deKay's Lofi Gaming

Gaming Diary

Tested On Humans Escape Room (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I’ve enjoyed this sort of puzzle game in the past, a category I’d include The Witness, The Room, Maquette, Doors – Paradox, and so on in, so when Amazon were giving away a whole set of them, of which Tested On Humans Escape Room was one, I was very pleased. Sadly, it isn’t great. The issues I had were mainly because the puzzles were either way too obvious or incredibly obscure and illogical. The joy of puzzle games is when …

Raccoin (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Yes! Another incremental clicker game with Luck Be A Landlord/Balatro nods! This one isn’t anything to do with cards or trees though. No, it’s all set around a penny falls machine. You put coins into it, that pushes coins out. Coins that come out earn you money. Somehow, you make money out of this – unlike a real one – because you have special coins that can be bought between rounds, are stored in an expandable clip, and do magic …

PowerWash Simulator 2 (Steam 2): COMPLETED!

You’d be hard-pressed, from the screenshots, to see that PowerWash Simulator 2 is actually a different game to PowerWash Simulator 1. And the gameplay too, in fact. After all, there are only so many different ways washing dirty stuff can be presented. Why, then, is this a whole new game and not just another pile of DLC for the original? Money? It’s probably money. Right? There are differences, if you look closely. Perhaps the biggest, in terms of “gameplay” at …

2025 Mosaic Retrospective (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

As I enjoyed Proverbs so much, of course I was going to download this, which is the same sort of puzzle game by the same developer. This time, instead of plague-era images depicting weird proverbs, it’s a collage of representations of events that happened in 2025. Some funny, some stupid, some sad. I say “the same sort of puzzle game”, but I actually mean “it’s the same game but with different pictures”. Which is exactly what I wanted, so that’s …

Minishoot’ Adventures (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

Half way through the sentence where a reviewer described Minishoot’ Adventures as “The Legend of Zelda, only it’s a twin stick shooter” I’d already slammed the WANT button on the eShop. Yes, I know I could have bought it there and then (or at least pre-ordered it), but paying full price for any game, regardless of how good it is, just feels wrong. Often, I’ll put something on my wishlist and by the time it is in a sale I’ve …

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

While I’m a big fan of 2D Metroid games, and I did enjoy the first Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2 just left me cold and so I never played the third game. Oh, and Hunters was terrible. As a result, I did not rush out and buy Metroid Prime 4 at launch like I did with Metroid Dread. I did, however, get bought it as a present recently. I was worried it would be incredibly hard (like Prime 1), and …

Ball X Pit (Switch 2): COMPLETED!

What if Arkanoid was Vampire Survivors? Well, you’d (sort of) have Ball X Pit. Instead of a bat, you have a person who throws balls to destroy enemies, which are essentially blocks, that move slowly towards you. You can gain XP from gems dropped by defeated baddies, as per Survivors games, and levelling up lets you choose a number of upgrades for your balls – such as balls that set things on fire or cause area damage like earthquakes. Eventually, …

Proverbs (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

One massive Picrossy/Minesweepery puzzle which takes about 20 hours to complete? Why yes, sir, I will boogie. Especially at the peanuts-price it was going for. Imagine a big old painting depicting pictures of lots of proverbs that have pretty much all fallen out of use, made up of groups of pixels all split into areas. Each area has some pixels with numbers in, and those numbers – a bit like minesweeper – says how many yellow pixels are touching it …

Gambler’s Table (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

It’s another clicker game! How rare. This one is themed around flipping coins. You click on a coin, and if it’s tails (or heads? I genuinely can’t remember and it makes no difference anyway) you get money. You spend the money on having more coins on the table, and higher value coins, and little helper people to flip coins for you, or upgrades where you just have to move the pointer vaguely near coins to flip them, or coins that …

Trees Inc (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

If I were to describe this game it would sound very much like it was the same as Timber Rush, which I also played recently. And, I suppose it is. Trees Inc is a cookie clicker type game where you chop trees, get money for chopping trees, and spend that money to chop faster, get more money, and buy helpers to chop on your behalf. So yes, it’s the same game. Well, not quite. It looks a lot more basic, …

Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I tend to claim every single free Epic and Amazon game each time they come up, but it’s not often one catches my eye enough to play. Arrangers, though, looked somewhat different and just happened to arrive when I was between games, and so here we are. It’s a puzzle game, mostly, where you move by sliding the floor as if it is made of tiles. You know, like those slidey jigsawy picture puzzles you can get. Some items and …

Inspector Waffles Early Days (Evercade): COMPLETED!

A while back I played the Playdate game Chance’s Lucky Escape, which was pretty good. This game, is set in the same universe and is a Game Boy title (albeit on the Evercade). As the name suggests, it’s a prequel to another game in the series – Inspector Waffles. Which I didn’t know existed and have just discovered it has a cameo from Lord Winklebottom. Blimey. But never mind those games, what about this game? Well, it’s an adventure game …

Timber Rush (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

See, Idle Slayer? This is how you make an interaction-necessary incremental clicker type game. It doesn’t outstay its welcome, you make constant progress, and (after a certain point) you don’t need to touch anything most of the time. In Timber Rush, you are a lumberjack. You chop down trees, wear high heels, suspenders and uh, make lots of money. On Wednesdays you also go shopping, probably. Chopping wood nets you money, and money can be spent on better axes, helpers, …

Idle Slayer (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

The title of this game is a bit of a lie. It implies it’s one of those cookie clicker type idler games where you kill things, but actually, there’s a lot of non-idle “gameplay” needed in order to actually progress. The basic idea is you run left to right, automatically, and collect coins and kill baddies. Coins let you buy upgrades for your equipment which basically act as coins-per-second increases and multipliers, meaning more coins more quickly with which to …

The Mr Rabbit Magic Show (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I do like Rusty Lake’s weird little point and click adventure games. What I hadn’t realised, is that I had this game, unplayed, in my library. Or that it even existed. I saw an article about it and looked it up on Steam and lo – I already had it. It’s also free, just in case you haven’t. It’s actually a meta game, being set in the Rusty Lake offices as they prepare for a company birthday celebration (which, cyclically, …