schneefink

I finally finished playing SOMA! Took me much longer than expected, about/almost 17 hours (I left it running while paused sometimes so idk), but I did most times try to find as much of the story as I could. I didn't get all the answers in the end that I'd hoped for but the ending was still satisfying despite the open questions, and it'll probably take me a few more days at least to think it all over.

( Spoilers )

I'm glad I played this game, and almost entirely without spoilers too (I didn't even watch the trailer.) I enjoyed it a lot, and it also made me more willing to give other horror games a try. (Inscryption sounds intriguing...) I'll most likely play it again in Safe = Story Mode eventually, not sure how soon. In the meantime I look forward to looking at the extra materials and resources etc. online. I already found a helpful timeline.

I've also decided that I won't start playing another new game this month, there's too much to do. (Even though there's so many games I already own that I want to play… still no time machine though.) I'm so busy with work that I've had barely any time (or more accurately, brain/energy) for uni or even Christmas preparations. At least I managed to finish a second draft version of my Yuletide fic that I'm quite happy with.

So apparently SOMA is the newest game I can't shut up about. (Maybe I should get an icon but I have no idea what would even be on it.)
I'm about halfway through now and the story keeps getting more intriguing, especially because I'm now pretty sure that some things I would have been content to simply ignore/accept on the basis of "video game logic" (healing mechanics etc.) are part of it.

( Spoilers up to the Theta Labs )

I want to find out more immediately but unfortunately there are things like work and sleep and study *sighs*
(Also, I really don't want any spoilers but I also want more content immediately so the urge gets harder to resist every day.)

CARROT is finally out! I discovered the artist via their Hades fanart (sadly now offline - I still have their House of Hades piece as my background) and when they announced that they were making a game I was excited. I would have played and enjoyed it for the gorgeous art alone, but on top of that the story is charming and the characters are a delight. The description says 20 minutes, but the first time it took me more than half an hour to play because I kept getting distracted by the art and all the tiny things to discover, like talking to the cat and going to the beach etc.

Today we had the first snow of the year! It felt early, even though it is late November, but then it also seems strange that it is already late November. Where did the year go?? Time passes weirdly in a pandemic, I say as I sit at home during the fourth lockdown.

For a while this spring and summer I played many new games. Then I told myself not to start a new game before our vacation, and after the vacation I told myself not to start a new game right as the semester starts, and then not right before the exam. But one exam is over now and I don't have another one until January, and we got a three month extension for some important deadlines at work (suuuuch a relief) so December is just very busy instead of incredibly busy, and that means I have time for new games again!

I just finished Carto, which was very sweet. The idea of a ten-year-old girl with the power to literally rearrange the world is scary, but as a game mechanic it was fun, and the puzzles were just the right difficulty for me. (I only looked up a solution twice, both times very early on the ice berg; I could have solved it eventually but was too impatient.) The art and exploration and characters were very nice. The game took me about five hours and I enjoyed them a lot (but not so much that I'm interested in going back to find all the secret puzzle pieces.)

I've been so busy playing Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night that I didn't find time to write about it, and of course the more I played the more I wanted to write about. But today is the evening, because I have a band-aid on two fingers which would make playing frustrating. Typing is a little better.

I found the game because I signed up for Humble Choice for the first time in August, originally for Carto, but then I thought Bloodstained looked interesting and gave it a try. By now I've played ~47 hours, which is more than twice as much as my third-most played game (Ori and the Will of the Wisps, ~22 hours.)[Edit: actually, it is Ori and the Blind Forest, at 35.4 hours, I forgot I played it twice.] A comparison with Hades, at ~365 hours, would be unfair.

It's a lot of fun. I like the art and the design, and I enjoy the gameplay and combat, especially once I found some more weapons to play around with and more shards too. The difficulty on Normal was just right for me, decently challenging but not too hard, and I appreciated that I could always go back and grind for level/more weapons/etc. and try a boss fight again later when I was stronger. (I hardly used any online guides either, just for very few specific things.)
It also has just enough story early enough to get me invested, and I really liked the main character Miriam and all the tragedy with her and Gebel and Johannes. I nominated them for Yuletide, promo post here.

( Spoilers )
I also made the great tactical decision to gift a copy of the game to LB on condition of him keeping me updated as he plays, I'm enjoying that too. It's his birthday soon and I thought of gifting him games I talked about that he expressed an interest in, but realistically I would have gifted them to him anyway because I look forward to him playing then and then talking about them, so that would feel like cheating.

Three things I enjoyed this weekend:

- During our picnic on Sunday I read One Day All This Will Be Yours, a SF time travel novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky. As K.J.Charles wrote, "Just hugely enjoyable, slightly in the way Murderbot is enjoyable but without any morals at all. And there's a pet dinosaur! What's not to like?" It was hilarious from the start, though it took me a while to really get into it because of the "no morals" thing; best read when one is in a mood for such things.

- We finished watching Superman & Lois, which I enjoyed a lot. The actual plot was okay, but I really liked all the interpersonal stuff, especially the entire Kent family, but also the Langs. ( slight spoilers )

- After watching two streamers start playing it, both DD and I played Boyfriend Dungeon this weekend and enjoyed it a lot. (I'm not thoroughly informed but from what I've seen the "controversy" about the warnings is probably mostly because of mistakes made in marketing… but in the long term more publicity might be good? Idk.) A queer dating game with dungeon crawler elements where you can date your weapons is an intriguing premise and the execution was well done. It's not very long, it took me about five and a half hours to get to the credits and eight hours to max all the weapons/relationships, so it was great for a weekend. I didn't like all the relationships equally much, naturally, but some of them I enjoyed a lot, and combat with the different weapons was fun. Some of the outfits were cool too. The creepy stalker was genuinely creepy and uncomfortable, that was well done ( spoilers ) The game gives you the option to disable supportive texts from mom, which I did after seeing on streams just how, hm, clingy and stressful mom is.

( My playthrough )

There's a lot of potential for crossovers/fusions with other fandoms and worldbuilding, the game only just came out but I'll be keeping an eye out. So much potential for wielder&weapon dynamics etc.! I don't think I'll replay the game very soon but I do look forward to the two additional characters that are supposed to come in later patches.

I finally finished Gone Home, in a little under four hours (and with some help from the internet after getting stuck once. Steam also tells me less than 10% of players have the "completed the game" achievement, which seems low but idk.) Overall I enjoyed it, I'm glad I finished it (but I'm also glad I'm done.)

( More details, barely any spoilers )

Not sure what I'll play next: ideally not something fast because my wrists have been bothering me more often recently. I'm thinking of trying Disco Elysium but I'm both worried that I won't like it and worried that I'll like it too much. Logic.

I started playing a "Recursion" in Transistor, i.e. the game again but with all the upgrades etc. I got in the first game. Turns out that when I'm less distracted by trying to figure out what is going on and how the gameplay works, I can focus more on how sad the story is. Poor Red :( Sadder than I'm currently in the mood for, so I put it aside for later.

Instead I played Figment, which is beautiful. The world design is wonderful (and at the very end especially clever.) So many nice details, and the music too – each villain has their own villain song, it's great. The puzzles were just interesting enough to keep me engaged and I always wanted to continue playing to see just one more area. It took me about six hours to get to the credits, and currently I'm walking around trying to find the last few memories.

I have several options as to what to play next, and there's a Steam sale going on so I bought even more games. Now I can play Hollow Knight if I want, which I look forward to (with a little bit of apprehension because I really love pretty and colorful games, and from what I've seen Hollow Knight doesn't exactly have many colors. It's said to be hard too, I'll see how it goes.)

Other games I've played recently but stopped:
- The Lion's Song: A point-and-click game with four interwoven narratives in and around early 20th century Vienna. I only played the first one, which might not have given me a great look at the narrative yet, but I wasn't very invested, I didn't like the character very much, and the art isn't my style, so it's possible I'll pick it up again but I doubt it.

- Undertale: I heard good things about this game so I tried it, but… it didn't immediately draw me in and the art isn't very appealing to me, so the first time I was even vaguely frustrated by a puzzle I was almost relieved to have an excuse to put it aside. Maybe I'll watch a playthrough eventually because I heard the story is not very long but intriguing.

- Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna): "an atmospheric puzzle platformer developed in collaboration with the Iñupiat, an Alaska Native people, drawn from a traditional story that has been shared across the generations." I did like the atmosphere, and the cultural background tidbits to discover etc., but I didn't enjoy the gameplay very much (though I can't put my finger on why) so I stopped.

We watched a few more episodes of Word of Honor (up to episode 16 now) and I'm glad that I finally found a character I like. ( Spoilers )

I'm still not sure if I'd say I like it, but I'm sufficiently interested to want to keep watching.


Today we didn't watch more though because now that my exams are over for this semester I can finally play new games! (I was worried that starting a new game would distract me from studying too much.) I started Transistor, which took me a little bit longer to get into than Supergiant's other games but three hours in I'm enjoying it. ( Spoilers )

I finished Yono and the Celestial Elephants and it was great. So cute, and the puzzles were fun, and then sometimes it got unexpectedly deep, and it was just overall a delight to play. I don't want to hype it too much, it's a kid's game and quite slow and not too fancy, but I enjoyed it a lot.

( Spoilers )

It took me just over 7.5 hours to finish the main storyline, but there are still several sidequests I can do, and more outfits to try out. Not sure if right now, but I'll probably get around to those eventually :)