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mysterytoastDefinitely slacked a bit on games the past few months, and on doing writeups. I did a lot of event organization in the meantime, but I've also just been constantly fatigued outside of work and raid. I feel like I've exhausted most of my puzzle cravings, though. Maybe I'll be able to diversify my pickings by the end of the year. Still, my genres are somewhat limited — while I can sneak in some gaming time during lunch breaks, I'm still struggling when I play action RPGs on the Deck, and on PC I'm largely using my limited gaming-while-sitting stamina to play MMORPGs.
Completed: 8/11/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 5.9 hours
Bought during the release sale.
A puzzle game where you place ilttle shape people in spots depending on their desires.
I played this on the Deck with touchscreen and it worked relatively ok, with the caveat that I felt touchscreen made it slightly more difficult. You can't really hover your mouse over a shape to see their conditions, so you have to swap shapes instead, but at the same time shapes are all the same color and tend to blur into each other, and I lost track of which one I was holding on occasion.
Other than that, it was a pretty good game. The narrative integration was fun, and I liked the gimmicks they pull out as you progress through the game - I particularly liked the "place me with/near furniture" levels, and the train car levels with the luggage mini puzzles. I also really liked the bonus levels, how those consisted of one big level, and how the bonus themes were always unique (though I wish there had been more variety in the regular levels). I also appreciated that you didn't need to 100% every level to move on to the next world — the stars were just to unlock the bonus levels.
Overall, good experience. Not overly difficult but it didn't need to be. I felt this was $10-15 worth of content, so $9.99 is actually a perfect price for it.
Completed: 8/31/2025
Playtime (100% achievements and a bit more): 9 hours
Bought during the release sale.
Yet another Unpacking-like game. I'm not going to complain about getting more indie games in that genre… that much.
Like the original Unpacking, this game involves a combination of unpacking objects from boxes and organizing existing items. Unlike Unpacking, it doesn't follow a single character, as you play as a housekeeping service and interact with several different characters across a traversible map. And extremely unlike Unpacking, the narrative is not grounded at all -- there are fantasy elements everywhere, and the core of the "story" surrounds aliens and people living in a simulation.
Honestly, I felt there were a lot of missed potential and half-baked ideas here. The game itself was long enough and decently fleshed out, but there were a lot of things that felt disjointed or too shallow. I thought the whole "time travel" thing that appeared in the demo would be relevant beyond the one level, but it wasn't, despite the entire UI they designed for it. There wasn't really a followup to the secret room in the first house. They designed an entire mechanic with synergizing objects, but it didn't really matter outside of the one puzzle and technically the plant-growing post-game. And most of all, the narrative honestly didn't really make sense. I had the feeling that the narrative we got was the remaining scraps of ideas rather than a cohesive story.
Completed: 9/14/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 4.1 hours
Obtained as part of the Fanatical War Child Charity 2025 Bundle.
Always a fan of the Rusty Lake games ever since they were flash games, and this time the narrative was long enough that I gained substantial knowledge about the series lore! I’ll admit I typically don’t play these games frequently enough or in order to pick up on the story between games.
It’s the quality I expect from Rusty Lakes, not sure what else to say. Smooth gameplay, interesting puzzles, subtle atmospheric music, very nice voice accents. I played on my Deck and that kinda took from the experience, and tbh I’m not sure why I did this for a point and click game. I accidentally double tapped a couple times during dialogue as well — which is unfortunate considering there’s zero way to go back a dialogue screen, and the game autosaves progress. Other than those minor inconveniences, it was pretty much like a mobile game.
I had to replay like a third of the game to get one missable achievement, though, which was a bit frustrating. Interestingly, the game not having Steam Cloud was actually a good thing here — it meant that I could replay the game on my PC to get the missable achievement and not worry about losing the progress on my Deck, where I hunted for the rest of the achievements.
Completed: 10/2/2025
Playtime (main story, all origami + all secrets, 32/35 achievements): 5.8 hours
Purchased as part of the Fanatical Best of Platinum Collection (Summer 2025) bundle.
I remember enjoying the demo and the paper folding gimmick, and the full game provided several more hours of a good concept executed well. It's an interesting gimmick, having to figure out how to fold two sides of a level together to solve puzzles. They did a good job of introducing additional gimmicks. Each full world introduced a new gimmick, but unlike some other games, didn't just abandon old gimmicks, instead integrating and even adding on to previous gimmicks to create more complex puzzles. I especially liked the block matching, light bouncing, and portals gimmicks.
By the end, I… still didn't have a great feel for what the underside looked like before folding. That was fine, though. Because folds can't overlap, there's ultimately a rather finite number of potential answers and you'll figure it out eventually. And if you don't, the game has a neat hints section that provides the answer folds. I thought that was a neat variant on the typical hint structure.
My petty gripe is that the game completely freezes when you tab out, and boots you to the pause menu whenever possible. In general the auto-pause feature can be useful, but 1) this is a puzzle game with zero reflex challenges, and 2) the auto-pause happens anywhere. This includes loading screens. This includes the ~5 seconds between when you click to exit the game and when the game actually closes. You better not tab out of the game thinking you're safe just because you told it to exit. Other than that, though, the game was enjoyable, and definitely worth the handful of hours and couple dollars I ultimately spent to buy it.
Is This Seat Taken?
Began: 8/8/2025Completed: 8/11/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 5.9 hours
Bought during the release sale.
A puzzle game where you place ilttle shape people in spots depending on their desires.
I played this on the Deck with touchscreen and it worked relatively ok, with the caveat that I felt touchscreen made it slightly more difficult. You can't really hover your mouse over a shape to see their conditions, so you have to swap shapes instead, but at the same time shapes are all the same color and tend to blur into each other, and I lost track of which one I was holding on occasion.
Other than that, it was a pretty good game. The narrative integration was fun, and I liked the gimmicks they pull out as you progress through the game - I particularly liked the "place me with/near furniture" levels, and the train car levels with the luggage mini puzzles. I also really liked the bonus levels, how those consisted of one big level, and how the bonus themes were always unique (though I wish there had been more variety in the regular levels). I also appreciated that you didn't need to 100% every level to move on to the next world — the stars were just to unlock the bonus levels.
Overall, good experience. Not overly difficult but it didn't need to be. I felt this was $10-15 worth of content, so $9.99 is actually a perfect price for it.
Whisper of the House
Began: 8/28/2025Completed: 8/31/2025
Playtime (100% achievements and a bit more): 9 hours
Bought during the release sale.
Yet another Unpacking-like game. I'm not going to complain about getting more indie games in that genre… that much.
Like the original Unpacking, this game involves a combination of unpacking objects from boxes and organizing existing items. Unlike Unpacking, it doesn't follow a single character, as you play as a housekeeping service and interact with several different characters across a traversible map. And extremely unlike Unpacking, the narrative is not grounded at all -- there are fantasy elements everywhere, and the core of the "story" surrounds aliens and people living in a simulation.
Honestly, I felt there were a lot of missed potential and half-baked ideas here. The game itself was long enough and decently fleshed out, but there were a lot of things that felt disjointed or too shallow. I thought the whole "time travel" thing that appeared in the demo would be relevant beyond the one level, but it wasn't, despite the entire UI they designed for it. There wasn't really a followup to the secret room in the first house. They designed an entire mechanic with synergizing objects, but it didn't really matter outside of the one puzzle and technically the plant-growing post-game. And most of all, the narrative honestly didn't really make sense. I had the feeling that the narrative we got was the remaining scraps of ideas rather than a cohesive story.
Rusty Lake: Roots
Began: 9/6/2025Completed: 9/14/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 4.1 hours
Obtained as part of the Fanatical War Child Charity 2025 Bundle.
Always a fan of the Rusty Lake games ever since they were flash games, and this time the narrative was long enough that I gained substantial knowledge about the series lore! I’ll admit I typically don’t play these games frequently enough or in order to pick up on the story between games.
It’s the quality I expect from Rusty Lakes, not sure what else to say. Smooth gameplay, interesting puzzles, subtle atmospheric music, very nice voice accents. I played on my Deck and that kinda took from the experience, and tbh I’m not sure why I did this for a point and click game. I accidentally double tapped a couple times during dialogue as well — which is unfortunate considering there’s zero way to go back a dialogue screen, and the game autosaves progress. Other than those minor inconveniences, it was pretty much like a mobile game.
I had to replay like a third of the game to get one missable achievement, though, which was a bit frustrating. Interestingly, the game not having Steam Cloud was actually a good thing here — it meant that I could replay the game on my PC to get the missable achievement and not worry about losing the progress on my Deck, where I hunted for the rest of the achievements.
Paper Trail
Began: 9/27/2025Completed: 10/2/2025
Playtime (main story, all origami + all secrets, 32/35 achievements): 5.8 hours
Purchased as part of the Fanatical Best of Platinum Collection (Summer 2025) bundle.
I remember enjoying the demo and the paper folding gimmick, and the full game provided several more hours of a good concept executed well. It's an interesting gimmick, having to figure out how to fold two sides of a level together to solve puzzles. They did a good job of introducing additional gimmicks. Each full world introduced a new gimmick, but unlike some other games, didn't just abandon old gimmicks, instead integrating and even adding on to previous gimmicks to create more complex puzzles. I especially liked the block matching, light bouncing, and portals gimmicks.
By the end, I… still didn't have a great feel for what the underside looked like before folding. That was fine, though. Because folds can't overlap, there's ultimately a rather finite number of potential answers and you'll figure it out eventually. And if you don't, the game has a neat hints section that provides the answer folds. I thought that was a neat variant on the typical hint structure.
My petty gripe is that the game completely freezes when you tab out, and boots you to the pause menu whenever possible. In general the auto-pause feature can be useful, but 1) this is a puzzle game with zero reflex challenges, and 2) the auto-pause happens anywhere. This includes loading screens. This includes the ~5 seconds between when you click to exit the game and when the game actually closes. You better not tab out of the game thinking you're safe just because you told it to exit. Other than that, though, the game was enjoyable, and definitely worth the handful of hours and couple dollars I ultimately spent to buy it.
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