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mysterytoastEscape Simulator
Began: 9/17/2025Completed: 12/1/2025
Playtime (all base, extra, and free DLC levels + Magic DLC): 12.7 hours
Base game purchased as part of the Fanatical September 2025 Prestige Bundle. Magic DLC purchased as part of the “Pine’s Big Sale.”
I missed doing escape rooms and wanted to scratch that itch, and this… sort of helped? It fits the general concept of solving multiple puzzles set within a single room, and the progression of both collecting multiple puzzle hints/solutions simultaneously and unlocking additional spaces as you proceed through the escape room. As a whole, it does essentially convert a physical game space into a digital version… but it still felt like it missed the mark slightly. And I'm guessing it's simply because I feel escape games are fundamentally a cooperative activity, and I played this game in singleplayer. Which makes this a problem entirely outside the game's fault.
On the game's own merits, it's pretty good. I did feel its approach of splitting each non-bonus map theme into multiple 15-minute parts detracted a bit from my ideal experience, where you get multiple puzzles to deal with in any order, but it worked well enough, I guess. There was never any particularly strong risk of losing to the timer, as long as I didn't get completely lost, and I appreciate that there was never any consequence (besides personal shame) to using the hint system… though I felt like the diagrams could be overly vague sometimes, which wasn't super useful when I needed specific pointers towards the next step. The physics system and interactability with fancy and expensive-looking objects (such as moving objects, and even a film screen at some point) was also something I appreciate in a medium where things typically have to be idiot and thief-proofed. I got to break so many vases and topple so many objects, it was great.
I might grab Escape Simulator 2 at some point. I played the demo level and I felt the scale of that was reasonable and even more in line with what I prefer in escape rooms, in terms of room length and puzzle linearity. The extra levels, which I think released after the base game but weren't split into DLC, felt like predecessors for ES2's longer pacing. But I stg I really need to play some more non-puzzle games.
Paperbark
Began: 11/30/2025Completed: 11/30/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 1.5 hours
Obtained as part of the 2020 Humble Bundle Australia Fire Relief bundle.
It's immediately an extremely Australian game. When I hit the bushfire section of the game I wondered if the reason I had this game was the Australia fire relief bundle, and that was indeed the case.
A short walking sim about a wombat who then gets caught in a bushfire. The game is really more about visual and auditory immersion than about the story, and has about the narrative depth of a children's storybook. Which is fine, it wasn't actually aiming to be any more complex than that. I thought the watercolor visual style and especially the "drag to reveal distant objects" concept was interesting, portraying the wombat's limited visual acuity and how we focus it to sense beyond that, as well as how ineffective that is during the fire portion.
My first run through took about 40 minutes, and the rest of the playtime was to finish gathering collectables and the other achievements. The book and cicada collectibles, while more involved than the other collectibles, were made slightly easier because of proximity sound effects. The devs also broke down how many collectibles were in each level in the chapter select (but not in the level, oddly), which was a nice QoL feature. I'm also glad they never patched out the exploit that lets you obtain the 18 minute timer achievement by skipping chapters, especially considering the any% world record speedrun of this game is 15 and a half minutes.
Would I recommend it? Ehh, it's not bad by any means, but I don't feel it's worth the full price. Maybe if you're handing the game to a young kid to wander in, then $9 is a good price for a digital interactive storybook, but for an adult? Nah. It's also not in my typical genres, and if not for me already owning it and playing for the sake of playing through my library, it wouldn't have been on my radar.
Access Denied: Escape
Began: 12/15/2025Completed: 12/20/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 1.4 hours
Purchased as part of Fanatical's Summer 2025 Build your own Triple Pack.
A short puzzle boxes game of very middling quality. I didn't think the box gimmick added anything particularly worthwhile to the game, other than making it a bit more difficult to see each level. My favorite puzzle types here were the "connect the color lines" puzzle, the multi-code input puzzle, and the puzzle where you follow a specific starting shape until you find an end shape corresponding to a number. I also thought the digging and snail maze minigames were unusual for puzzle games and took advantage of the game's future-tech aesthetic.
Sure, the narrative doesn't really hold together under scrutiny (why was the highly secure way of splitting dangerous components… locking them in little puzzle boxes, why did he need a professional to solve these puzzles, how was a sentient machine capable of locking a human being up in the first place when the lab seems otherwise untampered with), but hey, it's the narrative justification, it doesn't have to make total sense. It's an okay use of an hour and a half and worth the entire dollar I spent to get it.
Loddlenaut
Began: 12/26/2025Completed: 12/27/2025
Playtime (100% achievements, 100% cleanup): 7.6 hours
Received as a gift.
I remember seeing this game from the NYU Game Center showcase! I want to say I played the demo they had back then, and I vaguely remember seeing a presentation that included it. I'm glad this one made it to the final release and was popular, this was one of my favorites of the games shown that year.
It's such a cute game, from the artstyle to the animations to the dialogue. The art for each loddle type is adorable. And "feeling goopy" is such a mood. It's also not a particularly difficult game - the oxygen bar is pretty generous, and you can actually just bring a Recharge Ring to deploy as you need it. You have ample amounts of inventory space too, with the upgrade just being a nice QoL. I think my only complaint in that regard is that there's no return beacon, or something like that. It would've been nice to get back home quickly if I'm in the middle of nowhere, but then the map isn't too big.
I didn't actually mean to go for 100% cleanup. I aimed for 100% achievements, which involves filling all habitats to maximum capacity, but that meant waiting for the loddles to lay eggs and redistributing them so each habitat filled at the same pace. I decided I may as well go around cleaning up while waiting for the loddles to do their thing, and managed to complete both at around the same time.