My wife and I played through Duck Detective: The Secret Salami over the weekend. It’s short and sweet, and you can beat it in one sitting, and it plays very similarly to Golden Idol. If you’re looking for more of that, I’d recommend it, even if it’s not quite as good.

Indika has only gotten better as I’ve gotten further in. I’ll probably beat that game tonight, as I understand it’s not very long. While largely a narrative adventure game, it’s got some wild ideas for game mechanics.

I finished Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. It starts off so strong, and I felt like it might be one of the best metroidvanias I’ve ever played. Then you get a few hours in, and you just keep running into spots where you need to double jump to progress forward. When you finally unlock it, it’s not an exciting empowering moment but one of relief. The combat and platforming challenges are all really well done, but they just made so many of them that the pacing of the drip feed of metroidvania upgrades is too slow. With some better pacing, this really would have been one of the best metroidvanias I’ve ever played rather than one that’s just really solid.

As per usual, I also played some more Skullgirls. I went 0-2 in the latest tournament bracket, but both of those opponents were really tough, including a close 3-2 set with a former champion, so that felt like solid progress. In a world with replay takeover, it’s much easier to learn from those losses.

I finished my replay of Wolfenstein: The New Order. It’s still really good, and I’m glad I got a refresher of the story beats, but I’m sure as hell not playing the sequel with a controller like I did for this one. It’s just not a good way to play the game.

Tons of Satisfactory. They’re finally releasing 1.0 on September 10th and I’m stoked. Replaying new worlds, figuring out efficient build setups, messing around, etc. Great sandbox game.

Deadlock for the past few days since I got the invite. Honestly struggling with it despite enjoying the game mechanically. Farm is extremely important and despite being able to perform in fights against other players using skills and items it seems my twitch aim is not good enough to amass last hits and denies in the laning phase. And once you’re outfarmed and out statted it becomes a very tough uphill battle to even positively contribute at all.

Maybe I’m getting too old for fast paced shooters.

The usual brainrot at night is Overwatch with friends. Beyond that, played through Doom again fully for the first time in ages and halfway through Doom II with the recent Nightdive made rerelease, which is quite good. Since the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters were on special last weekend, I grabbed the six of them. Played through the first Final Fantasy and finished it 100% in about 18 hours, never finished it before and enjoyed it. Started working through Final Fantasy II but it’s a very weird game.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Made top 8 at locals. Then played a long casual set with the guy who eliminated me from bracket, came out of it feeling like I understand the Carmine matchup better now.

Kitsune Tails - Got to act 2 and I’m just replaying the same levels with a character who has a bunch of strong movement abilities. New levels designed for this character would’ve been great, but why am I replaying the same ones but now way easier?

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers - My opinions on this game keep going back and forth. I’ve found the strats to win more consistently by just relying on disrupting the opponent’s deck, but doing so feels a little too linear. I saw there’s a big balance update in beta now, so I guess I’ll have to see how the changes feel.

Splatoon 3 - lol, lmao

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came up with a new strategy at club this week where I just draw good tiles over and over.

Lots, mostly due to a gaming weekend with a friend! Mainly;

• Super Mario Wonder (Switch). Finished it way back but was stuck on the completion road. Got all but one of the medals now!

• Okami (PS3, 4). Gifted it to that friend after finishing it after a 10 year hiatus. What a gem! We played a bit more of it together.

• Final Fantasy XII (Switch). Just a few hours in, not sure what to think of it yet. I’m not a big RPG fan, she is. I certainly like the setting and style.

• Train Valley 1 and 2 (Linux). Completed the first. It was good but also addictive in a bad way to me.

Anno 1800, very addictive!

Some more Crime Boss. I tried the Multiplayer. It is nice, but repetitive without any clear overarching goal. They recently patched the game and now the enemies spawn weirdly all around you. I think that killed it for me.

Supermarket Together. Free to play Supermarket Simulator. Played it for about 13 hours with two friends. Quite fun together, but I imagine it to be too bare bones to enjoy it alone. Still, it is free. Give it a look if it sounds like something you might enjoy.

Kind Words 2 playtest. I already “played” a lot of Kind Words 1 a few years back. They added quite a few things to do, besides writing letters to people. The playtest ended, but there is a demo. Try it!

Started the Amid Evil DLC, The Black Labyrinth. Really good stuff and highly recommended if you enjoyed the main game.

Finished Zortch, a boomer Shooter made by a single person. They even wrote their own engine for the game. Plays a bit like Turok. Enemy variety is great, weapon variety not so much.

Some Cosmic Collapse, a neat Suika-Like. I tried a few different Suika inspired games. This one is the best by far.