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Vampire Survivors (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Let it be known: I actually spent actual money (rather than money gained from selling farmed trading cards) on this Steam game. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. The things a Steam Deck make you do.

I’ve wanted it for some time. Yes, it looks a bit pants and yes it’s cheap and yes, yes it rips off the Castlevania aesthetic to the point of why-hasn’t-Konami-stepped-in, but there was something interesting about how you just get ridiculously overpowered and swamped by a billion baddies that meant I couldn’t not get it.

What I didn’t know, was that there a number of levels. I thought it just played out on a single one until you unavoidably get done in by the undead horde. Well, that still happens, just you’ve a number of areas to do it in. And, do them all and grab the right items and power them up in the right way, and you unlock the final boss, which I was definitely not expecting to be a thing.

As you inevitably die, play sessions end at 30 minutes whether you want them to or not (unless you’ve unlocked and enabled endless mode). Death swoops in and scythes you, and there’s no escape. Well, there probably is some escape with the right powers and upgrades, but I never managed to get it to work. With increasingly difficult waves of baddies coming in every minute you can’t relax – you have to zoom round collecting XP gems dropped by baddies to power up and keep a few steps ahead of them. With a number of different autofiring powers, from whips and fireballs to shields and spikes, several of which you can have running together, there are unending combinations of ways to kit out your character. There are loads of characters, each with additional skills or alternative starting weapons, to choose from too.

Vampire Survivors is very addictive, “suffering” from a severe case of Just One More go, and it was only because I completed it I managed to wrest myself from its grasp. Although I am very much open for more goes. There’s something about the random drops, the weapon combinations, and the Numbers That Go up which remind me a lot of Luck Be A Landlord. They’re totally different games, but they both give you the same feeling when you play them.

Oh, apparently there’s DLC. Oh no.

Vampire Survivors (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Let it be known: I actually spent actual money (rather than money gained from selling farmed trading cards) on this Steam game. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. The things a Steam Deck make you do.

I’ve wanted it for some time. Yes, it looks a bit pants and yes it’s cheap and yes, yes it rips off the Castlevania aesthetic to the point of why-hasn’t-Konami-stepped-in, but there was something interesting about how you just get ridiculously overpowered and swamped by a billion baddies that meant I couldn’t not get it.

What I didn’t know, was that there a number of levels. I thought it just played out on a single one until you unavoidably get done in by the undead horde. Well, that still happens, just you’ve a number of areas to do it in. And, do them all and grab the right items and power them up in the right way, and you unlock the final boss, which I was definitely not expecting to be a thing.

As you inevitably die, play sessions end at 30 minutes whether you want them to or not (unless you’ve unlocked and enabled endless mode). Death swoops in and scythes you, and there’s no escape. Well, there probably is some escape with the right powers and upgrades, but I never managed to get it to work. With increasingly difficult waves of baddies coming in every minute you can’t relax – you have to zoom round collecting XP gems dropped by baddies to power up and keep a few steps ahead of them. With a number of different autofiring powers, from whips and fireballs to shields and spikes, several of which you can have running together, there are unending combinations of ways to kit out your character. There are loads of characters, each with additional skills or alternative starting weapons, to choose from too.

Vampire Survivors is very addictive, “suffering” from a severe case of Just One More go, and it was only because I completed it I managed to wrest myself from its grasp. Although I am very much open for more goes. There’s something about the random drops, the weapon combinations, and the Numbers That Go up which remind me a lot of Luck Be A Landlord. They’re totally different games, but they both give you the same feeling when you play them.

Oh, apparently there’s DLC. Oh no.

Adventure (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Yes, the best Atari 2600 game. Well, one of the top three, anyway. I got “Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration” for Christmas and although I’ve played a fair few of the games, most aren’t actually “completable”, what with being mostly score-attack arcade titles. Adventure, though, has an end goal – take the Chalice to the Yellow Castle.

The game has three modes. The first is a shorter game with just one dragon, fewer objects and fewer rooms. The second is the “main” version, with the full quest, three dragons, mazes, etc. The third is the second game with objects in random locations.

The random mode is sometimes a bit stupid, because it can mean that (for example) the key to get into the Black Castle is actually… inside the Black Castle. There is a bat which wanders the map randomly picking up items, sometimes swapping them with other items (and hilariously it sometimes swaps whatever you’re holding for a dragon, who then eats you), which can allow you to get hold of these “trapped” items, but it’s hit and miss and may take aaaaages.

I ran through both of the first two modes, completing them (which only takes a few minutes) then completed the third mode six times. It’s a good game, brent.

Lil Gator Game (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Imagine a game where a little alligator plays at being Link with his big sister. Only she’s grown up and busy with college and so doesn’t want to play any more. So Lil Gator’s (ever increasing group of) friends decide to help them by turning an island into a make-believe World of Zelda complete with plywood baddies and quests and powerups and a glider.

Lil Gator wants to make the game the most awesome game because they think it’ll coax Big Sis out of her studying, and you, as the actual player, wants to play the game Gator and friends are playing because it’s a sweet little kids-roleplay-as-video-game-characters game.

There are references to Zelda game-like tropes such as pointless fetch quests, lots of fun characters to befriend and do quests for, and a load of areas to explore – especially if you’re going for “killing” all the baddies and helping all the friends. And you can glide and slide and climb like Link does in Breath of the Wild.

It’s short, there’s no peril, but Lil Gator Game is really cute and funny and really feels like the sort of make-believe world kids would play in.

Little Inferno (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Is this the third platform I’ve played and 100%ed this on now? Probably. It’s still great. I suppose I’d not realised before but Little Inferno is really “just” a simple clicker game. You buy things to make money (by, er, burning them), with which to buy more things. Which you then also burn.

There’s a checklist of combinations of two or three things to burn together for extra kudos, and a story about the world getting colder all the time, but it’s just the silly but relaxing nature of Burning All The Things which keeps me coming back to it. That and the music. Little Inferno just for me!