of pushing it but I think this never looked very good even back then. I added this to my list a while back because it has a lot of many passionate fans and it adds old school shoot ’em up elements to the action genre. But I ultimately found it to be an underwhelming and overrated game.

I loved Cultist Simulator so when I saw another developer taking the same mechanics and apply them to the life of an artist, I knew I just had to buy it. This is a much more modestly sized and consequently shorter game however. Like its inspiration, this is quite a handful at first as your fledgling artist must grapple with poverty and mental illness. But once you understand the basic loop, you only have to search for a victory condition and go straight towards it. It’s not actually very difficult but there’s much more randomness than in Cultist Simulator and once you achieve one, there’s not much difference in going for another victory type so I doubt this has much replay value. Still, I love its theme and I want to reward developers who make quirky games like this.

This was yet another free game on Epic and they even let you have the Spacer’s Choice edition with better graphics and all DLCs included. This was released years ago of course and it can be thought of doing a science-fiction game in Bethesda’s style before Starfield using original IP. Unfortunately this is definitely a B-team effort as the game is unbelievably mediocre. I was already on the fence about eventually getting around to Starfield due to its poor reviews, but I’m definitely all knackered out of the space cowboy RPG after this.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 was so wearying to play that I kept looking forward to unwinding with this relaxed, top down rally game. As you can see from these screenshots, it uses very simplified graphics and it’s meant to be played with just a game controller. Yet that doesn’t prevent it from being a reasonably decent rally game with plausible physics, good enough to win over fans of such games as the Dirt Rally series. It’s a short game and fairly easy for someone already experienced with rallying but I had a great time with it.

I sung the praises of the first game so how could I not play the sequel especially after Larian followed it up with the highly acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3? This time around I soon felt that I had bitten off more than I could chew. This sequel is huge, especially with all of added content that is part the Definitive Edition, so there’s so much more of everything. Many of the elements that I liked the first time around were less appealing this time and the annoying things are much worse. It eventually got to the point where it felt like a slog that I had to power through. I still finished the game because I’m stubborn that way and I can understand why it appeals to some power gamers but this wasn’t a game I enjoyed very much at all.

This game’s description didn’t quite make it clear to me, but it’s really a very old-school style text adventure game accompanied by still images. There are no real combat mechanics for example. They’re just skill checks to see if you can get past obstacles. There are things like RPG stats, inventory items and so on, but it’s all very simple. I was turned off by how much reading this entailed at first even though I used to be a big fan of gamebooks. But I came around as I grew to know its world and ended up enjoying myself quite a bit.