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Oops. Oops. I started typing a set out a couple months ago and just never got around to finishing it. Also, I joined a static for the savage this FFXIV raid tier, which is eating up a chunk of my gaming time. Not that I mind, I really am enjoying the experience, but yeah, that kind of commitment is really affecting my already-tenuous will to play other games. 7.25 is releasing Occult Crescent and the Mamool Ja quests in a couple weeks and that’s also going to eat into even more time. Oops. Anyawy.
Completed: 3/7/2025
Playtime (all museum exhibits): ~2 hours
Played through Retroarch for the achievement integration.
I mean, it’s a DS game of a kids game, the expectations are somewhat in the floor here. It’s really short. There’s only “four” islands, but in reality one is a hub so there’s only actually three of them. And those islands are also short. I have a better feel for the length and scale of Poptropica islands than when I was a kid, and I actually did replay bits of Poptropica semi-recently, but even then these islands are really short and mostly get their filler from the handful of minigames. Every island also has a museum exhibit, and you get 100% completion there by completing every sidequest.
The minigames weren’t that good, either. The most tolerable one was the “racing” minigame, where you basically just jump and duck to dodge obstacles. There’s also a climbing minigame where you also have to dodge obstacles from the top, and a pipe maze minigame, and those were unremarkably fine. My absolute least favorite one was the one where the NPC throws out objects and you have to either dodge or intercept them to win, and you can only miss so many times before you lose. The movement was so incredibly floaty that I hated every moment of it. Then there’s the maze, where you use the touchscreen to drag your boat/ship/whatever to the edge and avoid both obstacles and the walls. That one wasn’t bad… except that Astro Knights Island had you complete the minigame every single time you went between Earth(?) and the planet hub, and vice versa. And you were required to do that multiple times. I think I had to play it 8-10 times? Really not fun. And then if you’re trying to go for the 100% RetroAchievements set you have to beat the high score for 5 minigame arcades in the postgame, and I gave up because I do not want to do the dodging minigame ever again.
Overall… I don’t recommend it. Maybe if you’re under the age of 8 and are a kid in the late 00’s and are at the end of the licensed GBA/DS shovelware era, it’s a neat little distraction, but that’s kind of a small niche now.
Completed: 3/22/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 1.7 hours
Bought via the Humble COVID-19 bundle in 2020.
A little game about solving little boxes. The puzzles themselves are fairly simple and straightforward, with only a couple things that were a bit confusing. I mistakenly thought this was a platformer for the longest time, until I was going through my list of owned games and marking what genre they were and learned this was a puzzle game.
Honestly, I feel like I didn’t play this the way it was intended. It calls itself a “tactile” game, but I played it with a mouse which inherently doesn’t provide tactile responses, and I imagine a proper controller could have used vibration or that thing on the DualSense controller where triggers have some resistance to being pressed. I also noticed there was VR compatibility, which probably would’ve gone further for making the game more appealing visually.
Even aside from that, though, I thought it was lacking. I got the impression that this is more of a toy than a game, something more about showing off the capabilities of a technology than a game strong on its own merits. It’s like the tech demo aspects of Astro’s Playroom. …Except that I didn’t engage at all with the technology. Also, I didn’t vibe with the aesthetic style, which is fine, but it also felt… childish? Like it’s focused on providing mental stimulation but not providing depth. Which is approximately the opposite of what I want from a puzzle game, but then maybe this wasn’t intended to be a puzzle game.
Completed: 5/2/2025
Playtime (11/17 achievements): 2.3 hours
Free on Steam.
A chill flight exploration game. I originally played this in 2020 and stopped after a few minutes because the performance was really bad on the laptop I had then.
The story is pretty much just an excuse to have a couple objective-based flights. The game is really all about flying around. And it is some nice flying! It’s still nothing compared to the likes of Wii Sports Resort, which has a lot of visual variety - the island here consists of grass plains, a few villages, and a couple landmarks - but it is still pretty good. The painting-like artstyle is nice, though it means the graphics needed to be set to the max to look good. I’m not good enough at making sharp turns for the two races, but flying on a more casual basis was fun and pretty relaxing.
Though… I’m missing 1 each of the telescopes and the targets, even though I’ve spent a good half hour just flying around trying to find the last ones. I really just don’t know where they are.
Overall, pretty neat. Doesn't completely fill the void shaped like Wii Sports Resort Island Flyover, but at least does something.
Completed: 5/11/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 7.1 hours
Bought during the Spring 2024 Steam sale.
A puzzle game about identifying plants based on customer demands and plant descriptions, and unraveling a story surrounding Undermere and the appearance of a woman in a jade mask and a monstrous creature that embodies death.
Ultimately it’s a rather short and not that difficult game, but I really enjoyed it. The whole concept of closely evaluating plants to try and match them to their descriptions was a lot of fun. Same goes with the day hints pointing towards specific map locations that unlock plants essential for pursuing different endings. There are 8 endings in four pairs of two, which are unlocked by making a specific decision on the second to last day. Two sets are simply variants of a certain action on the last day, one relies on a longer-term decision, and one is the default. I believe you can unlock every ending path in a single playthrough but I didn’t do that the first time around.
Something I noticed narratively was how immensely limited your perspective is. Sure, there are the day tarots and the accompanying narrative there, but that’s it in terms of “external” perspective. You are limited to the knowledge you glean from others’ gossip and the things they want from you. Because of that, you’re less getting a comprehensive understanding of the world around you and more responding to events as they happen. It’s an interesting approach, but I think the worldbuilding suffers a bit as a result - it wants to evoke the feeling that I’m really “there,” but I still don’t have a great grasp on the world or the motivations of other characters, especially Thea, because I don’t have the lifetime of knowledge that someone truly living in it would. Hopefully the upcoming sequel will at least provide more insights into the setting.
Also, when I think of this game I recall that “woke games” list and how this game is apparently bad because a character’s mother took her daughter and fled from her abusive father. Like, wow. That’s all I need to know about those kinds of people and their ideology.
I’m still slowly playing through a different puzzle game, I swear. I promise the fact that I haven’t played it since mid-March doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned it.
Poptropica Adventures
Began: 3/7/2025Completed: 3/7/2025
Playtime (all museum exhibits): ~2 hours
Played through Retroarch for the achievement integration.
I mean, it’s a DS game of a kids game, the expectations are somewhat in the floor here. It’s really short. There’s only “four” islands, but in reality one is a hub so there’s only actually three of them. And those islands are also short. I have a better feel for the length and scale of Poptropica islands than when I was a kid, and I actually did replay bits of Poptropica semi-recently, but even then these islands are really short and mostly get their filler from the handful of minigames. Every island also has a museum exhibit, and you get 100% completion there by completing every sidequest.
The minigames weren’t that good, either. The most tolerable one was the “racing” minigame, where you basically just jump and duck to dodge obstacles. There’s also a climbing minigame where you also have to dodge obstacles from the top, and a pipe maze minigame, and those were unremarkably fine. My absolute least favorite one was the one where the NPC throws out objects and you have to either dodge or intercept them to win, and you can only miss so many times before you lose. The movement was so incredibly floaty that I hated every moment of it. Then there’s the maze, where you use the touchscreen to drag your boat/ship/whatever to the edge and avoid both obstacles and the walls. That one wasn’t bad… except that Astro Knights Island had you complete the minigame every single time you went between Earth(?) and the planet hub, and vice versa. And you were required to do that multiple times. I think I had to play it 8-10 times? Really not fun. And then if you’re trying to go for the 100% RetroAchievements set you have to beat the high score for 5 minigame arcades in the postgame, and I gave up because I do not want to do the dodging minigame ever again.
Overall… I don’t recommend it. Maybe if you’re under the age of 8 and are a kid in the late 00’s and are at the end of the licensed GBA/DS shovelware era, it’s a neat little distraction, but that’s kind of a small niche now.
GNOG
Began: 3/22/2025Completed: 3/22/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 1.7 hours
Bought via the Humble COVID-19 bundle in 2020.
A little game about solving little boxes. The puzzles themselves are fairly simple and straightforward, with only a couple things that were a bit confusing. I mistakenly thought this was a platformer for the longest time, until I was going through my list of owned games and marking what genre they were and learned this was a puzzle game.
Honestly, I feel like I didn’t play this the way it was intended. It calls itself a “tactile” game, but I played it with a mouse which inherently doesn’t provide tactile responses, and I imagine a proper controller could have used vibration or that thing on the DualSense controller where triggers have some resistance to being pressed. I also noticed there was VR compatibility, which probably would’ve gone further for making the game more appealing visually.
Even aside from that, though, I thought it was lacking. I got the impression that this is more of a toy than a game, something more about showing off the capabilities of a technology than a game strong on its own merits. It’s like the tech demo aspects of Astro’s Playroom. …Except that I didn’t engage at all with the technology. Also, I didn’t vibe with the aesthetic style, which is fine, but it also felt… childish? Like it’s focused on providing mental stimulation but not providing depth. Which is approximately the opposite of what I want from a puzzle game, but then maybe this wasn’t intended to be a puzzle game.
SKYE
Began: 5/1/2025 (technically 6/22/2020)Completed: 5/2/2025
Playtime (11/17 achievements): 2.3 hours
Free on Steam.
A chill flight exploration game. I originally played this in 2020 and stopped after a few minutes because the performance was really bad on the laptop I had then.
The story is pretty much just an excuse to have a couple objective-based flights. The game is really all about flying around. And it is some nice flying! It’s still nothing compared to the likes of Wii Sports Resort, which has a lot of visual variety - the island here consists of grass plains, a few villages, and a couple landmarks - but it is still pretty good. The painting-like artstyle is nice, though it means the graphics needed to be set to the max to look good. I’m not good enough at making sharp turns for the two races, but flying on a more casual basis was fun and pretty relaxing.
Though… I’m missing 1 each of the telescopes and the targets, even though I’ve spent a good half hour just flying around trying to find the last ones. I really just don’t know where they are.
Overall, pretty neat. Doesn't completely fill the void shaped like Wii Sports Resort Island Flyover, but at least does something.
Strange Horticulture
Began: 4/15/2025Completed: 5/11/2025
Playtime (100% achievements): 7.1 hours
Bought during the Spring 2024 Steam sale.
A puzzle game about identifying plants based on customer demands and plant descriptions, and unraveling a story surrounding Undermere and the appearance of a woman in a jade mask and a monstrous creature that embodies death.
Ultimately it’s a rather short and not that difficult game, but I really enjoyed it. The whole concept of closely evaluating plants to try and match them to their descriptions was a lot of fun. Same goes with the day hints pointing towards specific map locations that unlock plants essential for pursuing different endings. There are 8 endings in four pairs of two, which are unlocked by making a specific decision on the second to last day. Two sets are simply variants of a certain action on the last day, one relies on a longer-term decision, and one is the default. I believe you can unlock every ending path in a single playthrough but I didn’t do that the first time around.
Something I noticed narratively was how immensely limited your perspective is. Sure, there are the day tarots and the accompanying narrative there, but that’s it in terms of “external” perspective. You are limited to the knowledge you glean from others’ gossip and the things they want from you. Because of that, you’re less getting a comprehensive understanding of the world around you and more responding to events as they happen. It’s an interesting approach, but I think the worldbuilding suffers a bit as a result - it wants to evoke the feeling that I’m really “there,” but I still don’t have a great grasp on the world or the motivations of other characters, especially Thea, because I don’t have the lifetime of knowledge that someone truly living in it would. Hopefully the upcoming sequel will at least provide more insights into the setting.
Also, when I think of this game I recall that “woke games” list and how this game is apparently bad because a character’s mother took her daughter and fled from her abusive father. Like, wow. That’s all I need to know about those kinds of people and their ideology.
I’m still slowly playing through a different puzzle game, I swear. I promise the fact that I haven’t played it since mid-March doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned it.
