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Smashing Bottles (PC) by jp (May 30th, 2026 at 18:16:28) |
Heard about this one recently and got stuck playing the demo on itch (though it's also available on Steam) for a few hours until I got to the final (demo) ending!
It's an incremental game with some interesting things going on - you have a bat and smash bottles, but you have a limited time to do so (in seconds, like max 25 or so after all the upgrades?). When time runs out you can go again or go to the shop to buy upgrades. As expected you want to get more money from smashing bottles and there's ways to do that - spawn golden bottles, champagne bottles (when they smash the corks fly out and can smash other things), and even molotov cocktails (that explode, smashing other things).
There's a few things I thought where nice/clever:
a. The game has two distinct phases (once you unlock molotovs, everything changes, really) - the "you smash" and the "maximize money in the time allowed". In the latter, the game mostly plays itself as the molotovs keep everything getting smashed.
b. The "you smash" has rotating bottles, and since the smashing can take a few hits, there's some interest in smashing champagne such that the cork flies in a certain direction for more damage.
c. The champagne corks are pretty clever - since it gives you a reason to, in the short time you have to smash, choose what to smash a little more carefully. Go for golden or champagne hoping for a productive chain reaction?
Of course there's also a prestige/reset mechanic - from which you can lock a separate bat that smashes.
I'm curious how far things will go once the full game is out - and what the nature of the upgrades will be. I'm really hoping for more variety in the experience beyond the simple "number go up" - in that sense the molotovs seem like they're capping the experience in a detrimental way (even as they were super fun to smash when I first unlocked them.
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Donkey Kong Bananza (NSW2) by jp (May 30th, 2026 at 18:07:32) |
Still playing!
It has an interesting structure in terms of its levels and such - the core metaphor is that you're going deeper into the planet with each level, and they're both thematic and numbered. I got to a point where there's a bifurcation - go right into what I thought was "jungle land" or left into "snow land". I went right did a few more levels, cleared the boss (it was plant/poison land) and in order to continue going deeper I was then told to go back to "snow land"! There's a fast travel/teleport system involving giant worms that can move your around, so it was easy enough to do this, but I was surprised to learn that the fork was just a "choose what order to do these" situation... and also, the entire "fork" makes little sense thematically so I'm curious to see how it's explained and communicated in the interface - will it look like a fork in the "hole" going into the planet's core?
The titular ability (bananza mode!) was a bit underwhelming - you turn into a bigger DK and can now punch things you couldn't before - it lasts a limited amount of time. But, I've since unlocked a new one - DK-bird - where you can glide around (and after paying to unlock) and drop an egg on enemies. The gilding around was important/necessary in the plant/poison levels, and I'm expecting it to be similarly required in the snowy ones. We'll see!
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Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC) by dkirschner (May 13th, 2026 at 14:58:07) |
Kicking myself for not writing an entry when I was playing this 6 months ago. I am cleaning up my wishlist, backlog, and etc., and the FEELING I get when I see Silksong "in progress" is anxiety. I had jotted a few notes in December, as follows:
"It’s true, Silksong is hard. Like, really, frustratingly hard. Like punishingly difficult. I hit a wall at the end of Act 1 trying to beat the Last Judge. The game likes to place benches far away from boss fights, such that retrying boss fights involves slogging back through tough platforming and other sections of the map."
I did kill the Last Judge and complete Act 1. I remember that took a very long time, and that after the Last Judge, I died a few more times and, probably, with shaking hands and rapid heartbeat, said, "I can't do this anymore." Actually, it may have been in one of those rooms with waves of enemies. This innovation is new and unwelcome to Silksong, rooms that lock upon entering and spill several waves of challenging enemies at you. Yeah, I think that is what got me, just being pummeled over and over in one of those rooms, getting tired of exploring the maze-like map, tired of dying, tired of corpse runs, just exhausted. The game became a chore.
Besides that, I loved it, haha. I was definitely into it for a while. It was sublime until it wasn't.
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Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC) by dkirschner (May 12th, 2026 at 17:20:35) |
I meant to quickly beat this back in April so I could have a "completion" for the month, but I got really busy after spending barely an hour one afternoon with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, a bizarre little twin-stick shooter about a turnip...who robs a bank. The game builds off previous games in the series, which I have never played, in which Turnip Boy commits tax evasion and, according to this game at least, seems to have started a war. Work has slowed down for the first time in nearly two months, and while I wait for my next contract to begin, I figured I'd knock this out.
The whole game is silly. The world is populated by sentient fruits and vegetables. You are employed by a pickle / mafia gang leader to rob a bank of a garlic bulb / bad guy / killed your dad. You have a base, where you can get new weapon loadouts by bringing weapons from the bank (always try to return with something new or high-powered!), purchase progression items from the "dark web," and upgrade stuff at another vendor. You go on "runs" to the bank, which are timed (starts at 2 or 3 minutes, goes up to 5 or 6 with upgrades). Runs are over when you die or when you exit the bank. Die and you lose half the cash you accumulated in the run. Survive and you are handsomely rewarded. Upgrade stuff. Go back to the bank. It's a roguelite too.
The bank has a specific layout of rooms, but you'll encounter some randomized areas too, and enemies and treasure are somewhat randomized. Throughout the bank are tons of NPCs with little fetch quests that usually reward you with pictures (fun/ny to look at) or hats (fun/ny to equip). A blueberry might want you to find its wedding ring, a lime wants you to get divorce papers from her lemon husband, a scientist pineapple wants you to find a philosopher mango and ask it an ethical question about experimenting on fruits, etc. I had some good laughs.
In each corner of the bank is a boss. Boss fights were fun, but the most challenging were early on. Once you start upgrading stats, the game becomes easy. It definitely ends up being an "upgrade everything and go nuts on all the enemies!" type game, experience being overpowered.
I haven't played a twin-stick shooter in a while, and while this wasn't revolutionary or anything, it was fun and scratched the itch. I gotta get back to Divinity: Original Sin 2. I might have some extra time till my next gig, so maybe I can boot it up, remember what I was doing, and make some progress this week.
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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) by jp (Apr 27th, 2026 at 22:04:52) |
I got to that point where I hit a monster/boss that just wasn't that much fun, and then I got a bit lost in terms of where to continue making progress, and the backtracking started to get a bit tiresome...as I explored and searched for different paths. So, time to bail!
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Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC) by dstomakh |
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most recent entry: Friday 8 February, 2008
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Gamelog Entry #2:
GAMEPLAY:
Since I’ve been playing Morrowind for several years I’m going to discuss what happens after you’ve played the game once through and are starting a second character. Something I should mention is that Morrowind has two expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon, which I have also played through. I didn’t mention these in my first entry, but I will be commenting on them here.
WARNING: There will be SPOILERS.
In terms of character creations you will likely choose the one with the best bonuses for later in the game and you will create a custom job class so that the skill you used the most the first time around will be either major or minor. You will also know that at around level five you will be attacked by assassins as per Tribunal’s start, thus you tend not to worry about buying, finding, and/or stealing armor for your character. You will know that spells are the most powerful attacks in the beginning of the game; that being the case choosing a character race that has more mana is favorable.
Overall, game play tends to be more rushed when you already know where you need to go and what you need to do to complete certain quests. When I was replaying Morrowind several parts of the main quest that I remembered taking a really long time I managed to do really quickly. Also you tend not to interact with the NPCs that much anymore, since you pretty much know what they are going to say and you know what the background story is.
Let’s talk about the two expansions: Tribunal and Bloodmoon.
Of course, there are new items, new NPCs, a ton of new side-quests, and all-new monsters. There is a new storyline in each of the expansions, in which Tribunal’s storyline lightly builds on Morrowind’s while Bloodmoon is completely stand-alone. One thing you don’t see, which could have been really good, is new dimensions to quests. Like maybe have more puzzle-type quests rather than the straight forward “go kill a certain monster and reap the rewards” type of quests.
Both expansions add a degree of difficulty to the game. The enemies are stronger than they are in the original game and there is a lot higher chance that they appear in mass. A short-coming of the original was that 99% of the time you would fight enemies one-on-one and while this continues to hold true for a large part of the expansions there are a lot more times when you are forced to fight groups of enemies (this applies more to Bloodmoon).
DESIGN:
I don’t know whether this is a short-coming in the design of the game, but it is very easy to exploit several features and elements (training, enchanting items, corpus disease stat boosters, finding powerful unique items, and getting millions of gold) of the game in order to make your character very powerful in the very beginning and then just breeze through the game. On one hand this makes the game too easy and less fun to play, but on the other it makes several tedious factors (for example, walking with the speed of a snail) go away quickly. There is a certain amount of satisfaction to be gained from being able to exploit some small developer over-sights (like making yourself a second Wraithguard; if you know what you’re doing).
One thing I found that is definitely a short-coming is that if you have the best items (enchantments of items included) you’re practically invincible. Resist magic 100+% really does make you impervious to all magic spells along with many weapon enchantments.
Thus, interaction with the game heavily depends on whether or not you have played it before or not. If you haven’t then in the beginning of the game you spend a lot of time exploring, which is probably exactly what the developer wanted to happen. However, if you’ve played it before then you tend to skip many things and go straight for things and quests that you know are the most fun and/or will give you the best experience. Traveling via walking pretty much goes out the window, if you can help it, unless it’s to find a really good item. If you get particularly lazy and/or bored you start to travel using the console (pretty much cheating).
In that sense, the exploration and interaction elements of the game are dulled and one could argue that the game is less fun to play, but I would disagree with that. I think that the variety of races, skills, and different low-level character builds (I say low-level because in the end all your skills are maxed out and it doesn’t matter who you started out as) make the game fun to play; as long as you don’t keep doing the same character build over and over.
The fun and attractiveness of the game really starts to wind down once you’ve become a “god,” done everything there is to do, and been everywhere interesting. While you will probably never completely dissolve the fog-of-war on the map, you have to realize that more than 50% of map is just terrain with nothing on it, no caves, dwellings, tombs, ruins, or strongholds; and personally uncovering a lava pit from the fog-of-war is pretty god damn boring. There are just no more accidental finds or small nifty features that really make you stop for a moment and think, “hey, that’s cool, I never knew…”
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