Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1269https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8031Retiring this one too. It's a twin-stick shooter / bullet hell type of thing mixed with modern Doom. Slick, for sure, but I didn't know it would be so arcade-y. There's not much story to speak of, and it's basically a test of mastering the controls to beat, with additional motivation provided by leaderboards. It is fun, intense, for sure, but as with Civ 6 and Noita (although Kill Knight isn't long per se), I don't have the patience right now to commit to it. I might be at a point where I'm exhausted by more open-ended or twitch-based games. I could feel it with Drop Duchy (roguelite fatigue?), which I saw through to the end, but perhaps I should find something more story-heavy with a clearly defined ending for next. Anyway, like I said, Kill Knight is slick. The controls gel really well. You use RT to shoot pistols, circle to melee attack, and LT to shoot like a shotgun spread. All the attacks synergize in different ways. You have to use melee to get shotgun ammo, for example, which incentivizes running up and slicing enemies. Each attack generates some kind of resource that you need for other attacks (or health, very important!), so you have to vary attacks. It really does feel like a twin stick shooter / bullet hell version of the newer Doom games. I think that's about it...Sun, 18 Oct 2026 15:28:37 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8031&iddiary=13565https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8028My first thought was "this is like Spelunky." And of course it is because it's another roguelike where you go down, down, down into the depths, and the only way you get better is to die a hundred times, learn what killed you and why, and just skill up. Also learning the wand system, which is one of the two things that make this stand apart. The other is the pixelated destructible environments. There are huuuuuundreds of enemies, spells, and perks. I saw like 5% of stuff and made it to the third "biome" a few times. In my longer runs, I had cool wands and spells, like spells that made my projectiles home or explode or that covered a wide range. The way it works is that each wand you find has stats (which seem to just randomly vary), including some number of spell slots. You can find/purchase spells, and you can move them around between wands. This means you can load up your favorite wand with a variety of useful/synergistic spells that'll help you kill enemies, move around, and explore the biomes. Perks are also helpful, like ones that make you immune to certain elements or that give you a little ghost companion to augment your damage output. The destructible environments are cool. Each pixel is categorized as a type of material (e.g., wood, water, coal, gunpowder...), and they have various interactions. Wood burns, for example, so if you shoot a lantern and it falls on wood, it'll light up and maybe collapse. If you're on fire, go find water to put yourself out. I don't know what "blood" does, but I saw that it ticks up to 100% as you stand in it. Acid poisons you. Occasionally stuff blew up and I wasn't sure why. I'm sure there are a lot more interactions. It reminded me of Divinity: Original Sin 2's elemental combat system. Anyway, so what this looks like while playing is that you're zooming around (you have a jetpack and can float a bit; this replaces a typical game's jump), firing spells and getting fired at by enemies, blowing up the environment, trying to get gold (to purchase wands and spells), find secrets, do whatever, and ultimately get to the bottom of the biome, where you enter a portal and can buy upgrades and rearrange your spells, and then you go to the next biome. There is often a lot of fire/poison/projectiles/etc. on screen at once and it can feel pretty hectic. I certainly appreciate the game and the ways that it makes something like Spelunky 2 feel traditional. There's a ton of customization with the wands, strategy in manipulating the environment, and so many things to discover. But having recently bashed my head against the Spelunky 2 roguelike wall for a while, I realize I have little interest in a similar head-bashing-against-the-wall experience playing Noita.Sun, 18 Oct 2026 15:12:28 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8028&iddiary=13564https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8022Eh. I played for a couple hours and was bored. I know this is one you have to sink time into to learn and thoroughly enjoy. But I'd just rather not, now that I see just how expansive it is. I did enjoy the option to be Teddy Roosevelt, after whom I named my cat. Bully! I got this in a massive Civ Humble Bundle a while back and gave most of the expansion pass keys away. Should have given it all away! On to the next thing!Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:13:25 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8022&iddiary=13560https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8013This really grew on me. It's a clever blend of Tetris, a city builder, and a roguelite. There's no story to speak of, so I can just explain how the game works. You choose a faction, say, The Duchy (there are only three aside from DLC). You have a few starting cards. At first, cards are either production buildings or military buildings. Production buildings generate resources (you start with the basics: food, lumber, gold), while military buildings generate troops (archers, axemen, swordsmen). You'll start on a standard roguelite map, the Slay-the-Spire-type three-lane path, and choose to move along it from encounter to encounter. You'll land on resources, peaceful regions, or battles at first (more types get unlocked). Here's how battles work. You're on a Tetris grid. Tetris pieces appear, just like that game, and you rotate and place them, just like that game. Except the pieces are different types of terrain (say, forest, plains, and rivers). And your production and military buildings are also Tetris pieces that appear. And your enemy's military buildings are also in the deck of Tetris pieces. Buildings have various conditions and results. For example, the Farm (production building) turns nearby plains into fields and generates food. The Watchtower (military building) gives an archer for each plain in range and three archers for each field in range. You already see the synergy between these two buildings! When you complete a row, it is considered "explored", and you get resources for every terrain tile in the row (food for fields, lumber for trees, etc.). The row doesn't disappear (as in Tetris), so you have a limited amount of space to place the blocks in the deck before the round ends. If you explore multiple rows at once, you get bonus resources. So, every match is a game of managing terrain, production, and military buildings to generate resources AND to limit your opponent from generating soldiers. That is, when their Watchtower piece comes up, you want to place it next to some woods or some rocks, definitely not smack in the middle of a bunch of fields, where yours hopefully is. You are always trying to minimize the army the enemy can raise because at the end of the round, you fight. Battles are a rock-paper-scissors affair between archers, axemen, and swordsmen. You basically move groups of units into other groups of units which stacks groups and sends them into battle. This is kind of hard to explain, but the game provides clear rules for how it works based on the size and type of groups that you're moving around, and the order in which battle happens. Just know that you want to be on the winning end of those rock-paper-scissors battles and you want to really, really think through the order in which you group your troops. One miscalculation can ruin the whole fight and lose the game. When you complete an encounter, you choose a new card, and are thus always growing your deck. You use the resources harvested during rounds to upgrade cards. So, at the larger deck-building level, you're looking for synergies between cards, building a deck with some sort of theme, and balancing production and military. Not enough production and you can't upgrade stuff. Not enough military and you can't win battles. In my last game, my first full win, I actually had the fewest buildings I'd ever had. I'd unlocked "technology" cards, which are passive (e.g., every time you explore a field, gain 4 additional food; or, all military building upgrades are 20% cheaper; etc.). I was able to synergize really well and build a deck focused on fields. Fields all the way! I turned woods to plains, plains to fields, got food bonuses for fields, had buildings that created plains and fields when placed, military buildings with bonuses for fields, etc. I pretty much annihilated Act 3 and the last boss. Speaking of bosses, I had no idea how they would do this. I thought bosses would just be like regular battles but with buffed cards, or maybe with more cards. But no! Boss battles fundamentally alter the grid in some way, alter your typical strategies, etc. For example, the last boss (who had killed me once before) requires "bribes," or else it'll throw you military buildings to deal with. To bribe it, you have to generate x resources over y turns and keep it up throughout the match. Every time you don't meet the bribe amount, the enemy sends a military building. And, every time you place a piece, there are squares on the grid that will automatically generate enemy troops if you place a piece there, and the squares change every piece, so you're constantly working around restrictions on the grid too. The first time I fought this boss, I got overwhelmed and lost. This time, the boss didn't send a single military building and I beat it by almost 100 troops, which is a lot. This was inevitable, I think, because there are a ton of upgrades in the meta-progression. Tons of new cards, even new mechanics. For example, you can unlock religious buildings and the "faith" mechanic, unlock mercenaries, unlock the "constellation" mechanic (which lets you manipulate a piece every 10 or so pieces, depending), you can unlock technology cards, "noble" cards, and so on. You also upgrade your starting decks and resources with each faction as you play them. I am really tempted to win with each faction before setting the game aside, but I have so much other stuff to play. I'll keep it installed and probably come back in the future!Mon, 12 Oct 2026 18:12:59 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8013&iddiary=13558https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8025Cute little narrative game with a good, darker-than-expected story. The art style is excellent (I love the different ways that tears come out of the characters’ eyes) and the sound and music perfectly complement the setting and story. You play as Luka, a kid in Beacon Pines who discovers that some strange things are happening, and all the adults, including his grandmother, seem to be involved. Hmm…! Pal up with some friends to uncover the town’s secrets. It features a mechanic where the narrative branches based on words that you discover (e.g., shame, fight, flight, chill, etc.). In certain situations (“turning points”), you can select from some words to use, which will change the course of the story. This was intriguing, but wasn’t used to its full potential. The game’s description oversells the impact of turning points. If you use the “wrong” word, you get a “the end” shortly thereafter. The game’s description says that using different words DRASTICALLY CHANGES EVERYTHING THAT FOLLOWS and that you’ll jump back and forth between ENTIRELY DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE STORY! Not really. At a “the end” screen, you go back to the turning point (through a menu) and choose a different word. You’ll either get another ending in a second, or it’ll be the “correct” word that continues the story. There are some actual branches, but interestingly, the game still proceeds linearly. For example, you have to go down branch A to get to branch B to get back to branch A. In other words, there is only one way through the story. Oddly, there are some words that are never used. You can’t just choose any word in your stock during turning points; only specific ones are available, which narrows the potential of this mechanic further. This mechanic reminded me a bit of Great God Grove, which is another “word game”, wherein you use phrases spoken by NPCs to solve dialogue puzzles. Instead of using whole phrases or sentences, here you just occasionally are prompted to use a word to complete a storybook narration, which determines what a character does and therefore what happens. Great God Grove also felt limiting. I suppose that is because language is near limitless, and that makes for tough narrative design. Despite its simplicity, I thoroughly enjoyed playing through the mystery of Beacon Pines. I wonder if they’ll make a sequel. I’d be interested to see what Luka and his friends get up to next!Fri, 09 Oct 2026 11:18:41 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8025&iddiary=13557https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8020This was an interesting one. Another "what happened in the space station" game (I have played several of those lately!), except in this one, all your interactions are with the ship's AI (named Kaizen) through computer terminals. This game was released in 2016, pre-genAI, so Kaizen procedurally generates dialogue based on what you type. For example, Kaizen will treat you differently if you're mean to it vs. nice to it. It can be persuaded to do things, like let you into into an airlock, or you can fail to persuade it and it'll kill you. That specific example was the only one during the game where I couldn't get Kaizen to do what I wanted. I suffocated in space like 10 times before looking up what to do. You have to specifically reassure Kaizen that you're not a threat to it, that you won't harm it. I really enjoyed trying to figure out what to do through speaking with Kaizen, but I often felt very manipulative. I suppose this is necessary. I mean, the gameplay is almost like completing a series of dialogue puzzles, probing with keywords and instructions and learning how Kaizen tends to respond. It's interesting because, knowing I was talking with the ship's AI, I was treating it like a genAI chatbot, and expecting it to respond like a genAI chatbot. GenAI chatbots are collaborative. They are designed to facilitate interaction, to address user needs. The game actually put me in this collaborative state of mind with Kaizen because it isn't framed as a rogue AI villain, as ship/station AIs are in most games like this. But then, Kaizen doesn't act like a genAI chatbot. If you tell it to do something, it doesn't ask what you mean. It doesn't suggest another course of action. It doesn't offer up very much. It's collaborative, but in a cheeky way, like talking to someone who's a little sarcastic or guarded and who isn't going to be easy to work with. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to play for about a week, and when I came back to it today, I totally forgot what I was doing, where I was supposed to go, what this code I had was for. And Kaizen was being difficult and wouldn't give me straight answers! This resulted in all the aforementioned deaths and looking up things in walkthroughs. Turns out I was right at the end. So the last little bit of the game was dampened by me having to basically follow a guide because I didn't remember anything. The game is really short, and the story and narrative presentation are both obtuse, but it's interesting for sure.Fri, 11 Sep 2026 16:12:33 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8020&iddiary=13544https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8019I played Part 1 for about an hour. Apparently it's only 2 hours long, but I couldn't bother to get through it. It's an Inkle game, received in an Inkle Humble Bundle, and I had never heard of this early effort of theirs, so I was intrigued. I see the Inkle DNA in it, a branching storyline, minimal gameplay, roguelike-ish elements (this has a "rewind" button, so instead of starting a "run" over, you just rewind to a previous decision). The story is typical high fantasy stuff. You're an unnamed adventurer going to get a magical crown. Choose which way you go on the map, see little scenarios, make little choices, engage in half-baked combat, die a lot. The combat is kind of a guessing game. You have stamina (health), and you can select how powerful your attack is, from 0 (defend) to 10 (a massive slash). The enemy will also select an attack power, but only sometimes reveals its intention in text. So if it hunkers down, then you should also defend, and not waste attack power. If it readies itself for a big attack, you should do a bigger attack, which will overwhelm it. Sometimes, it doesn't say anything, and you can be safe and defend (take 1 stamina damage) or you can try to attack. You take damage based on the difference between the attack power of your attack and the enemy's attack, though I didn't quite work out the math. So if you attack for 5 and the enemy attacks for 7 (whether or not it gave a tell), you take damage. And then there are spells, which is a whole mechanic where you manually enter three-lettered spells (HOT shoots a fireball, WAL forms a protective barrier, etc.). That's it. I was yawning after half an hour. I mean, I found the style and setting kind of interesting, but the combat was frustrating, and it was just...reading high fantasy text. I have 10 better fantasy RPGs and fantasy books sitting around that I'd rather engage with. Pass. Sorry, Inkle! I'll try Overboard! and Expelled! soon.Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:47:16 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8019&iddiary=13541https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8018Really poor "combat racing" game. I played for under an hour. Tracks are uninspired and were already repeating themselves. The tutorial immediately made me skeptical because it would progress quickly through tooltips before I could read what the information said. It also had one part where it wanted you to use an item with R1, but the tutorial said use L1. And it was really confusing with the controls, calling L1/R1 something else, and also giving keyboard controls, because the tutorial didn't change based on whatever input was detected. Anyway, it's a combat racing game. There are like 4 weapons only, a speed boost, a shield, and I guess a couple other things. In the campaign, you just race around the same boring tracks over and over through like 12 different tournaments, each of which (so far) has 3 different races. It's like the game has an hour of content and was like, "We'll just have the player do that 12 times," Difficulty seemed weirdly varied, like sometimes, I would be dead last forever after wrecking one time, whereas other times, I would wreck and no one would pass me. There's also a weird thing about manually resetting your car on the track if you crash/go off course. It doesn't just reset you like in any normal racing game. Instead, you have to reset yourself, and half the time I would reset myself backwards, like going the wrong way, and would waste like 15 seconds trying to orient myself. Totally unnecessary! Yeah, really poor experience...but, it was in some Humble Bundle, and I can't resist a racing game with missiles and stuff. No real time or money lost on this one.Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:34:09 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=8018&iddiary=13540https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7379Gonna go ahead and retire this one, too. I realize there's a reason that these two extremely difficult games (Baba and Spelunky) were sitting in my "playing" category for years. Any time I picked them up, I'd go, "Nah, not right now, I'll come back to it when I have more time to devote." And I'd pick it up later, it would be hard, and I'd postpone again. Spelunky 2 is like the first one. It's a hard as nails roguelike platformer. You die constantly. I made it to the first shortcut and I think last time I was playing (before this), I made it to the boss of one of the next levels. But today, no chance. I played for 20 minutes and don't think I lasted more than 2 minutes in a run. One thing I notice that's different about this one is that there are branching paths you can take. That is, once you get to the first checkpoint, you can go one of two ways, and sometimes those seem random? Or are they always a choice between the jungle and the volcano? Not sure. Anyway, I as with Baba Is You, I really do like Spelunky 2, but it's bested my patience and precision, and I don't want to play it anymore or look at it sitting, judging me, in my backlog. On to something else! I'm playing the lowest rated and oldest games in my backlog next, then clearing out all non-Steam/PS5 games (i.e., freebies on Epic and GoG).Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:31:29 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7379&iddiary=13539https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7833Ooookay, I started this years ago, have come back to it a couple times, and always set it aside again because it breaks my brain. Last week, I decided I was going to tackle Baba Is You for real, and I beat the level I had been stuck on really quickly. "Great!" I thought, "I've got the hang of it!" A few levels later: "What in the world...?" And thus a pattern was born. Get stuck. Either figure it out or watch a video and copy it. Solve a few more levels. Get stuck. Figure it out or watch a video and copy it. Solve a few more levels. Get stuck. Etc. Decide I don't want to do continue this pattern for the duration of the game. Write GameLog. Close GameLog. I had reviewed a couple papers about Baba Is You, so I was really excited to get back to it, thinking that somehow reviewing papers on problem-solving strategies in a notoriously difficult puzzle game would give me an edge. It did not. Also, those reviews were a while ago. The game is brilliant though. It's so simple, but combines basic commands into complex strings. You start with two rules: "Baba is You" and "Flag is Win." You are Baba. Move to the Flag and Win. Each element--words and objects--can be moved around. You can reconfigure those first two rules to say "Baba is Flag," which turns Baba into a Flag and is game over (because "You" have to be something). But "Flag is You" works just fine. Suddenly, Baba becomes inert and you control the Flag. Move "Win" over to "Baba is..." (now Baba is Win), touch Baba with the Flag (which is now You), and You Win. The level I am stopping at has the following rules at the beginning: Water is Sink (anything that touches Water Sinks) Baba has Rock (if Baba goes away, there is a Rock in his place) Wall is Stop (can't pass through Walls) Baba is Move (Baba moves when You do [note that You are not Baba here]) Rock is Push (You [whoever You are] can Push Rocks) Flag is Win Keke is You Some commands are behind Walls, so You won't be able to touch those. Others are in the open, so those are the ones You figure out how to manipulate. In this level, Rock is Push and a combination of Baba has Rock and Baba is Move (where one "Baba" is used in both commands) are in the open. There is a Flag in the a space in the middle of a bunch of Water. Baba and Keke are in the open, too. So, the question is how to get You (currently Keke) to the Flag without Sinking in the Water. I actually figured it out. I have to move the words so that Rock has Rock, which means that after Baba Sinks in the Water, the Rock he leaves behind will also have a Rock. Keke can Push that Rock, Sink it, which produces another Rock, which Keke Pushes, Sinks, and produces another Rock...continue until a path is cleared through the Water so that Keke can get the Flag. Easy enough. Often, levels build on each other. Not just new words ("has" is new in this level), but iterations on the same level. So, once I beat this level, it might give me some variation where, I don't know, the Water is Sink and Float, or something. Then you have to deal with that new property. It's going to get harder and I'm going to get stuck and the pattern will repeat. So, in the end, I appreciate Baba is You, but I don't want to play it anymore!Tue, 01 Sep 2026 17:19:17 CDThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=7833&iddiary=13538