Notes on recently played games - I
Many comments from my backlog of games to comment on. Some of these I played quite a long time ago. I’ll do a second similar post soon. Compiled with other notes here.
- Dodgeball Academia (2021): like the Mario Tennis on GBA, but for dodgeball. As a bonus, it’s Brazilian and the Portuguese text is very good.
- Donut County (2018): short puzzle game where you make things fall into an ever increasing hole. Finite amount of well designed levels. First watched a friend play around release time, then bought it for myself a few years later.
- inbento (2019): short puzzle game. Doesn’t get too hard (the mechanics do allow some infernal puzzles, but that’s not the vibe of this game). Also has cute drawings of cats.
- Olli Olli World (2022): fun arcade skate game. Difficulty is quite variable, on the first worlds it’s mostly easy, then gets very hard. To get to the end of the story you only need to get to the end of most stages; the extra challenges unlock more clothes for your character. The DLCs are mostly more stages, with some new mechanics; recommended only if you want even more.
- Moonlighter (2018): half rogue-like, half shop simulator. The combat is fine, a big drawback is that you have to commit to two main weapon types or grind a lot; I found the price discovery quite illegible. Nice gameplay loop, but it gets repetitive.
- Scarlet Nexus (2021): bought because it seemed like a good action RPG. It indeed is. A big downside is that the game has two main characters, with two stories to play through, but they intersect quite a bit. Played with one of the characters and was satisfied; not sure if I’ll go back to the other character.
- Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021): short punny games with 2D Zelda-like mechanics. Fun, doesn’t overstay its welcome, mechanics are serviceable. Difficulty adjustable.
- Vampire Survivors (2022): addictive, to say the least. Uninstalled after I got good enough to be able to finish a few runs. I recommend the noclip documentary on it.
- Yoku’s Island Express (2018): Nice little metroidvania with pinball mechanics. Has some nice challenges but plenty of checkpoints; very relaxing overall. Using pinball for exploration was very fun. The game is long enough to get a good fell of the controls, but not too long to get boring.
- Ys: Origin (2006): action RPG with simple but wonderful combat system. I played the three available characters; by the last one I was tired of the story, but not of the combat. The three characters also have a nice progression from easier to harder (mostly with respect to attack range).