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Toilet Chronicles (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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A game with toilets in it? Surely not. And me, here, with enough spare change in my Steam account from selling trading cards to afford to buy it? Serendipity!

I went in knowing almost nothing about the game, except that it has toilets in it and you’re trapped in the toilets. And that is pretty much all there is to know. You’ve gone into the toilets of a party and then the door to the gents seems to have vanished from the inside and you’re stuck. There are urinals, a couple of sinks, and some cubicles (one locked, one locked and occupied) and you’ve got to escape.

In my head, I was expecting a first-person version of classic Spectrum text adventure series Behind Closed Doors, where the premise is similar, and in a way that’s what I’ve got. You have to find and use items to gain access to other items and areas, but it’s all a bit surreal and there are many ways you can die. Some, like the grenade, are obvious. Some, like the giant tentacle that comes out of nowhere or the humana-humana Squidward are… less so.

There are a load of achievements for “finishing” the game in various ways, although by “finishing” I mean, most are Game Over as you die. I did get two separate “good” (or as close to “good” as it got) endings, as well as all the achievements for the bad ones (which included those in the free DLC that gives you access to another area), so I think I’ve covered “completed”.

A very silly game, but absolutely the sort of nonsense I want more of, please.

Invincible Presents: Atom Eve (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Presumably to tie in with, or advertise, the Invincible series on Amazon Prime, this part turn based strategy, part visual novel was released for free by Amazon. And it’s pretty good!

It tells a similar story to the show, but mainly from the point of view of Atom Eve, with her run-ins with useless foe Killcannon as well as family drama and love life trauma.

The visual novel bits allow you to choose various responses in conversations, some of which are only possible if you’ve levelled up the skill tree in required ways. The fights are turn based and fun, with some forward planning required for many of them.

Definitely worth playing if you’re a fan of the source material.

Cat Quest II (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Since I enjoyed the first game, and also had a free copy of the second, of course I was going to play that too. It isn’t actually vastly different to the first one, although you now have two characters you can swap between (you’ll never guess that the other one is a dog), and as well as a largely-similar map to Cat Quest OG there’s a whole dog-populated area north of it.

Gameplay is mostly as before, although upgrades to your equipment are now more like a traditional RPG with an actual upgrade shop rather than a lootbox-y gambling mechanic. The graphics are noticeably more polished too. Other than that, it’s pretty much more of the same, which it turns out, is Just Fine: a pretty laid back Zelda sort of game with silly characters lots of dungeons.

Xenosphere (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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I can’t tell you about this game too much because it will spoil it for you. What I can say, it’s a sort of simplified Trials game (you know, that motorbike on a 2D track thing) but also that it isn’t.

It’s also not very long, is very free (on Steam), and it’s by Nifflas who you might know from such games as Knytt and Affordable Space Adventure.

A Monster’s Expedition (Through Puzzling Expeditions) (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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I maintain that I am not really a fan of sokoban type puzzle games, and yet somehow, I seem to enjoy them. Perhaps it’s just when there are crate-pushing puzzles in otherwise crate-push-free games that I don’t like?

In any case, A Monster’s Expedition was one of the ones I did enjoy. You are a monster, who navigates islands which seem to make up a sort of Museum of Humans, as there are many artefacts (sometimes amusingly mislabelled as to their purpose) to be found. The game, however, isn’t about finding the artefacts – it’s about finding a way to leave the islands completely.

To do that you have to reach a ferry, and to reach the ferry you have to complete crate-pushing puzzles on each island in order to open paths, build log bridges, or make rafts to get around. Of course, they’re not crates you have to push: they’re trees.

You can chop down trees, then push the trunks as logs. If you push them sideways, they roll until they hit something or fall in the water, and if you push them lengthways they flip up on end and then over onto their side again. These, plus the double-height trees and some rocks, make up the majority of the puzzles and they’re all about trying to get logs into certain positions on each island to progress.

It’s simple, although many of the puzzles are not. Later on, you discover a few meta-puzzles, where there’s a collection of islands to solve, but not just to allow you to move between them – you have to make way for a log that needs to traverse the islands and bridges you’ve made too, which may mean the solution you had originally may not be enough for the log as well.

A Monster’s Expedition is a nice little (well, not little – it’s bloody huge) brain-scratcher, with a bit of humour and some fiendish puzzles. Oh, and if you’ve bought the itch.io Palestinian Relief bundle, you already own it!