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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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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
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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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Nethack (PC) by vgerprobe |
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most recent entry: Friday 24 April, 2009
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Background:
Nethack is an old school hack and slash style ASCII based game played from a terminal window. I found this game very nostalgic. It reminded me very much of the old text/ASCII art based Star Trek and fantasy RPG games I used to play on my old Tandy Sensation. However, Nethack even out dates them by roughly 6 years. First developed in 1987, Nethack is one of the oldest computer games that is still in active development. In Nethack you can somewhat customize your character by selecting from a list of character types, races, and allegiances. Each combination has unique characteristics that can help or hinder your progress through the dungeons of the game. Your goal in the game is journey through a series of dungeons and reclaim the Amulet of Yendor and escape back through the dungeons from whence you came, or so I have been told. I actually have no empirical evidence that this is how the game goes as I was never able to actually finish it. This game is friggin' hard!!!
Interaction:
Player interactions are handled exclusively through the keyboard. However, if you're playing on a laptop or mini-keyboard, you're out of luck. Nearly every key on a standard keyboard is mapped to some function. The numeric key pad (which most smaller keyboards lack) is mapped to your movement functions. Its actually technically possible to control your movements with the number row of keys, but its incredibly difficult as the location of the keys do not reasonably map to the spacial direction you intend to move. Also, there really aren't any multipurpose action keys. Every conceivable action is mapped to a key or combination of keys. This interaction style did somewhat limit the enjoyability of this game for me. I thought that playing this game reminded me of using an editor like vi or emacs, which requires you to use sequences of long (often counter-intuitive) key combinations to achieve your desired results.
Level Design:
The levels in Nethack are are series of dungeons that contain all sorts of odd creatures and places to investigate. Each level is designed to fit inside of a single standard terminal window. The levels are essentially an over-world type map that gradually reveals itself as you move through it. They are usually filled with open rooms, tunnels, boulders, statues, monsters, and hidden passages, all of which are represented by an ASCII character (sometimes the same character as one of the other elements). You being each level with only your current room visible. Aided only by your cat, dog, or saddle pony, you wonder through the maze hacking, slashing, and often kicking through various obstacles.
Playability:
This game is very, very difficult to just pick up and learn to play. Its probably not incredibly inaccurate to say that its almost impossible to crank up nethack and successfully finish it the very first time you play it. I spent _hours_ upon _hours_ reading Nethack play guides while trying to muddle my way through the dungeons. After this extensive effort, I did manage to become a master --- a master of every conceivable way to die in this game. For those of you brave enough to embark on the adventure of being a Nethack noob, you can look forward to interesting ways to die that include being eaten by sewer rats, bitten to death by newts, eating poisonous zombie flesh, zapped by bugs, blown to bits by magical missiles, shivved by hobbits, and many other even more fascinating ways to experience digital mortality. While on the topic of mortality, when you die in Nethack you're simply dead. No save states, no re-spawning, nothing... You are only allowed to save and exit so that you can walk away just to come back and die later. Without having spent much, much time researching and memorizing the interaction techniques and tactic guides, you're pretty much as good as dead. This is just a straight up difficult game.
Re-playability:
The only way that I can possibly imagine someone replaying this game is if they got hooked on the idea of beating it simply because it is incredibly difficult. Otherwise, there isn't really a lot of incentive. Fortunately, I don't suffer from a masochistic enough personality to get sucked into that vortex. However, there must be a lot of folks who are caught in this whirl pool of despair since this game has remained a cult classic for well over 20 years now. I'm really just joking about all of this though. Its really not a bad game, its just far too difficult and time consuming for someone like myself. I should probably just stick to playing first-person-shooters.
In closing, I'd like to say that there were many aspects of Nethack that I adored. Honestly, I'm a terminal junky. If I am required to use a GUI to interact with something, I loose a little bit of interest it. I work almost exclusively from terminals and really thought it was quite awesome that Nethack is a terminal based game (though GUI mods do exist). Even thought I griped a lot about the style of keyboard interaction, this is the same reason that I love using emacs. Everything you want to do has a key combination associated with it. This, of course, has a steep learning curve, but once you've mastered them you can very quickly perform complicated tasks with little effort. I'm sure some folks out there love interacting with Nethack as much as I love using emacs (yes, I really do).
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