Been a while since I’ve done one of these. Normally it’s all about games not on macOS but I’ve not been playing any of those for a while. Instead it’s random things that I didn’t think was worth any individual posts.
Last year I’m sure I mentioned tackling my backlog of games, particularly on Playstation, and my progress has been underwhelming, lol. Not even touched the old Playstation in ages. Instead ended up playing a lot of golf followed by even more card games, which is still ongoing. However, I recently played through some of my mac backlog. A few down, only 100 more to go. In no particular order…
Before that. Can’t help but mention a random game that popped up in an app store search because it made me laugh. War Tortoise 2. The concept is beautiful lmao worthy greatness. Put the weaponry of a tank on the back of a tortoise and have it manned by something that looks like a hedgehog. It seems to be a mobile semi-idle MTX thing from years ago but amazingly I looked it up and found it’s coming to Steam this month, in a premium version with no MTX and hopefully some new stuff. I’ll be keeping an eye out for that. How can I not when it looks like this. Hopefully it has some gameplay. Or stuff it in Apple Arcade. I just wanna drive a tortoise tank.
Meanwhile, Steam’s pervert games continue to thrill me. Are we all enjoying Climax Heroines? It was the description that really piqued my what-the-f-is-this radar. ‘Climax Heroines is a dungeon crawler about women with huge breasts trying to save their childhood home.‘ Maybe it’s a long lost script for an Adam Sandler vehicle. I dunno.
Back to the backlog.
I fired up Limbo at long last. A great short game; think the length is just about right. Thoughtful platforming with more puzzling and precision than I expected. The difficulty was spot on for a chilled playthrough. Can’t believe it’s about 13 years old now. It made a big splash at the time when indies were coming back into fashion and getting a lot of coverage. It still plays well and has a classic feel about it.
There were a few games I started but didn’t finish. I think I put about 5 hours into Fez until I found some bugs, one which appeared to make solving a sliding puzzle impossible. After a bit of reading some of the puzzles sounded excessively cryptic. It’s a really well conceptualised game and I liked what I played a lot. Just started to feel a bit of chore.
I had a free copy of Sundered on Epic. Nice artwork, some very atmospheric bits, I especially liked the sound of the language spoken by the booming voice guy. Despite that the combat felt a touch chaotic and the backgrounds repeated a lot. Along with my lack of patience for roguelikes (sometimes I much prefer a linear game with progress and changing locations) I canned it after a few hours. The skills tree was enormous and I wasn’t feeling the grind.
Next a puzzle game, Lyne. Simple premise of connecting blocks by drawing pathways with the mouse. I completed 7 out of the 26 sets of levels. Basically it stopped adding mechanics and instead relied on increasing the size of the puzzles. Ended up feeling too repetitive and only harder by virtue of each puzzle taking longer. It’s the sort of thing I might complete as a time waster but I’m so inundated with games, literally hundreds of them, many due to free giveaways, that there’s not much point finishing games that turn a bit meh. There’s always another ‘new’ game to try.
Alwa’s Awakening is another of those freebies from GOG and was a superb little metroidvania in retro NES aesthetic. Didn’t outstay it’s welcome at all. More focused on exploration, platforming, and secrets, rather than combat. It sucked me in for the weekend. The skill upgrades were quite unusual. No double jump or wall climb, and the weapons are quite basic. Instead I could place blocks and bubbles to aid exploring, gain ranged attack and extra vision. It may not sound like much but was refreshing.
The bosses are on the easy side but the long series of rooms leading to the final boss are nail biting. Oddly the final boss was one of the easiest. The only other downside is the story is basic with not much of an ending. Although, I was more than hooked enough by the gameplay that I could overlook the cons. Considering how cheap it is when on sale it’s an easy recommend for a not too difficult engaging platformer with a few smart puzzles.
Lastly I found that rarest of things – a macOS exclusive game on Steam. Called Sunbeam, it’s ‘a garden-themed 2D RPG which tackles the struggle of problem-solving in an uncomfortable and unknown place.‘ It looks like a fun little solo dev project. Hard to know what to make of it from the pics. I like puzzles, so maybe I’ll give it a spin one day purely for it’s notable status.
That’s it. Well done if you made it down here. There is no loot.
mishmash 