Gothenburg

Gothenburg, or Göteborg in the local tongue, is Sweden’s second largest city. It is on the west coast of the country, pretty much half-way between two other Nordic cities I’ve visited – Copenhagen in Denmark, and Oslo in Norway. In many ways, if feels like somewhere between the two as well. We went on holiday there for 8 days. According to the guide on the boat tour, the city is built on mud and they needed the help of the …

Entropy Survivors (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I actually got this in a random game bundle a while back, and it was one of the better games in that pack, but for some reason I didn’t put much time into it. Over the last few months I’ve been doing the odd run here and there, eventually finishing it today. As the name suggests, it’s a Survivorslike. In this one, you’re a frog riding a mech because of course you are, and you have two basic weapons – …

Find My Frogs (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

You’ll never guess from the title of the game what sort of game this is and what you’re supposed to do. No, not punch Nazis (although that would make a good game), it’s finding – get this – frogs. Incredible. In a dramatic change from the ten thousand “hidden cats” games currently available, this is a large, scrollable image with hidden frogs in it. Click on them to “find” them, and when you’ve got them all (and all the gnomes, …

Unboxathon (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Unboxathon is a simple, relatively short, clicker game. In this one (and I feel like I’ve played a lot of these recently), you buy boxes, open them, and sell the random contents. As you make more money and collect more stuff also found in the boxes, you can buy and unlock better boxes with higher value contents. There are upgrades which do things like improve the chances of rarer items, or allow you to open boxes with fewer clicks, or, …

The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

More of the same, blog post done, PUBLISH. Which, really, is true but a little shortchangey. It is more of the same, at least in terms of the style and the humour and the types of puzzles. One big difference is in how you don’t have your (usual) partner – Dooley – for some of the game as he went missing (spoiler, sorry) at the end of the previous game and much of the plot of this sequel is trying …

The Darkside Detective (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this in my library (in multiple libraries, in fact) and thought, ooh yeah, I’ll play that… just not right now. Tens of times. Finally, its time came! The Darkside Detective is a point and click adventure game with big chunky pixel graphics and silly puzzles and characters. The premise is that you’re a police detective, but your cases mainly revolve around ghosts and the occult. Spooky occurrences, portals to the Darkside, a …

Citizen Sleeper (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I really wasn’t expecting this sort of game from the description. I know Citizen Sleeper is considered a good game, and I knew it was cyberpunky and set in space, but I thought it was going to be like Syndicate or an isometric Deus Ex or something. I was way off. What it actually is, is a sort of visual novel with dice rolls. Playing it, I was reminded of the gameplay of Sunless Sea, albeit without the combat. Or …

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 …

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 …

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 …