deKay's Lofi Gaming

No business like crow business

No apologies for the very poor pun in the title. It was business involving crows. And there’s really nothing like it. Last year, we heard scratching in our (bricked up) chimney. About a week later, the scratching stopped. Whatever had fallen in had either died or escaped, but we didn’t know what it was at the time. A bird? A mouse? A dog? OK, probably not a dog. About three weeks after the scratching stopped, we noticed a few bluebottles …

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor (iPhone): COMPLETED!

T’other day, there was a big sale on the App Store, with loads of iPhone games reduced to 59p and £1.19. S:TSOBM was one of those, and I bought it. And so it came to pass, it was the second iPhone game I completed! Took about 3 hours in total, I’d say. Yes, I could have done it quicker, but I tried to get every insect on every level, so it took longer. So there. Perhaps I should explain the …

Banned from NOE Forums

deKay’s Nintendo Forums Wrangle Introduction Nintendo of Europe (NOE) have a website at www.nintendo-europe.com. On this site, they have a set of forums – open to all registered users (such as myself). As is common with most web-based forums, you can set yourself a “sig file”, which is appended to the bottom of each post you make. Prior to 6th November 2002, my sig read something similar to: deKayeditor of the free videogames magazine “ugvm”http://www.ugvm.org.uk On the 6th November 2002, I …

Portal 2 Co-op (Switch): COMPLETED!

Why yes, I did decide to play Portal 2 after Portal. And yes, I have played Portal 2 before. But! I haven’t played this Portal 2 before. I shall explain. What I’d never realised before, is that co-op mode in Portal 2 is not Portal 2 with two players. No, it’s a completely separate game. Different levels, different plot, different player character(s), just all set in the same world as Lonely Boi Portal 2. With two players at the same …

Return to Monkey Island (Switch): COMPLETED!

It’s another one of those “why did it take me so long to get round to it” games. Well, to answer that, just take a look around the rest of my site. But here I am, having eventually played and completed it. There was much kerfuffle about the change in graphic style between this and the original (and the remasters of those, and the Telltale Games ones) as if the pixels of the first two games were sacred and should …

Toem (PS5): COMPLETED!

This looked like a lovely wee game when I saw it appear on the Switch eShop, so because I’m morally against paying full price for anything these days I put it on my wish list in the hope of a sale. And then, it appeared on PS+, saving me even more money! It’s a unique looking, black and white 2D characters in a 3D world game with a hand-drawn style, which is why it originally stood out to me. For …

Unpacking (Switch): COMPLETED!

What I was expecting from this game: a sort of Tetris puzzle game where you have to fit items into a room. What I was not expecting: a putting-things-away simulator with an unwritten, non-verbal story about the life of a woman. Told over a number of years across various different houses, you unpack your belongings as you move in. Over time, you acquire (and lose) new hobbies, tastes and relationships, but this is only explained by the objects in the …

Dark Arms (Switch): COMPLETED!

This game is one I have for the NeoGeo Pocket and I remember I enjoyed it at the time, but don’t remember much about it. Aside from you shoot baddies to get souls which upgrade your guns. Seems, now I’ve completed it on the NeoGeo Pocket Colour Selection on the Switch, that really that’s all there is to it. OK, so not quite. There’s a story which is badly translated and makes little sense, and you don’t just have a …

Doki Doki Literature Club (Mac): COMPLETED!

A lot of people have written a lot about this game already, and aside from the general sentiment that You Must Play It and the knowledge that Something Dark Happens And Then It All Goes Sideways, I’ve managed to avoid all spoilers and plot points. So I won’t be sharing them here. All I will say is the same as I knew going into the game: Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel about a literature appreciation club in …

Flowlines VS (Switch): COMPLETED!

I go into this game a lot more on episode 36 of the ugvm podcast, but briefly, Flowlines VS is a game where you join paired hexagonal tiles in a grid up with one another without letting the lines cross. I’ve probably not explained that very well but one look at a screenshot should clear it up: There are over 400 levels, and for the most part they’re very easy. A couple caused me to try a few times, but …

Stories Untold (Switch): COMPLETED!

Can I just say, that it’s simply unacceptable for games to not have save points – even if only a suspend-and-resume type – in this day and age? There are four chapters in Stories Untold and you’re not able to save during them, meaning 45 minutes to an hour might pass. Sure, on the Switch you can put the console to sleep, but that means you (or anyone else) can’t play another game in the meantime, and with Animal Crossing …