Gambler’s Table (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

It’s another clicker game! How rare. This one is themed around flipping coins. You click on a coin, and if it’s tails (or heads? I genuinely can’t remember and it makes no difference anyway) you get money. You spend the money on having more coins on the table, and higher value coins, and little helper people to flip coins for you, or upgrades where you just have to move the pointer vaguely near coins to flip them, or coins that …

Trees Inc (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

If I were to describe this game it would sound very much like it was the same as Timber Rush, which I also played recently. And, I suppose it is. Trees Inc is a cookie clicker type game where you chop trees, get money for chopping trees, and spend that money to chop faster, get more money, and buy helpers to chop on your behalf. So yes, it’s the same game. Well, not quite. It looks a lot more basic, …

Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I tend to claim every single free Epic and Amazon game each time they come up, but it’s not often one catches my eye enough to play. Arrangers, though, looked somewhat different and just happened to arrive when I was between games, and so here we are. It’s a puzzle game, mostly, where you move by sliding the floor as if it is made of tiles. You know, like those slidey jigsawy picture puzzles you can get. Some items and …

Timber Rush (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

See, Idle Slayer? This is how you make an interaction-necessary incremental clicker type game. It doesn’t outstay its welcome, you make constant progress, and (after a certain point) you don’t need to touch anything most of the time. In Timber Rush, you are a lumberjack. You chop down trees, wear high heels, suspenders and uh, make lots of money. On Wednesdays you also go shopping, probably. Chopping wood nets you money, and money can be spent on better axes, helpers, …

Idle Slayer (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

The title of this game is a bit of a lie. It implies it’s one of those cookie clicker type idler games where you kill things, but actually, there’s a lot of non-idle “gameplay” needed in order to actually progress. The basic idea is you run left to right, automatically, and collect coins and kill baddies. Coins let you buy upgrades for your equipment which basically act as coins-per-second increases and multipliers, meaning more coins more quickly with which to …

The Mr Rabbit Magic Show (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

I do like Rusty Lake’s weird little point and click adventure games. What I hadn’t realised, is that I had this game, unplayed, in my library. Or that it even existed. I saw an article about it and looked it up on Steam and lo – I already had it. It’s also free, just in case you haven’t. It’s actually a meta game, being set in the Rusty Lake offices as they prepare for a company birthday celebration (which, cyclically, …

This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker! (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

What if Balatro was a cookie clicker card battler? Well, this, it seems. Like Balatro, you have a deck of cards that – over time – you can modify to add or remove cards, and have special cards that add extra points or multipliers to hands you play. Unlike Balatro, hands played are automatic – you just click the deck and a hand is dealt. Quickly, you get the ability to autodeal hands on a timer, just like in cookie …

Explorers (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

A little Pico-8 game which I picked up from itch a while back, Explorers has you boating about a randomly generated archipelago, finding treasure, meeting other people who you can try to convince to trade with you or help you, and sometimes stealing their boats. The aim is to complete your map, which you can do by visiting everywhere, but you can also fill it in more quickly by asking the people you meet about where they’re from or have …

Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Obviously the reason I started playing this is because of the absurd name. How I came to own it in the first place, however, is a mystery. Was it free on Amazon? Did I get it in one of those itch.io charity bundles? Ghosts? Who knows. CCFWTBT is a platformer where you, as an acrobat called Belle (along with her pet bell called Chime) have to rescue her boyfriend who is kidnapped by an ex-friend. It plays out like a …

Pesticide Not Required (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

What if Vampire Survivors was a chop-chop, dig-dig game? As in, as well as auto-attacking swarms of enemies with increasingly more powerful weaponry, you also plant crops, mine ore and catch fish? Well, Pesticide Not Required answers that question. As with other Survivors-type/Bullet Heaven games, there’s the usual kill things, get XP, go up levels, spend points on mostly random updates, and repeat. Only here, in order to progress, you have to buy seeds at the end of each day …

Un Pas Fragile (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Un Pas Fragile is a short narrative game about a frog who wants to do ballet. As all frogs do, I expect. It plays out over a few days, where you leave your house, get the bus, go to ballet school, and do some ballet. Of course, other people (er, animals) are not as accepting of your life choices as you’d like, so you get laughed at and bullied to begin with, meaning that you have to do some simple …

The Good Time Garden (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

This was a quick play after Thank Goodness You’re Here!, and it’s sort of a prototype for what that game ended up being. It’s more abstract, but still very silly. This time, you’re a sort of naked onionman thing who has to find food for a creature in order to progress. There’s not a lot to it, but it was enjoyable enough – and free on Steam! Bargain.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Sometimes, a game comes along which is properly hilarious. Sure, there are funny games, and games with funny events or “player made” hilarity, but it’s rare for a funny game to be this funny. Thank Goodness You’re Here! is what we used to call an arcade adventure game. I suppose, in some ways, it’s the spiritual successor to such British 8-bit computer games as Everyone’s A Wally and Jack the Nipper. You, as a little (although his size randomly changes …

Toilet Chronicles (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

A game with toilets in it? Surely not. And me, here, with enough spare change in my Steam account from selling trading cards to afford to buy it? Serendipity! I went in knowing almost nothing about the game, except that it has toilets in it and you’re trapped in the toilets. And that is pretty much all there is to know. You’ve gone into the toilets of a party and then the door to the gents seems to have vanished …

Invincible Presents: Atom Eve (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Presumably to tie in with, or advertise, the Invincible series on Amazon Prime, this part turn based strategy, part visual novel was released for free by Amazon. And it’s pretty good! It tells a similar story to the show, but mainly from the point of view of Atom Eve, with her run-ins with useless foe Killcannon as well as family drama and love life trauma. The visual novel bits allow you to choose various responses in conversations, some of which …