Anyone who describes themselves as a gamer, or even those who read a lot of books, collect DVDs (remember them?) or are avid fans of various other arts, know about The Backlog. It is, as a gamer at least, a list of games that have been bought (or acquired – most games are “free” these days) under the full intent to play, but for whatever reason are Pushed on the stack and have not yet reached Pop. Why these games …
I really enjoyed West of Loathing, so I’m not sure why I took so long to get round to the sequel (actually, I do – All The Games). And what a game it is. Well, it’s the same as the previous game. Of course, it isn’t, but everything that was great about that is still great here. Time has moved on a bit, so instead of being set in the Old West, Shadows Over Loathing is set in The Big …
I do love the SteamWorld series of games. And the world they’re all set in. Of course I was going to get this, although my interest was slightly tempered by the fact it’s the first SteamWorld game not made by the core staff of the previous ones. Would that be OK? I’m pleased to reveal, that yes. The style, humour and world have all come out unscathed. The references to other events in the series – particularly SteamWorld Dig 2 …
If you look at the screenshot, you’ll see that everything is very small. This is not, as I discovered having spent a long time trying to change it, a bug, a zoomed out setting, or a screen resolution issue. It is, in fact, intentional. The entire “map” is visible for the duration of the game, and everything is supposed to be tiny. And, on a Steam Deck, almost impossible to discern what is going on. But I managed it. It’s …
It’s another Sokpop game! I love all of these so far. Dino Game is probably the least fun one so far, but it’s still good enough to be worth a play, especially since it’s so cheap and short. You’re on an island with big brontosaurus-type dinosaurs. You need to escape via your UFO, but you can’t reach it as it’s up in the sky. If you can befriend the dinos, by feeding them what they want, however… Yes, pretty simple, …
Frog’s Adventure is a hop-and-click adventure game that first came to my attention via John Walker’s Buried Treasure site. As a result, it’s how I found out about Sokpop and after someone Very Kind in the ugvm collective sent me a copy of it, I bought the rest of the Chill Adventure bundle because they all looked great. For some reason, it wasn’t the first one I played though. John explains the game much better than I can so I …
Yes! Another little Sokpop game! This one has you boating between tiny islands, upgrading your little boat, defeating skeletons, and following treasure maps to get items which will help you destroy a huge sea monster. The controls are a little fiddly, and it was only by accident I realised you could swap which side of your boat you could fire a cannon from (which until then had meant sea encounters were unnecessarily difficult), but like the other Sokpop titles it’s …
Another Sokpop game! This one is a tiny Metroidvania where you’re a robot and you have to, well, explore and collect nuts and bolts and fly a little spaceship. Upgrades include a body (you start as just a head!), a gun, the ability to go in water, and so on. It’s all quite cute and has frogs in it. It’s got chunky graphics which remind me a bit of Atari 2600 games aside from a few bits where they have …
I bought a bundle of cute looking games on Steam from a group called Sokpop. They seem to have hundreds on there, but the “Chill Adventure” bundle looked right up my street. Turns out it was. It’s here if you want it too. After a brief go of some of them, once my daughter graciously allowed me to have my Steam Deck back once she’d played them, I settled on Fishy 3D. You’re a fish who has to grow bigger, …
What’s this, you say? It’s been over a month since I completed anything? You thought I was dead? Well, no! Turns out that Tears of the Kingdom is Quite Large and so it has taken me 95 hours to complete it. Which, across a month, is about three hours a day. That’s fine, right? There’s a lot to talk about regarding the game. For example, a number of people complained that it’s just using the same overworld as Breath of …
It’s been a while, but with it recently popping up on the Switch Online service, I gave it another go. This time, I’d remembered how damn difficult it was, but even so, a few later levels (especially one which was an autoscroller) are properly brutal. Yes, I used save states. You have to, and not even because it is difficult – it’s just so, so long and there aren’t any built-in save options or passwords or anything. All you can …
In which you run a launderette, put washing on, tumble dry, collect it up, and pick up rubbish. Only! In the back room of the launderette is a mostly forgotten and unloved video game arcade with a handful of machines! So when you make laundry money, you buy more arcade machines, and then they make you money, and then they start to make so much money that, actually, the laundrette starts to just get in the way so you oust …
The first game to be “free” with the new higher tiers of PlayStation Plus on the day of release, Stray was a lovely surprise. I knew it existed, so I don’t mean like that, and it was announced to be coming to the service a while back. No, what I’m referring to is the gameplay, the setting, and just how good it is. Until downloading it, my interested was “ooh, a cat game? That might be fun”. But it’s so …
It’s been a long time since a Lego game came out. This one is (yet another) Star Wars themed one, which re-treads a lot of ground from previous Lego Star Wars games due to the fact they’re based on the same films. They are, however, all new levels, and the most recent two films have never been developed into a Lego game either, so that’s OK. It’s also a “new engine”, “rewritten from the ground up” or something, so you …
Haven Park is a twee little game (and I mean that in a good way) about a bird who takes over the running of a set of run down campsites out in the countryside. It’s very similar in feel to A Short Hike, but with more interaction and a different emphasis. It involves collecting resources, like wood, to build appealing camping areas, which are then populated with visitors. Some of these have additional requests, and there are a few areas …
