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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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they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
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2323 registered gamers and 3358 games. 7895 GameLogs with 13390 journal entries. 5126 games are currently being played.
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Arkham Horror (Other) by Fluffyal |
| Hard to pick up, but very fun to play |
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most recent entry: Wednesday 1 February, 2017
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Arkham Horror: 2 sessions, Friday Jan 27.
Arkham Horror is a multiplayer, cooperative card game for 1 to 4 players. The game is one campaign which covers three scenarios. Each scenario feeds into the next and provides a timeline over the course of an entire game. Each player chooses one of five investigators to play as. The investigators are trying to uncover the secrets of Arkham and defeat the eldritch horrors directly from H.P. Lovecraft's works.
-Players-
Each of the investigators has four stats: willpower, intellect, combat, and agility. They also belong to two of five classes, with one being a primary class. The classes are Guardian, Seeker, Survivor, Mystic, and Rogue.
Every class has a set of cards associated with them as well as a set of neutral cards. Each investigator can include cards from either class and the neutral set up to a maximum of 30 cards. There are two additional cards unique to each character included in the deck, for a maximum count of 32. These are a weakness card and one item card with unique effects.
Throughout the game players will need to make skill checks to accomplish things or avoid negative effects. Players may positively modify a skill before they draw a Chaos Token. Chaos Tokens are almost always negative, ranging from +1 to -4 in uneven amounts. This spread only accounts for normal mode, harder difficulties remove any chance for a positive draw. If a player matches or exceeds the required skill check number, they pass the check.
On their turn, a player may perform any 3 of the following actions: move, attack, engage, evade, draw a card or gain a resource, investigate, or play a card. Playing a card takes a certain number of resources depending on the card.
-Rooms-
Rooms are the different areas the players may move to during their turn. Each room is connected to another, and may be connected to multiple rooms.
Each room has two values, a Shroud value and a Clue value. To gather a clue, the investigator in the room checks their intellect against the shroud.
Some rooms may have negative or positive effects on those who enter.
-Enemies and Encounters-
At the beginning of the second turn and every turn after, each player draws an Encounter card. The Encounter could be a monster or negative effect.
Monsters spawn on the investigator who drew it unless otherwise specified. Each monster has health, combat, agility, physical damage, and mental damage attributes. In order to attack a monster, the investigator must pass a combat check against the monster's combat value. Unless otherwise modified, an investigator's attack will deal 1 damage.
-Objective-
The objective of each scenario is to complete the investigators' Acts before the mysterious eldritch Agenda is completed.
Investigators can advance the Act by completing certain objectives in the game, like gathering a certain number of clues.
The Agenda is advanced when the Doom Counter reaches its specific number. At the beginning of every turn after the first, one doom is added to the Doom counter. When the Agenda advances, bad things happen and the investigators are closer to losing the scenario.
Win or lose, the investigators advance to the next scenario and carry the ending of the previous scenario with them to the next.
-Game Play-
The first session I played, I played with one other person. I was Roland Banks, a Guardian Seeker who excelled at killing monsters. My accomplice was Wendy Adams, a Survivor Rogue who preferred to dodge monsters instead of fighting them. She also seemed to attract clues like a magnet. Neither of us had played before, so throughout the session both of us were checking the rule book multiple times per turn.
We began our adventure in the Study of a Haunted house. The door itself disappeared and we had to find our way out. After gathering enough clues, we found our way out to the rest of the house, which had been transformed and infested by ghouls. We began our search of the house to find more clues in the basement. While we were searching the basement, we spawned an elite ghoul. This ghoul was hard to hit and dealt a significant amount of damage, we managed to defeat it after several turns of punching it. We managed to escape and dodge a weaker ghoul after gathering all the clues in the basement. Now we managed to make our way to the attic a little battered. Of course, as is the nature of the game, if it can make life harder for you, it will. We managed to draw the only other elite ghoul in the encounter deck to help us enjoy our stay in the attic. After defeating the ghoul and grabbing all the clues we made our way to the parlor to release the spell that was barring our way.
Promptly after opening the barrier, we advanced the Agenda by drawing two Doom cards, which put the Agenda to its third and final stage. It was now a race against time to finish our last Act. After the barrier dropped, the Ghoul Priest, this scenario's boss enemy, spawned on top of us. We also had the opportunity to recruit an ally which would help us deal more damage on a successful attack.
We had three ghouls on our location. Luckily Wendy was exceptional at dodging the ghouls. I made my way to the parlor to recruit the special ally and Wendy dodged all ghouls and made her way into the parlor with me. I then lobbed a stick of dynamite into the hallway and killed two of the three ghouls. I equipped my revolver and began to shoot the Ghoul priest.
Unfortunately, we were not able to kill the priest before the Agenda advanced to its completion. The scenario ended with us running out of the house in fear.
-Second Session-
For my second session I replayed the first scenario with the same person as well as one additional person. I was Roland Banks, and we also had Wendy Adams and "Skids" O' Toole, a Guardian Rogue. The game progressed much more smoothly now that two of the three of us had a little experience with the game.
We managed to not draw the elite ghouls the entire time, but we did draw many more monster cards than the previous session. After gathering the clues from the basement and attic and mentally preparing for the boss fight, we made our way to the hallway to advance the Act and spawn the boss. While the boss now had 15 health instead of ten, due to the extra player, we also had a much easier time fighting it this time around. We successfully defeated the priest and escaped the house.
RNG is a good part of deciding whether or not you have an easy or difficult time progressing through the scenario. For the most part, the game is designed so that the investigators would not have too big of an advantage, should they ever have one at all.
-Overall-
Arkham Horror is a very fun card game that unfortunately requires a significant time sink to simply understanding the rules and interactions. Each scenario takes about 3 hours to complete. Everyone had a blast playing this game.
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