Densetsu no Stafi (Switch): COMPLETED!

When I bought the original Game Boy Advance, imported from Japan, I ended importing a lot of Japanese games too. At the time it was usually cheaper, and there were some really weird looking games that I wanted to play. For a few years, I often saw the three GBA Stafi games for sale on the likes of Lik Sang (RIP) and Play Asia, but never cheap enough to buy. Eventually the DS came out and the 4th game in …

Lucy Dreaming (Switch): COMPLETED!

I do like a nice silly point and click adventure game. Especially with regional British accents. And, hopefully, toilets. WELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, Lucy Dreaming has all those things. Phew, eh? Lucy suffers from nightmares and sets out to get to the root of why, with it seemingly having something to do with a murder in her town many years ago. Lucy can explore her house, and the town, in the usual pointy-clicky way you would with other …

Picross S4 (Switch): COMPLETED!

Yes. It is another of Jupiter’s almost identical picross games. And yes, it is even longer than the previous ones I played. And yes, I will be buying Picross S5 when I see it on sale. What are you implying? There’s nothing new in this one, apart from all the puzzles being new of course. What I mean is there’s no new modes or mechanics or anything. It does have some huuuuuuge bonus puzzles if you have save data from …

Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation – The Endless Seven-Day Journey (Switch): COMPLETED!

Kaz Ayabe is known for making, well, the same summer holiday game over and over again. He has a series of titles called Boku no Natsu-yasumi (which means “my summer holiday”) which are quiet little games set in rural Japanese villages where you collect bugs and catch fish and run errands and, well, that’s it. You discover secrets and there are events and stuff but they’re like Animal Crossing on whatever the opposite of steroids are. On the 3DS, Ayabe …

Another Code: Recollection (Switch): COMPLETED!

Another Code: Recollection, is a remake of two games that were originally on the DS and Wii (Another Code: Two Memories and Another Code: R). These games are essentially point-and-click adventures with puzzle elements and some great visual novel-style storytelling that digs into family secrets, memory, and loss. You play as Ashley, a young girl trying to uncover memories of her past while helping others do the same. See, the name is clever because it’s a “re-collection” and also a “recollection”. The …

Frog Detective (Switch): COMPLETED!

Once a set of three separate games on Steam, all the Frog Detective games are now bundled together on the Nintendo Switch! Of course I bought it. You’ll never guess the premise: you’re a frog, and you’re a detective. You know you’re a detective because you get a magnifying glass right at the start, although you never actually use it. But the point is, you’re ready to solve mysteries. There are three mysteries in total, and each one is just …

A Fisherman’s Tale (Quest): COMPLETED!

My second VR game completed! A Fisherman’s Tale is a first person point and click adventure game set inside a lighthouse. Only the twist is, inside the lighthouse is a model of the same lighthouse only that lighthouse is the lighthouse you’re in. In turn, the lighthouse you’re in is therefore inside a larger lighthouse. A similar premise was used in the game Maquette, although the scope there was much larger, complicated, and not in VR. Being in VR it …

Moss (Quest): COMPLETED!

I was recently bought a Meta Quest 2, which – naturally – meant I needed to figure out what games work well on such a thing and which were worth my time playing. One that was recommended over and over was Moss, so here I am telling you about My First Ever Completed VR Game! If you take VR out of the equation, Moss is a nice little platformer with some puzzles and sword fighting as you take your mouse …

Pepper Grinder (Switch): COMPLETED!

I’ve often said that some games that are previewed too far in advance of release are not doing themselves any favours. For me, anyway. Pepper Grinder is one such game, that piqued my interest in a Nintendo Direct long, long ago and then when it came out I’d totally forgotten about it whereas if it was wowgoshlookithtis and it was released a couple of weeks later, I might have jumped on it immediately. Then I saw it in an eShop …

Cat Quest II (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Since I enjoyed the first game, and also had a free copy of the second, of course I was going to play that too. It isn’t actually vastly different to the first one, although you now have two characters you can swap between (you’ll never guess that the other one is a dog), and as well as a largely-similar map to Cat Quest OG there’s a whole dog-populated area north of it. Gameplay is mostly as before, although upgrades to …

Xenosphere (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I can’t tell you about this game too much because it will spoil it for you. What I can say, it’s a sort of simplified Trials game (you know, that motorbike on a 2D track thing) but also that it isn’t. It’s also not very long, is very free (on Steam), and it’s by Nifflas who you might know from such games as Knytt and Affordable Space Adventure.

Cat Quest (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

My daughter picked this up on the Switch some time ago and loved it (and the sequel) so much she actually preordered Cat Quest III the day it was announced. She had never preordered a game before! I’ve always liked the look of it – 2D sprites on a map in a way that sort of feels a bit like Paper Mario but the game is more like Zelda and the camera angle is like those 2D-HD remakes of old …

Street Fighter Alpha (Switch): COMPLETED!

Anyone would think I’d recently bought both the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection pack and the Capcom Fighting Collection pack on the Switch eShop for super cheap recently or something. And if they thunk that, they’d be thunking right because I have. Now, I’ve said before that Street Fighter Alpha 2 is my favourite Street Fighter game (and, probably, my favourite one-on-one fighting game of all time), but that doesn’t mean I don’t like Street Fighter Alpha, er, One. It …

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (Switch): COMPLETED!

Yes, it isn’t the best two player competitive blocks-in-wells based puzzle game (that would be Puyo Puyo), but you can’t not like Super Puzzle Fighter with it’s super-deformed Capcom fighters and just the sheer absurdity of it. The aim I much like other similar games – match up blocks and send them over to the other player’s well to fill it up a bit and bugger up their plans. Each character has a special pattern of blocks that, when you …

Vampire Savior (Switch): COMPLETED!

No, not the horde-based twin stick only one stick sort of shooter. That’s Vampire Survivors, even though I keep getting the two names mixed up. No, this is the Capcom 1-on-1 fighting game from the late 90s heyday of Capcom 1-on-1 fighting games. There was a cheap bundle of bundles (a bundle^2, if you like) on the eShop recently where you could get Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection and Capcom Fighting Collection together for less money than either collection had …