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Trolley Delayma (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Delayma because it’s like “dilemma”, you see. And autokerwrongt keeps changing it to that.

Trolley Delayma was an entry in a Ludum Dare game jam, where the theme was “delay”. They’ve used that, combined with the philosophical “trolley problem” to make a game which looks somewhat like, but plays very differently to, Baba Is You. “Trolley” is American for tram, in case you were confused why this isn’t set in Asda, and the associated problem is whether to run down one important person or several less important people.

The delay bit comes in to try and not run anyone over at all, as you cause the tram (or trams) to get stuck in a loop of track. Some levels are puzzles, as you try to flip bits of track correctly, and some are a race against time as you have to do them quickly enough – all while avoiding the tram yourself.

It’s a clever premise, which ends up being sort of the reverse of those slide-puzzle type train track games where you craft a route to the end before it crashes. Oh, and it’s also free.

Stikir (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Well this is a bloody weird game. It is, sort of, a game about making a game. Only you play the game and the game keeps changing as you do. One minute it’s a platform game, then it’s a sideways scrolling shooter, then you’re in the dark, then you have to dodge stuff while not falling in holes. Weird, as I said.

In some ways it feels a bit like a Wario Ware game, only with the microgames somewhat longer (mostly) than 3 seconds each. If any more information than this is needed, then I can only suggest you play it yourself.

Rusty Lake Hotel (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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It’s another Rusty Lake joint, like Samsara Room from the other day. It’s very similar in style, only the setting this time is, as the title might suggest, a hotel.

But not an ordinary hotel, oh no. This is one where a number of distinguished animal guests have been invited to attend several consecutive evenings of exquisite meals. Meals where one of the guests is the main course each night.

Your job is to kill each in turn, using standard point-and-click, escape room style mechanics. Poison a drink, behead an animal, that sort of thing, but how? By finding items and using them in clever ways in each one of the guest bedrooms. There’s the usual spotting patterns to trigger things type puzzles, finding keys, and so on, but with a macabre twist. It’s like Lord Winklebottom got a bit cannibally.

Button City (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Button City is a cute little game about a fox who makes friends at a local arcade and becomes a member of a four player team of players of some sort of MOBA called “Gobabots”. The main plot is about trying to stop the arcade from being closed down, but there’s also story about the other characters in the game, many of whom have personal issues to overcome, and you can collect new robots to use as your avatar in the MOBA. Plus, you can actually play this team game and beat others to win prizes! The arcade also has a simple car racing game and a Dance Dance Revolution style machine you can play on (and challenge other characters at).

Much of Button City is spent doing simple fetch quests or helping folk out with tasks, like babysitting or passing notes between tenants in a block of flats, but the central Gobabots tournament also takes up much of the gameplay.

It’s full of quirky characters and sometimes very silly humour (a highlight being the Moustache Club), and I love the art style even if many of the reactions and expressions of characters appear to have been lifted directly from Animal Crossing. There’s a lot of depth and backstory to many of the animals you interact with and this gives them a lot of personality which really comes through even in the relatively short time the game lasts – around 6-7 hours.

Super Adventure Hand (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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One of the great things about the Steam Deck, especially with Heroic set up so it can seamlessly work with my GOG, Epic and Amazon game libraries, is the huge number of free games I manage to accrue and actually play. Super Adventure Hand was a recent one, free on Amazon Gaming, which I’d stumbled over on the Switch eShop as “eeeer, dunno”. Can’t argue with free though, can you.

And, I’m glad I didn’t pay full whack for it. There’s nothing especially wrong with it, it’s just a bit dull. It starts off with you, as an arm and hand, having the arm severed and kidnapped. You then have some mild platformy and simple puzzley levels to work through in order to get it back.

As a hand, you can grab things like handles and switches, climb up most walls, and “flick” baddies (which are mostly feet, the natural enemy of the hand, apparently). Platforming mostly involved flinging yourself across gaps and grabbing on to the other side, although moving, rotating and intermittently electrified platforms made this a bit harder. Puzzles are often of the “drag boxes to the right places” variety.

There are a few levels which differ from these two staples, such as a couple where you drive a car for some reason, a handful (ha) where you have a skateboard (sadly without any Techdeck fingerboard tricks), and some where you have to rescue mini-hands.

As I said, the game is fine. The wonky physics and sometimes pushing the stick forward flips from “climb up” to “climb down” mid-climb can both be a bit annoying but near instant restarts and mostly generous respawn points mean they’re not really an issue. No, the main issue is that it’s just a bit boring. Ten minutes in and the quirkiness of having Thing to control wears off and you’re left with a pretty generic, and somewhat short and easy, platformer.