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October – Once a gamer always a gamer!

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Dredge (PS5) - Completed

Once a gamer, always a gamer. I took a few weeks off gaming to rest & had a doctors/physio appointment for my RSI. Anyway enough of that and back to gaming, Dredge has been on my PS+ Subscription backlog for a while and I was keen to play it before it left the service.
 
It is a nice short indie title where you steer a boat around collecting fish/loot to sell and use that cash to upgrade your boat. There is a main quest that has you collect trinkets for a mysterious man (all is revealed in time).
 


Be careful when going out at night & always make sure you get your sleep! 
 
Lost Records Bloom & Rage Tape 1
 
From the makers of Life is Strange (which is still on my backlog) Don't Nod this is a story about four girls who reunite 27 years later after spending a summer together in 1995
 
It is not a game that can be played in small chunks due a checkpoint system so I'm only really paying at weekends to ensure I can complete a story section.
 
Wordle
I've heard about it but I've only gotten into this from the kids mentioning it, it is part of my daily routine now to spend a few minutes completing or on a couple of occasions failing and not guessing the correct word.
 
I play on the New York Times games app & thus have also been enjoying Pips (Domino puzzle game), Spelling Bee, although this only let's you play up to the solid rank before promoting the subscription. Connections which I'm really bad at! & Strands which I do enjoy. 
 
 
Backlog

I've purchased a few more games in Shadowrun Trilogy & Shadow Warrior Trilogy both were recently on sale and on my wishlist.

Current Backlog

Digital Games - 44 (added six with Shadowrun & Shadow Warrior Trilogy)

PS+ Subscription - 16

PS+ Monthly - 24 

Physical Games - 11 

Total  95 Games

October Targets

- Don't buy anymore games!

- Carry on playing shorter length games with Sword of the Sea next 

 

Want

Current Wishlist is at 27 Games (added two in Harmony - The Fall of Reverie & Tactical Breach Wizards)

 

Bin

Nothing for September, I enjoyed my time off gaming catching up on TV shows.

Mr Driller 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s Mr Driller only on the Game Boy Advance, only on the Switch. It’s missing the many game types and variations from later games in the series like Drill Land, but it’s the same gameplay and just as much fun as it ever was.

But hoo is it hard. The constant worry that you should just dash for the end rather than try to grab some air, or vice versa, when you’re low on oxygen. The all-to-easy way to miscalculate the outcome of a dig, which ends up getting you squished. The sections which seem easy because there are massive chunks of the same colour you can obliterate at once, but actually, you end up making air inaccessible or something. I wouldn’t say success is random – although the levels are arranged seemingly randomly – but it certainly feels like it sometimes.

After a million attempts at the final area, I was done. Phew!

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (Switch): COMPLETED!

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A silly point and click game where you’re a gritty noir-ish hard-boiled detective? And you’re a duck? Sold.

Aside from being a duck, you’re every cliche known to the character. Your apartment is your office, you have no money, you’re going through a divorce, you seem to have a drinking problem – a full house.

Desperate for work, you take on a job for an anonymous person who wants you to investigate a lunch theft from the staff kitchen in the offices of a bus company. By making deducktions (no, really) where you link characters and evidence to fill in gaps in sentences, based on the information you’ve found or gotten out of the workers. It soon becomes clear that there’s a bit more going on than someone nicking food from the fridge, when there’s evidence of smuggling and even a kidnapping.

Good things about the game include the comedy style (and duck puns) and how the character you think might be the suspect keeps changing, as everyone seems to have some sort of grudge or problem with at least one other person involved. On the down side, it’s an incredibly short game. I was expecting several cases to solve, whereas there’s really only one (well, three crimes, but they’re all the same case and you solve them together). There’s also a puzzle I just didn’t get, involving a safe combination, which I brute forced in the end but even after looking up a solution later it still doesn’t make sense.

Still, if I see the sequel (beakquel?) cheap, I’ll probably buy it.

Viewfinder (PS5): COMPLETED!

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This is one of those puzzle games that makes you feel very clever. Not quite as clever as The Witness, perhaps, or Superliminal, which this feels a bit like.

The premise is that in a future where climate change has broken everything, you’ve been put in a VR machine within which some clever people in the past supposedly found a fix for the planet but it was never put in place. You have to find out what it is. It’s sort of like wandering round a shared Mind Palace or something.

What it actually is, because that’s just the framing gimmick, is a series of first person levels where the aim is to reach a device that lets you move on to the next bit. Only it’s always out of reach or needs power or is behind a wall or has a missing cable or is sound activated but the sound-making-device is too far away.

You solve these puzzles initially by making use of photographs you find. These 2D pictures create a 3D object of the photo when used, so for example, you have to get from one platform to another but there’s a big gap. If you stand in the right place, and hold up the photo of a bridge you found nearby in just the right way that it looks like the bridge fills the gap, then magically it does fill the gap.

Later on, you get a camera with which to make your own photos, and various other things – like batteries, a photocopier, pieces of pictures you have to line up, and walls of a certain colour that can’t be photographed (or “printed over” with a photograph) complicate things.

It’s not especially long, but it has plenty of clever ideas along the way. I also appreciated some of the trophies. They reward for trying to do stupid things. For example, there’s a bit where you need three batteries to power an exit, but you only have one battery. Naturally, you take a photo of the battery and then that photo gives you a second battery. My mind then thought… wait. I’ve more shots left on this camera. Took a photo of both batteries, then all four batteries and so on. Got to 32 or 64 batteries and a trophy popped. Amazing.

Roguecraft DX (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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This is an isometric Amiga-based little roguelike on the Evercade, which is an update to the Commodore 64-based Rogue64, which was a free hidden game on the Evercade. There’s nothing especially new or special about it, but it’s polished and looks really nice. It’s simple enough – randomised dungeons with baddies that generally get harder as you do deeper in, potions (most of them with random-for-that-run effects), health to maintain, and so on.

You can start with one of three classes – Warrior, Rogue and Wizard, which also act as the difficulty levels. I’ve completed it as a Warrior, but not managed it with the other two yet. And I very much enjoyed it.

Oh, and the “craft” in Roguecraft is referencing Lovecraft, not crafting. Of which there is none.