deKay's Lofi Gaming

Gaming Diary

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I’ve played some baffling games in my time but this may be one of the oddest in years. It’s sort of a visual novel, where you play as seemingly the subconscious of a very anxious girl who is sent out to buy some milk. Except, you also play as you, the player. And the girl knows it’s not real. Or is it? Or is it not real but her medication makes it seems like it is? Or is the subconscious …

Vampire Survivors (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Let it be known: I actually spent actual money (rather than money gained from selling farmed trading cards) on this Steam game. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. The things a Steam Deck make you do. I’ve wanted it for some time. Yes, it looks a bit pants and yes it’s cheap and yes, yes it rips off the Castlevania aesthetic to the point of why-hasn’t-Konami-stepped-in, but there was something interesting about how you just get ridiculously overpowered …

Adventure (Switch): COMPLETED!

Yes, the best Atari 2600 game. Well, one of the top three, anyway. I got “Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration” for Christmas and although I’ve played a fair few of the games, most aren’t actually “completable”, what with being mostly score-attack arcade titles. Adventure, though, has an end goal – take the Chalice to the Yellow Castle. The game has three modes. The first is a shorter game with just one dragon, fewer objects and fewer rooms. The second is …

Lil Gator Game (Switch): COMPLETED!

Imagine a game where a little alligator plays at being Link with his big sister. Only she’s grown up and busy with college and so doesn’t want to play any more. So Lil Gator’s (ever increasing group of) friends decide to help them by turning an island into a make-believe World of Zelda complete with plywood baddies and quests and powerups and a glider. Lil Gator wants to make the game the most awesome game because they think it’ll coax …

Little Inferno (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Is this the third platform I’ve played and 100%ed this on now? Probably. It’s still great. I suppose I’d not realised before but Little Inferno is really “just” a simple clicker game. You buy things to make money (by, er, burning them), with which to buy more things. Which you then also burn. There’s a checklist of combinations of two or three things to burn together for extra kudos, and a story about the world getting colder all the time, …

Pokémon Scarlet (Switch): COMPLETED!

Well, completed insofar as the story is done. Actually, there are four stories – three “paths” to take, then a final story available once you’ve done all those. As with other recent Pokémon games, getting to the “end”, beating the Elite Four, then completing the story and defeating the final “boss” was all very, very easy. Yes, you need suitable Pokémon for each part, and yes, they need to be sufficiently levelled, but I was totally overpowered by the time …

Later Alligator (Switch): COMPLETED!

Alligator New York, the setting for this game, is like Real New York only everyone is an alligator instead of a human being. If I were an alligator, I’d probably struggle to wear human clothes, drive human cars, and use human tools, but apparently instead of alligator things, human things work just fine. And alligators can have moustaches and hair? Of course. As a mysterious alligator, decked out in a 1920s Speakeasy-going suit, you’re convinced by paranoid young alligator Pat …

Pokémon Scarlet (Switch)

A rare (these days!) post about a game I’m playing but have not yet completed! So I’ve very much enjoyed recent, as in, 3DS onwards, Pokémon games. Partly because I’ve played them all while my daughter plays the other game (Violet, this time) and we sort of race to the end. Naturally, I win. This time around there has been more than usual in the way of complaints about the game. Mainly to do with bugs and performance issues, and …

A Building Full of Cats (Switch): COMPLETED!

This is a little “find the hidden cats” game. You literally just have to click on all of the cats, of which there are about 300, and then you “win”. Some are hidden in drawers or behind curtains. A few move and have to be found several times. Some blend in with the wallpaper, some don’t actually look much like cats, and some are tiny. But it’s a nice, quiet little game and passes the time, and sometimes, that’s fine.

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers (PS5): COMPLETED!

I’m a fan of the EDF games, with their Massive Ants and Massive Wasps and Massive Robots and Massive Space Ships. I was intrigued by this, Minecraft-y looking entry into the series, but the problem with EDF games is they cost money and don’t often drop to Super Cheap, so I never got round to buying it. And I still haven’t, because it appeared on PS+! I thought the only real difference between this and the others in the series …

Fallout: New Vegas (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

How kind of Amazon to give this away for free just after I’d played Fallout 3 which was also given away for free! Like with Fallout 3, I wanted to play this as A Bad Man, but actually, I didn’t. Well, not entirely. You see, I wasn’t really a big fan of all the factions in New Vegas, not least because none of them were truly “good”: The NCR wanted control and land, Caesar’s Legion wanted slaves and loved to …

Paradise Killer (Switch): COMPLETED!

I’ll admit, I went into this expecting a somewhat different sort of game. In my head, it was a bit Phoenix Wright or Murder By Numbers, but it actually turned out to be a more-interactive-than-usual visual novel with a make-your-own-ending, in first person with platforming. Neither the reviews nor the screenshots suggested the platforming was even a thing, but it is – and it’s a pretty big part of the game. So, my interpretation of the world in which this …

Wiz ‘n’ Liz (MD): COMPLETED!

After a write-up in Retro Gamer magazine, I was reminded how much fun this was all those years ago, so since I already had my RetroFlag GPi out for Mega-lo-Mania purposes, it seemed rude not to have a quick go. Which turned out to be a couple of days of play and ended up with me completing it. As you do. Somewhere, I have a hand-written, self-worked-out list of every single fruit combination for all the magic spells you can …

Mega-lo-Mania (MD): COMPLETED!

It was time to play this again. I mean, sure, it’s almost always time to play this, but it was especially time to play this just now. Choosing Madcap this time, for no real reason, I made it through to the final level where I was once more unopposed. So an instant win, again. Ah well. The real fun was the fun we had along the way, or something.

Casual Birder (Playdate): COMPLETED!

Yes, I have a Playdate! Finally! And yes, this is the first game I’ve completed on it! Casual Birder is a little like that Bit Orchard or Toem in a way. It’s a sort of adventure game set in a town obsessed with taking photos of birds. The aim is to take part in a bird photography competition, but of course things are made difficult in a number of ways. For starters, some of the birds are a bit shy, …