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The Mr Rabbit Magic Show (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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I do like Rusty Lake’s weird little point and click adventure games. What I hadn’t realised, is that I had this game, unplayed, in my library. Or that it even existed. I saw an article about it and looked it up on Steam and lo – I already had it. It’s also free, just in case you haven’t.

It’s actually a meta game, being set in the Rusty Lake offices as they prepare for a company birthday celebration (which, cyclically, this game was released to celebrate), but it starts as you playing the Mr Rabbit game within the game, where you help said bunny perform various magic tricks, mostly by clicking on things in the right order or spotting patterns. These tricks do get a bit… weird.

After a while you “break out” of the game and have some tasks to perform in the studio offices, and this bit plays out like, and references many of, the other Rusty Lake games. Unhinged dark macabre humour included. Those wacky Dutch, eh? Must be something in the water. Or the brownies.

It’s short, has a few clever bits and is well worth playing, especially if you’ve played others by the studio.

This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker! (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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What if Balatro was a cookie clicker card battler? Well, this, it seems.

Like Balatro, you have a deck of cards that – over time – you can modify to add or remove cards, and have special cards that add extra points or multipliers to hands you play. Unlike Balatro, hands played are automatic – you just click the deck and a hand is dealt. Quickly, you get the ability to autodeal hands on a timer, just like in cookie clicker games.

As you score points based on poker hands played, you spend those points on upgrades, like more decks, cards, multipliers for different hand types, and so on. Eventually you get loads of decks running at the same time, with seven cards in a dealt, and extra poker hands like five of a kind or a 7 card straight. Numbers go up, you get bonuses for “resetting” the game and permanent upgrades that persist (and can only be obtained by) resets. Just like any number of “modern” incremental clicker type games.

Only, there’s more. Because the plot is that Jester, the clown on the artwork, has actually trapped you and you have to make money to pay for your release. Naturally, he reneges this deal and you have to actually fight him. It’s here the card battling, albeit automated, comes into play.

It’s a surprisingly deep, and short (which works in its favour), game of the genre. It’s a bit fiddly to play on the Steam Deck because some of the text is impossible to read even when zoomed in, but luckily there’s nothing that important you miss. If the devs could just scale everything up a bit for the Deck, it would be amazing.

Explorers (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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A little Pico-8 game which I picked up from itch a while back, Explorers has you boating about a randomly generated archipelago, finding treasure, meeting other people who you can try to convince to trade with you or help you, and sometimes stealing their boats.

The aim is to complete your map, which you can do by visiting everywhere, but you can also fill it in more quickly by asking the people you meet about where they’re from or have been and they’ll draw some of it for you.

It isn’t particularly complicated, but it’s an incredible example of what you can do with Pico-8!

Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Obviously the reason I started playing this is because of the absurd name. How I came to own it in the first place, however, is a mystery. Was it free on Amazon? Did I get it in one of those itch.io charity bundles? Ghosts? Who knows.

CCFWTBT is a platformer where you, as an acrobat called Belle (along with her pet bell called Chime) have to rescue her boyfriend who is kidnapped by an ex-friend. It plays out like a 8-bit title, different levels, tricky platforming, bosses, and so on. You use Chime as a sort of boomerang that can activate things but also help you reach places higher up. Getting used to Chime and how to use it took a while.

Between levels you have a map you can freely navigate, with various places to visit like an inn and a town, where characters give you side missions. Most of these involve revisiting levels once you’ve obtained extra items or abilities. This was one of the reasons that I got a strong Shantae vibe from the game, which is no bad thing. It’s not as good as games in that series, but it’s better than the vast majority of these retro-styled platformers.

I loved the cast of characters and their relationships. There’s a fun twist near the end regarding the kidnapper too (which I won’t reveal) which meant the game was a fair bit longer than I was expecting. I didn’t complete every side mission but I did a fair few of them, and (of course) completed the main game. If I didn’t have such a huge backlog of games I’d probably go back and mop up some more bits but, sigh, time, eh?

Pesticide Not Required (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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What if Vampire Survivors was a chop-chop, dig-dig game? As in, as well as auto-attacking swarms of enemies with increasingly more powerful weaponry, you also plant crops, mine ore and catch fish? Well, Pesticide Not Required answers that question.

As with other Survivors-type/Bullet Heaven games, there’s the usual kill things, get XP, go up levels, spend points on mostly random updates, and repeat. Only here, in order to progress, you have to buy seeds at the end of each day and plant them, keeping them watered until they’re able to be harvested. At first this is tricky as you’ve limited tillable soil area, plus you’re dealing with all the baddies, but you can unlock helpers who can plant and water on your behalf, and you’re able to purchase extra planting spots too.

This addition set of chores really changes the gameplay a fair bit, as you have to specifically go to areas of your garden as well as just avoid baddies, or you won’t progress. Is it better than Vampire Survivors? No. But it’s well worth playing. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I class it as complete because I completed every scenario in every season.