deKay's Lofi Gaming

World of Goo (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

It’s been a long time since I last played this on the Wii. I blame not having another machine with a suitable input device, as it only really works with touch screens and pointers, not control sticks. Yes, I know I could have managed on the Switch or even on the Mac, but anyway. Trackpad on the Steam Deck it is. I’d totally forgotten about most of the “story”, and have no recollection of the Information Superhighway “world” at all. …

Pony Island (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I aborted an attempt to play Pony Island on my Mac a few years ago, as you have to press the left and right mouse buttons at the same time at some point, and with a Mac mouse you can’t do that. I had a PC mouse I could have plugged in instead, but I also had eleventybillion other games that didn’t require that sort of effort, so it got shelved. Until now! Sure, the Steam Deck actually has no …

Heaven’s Vault (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

What an unusual game. I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just not really like anything I’ve played before. Heaven’s Vault has the feel of a point and click adventure game (albeit with direct control of your character), but it’s also mostly a visual novel. Except, it has “driving” sections. And, perhaps most interesting and unusual, there’s an entire language you have to slowly translate as the game progresses. Then there’s the animation style, which is like a …

Moving Out (PS5): COMPLETED!

This is one of those intentionally obstructive co-op arcade games like Overcooked, and it has a similar art style and sense of humour to that game too. But, it’s a lot easier and I (well, we – daughter was on controller 2) had more fun with it. The aim is to clear a house of (mostly) furniture, by carrying it to the waiting lorry and packing it all in so it fits. Smaller items, like toasters and boxes, can be …

Aperture Desk Job (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Yes, I have a Steam Deck. And you know what? It’s actually great. I was sure it’d be horrible and clunky and just a bit wrong, but actually, it isn’t. Well, OK, it is still a bit clunky. To show off the ten trillion different sticks, buttons, pads, flaps, twiddles, surfaces and touchybits that the Steam Deck packs to ensure there’s a workable control method for just about every game you can throw at it, Valve created a free game …

Bit Orchard: Animal Valley (Switch): COMPLETED!

In case you were thinking this was like a Game Boy version of Stardew Valley, then you’re right. It is. Only very, very cut down. Well, maybe cut down is wrong. Streamlined? Slimmed down? As in that game, you inherit a run-down farm (an orchard, in this case – albeit one with only one tree), meet people, grow crops (well, just apples), do a bit of fishing, complete some quests, chat to a ghost, and so on. Only instead of …

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (PS5): COMPLETED!

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 …

SNK vs Capcom: The Match of the Millennium (Switch): COMPLETED!

Yes, another NeoGeo Pocket game from that Switch compilation. And it seems I’d completed this previously – twice in fact. Like all the other fighting games on the NeoGeo Pocket, it’s very good, although they don’t half do a lot of asset reuse. At least in this one they had to create all the Capcom fighters from scratch though! I played through it three times. First as Ken, then as Mai, then as Leona, getting the ending for each, Of …

Millie and Molly (Switch): COMPLETED!

This is a simple little platform puzzle game with 100 levels. It’s similar to Fire ‘N Ice, Solomon’s Key, and Catrap in terms of gameplay, although in this game you can’t step up blocks and you can’t jump. Also, many of the levels let you use two characters (Millie and Molly, of course) with one frozen, so can be used as a “block”, while you control the other. The aim is to defeat all the enemies (simply by touching them) …

Spider-Man: Remastered (PS5): COMPLETED!

The most important thing in any Spider-Man game is the web swinging. What’s the point of being Spider-Man without it? Sure, he could swing in some of the 2D 8 and 16-bit platformers, but when the Gamecube-era Spider-Man 2 game came out the freedom of 3D traversal round New York was a massive wow. The rest of that game… not so much. Well, much time has passed since then and this, the PS5-improved version of the PS4 exclusive, is very …

Little Big Planet 3 (PS4): COMPLETED!

I don’t know where I got this. PS+, perhaps? I certainly would never have bought it what with not really liking the first game. Oh sure, it was clever and it looked pretty and you could make your own levels, but they forgot to make it controllable and fun and the physics are all over the place and the moving in and out of the screen is hit and miss. But they’ll have fixed that two sequels later, right? Right? …

Metroid Dread (Switch): COMPLETED!

It’s been a long time coming, but I have filled this last year or two with many, many Metroidvania games in preparation. Even though I didn’t know it was coming. Of course I ordered it instantly. And, it was really good. I didn’t expect otherwise, but people were very down on Metroid: Other M and I never really got into that myself either. It was lacking the Metroid lonely atmosphere, I think. Too many other people. Lots of chat. Not …

The Room Two (iPad): COMPLETED!

I quite enjoyed the first game when I picked it up on the Switch cheap a while back, but never saw this sequel (or rather, second half of the story) appear on there. I noticed it was on Apple Arcade and so thought I’d play it there instead what with it being essentially free. Controlling it on a touch screen was actually more complex than perhaps it should have been, especially the zooming in and out which felt in inverse …

Wonder Boy – Asha in Monster World (Switch): COMPLETED!

A long, long time ago, I played about 15 minutes of the original Mega Drive version of this game in a local game shop. It was all in Japanese but I liked the look of it. Not quite as long ago, but still over a decade ago, Sega released the first English translated version of it as part of a Wonder Boy pack on Xbox Live Arcade. I bought it, but never played it. Then this came along. A remake …

One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 (PS5): COMPLETED!

Not that long ago I picked up One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 on the Switch because it was cheap and I was after a fun musou game. Turned out that, despite not knowing anything about One Piece, it was really rather good. So, when the sequel was cheap on PSN and I’d just bought a second PS5 controller, I thought I’d pick it up. It’s more of the same, really. There’s a few different story arcs, characters who were not …