[ Previous entries: 2016 … 2017 … 2018 … 2019 … 2020 … 2021 … 2022 ]

Round-up time! I definitely got more gaming done this year vs last. Whereas, I only got 38 hours logged into Steam games last year (while delving into various other platforms like Amazon Luna, Epic, Apple Arcade, and Google Play), I got my Steam hours up this year. SteamDB profile indicates that I finished at 2420 hours, minus 2300 hours (ending point for 2022), equals 120 hours on Steam. I dipped into Amazon Luna occasionally, but rarely stayed due to the streaming latency. And the record below shows I didn’t game at all on Epic, Android, iOS, or many other platforms.

I think my Steam Replay Report from 2023 is slightly more interesting than the one from 2022. 256 achievements, and those were mostly deliberate, though some were holdovers from previous years. They didn’t click until I booted up the game again this year. This was motivated by a new achievement hunt after I learned of the site called Steam Hunters which provides a whole new way to look at your Steam gaming.

Vampire Survivors dominated (and I think that will continue well into the future) and accounted for exactly half of the achievements earned. Then there was Banished, which I only meant to enter into briefly in order to gain an achievement, but ended up staying for 15 hours before the achievement showed up — and enjoyed every minute.

1. Vampire Survivors: I’ve heard a lot of positive buzz around this, but few more details beyond the heavily populated albeit pixelated screenshots. It sort of dumps you in and leaves you to figure it out. I wasn’t impressed at first (possibly because my computer was in a laggy state when I first played it), but after a reboot, it started to click. Before I knew it, I had sunk a dozen hours into it in a weekend, finally reaching the cartoonishly chaotic endgame state for a given level. Then I just kept on playing and playing, and suddenly it was February and realized I had only played this game. New updates and DLCs would be rolled out throughout the year and I would quickly sink my teeth into those as well. This game is the main reason I got any significant playtime this year as well as a load of achievements.
2. Metal Slug: A month and a half into the year, I’m finally getting around to playing some game that is not Vampire Survivors. Many Metal Slug games came up for cheap in an SNK sale in February, so it seemed like a good opportunity to fill in that gap in my gaming history. I dropped $2 on the original version. These were always mainstays in the arcades I frequented in the late 80s/early 90s, but I never dropped a token in. I absolutely see the charm in the detailed visuals.
3. Astral Traveler: This reminded me a bit of S.T.U.N. Runner. But it didn’t grab me at all, as I only sunk a few minutes into it and quickly moved on. I later rediscovered it while scrubbing through my games for an achievement hunt and didn’t remember playing it at all earlier in the year, such was the impact that it made. Even the motivation of collecting a single achievement didn’t help me understand what I was supposed to be doing in this game.
4. Yakuza Kiwami (Amazon Luna): The first Luna game I have tried this year (I didn’t even bother with any of the January freebies). I had to visit the Wikipedia page in advance of playing just to see how confused I would be, jumping into a random point in the series. Fortunately, this is a remake of the original entry in the franchise. I actually greatly enjoyed myself and this made me long for the opportunity to really be able to sit down and immerse myself in an open world crime game.
5. Spec Ops: The Line: Morally complex military shooter game from a decade ago that was on sale for cheap enough. It grabbed me pretty quick with its amazing set pieces and I put a few hours into it. I wanted to continue as far as I could into the story, but one of the game play segments got to be too much for me and I ended up putting the game away and just watching the cut scenes edited together on YouTube.
6. Mega Man 11 (Amazon Luna): Freebie on Luna that I really wanted to enjoy. Couldn’t get through one level and I meant to visit other levels before the month was out, just to see the creativity on display. But alas.
7. Slayaway Camp: Another game that I played for free on a different service that I then proceeded to purchase on good old Steam. What can I say? I just can’t get into mobile/handheld gaming, but I love whiling away some time on a good puzzle game with clever aesthetics (in this case, 80s slasher horror flicks).
8. Resident Evil 4: Chainsaw Demo: I was eager to try the demo of this remake to see just how amazing the graphics could be. I didn’t last long here. Indeed, it reminds me of my attempts to play other remakes in the series.
9. StarCraft (Remastered): Time to get back to the roots using this title. I didn’t put much time in, though.
10. Steel Assault: This came up for sale on Steam. I was eager to play it again after demoing it on Amazon Luna last year. Again, probably not the usage model that Amazon had in mind for the Luna service, i.e., “try on Luna before you give you money to Steam”. I feel like it’s more playable on Steam, perhaps due to no possibility of network latency.
11. Yakuza Kiwami 2 (Amazon Luna): I enjoyed the first Yakuza Kiwami game on Luna. I was unsure whether I would be able to follow this game, not having finished the first one. Fortunately, it had a lot of “would you like to learn more about this?” segments as you amble around the opening of the game, which fill you in on the various story pieces you may have missed from the previous installment. This is the kind off game that makes me wish I had the time to indulge in open world time sinks.
12. Resident Evil 2 Remake (Amazon Luna): Another Luna freebie that I had to try before its free month expired. Very fun to revisit this one with its vastly upgraded visuals. I particularly respect how they maintained the mid-90s aesthetics with the technology (payphones, CRT computer monitors, fax machines). When I played the game, however, the game’s landing page on the Luna site illustrated why one shouldn’t get too invested in this game streaming tech as the landing page announced that it was slated to leave streaming soon. Ultimately, I didn’t play very long because I find these games are really quite brutally difficult.
13. Endzone: A World Apart (Amazon Luna): An Amazon Luna monthly freebie, a post-apocalyptic colony builder. I think the major twist here is that it requires a controller. These types of games are quite complex in the UI and ordinarily require a mouse and keyboard. I almost gave up a few times during the tutorial as I struggled to accomplish the goals laid out because I couldn’t figure out how to reach the required menu item in the UI.
14. SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech (Amazon Luna): This might be the first time I’ve suffered through even a little of a card-based video game (though I think my beloved Plants vs. Zombies had a sort of card mode). Also my first introduction to the SteamWorld franchise. I generally have never been able to comprehend random cards as a core gameplay mechanic in video games (at least games that aren’t simulating normal card games). I guess the graphics were pretty enough, with a sort of watercolor-influenced aesthetic.
15. Infectonator! Survivors: I rewatched Shaun of the Dead for the first time in like 15 years. It made me want to play this game again. Got sucked into it for a few nights.
16. Arcade Paradise (Amazon Luna): Seemed promising but turned into a massive disappointment. Basically, you work a menial job to earn money for the privilege of playing some arcade games. You have to do laundry in a laundromat, pick up trash around the same place, and… unclog the toilet. This is where I lost it, not because it was such an ugly chore, but I genuinely couldn’t get a grip on the control scheme and actually unclog the darn toilet. So I never did get to see what the arcade games were like. Reading online, though, it sounds like they were nothing special.
17. F-Zero (SNES Mini Retro): Always gotta take a few laps around the track from time to time, even if I’ve never gotten very far overall in the game.
18. Zen Chess: Mate in One: Simple chess puzzler that was on sale. Hard not to like, at least if you know the rules of chess, and much better than that weird chess puzzler I tried last year. The music has me wondering if there is a standard set of tunes for these simple zen puzzle games, because the soundtracks seem to run together in my mind.
19. Zuma Deluxe: I purchased this awhile back and saw it was still on my “Not Played Yet” Steam list, so I sunk a few minutes into it. I remember this being one of the earlier mobile games I played and enjoyed, circa 2010, before the dark times, when mobile games started to decline before outright sucking. Unfortunately, this desktop version suffers from a few problems: Can’t be full-screened, even though the option is there, thus it can be difficult to play without occasionally clicking out side the small-ish window; and the “mouse to rotate a wheel” core gameplay mechanic feels frustratingly inaccurate. I later figured out that the fullscreen option works if I disable hardware acceleration. So it’s possible to play in 4K, albeit at a stretched aspect ratio, and at the small cost to my sanity as it shifts video modes and screws up all my desktop windows.
20. Devil May Cry 5 (Amazon Luna): I was trying to get back into sampling Amazon Luna games, but the experience of trying out DMC5 was too punishing. Suddenly, the streaming just can’t keep up and I bailed a minute into the action. I still have the earlier DMC collection on Steam to work through, if I get the motivation.
21. Orbital Bullet (Amazon Luna): A game with a fascinating aesthetic, in which our hero runs around the perimeter of various small asteroids. Pretty, and sounded good, but it failed to hook me in any appreciable way.
22. CARRION: I have an ad-hoc tradition of playing some game on Halloween night after I shut down the house’s trick-or-treating operation. Often, it’s a scary-themed game. This year I chose CARRION, which I’ve had my eye on since it released about 3 years ago, and came up for sale just before Halloween. It’s exceptionally novel, you have to give it that much.
23. Ride 4 (Amazon Luna): This is the first time I have heard of the Ride franchise, which is apparently the 2-wheel version of realistic racing simulators such as Gran Turismo. It didn’t click, at all. First, the same streaming issues that plagued DMC5 a few days earlier cropped up here. Then, the game won’t allow you to cleanly exit unless you finish the tutorial window! Good thing the browser window can be axed.
24. Tiny Lands (Amazon Luna): This is an interesting idea: a video game in which you are tasked with finding the differences between 2 nearly identical images, like puzzles that used to appear in the newspaper. This is more advanced though, since the pictures are actually 3D rendered scenes which you need to rotate and zoom in order to discern the variations. It was a fun romp for a few minutes. I always found that the fifth and final difference was the hardest to find.
25. Peggle Nights: Enjoying Zuma Deluxe so much, I remembered that I hadn’t worked through this similar classic (by today’s standards) casual game that I had purchased on Steam some time ago.

Okay, quick break for a weird tangent here: I sometimes check into my profile on the SteamDB site, which can track your game library and playtime (if you set your Steam profile as public). It lists a certain number of games in my library as having been “played”. Around November, I learned of a separate site called Steam Hunters, which specializes in tracking achievements. When I checked my profile on this site, I noticed a gulf of about 100 games vs. SteamDB’s “played” count. It turns out that SteamDB counts a game has “played” if you have a total of 5 minutes of playtime, obviously a low bar. Meanwhile, Steam Hunters counts a game as “started” when you actually earn your first achievement in a game.

Thus, I set out on a meta-goal to narrow the gap between these 2 numbers.

26. Banished: The first game I noticed that has 5+ minutes (roughly 7) of total playtime on Steam, but no achievements earned yet was this colony simulation. I started it once, maybe twice before, but the tutorial bored me too much to continue. Tutorials often do that to me. Anyway, the way I wanted to work this achievement goal was to play until I organically earned my first achievement, so I went in with no knowledge of how to earn my first one. I read a brief guide from the Steam Community page regarding Banished that gave me some pointers as I delved into the game again this time, just bumbling around and figuring things out as I went. This reminds me of the way that I approached my beloved They Are Billions, figuring out new things every time I sat down to play, for like the first 50 hours. I restarted my colony a few times as I figured out more and more things. The general colony portion reminds me strongly of Exodus Borealis, a game I briefly fell in love with last year, particularly in the seasonal mechanics tied to the rapid life/death cycle. I finally scored my first achievement after about 14 hours– to think, I just wanted to get in and out with some achievement, but alas. Hey, at least I was having fun. After getting the achievement (for constructing one of each building type in my colony), I somewhat lost motivation to keep playing. My colony had reached an equilibrium at around 45 colonists. Reading some reviews of the game, it seems there are some wonky mechanics surrounding how effectively colonists can breed. If you don’t nail that correctly, your colony will never really get off the ground. Still, this experience makes me want to try my hand at some other more complex games by just poking around to see what I can figure out.
27. Chip’s Challenge 2: The second game I tried for my “try to get an achievement” challenge. This time, I only had to invest about 14 minutes rather than 14 hours in order to hit that first achievement in this classic block puzzler, by completing the first 5 levels.
28. Mega Man Legacy Collection: Mega Man 2: Looking for games that I’ve played but not scored any achievements on, I saw that there’s an achievement for finishing Mega Man 2 in this Mega Man collection. Mega Man 2 was my first exposure to the franchise and remains my favorite. I decided to cheat somewhat by looking up the optimal order for challenging the robot masters. But by the time I reached the third stage, I still got too frustrated/overcome with the realization that I should be doing something better with my time that I elected to move on. Strange to think that I completed this game in under 24 hours when I rented it as a kid.
29. NiGHTS Into Dreams: Next up on my achievement hunt… this just isn’t going great. I actually tried on this game, but I have no idea what’s going on and then the graphics made me feel ill after a few minutes. No harvesting from here. I had to go lay down while wondering what it would have been like to spend a bunch of cash in the mid-1990s for both a Sega Saturn and this game and then getting sick every time you tried to play it.
30. Pinball FX3: Next on the achievement hunt, I apparently played this game for 6 or 7 minutes previously. My notes from my previous play session showed that the game messed up my monitor resolution and also featured an extensive tutorial (on pinball). It also had an annoying voiceover for menu navigation. On this playthrough, the resolution was already correct, the game didn’t bother me with a tutorial, and I shut off the voiceover. I wondered how hard it would be to score an achievement, but I managed to grab 2 of them on just a single playthrough of the default board, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
31. QUBIC: I played this all the way back in 2018. I remember it being a novel little puzzle game that cost a dollar. But my notes indicated that the achievements were broken. So I decided to fire it back up and see if that functionality has been fixed sometime in the last 5 years, and maybe grab 1 or 2 of the 141 (!!) available achievements. Turns out all I needed to do is launch the game and I got 74 overdue achievements. It’s playing havoc on my Steam client while I’m writing these notes, giving me about 3 achievements every 10 seconds or so.
32. Sine Mora EX: I’ve wanted to revisit this shmup game ever since I sampled it in 2019, and my achievement hunt provided the impetus. I still have no idea what’s going on with the story, or who the factions are, but the visuals are absolutely stunning and it actually taxes my (somewhat aging) video card at full 4K in the process, same as it did 4 years ago. I exited the game after an hour to find that I did, in fact, earn an achievement.
33. Ball of Wonder: I was surprised to notice that I hadn’t scored any achievements on this despite feeling like I had played it a lot. It turns out I had only played it 4 hours, but it was a great time waster. I fired it up one more time and quickly received a few progress achievements (destroy X amount of Y-type blocks in this Arkanoid/Breakout clone).
34. Stars In Shadow: At long last, I did something in a 4X game. Motivated by my achievement hunt, and bolstered by success at figuring out how to play Banished, I decided to jump into this game and just poke around. Honestly, it’s very approachable, with a very cartoonish style and obvious aesthetic differences among the various races. And I even earned an achievement a few minutes in.
35. Zombo Buster Advance: Thanksgiving time! The time of year when I have an ad-hoc tradition of sinking into some tower defense game or another. I played Zombo Buster Rising a few years ago but was quickly annoyed with it because it felt like a mobile game that was ported to Steam, which turned out to be correct. This one is different and apparently has never visited a mobile platform. Advance has somewhat deeper gameplay than Rising, but not by much. It grabbed me long enough to score an achievement, then I went back to scrubbing through other unplayed TD games.
36. Planet TD: Another unplayed tower defense acquisition in my collection. It’s fairly uninspired. Neither the towers nor the enemies are particularly distinctive. I cleared the first 2 levels while struggling to remain awake. At least I scored 11/61 achievements so I don’t need to revisit for the achievement hunt.
37. FTL: Faster Than Light: The old roguelike indie darling that took me forever to warm up to. I hadn’t played it in forever and noticed that, despite playing it for well more than 13 hours, I had never scored even a single achievement. So I fired it up and immediately scored 2 achievements. I guess they were a relatively recent addition. Sure enough, seems that they didn’t arrive until January, 2020. I still went on to play it quite a bit in December.
38. Lumencraft: This is supposed to have some tower defense elements to it after awhile of digging and grinding up crystals. I might have to spend more time with it.
39. Gravity Island: This game is so challenging that I couldn’t even make it past the initial language selection screen. Or perhaps I was encountering some odd bug. Also forces a resolution change and messed up desktop windows, which is always a strike against a game.
40. Alien Shooter TD: I’m surprised that I missed this game during my annual Thanksgiving tower defense celebration, when I was scrubbing my library in search of unplayed TD games. Around Christmas, I got around to playing it. It didn’t impress me, especially since the graphics felt really primitive, as in early-era 3D graphics, even though this game dates to 2017. I should have guessed by the “TD” tacked onto the end of the title that “Alien Shooter” is the name of a franchise and that the earlier games actually do date back to the early 3D games. This TD game featured a game play innovation I hadn’t seen yet: The need to constantly purchase more ammo for your soldiers. I was about the abandon it before scoring an achievement, but then I crossed the threshold for a fairly basic one, so I won’t need to revisit this.
41. Girls Like Robots: Another revisit for the achievement. I really had to force myself to get through the first act. It just doesn’t grab me, but I got that precious achievement. What a chore.
42. Besiege: Apparently, I tried this briefly prior to this playthrough, but I couldn’t find any record of that fact among the pages of these yearly recaps. The achievement hunt gives me renewed motivation to figure it out. This is sort of a physics simulation and mechanical engineering workshop that allows you to create a siege vehicle that will destroy various medieval fortified positions. It’s sort of grabbing me this time around. I scored my first achievement pretty early on, but I hope to get back to it.
43. Bloodrayne Betrayal (Legacy): I haven’t visited this game in a long time (6+ years), but the achievement hunt marches on. I remember sampling this game a few times and enjoying it quite a bit, despite the miserable reviews, and the fact that I only had 26 minutes of playtime invested. I’m still enjoying it on this playthrough. However, I got stuck at one point. Then I decided to delve into what the achievements require exactly and they seem pretty advanced (no “baby’s first achievement” here). So this will likely remain a hole in the achievement hunt.
44. Bloodrayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites (Amazon Luna): The last game I played, also on the last day of the year. After playing the legacy version, I wanted to dip into this remaster/alternate artwork edition. It didn’t grab me, though, as the streaming latency still made the experience too arduous. I didn’t stick around long enough to appreciate the graphical differences.

So by the end of the year, I managed to narrow the game between SteamDB’s “played” games and Steam Hunters’ “started” games by at least a dozen.

[ Previous entries: 2016 … 2017 … 2018 … 2019 … 2020 ]

Steam hours currently = 2,262 hours, minus last year’s milestone of 1,934 hours, which means that (while crossing the 2k hour mark) I logged 328 hours in Steam gaming last year. So, my Steam gaming time continues to decline year over year. And I only have 34 games logged here. I guess I had other things going on this past year.

Over at MobyGames, I managed to accrue… wow, 38 whole points! This seemed strangely low to me until I recalled that I spent a huge amount of time actually approving contributions this year, as opposed to making contributions.

At the very least, I think I managed to finally kick my They Are Billions habit, a significant milestone. Speaking of which, it looks like that was the very first game I played last calendar year…

1. They Are Billions: I was managing my addiction by allowing myself to play the weekly community challenge. However, I would still slip into the mode of playing the survival game, mostly serving the role of something to do while listening to some manner of audio program. I came to the realization that when I play in these increasingly advanced survival modes, it’s essentially the equivalent of idly bouncing a rubber ball against the wall to keep my body doing something as I’m listening to said audio programs. However, in April, after 863 hours, I finally won a 350% game, something I didn’t think I would accomplish. At 965 hours in August, I won at 380% (score of 103,868 points). Sometime in the middle of September, I decided that I was already as good at the game as I ever care to become (vs. could possibly become), and finally hung it up. Strangely, I had managed to log exactly 1,000 hours into the game at the time I decided to quit. I have a feeling that I will never log as many hours into any other game. Or at least, maybe I’m just hoping that’s the case.
2. Two Dots (iOS): I got some mileage out of the previous Dots game on mobile platforms and I saw the sequel in the App Store. Free with IAP. Usually, I try to evaluate what the IAP on offer entails before installing the game. But I could not determine the purchase types for this title. So I gave it a whirl and got through a few levels before I failed to meet the goal after 8 or 9 levels… and I had to wait 20 minutes before trying again, or had the option to pay to give it another spin. I do believe this is the first time I have ever played a game that offered this scenario. Previously, I had only heard of it. Uninstalled the game immediately after encountering it.
3. Plants vs. Zombies 2 (iOS): Plants vs. Zombies on an original iPod Touch was my first introduction to the tower defense genre. The sequel first appeared in 2013. It was free with IAP, but made to be unobtrusive and non-essential. I remember enjoying it quite a bit but eventually lost touch with it. I decided to give it another whirl. Unfortunately, it’s such a horrendously cluttered experience that I can’t even find my way around the menu anymore.
4. Opus Magnum: I appreciate that it played at fullscreen and that changing the resolution had the effect of changing the UI scaling rather than changing the desktop resolution. It is another machine-building game from Zachtronics, in the same spirit of their SpaceChem game, which I very much enjoyed. I rather love the soundtrack too.
5. Stories Untold: Not sure what this is about, but I picked it up a few months ago since it promised some sort of retro-80s nostalgia trip, at least owing to the aesthetics of the artwork. Starting up the game, it seems to be an old school interactive fiction text adventure, played through a classic CRT on an 8-bit computer that strongly resembles a Spectrum ZX with integrated cassette loader (which makes sense since this seems to have been developed by a U.K. dev house). I suspect that there is supposed to be more to the game than just this simple IF game. Unfortunately, I was unable to get very far in the first story since I couldn’t seem to persuade the text parser to allow me walk around the back of the house so I could turn on the generator so I could then proceed inside the house.
6. Observation: This is from the same people as Stories Untold (I probably picked them up in a bundle as they seem to be on sale together frequently). I didn’t have high hopes after Stories Untold, but I took the opportunity to quickly clear it off my “unplayed” list. You’re supposed to play as a space station AI computer. I couldn’t figure out how to do anything and I didn’t care enough to try harder, after the previous disappointment.
7. Peggle Deluxe: This was on sale in a pack with its sequel, Nights, so it was a no-brainer to pick up this addictive casual game and play through it again.
8. StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void: I wanted to get back into playing StarCraft II, with the Protoss campaign (Legacy of the Void). I didn’t get too deep into it. Protoss is not the most intuitive faction to play.
9. Mahjong Epic (iOS): Always fun to sink some time into this one.
10. Siege of Centauri: I had this tower defense title on my Steam wish list for quite awhile and it never went down enough in price for me to pick it up. However, it eventually showed up in a Humble Bundle of games that included others I wanted to try, so I finally get to try it. It’s reminiscent of Defense Grid, which is positive. It just annoys me that the game pushes my GPU to 100% no matter what the graphical settings are. I suspect that it isn’t really that taxing; rather that the frame rate might be uncapped. At least the game provides UI scaling.
11. When Ski Lifts Go Wrong: I saw this in a Humble Bundle and it was the only game in the bundle that looked interesting. Fortunately, it was on sale for cheap on Steam at the same time. It’s like a physics puzzler where you are trying to construct minimally strong ski lifts, lest the skiiers, um… die. “Fail fast,” as they say. Regrettably, I couldn’t figure out how to get past the second level in the tutorial. It seems like a game bug that others have also reported on the Steam forum. At least I got an achievement out of my brief play session, for committing manslaughter against 5 skiiers.
12. Styx: Master of Shadows: I’ve had my eye on this one for awhile and it finally came up on sale cheap enough that I bought it. It’s a really good experience– from the very start, it automatically detects the best graphical settings and runs fullscreen. I think the story is strong with just the right amount of bizarre fantasy worldbuilding. I’m rusty at the core stealth gameplay but I’m still having a lot of fun with it. At 4.5 hours, I finally finished the first mission, which I’m led to believe was essentially the tutorial mission. So I’m not sure how plausible it is for me to consider ever finishing it. Also, the story cutscenes after this first mission have a jarring change of art style which drove me nuts.
13. Resident Evil 4: There was a Capcom publisher sale in April which reminded me that I already have this game in my library, which makes it the 3rd time I have purchased the same game. I bought it on its original platform (GameCube) in 2006. I purchased a digital edition of it on the PlayStation 3 in 2011, which was an upgrade in that it added widescreen support to a previously 4:3 aspect ratio game. Then I purchased this Steam version which promised to be the most HD version yet. I was easily able to get it running at full 4K and I guess it looks pretty good– not great.
14. Sega Mega Drive and Genesis Classics: Beyond Oasis: I decided to dust off this large collection of emulated Genesis games and continue working through alphabetically. This game had a great intro. But the game play struck me as a bit too RPG-ish, which was not something I was looking for in a quick play session.
15. Sega Mega Drive and Genesis Classics: Bio Hazard Battle: This is more like it! After bailing out of Beyond Oasis pretty quickly, I dove into this title, which turns out to be a pretty creative little shoot-em-up game that features giant bugs (both antagonists and protagonists). It was challenging but still a lot of fun; it became a little easier when I recognized that the powerups were there to be collected and not avoided as indestructible objects on the playfield. There is some unconventional shmup game play in that you have some companion weapons that fly near you, but whose aiming direction is influenced by the opposite direction in which you are flying.
16. Beyond Blue: From a pack of Earth Day Humble Bundle games. Really beautiful underwater game, especially at 4K.
17. Zen Pinball (iOS/Android): I launched this on my iPad to play a round of the default freebie board. Then I tried to see if I could access some old boards I purchased a long time ago. Nope. But I could access them on the Android version. Turns out that I purchased about 1/2 dozen boards nearly a decade ago. However, Zen Pinball doesn’t allow transferring purchases between platforms. Later on, it was the first game I booted up on my new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 phone. I have always enjoyed this game but it’s hard to play on the new phone because the screen is so tall and skinny, making it difficult to play in portrait mode. Landscape mode is more playable, but you don’t have the benefit of seeing very much of the board.
18. Infectonator: Survivors: I listened to an audiobook called The Junkie Quatrain, essentially about survivors trying to make it in a ruined city full of zombies. It reminded me of this game, so I went back to play it. I had a good time but I eventually had to put it down as it got too repetitive and frustrating for me.
19. Super House of Dead Ninjas: Just another romp with a fun old game.
20. SimplePlanes: A bundle of HOTAS (Hands-On Throttle And Stick)-enabled games showed up on Humble Bundle and tempted me. So I bought a Logitech X52 HOTAS and wanted to see what I could do with it. I started with this game because, well, it had simple in the title and I wanted to start easy. This game has you building planes and then flying them. I got through the building tutorial but I was unable to get the HOTAS to work with this game.
21. DCS World: This is a game that uses the model of giving away a little bit (in the form of a few different military aircraft types) and then having an enormous amount of DLC for purchase (many other aircraft types). This is when I started to figure out something crucial– I don’t know anything about flying. I need to figure out some way to learn the basics and flying and how that applies to flight simulation software.
22. Elite: Dangerous: Another big reason I wanted to try out a HOTAS– flying in this game is supposed to be a natural fit for the control scheme. Again, I couldn’t get too deep into it because I am just not competent at flying yet.
23. Masters of Anima: I got the impression that this was a puzzle game or tower defense game. It’s not quite either, at least during my brief playthrough. It has some interesting art styles happening. The cut scenes remind me of Disney’s Hercules. The game engine and graphics remind me more of StarCraft II, mostly of the Protoss variety of graphics. I think the game has more in common with games like God of War and Darksiders, though.
24. Blaster Master Zero: I recently learned of this series of upgraded remakes/sequels of the original Blaster Master game. I put a lot of time into the original Blaster Master game on the NES. This game reminds me of DuckTales Remastered in that it’s an improvement in the storyline of the original. The graphics are a little too low-res, but it’s still fun.
25. Velvet Assassin: I felt like playing a game for the first time in a long time on Halloween night, after I shut down my home’s trick-or-treating operation. I chose this stealth action game that I picked up for a whole dollar at a recent sale. The first thing I really appreciated was that it starts with a Windows dialog box that offers graphical configuration before launching the game. Usually, games try to launch in a low-res mode, mess up the desktop, and I have to configure the settings in game. So I was able to configure the game at 4K, maxed on all settings, and it’s quite lovely, at least outside, before the titular character gets into the dark, drab indoor environments.
26. Xeodrifter: Retro pixel space platformer that I can’t really figure out. It’s interesting for the fact that it uses a window frame to handle configuration items.
27. Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle: The King of Dragons: An arcade game that I have never experienced before (Lol! I later realized that I wrote up this same game in the previous year– goes to show how much of an impact it made on me). I played it as long as I could before the monotony of classic arcade style action became too much for me.
28. Banana Hell: This falls into the category of impossible platformer. Fun, but incredibly difficult. Weirdly, that doesn’t put me off. I keep on trying.
29. Dungeon Warfare II: Thanksgiving weekend rolled around and it occurred to me that I have often played a bunch of TD games on previous such weekends. Since I didn’t have any new games purchased from the traditional sale, I looked for an older game that I hadn’t played as much. I had about 5 hours on record when I delved into the game this time. I was surprised it was that many. I thought I had discarded the game pretty quickly the last time I tried it. Pretty fun this time around.
30. Box: The Game: The game was free on Steam. It was a delightful, quick romp of a puzzle game.
31. Stars In Shadow: I wish I understood why I am so infatuated with the idea of understanding 4X games. I tried playing this one but got too bored a few minutes into it. I liked the cartoonish aesthetic, though.
32. Talisman: Digital Edition (Android): I got this in a Humble Bundle of tabletop games. I side-loaded it onto my new Android phone. Then I realized it was some sort of card game and quickly lost interest.
33. Mysterium: A Psychic Clue Game (Android): Pretty, but I really didn’t understand what was going on. It’s sort of the opposite end of what usually happens– normally, games have way too much tutorializing. This one didn’t seem to have enough.
34. American Truck Simulator: I fired this up for a quick play session since a MobyGames contact needed confirmation that the game does, indeed, feature gas stations that showcase the price of gas. This critical data was needed for a Steam game group. I even pulled into a station and tried to fill up, but I couldn’t figure out the hotkey to enable that action.