Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Persona! There we go. I was going to try not to mention it at all but I realised that would be impossible so thought I’d just come straight out with it. Yes indeed: Tokyo Xanadu is very Persona. Perhaps that is why I enjoyed it so much. So, stop me when you’ve heard this one before. Some school children who ordinarily wouldn’t mix with each other because one is really shy and one is perceived to be a bully and …

Trolley Delayma (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Delayma because it’s like “dilemma”, you see. And autokerwrongt keeps changing it to that. Trolley Delayma was an entry in a Ludum Dare game jam, where the theme was “delay”. They’ve used that, combined with the philosophical “trolley problem” to make a game which looks somewhat like, but plays very differently to, Baba Is You. “Trolley” is American for tram, in case you were confused why this isn’t set in Asda, and the associated problem is whether to run down …

Stikir (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Well this is a bloody weird game. It is, sort of, a game about making a game. Only you play the game and the game keeps changing as you do. One minute it’s a platform game, then it’s a sideways scrolling shooter, then you’re in the dark, then you have to dodge stuff while not falling in holes. Weird, as I said. In some ways it feels a bit like a Wario Ware game, only with the microgames somewhat longer …

Rusty Lake Hotel (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

It’s another Rusty Lake joint, like Samsara Room from the other day. It’s very similar in style, only the setting this time is, as the title might suggest, a hotel. But not an ordinary hotel, oh no. This is one where a number of distinguished animal guests have been invited to attend several consecutive evenings of exquisite meals. Meals where one of the guests is the main course each night. Your job is to kill each in turn, using standard …

Button City (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Button City is a cute little game about a fox who makes friends at a local arcade and becomes a member of a four player team of players of some sort of MOBA called “Gobabots”. The main plot is about trying to stop the arcade from being closed down, but there’s also story about the other characters in the game, many of whom have personal issues to overcome, and you can collect new robots to use as your avatar in …

Super Adventure Hand (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

One of the great things about the Steam Deck, especially with Heroic set up so it can seamlessly work with my GOG, Epic and Amazon game libraries, is the huge number of free games I manage to accrue and actually play. Super Adventure Hand was a recent one, free on Amazon Gaming, which I’d stumbled over on the Switch eShop as “eeeer, dunno”. Can’t argue with free though, can you. And, I’m glad I didn’t pay full whack for it. …

Samsara Room (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Name Samsara Room Developer Rusty Lake Genre Puzzle Platform PC, Mac, iOS, Android Release Date February 2017 Modes Single-player Languages English Website Rusty Lake Another rummage in my itch.io library, and up came this game. “Rusty Lake?” I thought. “Where have I heard that name before?”. Turns out, they also did The White Door, which I remember liking. Why not, eh? It’s more abstract than that game, with very little in the way of words to help you. It’s essentially …

StarBoy (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

While having a rummage through the various itch.io charidee bundles I’ve bought in the past for something to play, this caught my eye. I think it’s the way it’s superficially a bit like Minit and Gato Roboto, although it’s not really much like either of those games. What it actually is, is a short platform, all in black and white, with a lot of wall jumping and some puzzles. These puzzles are mostly of the type where you have to …

Pear Quest (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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 …

Dino Game (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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, …

HoloCure – Save the Fans! (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

In a sea of coattail riding Vampire Survivors clones, it takes something for one to stand out. HoloCure did this by being free. As in, completely free. No cost, no IAPs, no paid DLC. Free. That, and it came to my attention via a recommendation from Gaming on Linux, who I follow because apparently I’m a Linux gamer now what with the Steam Deck and all. Anyway, the game. it’s Vampire Survivors only with anime girls and cute baddies. Apparently, …

Frog’s Adventure (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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 …

Kraken’s Curse (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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 …

Bobo Robot (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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 …