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Com-PETE-ions, 2021 Edition

Here's a list of games I've Com-PETE-d in the abovementioned calendar year.

So - what constitutes "Com-PETE-ion"? All Achievements/Trophies, where available, is a bare minimum; the aim is to fully experience what the game has to offer (from at least an asset perspective). DLC is required in almost all cases - the commitment is to the game as a whole.

After a couple of 40+ Com-PETE-ion years, I've decided to not set myself any monthly goals this year. I think I was denying myself "fun" in favour of "Getting Things Done", so I'm removing that pressure point. Who knows what will happen as a result?

--Pete.

List items

  • Lured in by Brad & Drew's QL ( https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/quick-look-linelight/2970-12177/free-video ), I thought this would be a nice, gentle puzzler. NOPE - by the time I was in the Bonus Worlds, there was much gnashing of teeth and - eventually - the need for a walkthrough. The additional Green Stars only upped the pain... but - credit where it's due - there is some inventive puzzling to be found here. Puzzles that combine timing, stretching, and magnetism can go to hell, though.

  • Call me sick, but watching Brad and Jeff struggle in the QL sold Oure to me. And I was surprised how straightforward I found this game - there was very little jank from such a small dev team! Exploring the clouds as a nimble dragon was really good fun - I found the controls to be fantastic, with a tangible sense of weight to the beast - but the narrative was limp, at best. Sure, it wears its influences (Shadow of the Colossus, Journey) loudly and proudly, and it could never live up to them, but Oure was very pleasant podcast fodder.

  • An aesthetically gorgeous game that's almost like a Spirograph quiz. Soothing, fascinating, and short... but well worth the time and money.

  • Finally managed to unlock all the parts and Mystery Mushroom costumes... the latter of which caused me to simulate a raft of Amiibo, before sinking a bunch of time into getting some Expert and Super Expert clears. I also uploaded a bunch of Mystery Mushroom courses to allow others to play with the different aspects of all the costumes... it just seemed like the right thing to do :)

    Edit: feel free to start at 10D4-0000-0422-4A60, and star to your heart's delight ;)

  • In the lead-up to the announcement of Moon on the Switch, Onion Games started a mailing list. It's pretty low volume, and the English is pretty good, so it's well worth a look... especially if you're as enamored of Onion's output as I am.

    Anyhoo, as a reward for signing up to their mailing list, you get access to a nice little treasure-trove of Oniony goodness... wallpapers, MP3s, et cetera. But the gem is a free little game called "Romeo And Juliet", a one-button game that - despite the occasional frustration with random enemy placements - manages to generate just the right level of addiction. The only problem is that the "story" text - written in that cheery Onion style - appears just out of the eye-line of an increasingly hectic game. A pity, really, because it really is quite sweet. And weird.

    Com-PETE-ion? There's a "special" ending for finishing the game (reaching Level 100) with more than 10,000,000 points. It's nothing stellar, but as a small freebie it's cheerful enough.

  • Vinny's enthusiasm during the Quick Look ( https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/quick-look-the-station/2970-11578 ) was infectious, leading me to jam this on my Steam Wishlist in short order. And it turns out that the Quick Look was a pretty good representation of the game; it's narrative-heavy, terror- (but not tension-) free, but very short. Having said that, it's the perfect length, and the narrative twist in the tail is pretty good. Well, the whole last quarter of the game is pretty excellent. Despite the short length, it's totally worth buying, especially if you can find it on sale.

  • Ōkami is aesthetically stunning - especially for a fifteen-year-old game,. Gameplay-wise, it completely lived up to the "one of the best Zeldas" tagline that was slapped on it by various outlets, and was good (and compelling) fun for 99% of its significant length. It only really began to drag for me at around the 110 hour mark, towards the end of my second playthrough.

    First playthrough was around 75-ish hours: I avoided guides until I finished the game (at about 50 hours), but then went back to a late-game save to mop up all the collectibles. Com-PETE-ion required a second (100%) playthrough, and it was a blast (once the über-power collectible had been enabled).

    Totally recommended. I played it on the Switch; docked, it looked gorgeous... but in handheld mode, it was stunning.

  • WOW I was obsessed with UGG when it was first released - it easily dragged me away from the Link's Awakening remake (which was released the same day on the Switch). My SO and I fell into its world, drinking in every detail and challenge... for three days. And then, after finishing the first sweep of to-do list challenges, a bunch of new items appeared on the to-do list... and I bailed. For (almost exactly) seventeen months.

    The speed runs were actually pretty doable, and the other extra to-do list items were pretty fun. UGG is (still) a great game, and I don't know why I left it on the backburner for so long.

  • After I added Yoku’s Island Express and Creature In The Well to my “Maybe” list, I figured that the Metroidvania x Pinball genre was one that I should investigate to see whether it gelled with me... and, as luck would have it, Yoku was 75% off on the Switch.

    And, truth be told, it probably took less time to 100% the game than it did to contemplate its purchase. But nearly all of that brief period was totally satisfying, with only a few short moments of clumsy-fingered frustration. Yoku’s Island Express was a gorgeous, cute, and compelling winner.

  • Thought I'd give this a bash after being intrigued by the QUBE 2 Quick Look. It's unashamedly inspired (aesthetically, at least) by Portal, but there's certainly worse things to base your style on. And there's some pretty good platforming puzzles to be had, here, along with some (initially daunting) time trials. Com-PETE-ion required all Golds on the Time Trials, which just required a little practice.

    An unexpected bonus for buying this on the PS4 - the PS3 version is included, with a separate Trophy list! However, the PS3 is a far less polished affair, with loading stutters making the time trials an exercise in frustration. As a result, "all Trophies" was a lesser Com-PETE-ion for that version. Still, a nice two-for.

  • Time Warpers has made many appearances on GB videos (especially Jeff's at-home vids, where it often idled in the background), and it needled its way into my thoughts and onto my Steam Wish List and then it was on sale and I bought it and I sat and actively watched the numbers tick and then I started idling it and suddenly Steam is reporting "You've played for 3566 hours".

    Look, I'm not sure this is my favourite clicker/idler; but it's pretty when it wants to be, can be pretty low-spec when it wants to be, and those numbers tick up *good*. All Achievements (including the internal event-based ones) and a full suite of Tier 11 Legendary perks constitutes Com-PETE-ion.

  • What an awesome idea! I was totally smitten with the idea of Kind Words after I saw Brad grappling with it one stream, and imagined it would be a great way to exercise both my writing chops and my head-space. And, for a short while, that was the case.

    The problem is that my writing - and, indeed, compassion - could only support and assure and guide people for so long. The desire was there, for sure… but as a fifty-year-old man, there's only so much you can tell fourteen-year-olds who've had their hearts broken after a two-week relationship. One would suspect there's a lot of trolling going on, too, lest the human population would be disappearing at a precipitous rate. And the lack of inline spell-checking - likely a deliberate design choice - leads to damning results.

    Great audio and visuals, though, and I enjoyed the low-key collectathon associated with receiving all the stickers. While conceding that the vast majority of the letters I saw were important to those who wrote them, I suspect I just missed the zeitgeist of a more identifiable & contemplative community.

  • Away from home for a holiday (and with nothing on the Switch really tickling my fancy), I decided to give Severed a bash on my iPad. It's an engaging bit of hack-and-slash with mild RPG elements, and a set of controls that work like a charm (though rapid screen-rubbing has numbed a few fingertips). The narrative is light, but serviceable, and aesthetically it's pretty charming too. A relatively easy Com-PETE-ion (though the Standard difficulty initially proved a bit of a step-up from Casual), with all iOS Achievements gettable. Don't be put off by the threat of swiping your way through combat... this is well worth a look.

  • I was expecting a short narrative from this game (though I thought there was some puzzle element in there somewhere), but I had no idea how convoluted and serpentine the narrative and meta-narrative would be. Despite being pithily summarised as "pleasantly pretentious", I found this a worthwhile investment of a pair of hours, even if I did feel a little attacked by Coda's digs at Just Getting Through The Game... guilty as charged.

  • An astute - and wildly funny - evisceration of corporate workplace culture. Lightly interactive, it’s short and totally accessible and well worth playing... unless Corporate Capitalism runs through your veins (whereupon you'll turn up your nose and complain about millennial snowflakes, before continuing to ignore your privilege). Even the Steam Achievements dig into the nature of work. Brilliant!

  • I'm morally mis-aligned to the idea of subscription-based gaming, so I didn't play Grindstone when it was first released on Apple Arcade... but, based on early media ravings, it was added to a "Must Play" list. And when it was released on the Switch, I went in guns blazing.

    Grindstone is fantastic. A brilliant little puzzler with oodles of charm, I liked it so much that I've sunk nearly 200 hours into it, 100%-ing it twice, and compiled a Crafting, Challenge, and Level Guide. I'm seriously considering picking it up on the PC, too.

  • After conquering my initial scaredy-cattiness, I really quite enjoyed BioShock. Sure, the PS4 Remaster is chock full of bugs and weirdness that screwed up Trophy progress, but I had no problems smashing my way through another run of the game in order to fix Blind Squirrel's mistakes. Fantastic world, solid action, and plenty of freedom.

  • Terrifically fun football (read: soccer) game that's been created with no regard for the actual rules of football. And whilst that provides a torrent of humour due to the ludicrous interpretations of the rules (the "off side" variant is brilliant), the game itself is bloody good fun... especially after you win your first World Cup (against Brazil United) and unlock a handful of handy cheat modes.

    The "story" is complete nonsense, with brilliant writing and loosely branching narrative. And yes - Com-PETE-ion saw me successfully kiss the arch-nemesis, Pedro.

    Also: best use of dubstep ever.

  • My first taste of Umurangi was fun, but something didn't quite gel; I assumed that was because I was trying to rush through the game, rather than chill with it. Onto the back-burner it went.

    ...Until today. Whence I played it for about eight hours straight. Initially easing my way through the levels, then - once familiar with the layout and required photos - picking them apart with brutal efficiency, with steel precision. *Super* good fun, and the Macro DLC's sting-in-the-tail was fantastic.

    Hot tip: unlock the skates ASAP... they turn the game into a first-person Jet Set Radio.

  • Audio? Sublime. Visuals? Suitably ethereal. Atmosphere? Stunning.

    Fract OSC offers no guidance, aside from the most rudimentary of control instructions. You're left to your own devices for much of the game, exploring and experimenting with a variety of rhythm- and tone-based puzzles. And, for two-thirds of Fract, I was completely hooked... but then came the other third of the main game, which left me absolutely flummoxed. Seriously: I had no idea what to do. So I fell into a following a guide for much of the remainder of the game... and felt super glad that I had.

    Regardless, I really enjoyed my time with Fract OSC - but I shudder to think what would have happened had I encountered that problematic third *first*.

  • I loved the Monument Valley games, so I was already predisposed to buying this; hearing that it was a short, peaceful game sealed the deal. It's cute-as-a-button, the audio is (necessarily) superb, and the gameplay is buttery smooth. I got sucked into the "collectibles" straight away, and loved every second of it. A wonderful little game, and exactly what was needed on the first day of our latest COVID lockdown.

  • QUBE 2 is not only a better game than the original QUBE, it's a fantastic game full-stop. Whilst hard-core puzzle fiends will probably find it easy going, I managed to Com-PETE the game without consulting a guide, often solving a puzzle and yelling "PHYSICS!" with a very self-satisfied grin. It looks lovely, the narrative doesn't detract, and the audio is perfectly understated... this is a cracking game.

  • Virginia is a textbook example of how interactive narratives can work. Sublime.

  • The opening half (which is to say, the first one-and-a-half Episodes) of Tell Me Why are intriguing: good characters liven up a functional plot, and create enough interest for me to persevere with the clunky mechanics. But the end of Episode 2 feels like the characters have run out of lines, and actors are ad-libbing for impact; the third Episode feels (with the exception of one cut scene) markedly lower in polish than the first.

    It was a bad idea to play Tell Me Why and Virginia at the same time. One game creates a limited scope to tell its story, and succeeds magnificently; the other fails to constrain its goals and, as a result, satisfies none of them. It's fair to say that, after this and Life Is Strange both left me irritated, I won't be looking at any more of DONTNOD's narrative adventures.

  • I have to admit to not doing my due diligence on Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and before I knew it I was in digital possession of another Ubisoft open-world game... a developer and game-style that I'd previously sworn off. And, truth be told, this wasn't a terrible reunion... for the first ten or twenty hours.

    But after awhile, it all became busy-work. And - worse - uninspired busy-work. Sure, it's pretty, and the writing is just self-aware enough to keep its tongue-in-cheek, but it just became a slog to free the map from activity icons.

    The DLC, though? The first instalment felt like a grab-bag of dungeon ideas that couldn't be squeezed into the main game, and was interesting enough. The second piece of DLC, however, was uniformly terrible. Awful writing and insipid world design left me feeling like I'd completely wasted my time. The final DLC, with its semi-fixed camera, was frustrating to explore, but the writing (especially towards the end) was a delight.

    Com-PETE-ion? Over nearly 200 hours, I cleared all maps of icons & quests, and completed all the UbiSoft Connect Challenges. And that'll be enough UbiOpenWorld for me for another decade.

  • The one benefit of COVID was the (apparent) altruism of Sony with its "Play At Home" events. As loathe as I am to just load up on freebies, I thought I'd commit to Ratchet & Clank because of the positive vibe around the franchise... and, hey, a fun & colourful action platformer seemed like a pretty good idea. And, as Sydney went into (another) lockdown, it seemed like a pretty prescient pick-up.

    Sure, this 2016 remake doesn't completely hide the age of the game: presentation definitely has an early 2000s vibe, but nothing too onerous. The revamped visuals are gorgeous, and it was fun poking around to see how Insomniac managed to keep the framerate up when you amp up the destruction. And whilst the gameplay was enjoyable enough (save the occasional edge-of-bounds weirdness), I didn't form the same connection with the characters that others seem to have managed.

    Am I going to go on a Ratchet & Clank retrospective bender? No. But, based on the technical nous evident in this remake, I might give Rift Apart a bash (once I get a PS5).

  • I've got a raft of Serious Sam games on The List as a result of an ill-informed Humble Bundle donation in 2014... if I could undo that act, I would, because I'm not really a fan of the hundreds of hours of Sam-based action ahead of me.

    The Random Encounter was alright, though - possibly because, as a Vlambeer joint, it's not your usual immature FPS. It's still pretty silly, though, and verges on unfair at times, but its turn-based action is a curious affair that doesn't really outstay its welcome.

  • Highly recommended by a friend, I knew nothing about The Talos Principle until I actually started it. And it turns out it's a physics-y puzzler which, at its best, evokes feelings of The Witness. Talos completely lacks The Witness' variety, however, and - at its worst - it disappears up its own arse with heady narrative and next-level obscure puzzle solutions. As usual, the "DLC" - included by default with the PS4 version - was markedly less enjoyable than the main game, with puzzles and narrative that bordered on the obnoxious.

    Com-PETE-ion was pretty straightforward - all sigils, all stars. And whilst I managed to figure out all the main game sigils (and around ten stars) all by my lonesome, I had no qualms whatsoever using a guide for the rest of the game, such was the ludicrous nature of some of the puzzles on offer.

  • I really enjoyed the quirky Grow Home, and this sequel was likewise enjoyable. But it kinda felt like a different game, in a way - the original felt very focussed on the growing of the Star Plants (a weird, but enjoyable, mechanic), whereas the cultivation aspect almost feels like an afterthought here. Quality-of-life improvements make for smoother gameplay, but the whole package feels a little less charming. Still worth a look, though.

  • Rather than kick off No More Heroes III, I thought that it might be worth checking out one of Suda51's earlier works (Killer7 being the oldest Grasshopper game I'd played). And bugger me if this isn't some Suda-ass Suda - initially incomprehensible, the plots many gossamer strands eventually weave together to form some satisfying resolution. Gameplay is negligible - it's basically a visual novel - but the last 15 hours were absolutely compelling stuff. Some of the Steam Achievements are a little nuts, though - the 100-question rapid-fire general knowledge quiz would be insane without a list of answers nearby.

  • Lured in by an ad my partner spotted on the eShop, I wound up grabbing this on the PS4 (to bump up my TT Bean Dive). And it turns out that it's an enjoyable little real-life spy romp, based on fantastical interpretations of the author's interviews with her father about his time working for Danish Intelligence.

    But it's a very compromised enjoyment. Movement in the game is most charitably described as "squirrelly", with bad controller zoning and aggressive environment walls. And for all the fascination to be found in the family-driven content, at times Cosmic Top Secret can feel *too* personal - like someone made a game out of their un-edited scrapbook journal. Great aesthetics, though.

  • Vinny raved about Cradle's narrative in the QL (and Austin's enthusiasm was infectious), so I bought this back in the day. Playing it in 2021, though, is *rough*. Sure, the narrative content is there for you to find (and enjoy it I did, at least until I found the Neanderthal thought-sharing stuff), but the gameplay was completely off-putting to me.

    I'm only barely OK with pixel-hunting point-and-click adventures... but when the "pixel"-hunting is spread out to a huge open world, with no item highlighting and muddy textures and buried objects, I find it all a bit obnoxious. So I "played" the game with a guide, enjoyed the text I found, and mashed the cube-puzzles as little as I could (while still getting all the Achievements). Sure, Cradle is interesting, but not really worth playing.

  • I *love* the original Psychonauts (100%-ed it on three platforms, no less!), so I threw money at Double Fine (via Fig) when they sought backers... and I couldn't be happier with the result.

    Psychonauts 2 is absolutely wonderful. Charming, hilarious, touching, engaging, and still a bloody great game. I didn't really mind the oft-ridiculed Meat Circus in the original, but there's nothing even *close* to that ornery in the sequel (the Cook-Off is a little niggly, but that's the worst of it). It's actually pretty amazing to see what happens when a company has the time - and resources - to make a game that's actually player-friendly; Psychonauts 2 is an absolute joy to indulge in.

    Edit: Did a second playthrough on my Xbox One X (the first was on PC). Noticeably longer load times, gameplay was still stellar. A worthy GOTY contender, if not winner.

  • I'm a life-long Minter aficionado (Gridrunner, AMC, & Rox64 were my intro to his work on the C64 in 1983!), but my interest in his more recent works (from the Minotaur Project onwards) has waned... in fact, I wasn't even going to buy Moose Life until I saw Gerstmann play it one stream.

    Popping one Trophy to include Moose Life in my recent Bean Dive did not make a good impression... but returning to the game through PSVR goggles revealed a beautifully balanced experience amongst the constant colourful voxel spray. The later levels left a hallucinogenic WTF-ish grin on my face, with gut-laughter being interrupted only by yelps of "Where am I?".

    Moose Life may not have reached the pinnacle - Space Giraffe remains my favourite - but this is some top-tier Minter goodness... but only if you can play it in VR.

  • A gorgeous game, with a wonderful sense of movement and flow. Great environments, a solid progression, and lush aesthetics are only (very occasionally) let down by grotty stealth sections. The end-game is utterly fantastic, with a genuinely tangible sense of power. Totally recommended!

  • I came into this highly-lauded game without a clear idea of what it actually was... it turns out that To The Moon is basically a pixel-art visual novel with a thoughtful story. There's plenty of attempts to tug at the heart-strings, but the memory-messing narrative leaves plenty of ambiguity - no character is "good", and the two additional DLC chapters only magnify that murk. A feel-good story this is not; but if you're after a contemplative reflection on the role of memory, this is your jam.

  • I'm so glad I waited until I had an actual plank before Experiencing for the first time; the VR environment is utterly convincing, and well worth acquiring a chunk of wood for. Watching my partner Walk the Plank was also worth the price of admission.

    As for "game" content required for Com-PETE-ion... well, the Hero Academy mini-games are no joke. The Rocket Race, in particular, is pretty bloody tricky to three-star... but utterly rewarding to do well. Totally recommended, if you've already got a VR rig.

  • It only felt right to buy this again on the Switch - I played it on its PC release, and loved it to bits. It's still an absolute joy to play, with a gorgeously realised chunky-pixel world to explore and plenty of quirky characters with un-annoying contemporary dialogue.

  • With my hometown just emerging out its latest lockdown, the opening dialogue exchanges that underpin Quarantine Circular certainly hit home. A bleak visual novel (with a handful of branches, allowing eight scripted endings - and a few more unscripted), this is a solid bit of sci-fi writing with a pleasing presentation. The limited cast are convincing, though it's possible to contort their available choices to contrast violently with their presented dialogue. Still, it's fun - and accessible enough - to push through multiple 90-minute runs of this game just to explore where the writing can go.

  • With a rotating disc that you drop notes onto outer layers, pushing existing notes in towards the centre, Sentris presents itself as half sequencer, half puzzle game. The "puzzling" is extremely simple, akin to playing Tetris with Lumines' timeline. The sequencing aspect is a little more fleshed out, with a series of pre-defined instruments/sample sets and (in Remix Mode) control over tempo and pitch.

    But, despite loving most forms of music, I don't have a musically creative bone in my body... so the sequencing is pretty much lost on me (or, at best, reminds me of how crap my sense of timing is - hello, Child of Eden!). And it turned out that the most interesting musical moments that Sentris facilitated for me were when I effectively "failed" the puzzles - dropped a note off-beat, or wrongly placed a chord.

    And that's certainly a unique paradox for me, when playing a puzzle game: finish a game with less enjoyment, or fail the game for pleasure?

  • A fun little stealthy collectathon with a brilliant funk-laced soundtrack and a cartoony visual style. It's occasionally challenging to 100% levels, and the writing sometimes shows its ESL origins, but otherwise this is an enjoyable romp. Some of the movie-inspired bonus levels are great fun, too.

  • I'm not a massive fan of the stealth genre - Never Stop Sneakin' is about the level of "stealth" that I usually like - but Volume appeared to be highly regarded (and another Bithell joint), so I jumped in. 100 levels can seem pretty daunting, but most are under two minutes long, and new mechanics are introduced at a reasonable pace.

    Volume is *almost* brilliant, but there's some oddness to it. Levels are weirdly balanced: for me, the trickiest level was in the forties somewhere, and the final level is almost anticlimactic. Some of the VO seems utterly detached and stands apart from the largely serviceable audio.

    But it's still an enjoyable game, if a little unfocussed. Hot tip: don't play this and Serial Cleaner at the same time; differing stealth mechanics can be a bit confusing when they overlap!

  • A wonderfully animated mini-game collection, Later Alligator is immediately charming - Pat the Alligator is a ridiculously fun central character, and his wider family are likewise a bunch of fun to visit. But I couldn't shake the feeling that a lot of the New York character archetypes were a little lost on me... that I only got *half* the joke. But that still makes for a fun (and short) little excursion into Alligator New York City... and the second & third endings are certainly a surprise!

  • This game looks incredible - a cross between Playdead's near-monotonal environments and a crafting aesthetic, with fantastic themes in its handful of levels. The light-based puzzling is pretty good too, with a great balance of head-scratching and reward. But whilst the plot - and (intrusive) voice-over - attempts to tackle topics of weight, it does so in a ham-fisted manner that undercuts the intent. A shame, really, because I had a lot of fun playing for five hours... just less fun listening.

  • Anime? Love it (broadly speaking). Visual novels? I'm keen (occasionally speaking). Tower defense? Hate it.

    And yet I *love* 13 Sentinels. It has a plot that's super-convoluted, hyper-fragmented, and chock-full of holes and problems and is presented in a manner that can make it nigh-on impossible to coerce into something that is cohesive... and yet it all comes together in the end. And the tower defense stuff, when played on Casual, has an incredibly pleasingly tangible sense of power to it.

    Did it drag after forty hours? Not in the slightest. And I think my partner is actually going to miss my floundering attempts to summarise the plot.

  • My only EGS purchase (after discovering that Steam won't sell it in Australia due to classification issues), this seemed essential after Jan raved about it on a UPF (and again in the QL). And there's a lot to like, with zippy 3D platforming and graffiti reminding me of my beloved JSRF.

    But the lo-fi aesthetic (and audio) also reminds me of Umurangi Generation, and that comparison is a bit damning. Umurangi deftly handles the aesthetic, is funny, and has something to say; Sludge Life, whilst being undoubtedly bringing weird and wonderful to the humour, is a lot less subtle... and doesn't really say anything. It's still pretty fun while it lasts, though.

  • I'd already played this on PSVR - my first PSVR game, in fact - but I love giving Double Fine some love/money, and picked it up to play on my Quest + Virtual Desktop setup. And it's still a fun little romp, but with a few wrinkles: the boxcar puzzle was made much more difficult by all the boxes being rendered flat black, and there were a few audio creaks as well. But it's still a great bridge between the two mainline Psychonauts games, and laughing at the whining in the Steam Discussions is fun, too.

  • With all the chatter around Inscryption, I thought I'd check out the cheaper (in both money and time) earlier game from its creator. I'm bloody glad I did: Pony Island is a brilliant little gem, perfectly formed and astutely subversive. It's easy to see how this could have inspired more recent self-referential games (Sludge Life included), but there's something so holistically satisfying about Pony Island that it's impossible to *not* recommend.

  • Ben & Brad's Quick Look ( https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/forager/2970-19052 ) was interesting enough to plonk Forager onto my Steam WishList; last Christmas' sales saw me snaffle this... and then forget about it for a year.

    It turns out that Forager is a gorgeous casual "survival" game. Bereft of story, there's no real pressure to do... well, anything, and there's no real threat from your immediate environment. So it becomes an entertaining resource management loop, acquiring resources to feed factories and unlock higher tier items.

    And those loops seem really well planned, too - there's a lot of little slopes that you slip down to feel momentarily OP, and these moments are frequent enough to drive you along. Completing Feats unlock little extras, like comics and a wonderful little making-of slideshow.

    Cute as a button and aurally inoffensive, Forager is splendid podcast fodder. The fact that I plunged nearly 80 hours into it over a week should say it all.

  • Right up front: I'm joining the chorus of voices who found Spiritfarer to be a warm and affecting narrative. The fact that I could see uncanny parallels of my parents in Spiritfarer's cast certainly had a lot to do with that; my mother's shadow, Alice, was only lacking the physical violence that often accompanies dementia.

    Was it long? Well, yes - but it didn't seem to outstay its welcome. Instead, the length of the game afforded long, contemplative stretches where one could deeply consider that which they'd experienced... and that yet to come.

    The light management and platform game elements don't excel, but nor do they get in the way. A podcast game, this is not. An incredibly thoughtful and compassionate narrative on death, this is.
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