#completed — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #completed, aggregated by home.social.
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Tested On Humans Escape Room (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
I’ve enjoyed this sort of puzzle game in the past, a category I’d include The Witness, The Room, Maquette, Doors – Paradox, and so on in, so when Amazon were giving away a whole set of them, of which Tested On Humans Escape Room was one, I was very pleased. Sadly, it isn’t great.
The issues I had were mainly because the puzzles were either way too obvious or incredibly obscure and illogical. The joy of puzzle games is when they make you feel Very Clever, but TOHES never does that. It also doesn’t help that at least one of the puzzles has two working solutions but only one is accepted.
The Triangle Puzzle, not named in the game but it is, uh, a triangle, is one of these. You’re give a triangle with spaces on each side for coloured balls. Clues elsewhere show that each ball is worth a certain amount, and each side must add up to a certain total. My screenshot is a working solution, but isn’t the correct answer.
There is a plot, in that you’re a sort of prisoner in a medical testing facility, but that never really amounts to anything. You uncover notes about you, and your – presumably dead given all the blood – cellmates but in the end it’s all just a dream? Or isn’t? It’s very unsatisfying.
So, OK for free, but a bit of a disappointment. I might try one of the other games in the series just to see if it’s any better.
Definitely not a copy of Rubik’s Clock at all. #completed #steamDeck -
Raccoin (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
Yes! Another incremental clicker game with Luck Be A Landlord/Balatro nods! This one isn’t anything to do with cards or trees though. No, it’s all set around a penny falls machine.
You put coins into it, that pushes coins out. Coins that come out earn you money. Somehow, you make money out of this – unlike a real one – because you have special coins that can be bought between rounds, are stored in an expandable clip, and do magic things. So you can get coins that are rabbits and then fox coins hunt them and increase your score. Or you can electrify coins, or have giant coins, or all sorts.
There’s also a combo meter, which builds as you push coins off the edge and is cancelled if you spend too long between doing so. Build it enough and you trigger a bonus wheel to spin, with “prizes” like more coins or massive towers of coins.
Like other games of this sort, it’s getting the right combination of special coins, a bit of timing, and a lot of luck that allows you to get higher and higher scores on each run. And, like other games of this sort, it’s pretty addictive. Raccoin isn’t as good as Luck Be A Landlord or Balatro, but it is decent enough.
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
PowerWash Simulator 2 (Steam 2): COMPLETED!
You’d be hard-pressed, from the screenshots, to see that PowerWash Simulator 2 is actually a different game to PowerWash Simulator 1. And the gameplay too, in fact. After all, there are only so many different ways washing dirty stuff can be presented. Why, then, is this a whole new game and not just another pile of DLC for the original? Money? It’s probably money. Right?
There are differences, if you look closely. Perhaps the biggest, in terms of “gameplay” at least, is how they’ve done away with all the different types of soap. In the first game, different surface types required the purchase and use of specific detergents, so you’d need one for stone and one for metal and one for plastic and so on. Well, not only is there only one soap type now, it’s free and unlimited. Well, you can only have so much splashed on surfaces at any one time, but rinsing it off magically refills it to your washer so it is effectively infinite. This might not sound like much of a change but, in a game with very few possible changes, it’s a game, uh, changer.
I almost completely avoided using soap in the original, because of the cost and fiddly swapping it out and stuff, so cleaning took more “passes” than it could have done. Now, I foamed up everything with gay abandon. Game changer.
Another change is the addition of a new piece of equipment – the swing. You hang it from the top of a flat surface, and sit in it – giving you mostly free movement up, down, left and right to squirt much more easily than you would with ladders or the scaffolding. Both those, and the hilariously useless step-stool, return, but on specific levels the swing is an excellent new bit of kit. Could have really done with that on the tower at the fire station in the original.
There’s also a new plot. The dodgy Mayor is being dodgy, and the gems you recovered in the previous game that were required to keep the volcano in check have been stolen, but ultimately this just manifests as a reason to clean stuff, same as before.
The final change, which may well have been there before but I didn’t make use of it, was single console split screen co-op. I played on the Switch 2 so was disappointed it didn’t support the game share method of giving player 2 a Switch of their own to stream to, but it was still fun and, as you’d expect, halved the time it took to complete levels.
That’s all there is to say, really – it’s more of the same with a few quality of life improvements. Could it have been DLC? Probably. Should it? Well, chances are it’d have been about the same price anyway (I paid £15 for it, but the eShop price is £20) so it doesn’t really matter. It’s more relaxing zen washing, and it’s worth the entry fee, so I don’t actually care. Oh yeah, and there’s a toilet to wash. Winner.
#completed #powerwash #switch2 -
2025 Mosaic Retrospective (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
As I enjoyed Proverbs so much, of course I was going to download this, which is the same sort of puzzle game by the same developer. This time, instead of plague-era images depicting weird proverbs, it’s a collage of representations of events that happened in 2025. Some funny, some stupid, some sad.
I say “the same sort of puzzle game”, but I actually mean “it’s the same game but with different pictures”. Which is exactly what I wanted, so that’s fine, and as a bonus it is completely free. Unfortunately, it suffers from the Impossible To Use On A Steam Deck controls issue that Proverbs also had, but was just as easily fixed to work how I wanted it.
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Minishoot’ Adventures (Switch 2): COMPLETED!
Half way through the sentence where a reviewer described Minishoot’ Adventures as “The Legend of Zelda, only it’s a twin stick shooter” I’d already slammed the WANT button on the eShop. Yes, I know I could have bought it there and then (or at least pre-ordered it), but paying full price for any game, regardless of how good it is, just feels wrong. Often, I’ll put something on my wishlist and by the time it is in a sale I’ve totally lost all enthusiasm for it or, more frequently, totally forgotten what it was. But not this game. I checked the sales every week.
So I’ve finally managed to play it and it’s everything I wanted. You’re a little spaceship and you have to rescue other little spaceships and explore the world and the dungeons in it and fit baddies and big bosses, and get upgrades which improve your abilities or unlock new areas. There are some mazes, and puzzles, and somehow, somehow, despite the fact you shoot hundreds of bullets a minute and you look like something from Gradius, it’s still Zelda. Zelda with Geometry Wars gameplay. And it works.
The dungeons are fun and varied. The boss battles are a mix of wait-and-strike and bullet-hell. There are various sidequests, like finding engravings to expand the lore or racing a little fairy thing round a number of courses (where you can often cut corners, pleasingly), or collecting red crystals to use as currency to improve your shooting, speed or power. Getting every last item, trinket, and ticking off every last area on the map was addictive and I happily 100%ed the game.
More of this sort of thing, please!
#completed #minishoot #switch2 -
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch 2): COMPLETED!
While I’m a big fan of 2D Metroid games, and I did enjoy the first Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2 just left me cold and so I never played the third game. Oh, and Hunters was terrible. As a result, I did not rush out and buy Metroid Prime 4 at launch like I did with Metroid Dread. I did, however, get bought it as a present recently.
I was worried it would be incredibly hard (like Prime 1), and concerned the Samus Onna Bike bits would be terrible because those bits certainly looked terrible, but, actually, I was pleasantly surprised. Aside from a few times on some of the bosses, I didn’t die. I remember one of the later bosses on Prime 1 in particular taking about a billion attempts and when I did finally beat it I was down to almost no health, so I’m glad it wasn’t like that at all. No, the real “difficulty” was more in finding where to go than most of the battles, and one of the soldiers you rescue early on (annoyingly, it has to be said) helps with not getting lost most of the time. As for the bike, it’s OK. Completely unnecessary, adds nothing to the game bar making the game a bit longer as there’s a sizable desert to criss-cross hundreds of times which only seems to exist to have somewhere to use the bike. ANYWAY.
The gameplay, the graphics, the performance, the power-ups, the exploration, however, are all excellent. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable adventure from start to finish. It’s just missing a little something. Maybe it’s the rubbish Big Bad, and lack of other Metroid baddies like Ridley or Kraid or Mother Brain. Maybe it’s the slightly soulless desert. Maybe, just maybe, it’s that Metroid is intrinsically better in 2D than in 3D? It’s by no means a bad game at all, it’s just not quite the game Dread is.
#completed #metroid #switch2 -
Ball X Pit (Switch 2): COMPLETED!
What if Arkanoid was Vampire Survivors? Well, you’d (sort of) have Ball X Pit. Instead of a bat, you have a person who throws balls to destroy enemies, which are essentially blocks, that move slowly towards you. You can gain XP from gems dropped by defeated baddies, as per Survivors games, and levelling up lets you choose a number of upgrades for your balls – such as balls that set things on fire or cause area damage like earthquakes.
Eventually, you get the chance to combine ball powers, so you can have a laser which hits all blocks in a column but also poisons them, or balls that can pass through blocks but also freezes them for a few seconds. You also get passive power-ups like increasing the damage to blocks from behind, or increasing the chance you’ll dodge an attack, and often these too can be combined.
As well as XP as you play each run to level you up for run itself, you also gain another XP type which gives permanent bonuses, and gold to buy things. Outside of the runs there’s a sort of farming game, where you buy land and buildings, plant crops, and then use all the characters you’ve unblocked as balls to bounce off everything to build the buildings and harvest the crops. Crops (grain, wood and stone) unlock and pay for additional buildings, and these building add extra bonuses to your characters, like faster movement or more HP.
Each character has its own quirks and runs can play out very differently as a result. Firstly, they all start with a different type of special ball, but then they have features like balls being launched from the back of the field instead of the front, or all balls pass through blocks or something. Later in the game you get the ability to take two characters into a run together, and that sort of amalgamates their abilities, further altering how the run plays out.
You can’t just stick to your favourite characters either, as in order to unlock the next level you have to complete the previous one a number of times with different characters. At first I hated this, as I thought I’d found the “best” character and wanted to stick with them, but it forced me to play differently and, actually, most of them have merit.
To complete the game, you have to have a number of successful runs on each level (with, as I said, a range of characters), and I did that. It unlocks a sort of NewGame+ which is really just an extra difficulty for each level you can choose. I’ve played quite a bit of that too, but it doesn’t really add anything to what is an already excellent game. Addictive Survivors gameplay loop and a surprising amount of variety add up to a must-buy title.
#completed #switch2 -
Proverbs (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
One massive Picrossy/Minesweepery puzzle which takes about 20 hours to complete? Why yes, sir, I will boogie. Especially at the peanuts-price it was going for.
Imagine a big old painting depicting pictures of lots of proverbs that have pretty much all fallen out of use, made up of groups of pixels all split into areas. Each area has some pixels with numbers in, and those numbers – a bit like minesweeper – says how many yellow pixels are touching it (including the numbered pixel itself). All other pixels are red. Fill them all in correctly, and the area redraws as a bit of the painting, your percentage complete in the top right corner goes up by a minuscule amount, and you might unlock a proverb and its meaning.
And then you do some more.
Like Picross, it’s very relaxing and did tend to make me fall asleep while playing. I wasn’t bored, just zen’d out.
One thing I do need to mention is the horrible default controls on a Steam Deck. After I’d modified them to match the Picross E/S control scheme, and enabled “hold down the button to fill pixels as you move” in the customisation, all was well with the world. The defaults are probably fine if you play on a big monitor with a mouse, but handheld it needs to be Picross-like!
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
Gambler’s Table (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
It’s another clicker game! How rare.
This one is themed around flipping coins. You click on a coin, and if it’s tails (or heads? I genuinely can’t remember and it makes no difference anyway) you get money. You spend the money on having more coins on the table, and higher value coins, and little helper people to flip coins for you, or upgrades where you just have to move the pointer vaguely near coins to flip them, or coins that flip themselves randomly, or coins that flip other coins, or coins that flip more than once per flip. Flip! Flip! FLIP. And you unlock different tables, which, like the seasons in Trees Inc, have special modifiers for that run.
Like some of these games you get to a point where progressing further is really slow, but you can reset everything and gain some permanent upgrades to make the next run faster and get you a bit further. Oh, and you can unlock pointless hats for your helpers to wear.
It’s nothing new, but it’s well put together and if you’re in the mood for brainless gaming it, like many of the other clicker games I’ve played recently, is perfect.
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
Sixth Varda mission successfully returns
https://atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug=sixth-varda-mission-successfully-returns
<p>Varda Space Industries completed its latest reentry mission May 18 as the company balances supporting
#successfully #industries #completed #mission -
Psyche Spacecraft Completes Mars Flyby
https://atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug=psyche-spacecraft-completes-mars-flyby
<p>NASA’s Psyche spacecraft completed its close approach of Mars on May 15
#spacecraft #completes #completed #psyche -
Trees Inc (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
If I were to describe this game it would sound very much like it was the same as Timber Rush, which I also played recently. And, I suppose it is. Trees Inc is a cookie clicker type game where you chop trees, get money for chopping trees, and spend that money to chop faster, get more money, and buy helpers to chop on your behalf. So yes, it’s the same game.
Well, not quite. It looks a lot more basic, and you grow different types of trees rather than just have one tree, and you have to wait for them to re-grow (although helpers and upgrades can speed that up). Oh, and you unlock different seasons that have different modifiers (like things grow slower or there are lightning storms) that you can swap between. But it’s still a clicker game about trees. And it was pretty good.
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
I tend to claim every single free Epic and Amazon game each time they come up, but it’s not often one catches my eye enough to play. Arrangers, though, looked somewhat different and just happened to arrive when I was between games, and so here we are.
It’s a puzzle game, mostly, where you move by sliding the floor as if it is made of tiles. You know, like those slidey jigsawy picture puzzles you can get. Some items and characters on the same row or column as you also slide with you, and others don’t. Things sometimes “loop” left/right or up/down as well. Initially, most puzzles are just simple navigate-the-room-like-this type, but as you progress you have to move things around, fight baddies, and trigger switches using the same mechanics.
The plot for the game involves you finally plucking up courage to leave the village you have lived in since being found as a baby to try and track down your people. Your only real clue being the symbol on your clothing and, well, your weird movement. Leaving the village means braving the outside world and the “static” – a force which causes things to… get stuck – which becomes increasingly pertinent to the story as the games goes on.
In some ways, the puzzling is a bit like sokoban, only instead of moving the crates you effectively move everything else. I found that when I got stuck, which wasn’t that often, it was because I’d temporarily forgotten one of the core, simple, rules of how the game works, like you can move off the left of a row to appear on the right, or that you can essentially “drag” items behind you from a distance. Other than that, there wasn’t anything too tricky to deal with, although a couple of boss fights were a bit fiddly.
#completed #epicGames #steamDeck -
Inspector Waffles Early Days (Evercade): COMPLETED!
A while back I played the Playdate game Chance’s Lucky Escape, which was pretty good. This game, is set in the same universe and is a Game Boy title (albeit on the Evercade). As the name suggests, it’s a prequel to another game in the series – Inspector Waffles. Which I didn’t know existed and have just discovered it has a cameo from Lord Winklebottom. Blimey.
But never mind those games, what about this game? Well, it’s an adventure game where the eponymous inspector solves his first few (linked) cases. A robbery, some arson, and so on. There’s nothing too difficult to deal with, but I did have to play through the whole game twice as I missed completing the (optional) side quests involving “Maffles”, so if you play this, keep an eye out!
Of course, now I have to buy the “main” game in the series to complete the set.
#completed #evercade #waffles -
Timber Rush (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
See, Idle Slayer? This is how you make an interaction-necessary incremental clicker type game. It doesn’t outstay its welcome, you make constant progress, and (after a certain point) you don’t need to touch anything most of the time.
In Timber Rush, you are a lumberjack. You chop down trees, wear high heels, suspenders and uh, make lots of money. On Wednesdays you also go shopping, probably. Chopping wood nets you money, and money can be spent on better axes, helpers, and other upgrades to get more money faster. Soon enough, you’ll have thousands of logs flying everywhere, automatically collected and turned into cash.
Unlike other clicker games, you have a limited amount of “chopping time”, so each “run” is only a few minutes during which you try to improve your chopping skills on the fly, much like you would in something like Vampire Survivors. You gain XP, and each level you get to choose a random upgrade that only applies to that run, like a multiplier or a speed increase or a higher chance of getting two logs for a single chop. Get the right combinations of these upgrades (like an increased chance of doing critical damage, and an increase in the amount of critical damage) and you can get a huge payout. After your run, you get buy permanent upgrades and skills.
There’s not a lot of depth, but playing with upgrade combos is fun and seeing numbers go up, especially exponentially, is always satisfying. However, there is a suggestion on the Steam forums that pretty much the whole game is AI generated. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but you might want to check that out before you buy it.
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
Idle Slayer (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
The title of this game is a bit of a lie. It implies it’s one of those cookie clicker type idler games where you kill things, but actually, there’s a lot of non-idle “gameplay” needed in order to actually progress.
The basic idea is you run left to right, automatically, and collect coins and kill baddies. Coins let you buy upgrades for your equipment which basically act as coins-per-second increases and multipliers, meaning more coins more quickly with which to buy more stuff to repeat the cycle with ever-increasing numbers going up.
So, it’s same as most of games like this. However, there’s a second currency – souls – which can only be earned by resetting all your progress. You collect them mainly from slaying foes, but can’t actually use them until you wipe out all your upgrades, coins and equipment and start again. The souls can then be spent on permanent upgrades and unlockables. This too I’ve seen in other games and is sometimes called “prestiging”. Later, there’s also a third type of currency which you can sort of “super prestige” with, which also wipes out your permanent upgrades but lets you buy other properly permanent upgrades. Oh, and there’s a gem currency which you can buy various thing with but requires Real Actual Money, so I never touched it.
The “idle” bit which isn’t though, is the auto-runner stuff. Sure, you can just leave the game running (or even not running, and coins and souls rack up when you’re not playing), but there are missions and requirements where you need to interact. Like, boost so many times, or collect boxes that require you to jump, or enter and complete bonus levels which are tricky (the first few times, but not when you’ve done them over 200 times) platforming timed-jump challenges with big money rewards. If you don’t do these hands-on bits, you progress much, much less quickly. And, since this game is months long (yes, I’ve been playing it for months, off and on) you have to take part or it’ll be years.
In terms of completing it, I bought everything. All upgrades, all items, all unlocks. There’s no “congraturation you sucsess” and there’s no credit roll, but I literally ran out of things to do, so as far as I’m concerned, I’m done. Should you play it? No. It might be free but it’s stupid and too time consuming and there are a few bits in your progress where it takes too long between improvements. Like, when you first hit Billions of coins, it takes hours to accumulate them and reach the next milestone. Same when you get to Octillions. But you skip over Trillions so fast you barely notice they exist. There’s a bit of a pacing issue, and I can’t help feel it’s intentional to get you to cave and spend Real Actual Money to skip these slow bits. I think I’d have prefered to pay a bit for the game and not have to deal with Crawl or Pay.
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
The Mr Rabbit Magic Show (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
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.
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
Artemis II splashdown: what mission milestone was hit? #science
https://atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug=artemis-ii-splashdown-what-mission-milestone-was-hit-science
<p>Artemis II splashdown completed a key return to Earth milestone NASA’s Orion capsule carrying the
#splashdown #milestone #completed #artemis -
Artemis II splashdown: what mission milestone was hit? #science
https://atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug=artemis-ii-splashdown-what-mission-milestone-was-hit-science
<p>Artemis II splashdown completed a key return to Earth milestone NASA’s Orion capsule carrying the
#splashdown #milestone #completed #artemis -
How NASA and the Artemis II crew completed the 'perfect' splashdown
https://atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug=how-nasa-and-the-artemis-ii-crew-completed-the-perfect-splashdown
Quick take: <p>Nine days
#splashdown #completed #artemis #perfect -
This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker! (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
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.
#completed #steam #steamDeck -
Once Upon A Katamari (Switch): COMPLETED!
It seems like forever since there was a new Katamari game. Aside from that incredibly hard iOS one that was free on Apple Arcade, of course, but that doesn’t count.
Running out of ideas for new things to roll up and places to do said rolling up, Namco Bandai Namco (Bandai) BandaiNamco have decided to use time travel in this iteration, with the King of All Cosmos taking The Prince across various stereotypical time periods and locations as Cave Man Times, Ancient Greece, and The Wild West, so you can roll up guys in togas and dinosaurs and pirate ships and stuff. Does it make a difference? Not really. It’s just an envelope for the levels to live in.
The rest of the game is exactly as you’d expect, and, I’d wager, want. It’s certainly what I’d want anyway. Loads of things to roll up so you get progressively bigger, with levels where you have to roll to an exact size, or avoid rolling up specific things (like the reprise of Cow or Bear from an earlier title), or roll things up while you constantly move forwards. Or roll up a person into food items to make them fat. Or become a sponge and spread water across a desert. You know, standard stuff.
And it’s as good as it ever was. I’m slightly disappointed there’s no Switch 2 update for it, ideally to get rid of the (to be fair, mercifully short) mid-level loading pauses, but it’s fine. I coped with the PSP game so I can cope here.
#completed #katamari #switch -
Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope (Switch): COMPLETED!
What seems like a very, very long time ago, I played the original Mario + Rabbids (apparently it’s “Mario Plus Rabbids” not “Mario And Rabbids”, which sounds clumsy) on the Switch and it was great and I was well up for the sequel when it arrived. But, like many other things, it got forgotten and I never got round to buying it. Until it was so cheap on the eShop recently that it was basically free. And I mean this in a “it was about £5 instead of £50” way of being “nearly free”, rather than Kotaku’s thinly veiled adverts for “nearly free” Macbooks that are $899 instead of $999 or something. Yes, those adverts annoy me so much I’ve deleted Kotaku from my RSS reader. Yes, I still use an RSS reader.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Sparks of Hope. In most ways, it’s more of the same not-quite XCom of the original, only this time it blends Rabbids with Mario Galaxy’s characters, mashing Rabbids with Lumas to make Sparks, which essentially give you extra abilities you can use in battles.
I’m also pretty sure the game no longer uses a proper grid-based movement system. I mean, it is still effectively grid-based but feels like it isn’t, with movement ranges being shown as circular areas and freedom to move whereever in that you like. You do, however, “snap” to a sort of grid, and cover like rocks and crates are still noticeably square, so it’s a bit fake. Outside of the battles, the overworld feels much less grid-like though, except many puzzles there involve moving things in rectangular areas.
Other than those changes, and some new characters and tweaks to moves and rules, it’s more of the same. Battles seem a bit quicker, although some of that could be the quicker load times on the Switch 2, and the game seemed a lot easier. So much easier that I don’t actually recall losing a single fight. Doesn’t really matter though, because it’s fun – especially when you manage to chain attacks like tackles, movement sensor reactions, and making baddies bounce into the air so they move and get shot all in one turn, obliterating even difficult foes.
Also, Rabbid Peach channelling Mean Girls is great.
#completed #mario #rabbids #switch -
Mika and the Witch’s Mountain (Switch): COMPLETED!
I have a soft spot for games by Chibig. I like how they’re all set in the same universe, often with recurring characters (like Mûn). Probably the biggest game of theirs was Summer in Mara, a sort of Wind Waker-ish, Harvest Moon-lite adventure. Most of their games are of slightly different genres too.
Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a sort of arcade adventure. It’s set on an island, at the top of which is a witch, whom you want to train you up but she immediately throws you off her mountain and you have to make your way back up by completing tasks for the locals to earn enough to repair your broomstick to the point where it can fly high enough.
Basically, you run (and fly, a bit) round the island collecting and delivering things. Most items you deliver need to stay dry and undamaged, so you can’t slam into rocks or take a swim, but (a few items aside) it’s not too tricky. The draw is in the characters and interactions, which Chibig do very well.
There are a handful of puzzles, and the odd bit of difficult traversal, but it’s mostly laid back and stressless. The island has a number of secrets to discover and exploring every inch of it is fun. There are a few character-related side stories too, like the relationship between the two fishermen or the unruly children of an artist who has lost his mojo, which (naturally) you get involved in and try to resolve.
Another joyous blue-skies game in the series.
#completed #mara #switch -
Mika and the Witch’s Mountain (Switch): COMPLETED!
I have a soft spot for games by Chibig. I like how they’re all set in the same universe, often with recurring characters (like Mûn). Probably the biggest game of theirs was Summer in Mara, a sort of Wind Waker-ish, Harvest Moon-lite adventure. Most of their games are of slightly different genres too.
Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a sort of arcade adventure. It’s set on an island, at the top of which is a witch, whom you want to train you up but she immediately throws you off her mountain and you have to make your way back up by completing tasks for the locals to earn enough to repair your broomstick to the point where it can fly high enough.
Basically, you run (and fly, a bit) round the island collecting and delivering things. Most items you deliver need to stay dry and undamaged, so you can’t slam into rocks or take a swim, but (a few items aside) it’s not too tricky. The draw is in the characters and interactions, which Chibig do very well.
There are a handful of puzzles, and the odd bit of difficult traversal, but it’s mostly laid back and stressless. The island has a number of secrets to discover and exploring every inch of it is fun. There are a few character-related side stories too, like the relationship between the two fishermen or the unruly children of an artist who has lost his mojo, which (naturally) you get involved in and try to resolve.
Another joyous blue-skies game in the series.
#completed #mara #switch -
Castaway (Switch): COMPLETED!
Yes, it does look a lot like a Game Boy Colour Zelda game. It feels a bit like one too, not least because you have a sword and a hookshot and there are block pushing puzzles just like in Link’s Awakening. Only it’s only an hour or two long and there are only really three short dungeons.
Which is fine. It was enjoyable and tight and all that.
Once completed, however, you get access to a roguelike dungeon mode, where you have 50 small rooms with increasingly difficult baddies and traps to get past, with random upgrades every time you’ve collected enough XP. A run here will be maybe 45 minutes or so, and it’s great. I completed this too, but it did take about 10 or 12 runs to do so. Tip: the seemingly useless pickaxe upgrades should not be ignored (like I kept doing) as they make the final boss much easier.
#completed #switch -
The Fairyland Story (Evercade): COMPLETED!
This is one of the games on the recent Taito cartridge for the Evercade. I’m not 100% on the timings, but it feels very much like a precursor to Bubble Bobble – loads of single screen platforming, baddies to destroy, a particularly nasty baddie that appears if you take too long, and so on. It isn’t anywhere near as much fun as Bubble Bobble though.
The main issue I had is that often, especially on later levels, some of the baddies are really difficult to reach, especially without accidentally colliding with them and dying. There’s a level right near the end – level 95, I think – where the screen is sort of split in two and if you’re playing single player (like I was) then you can’t physically get from the left side of the screen to the right side. I can demonstrate with this screenshot from StrategyWiki:
You’re the witchy looking woman in red. The issue is that there’s no way to do a “small” jump to get over the four blocks at the bottom without jumping too high and ending up on the platform above. Except… there is. Thanks to a web search and a very old post on GameFAQs, I found that if you tap jump and then immediately tap right, then providing you’re standing in the right place, you can do a tiny jump. Get the timings or length of tap wrong and you don’t, so even if you know how it’s still nearly impossible. Literally nowhere in the game does it say this either directly or indirectly. Nowhere else in the game is it necessary. How arcade gamers in the 1980s without GameFAQs managed this I have no idea.
You can also see in that screenshot that neither of the baddies are actually reachable even if you do this. You have to coax them out by climbing higher up the screen than them. Which is a pain.
So, it’s not a great game. I completed it mainly because I’d started so I had to finish, but there are far better single screen arcade games like this out there. Still, if it wasn’t for the mistakes of The Fairyland Story maybe we wouldn’t have Bubble Bobble.
#arcade #completed #evercade #retro -
Picross S Namco Legendary Edition (Switch): COMPLETED!
It’s been a while since I last completed a Picross game, but I’ve actually been playing this one off and on for six months or more. It is, as they always are, more of the same – a polished, Jupiter developed, game of Picross with loads of puzzles.
The difference this time, however, is that it’s Namco themed. Specifically, 8-bit Namco games from the 1980s. Pixel representations of the likes of Dig Dug, The Tower of Druaga, Pac-Man, Rally-X, Mappy, Xevious and several Japanese titles I’ve never heard of, all in Picross puzzle form. Excellent.
Aside from the music. I mean, I love the Mappy theme tune as much as anyone, but the same 8 seconds over it repeating overandoverandoverandover for a 45 minute puzzle? Nah mate, that got turned down fast.
#completed #mappy #pacMan #picross #retro -
Teddison Inc (Playdate): COMPLETED!
Teddison Inc is a cookie-clicker type numbers-go-up game. You’re a bear (for no explained reason, except – presumably – to enable the pun in the title) and you’d discovered you can use a bike to generate electricity. So you crank the Playdate and the number of watts goes up.
Then you can spend these watts to buy automations so you no longer have to crank. And more cyclists. And then better electricity generators like solar farms and wind turbines, as well as upgrades like better bike cranks to make existing generators more efficient. Soon you’re generating kilowatts, megawatts, and so on as the number go ever higher.
Unlike some of these clicker games where you have to leave them running overnight to get enough currency to progress, the whole game here is doable in a single sitting of about an hour. Which feels a bit short, but it’s fine. Some irony in a game about generating power using less power to play than other games in the same genre, I suppose.
#completed #playdate -
Holy Potatoes! We’re In Space?! (Switch): COMPLETED!
Maybe I should have looked up the game before playing, but I naïvely assumed that this follow-up to Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! would be more of the same only instead of the sort of fantasy setting of that game, I’d be creating weapons in a more sci-fi environment. Which, I suppose, you do. But actually, it’s a turn based RPG.
Whereas in Weapon Shop you just made weapons for other spuds, here you’re actually pilot of a spaceship and you travel to planets and fight baddies in other space ships. You have a crew (who you can recruit, train and “upgrade”), you have up to four weapons slots on your ship, and you fight in a very JRPG way Only in space with spaceships.
Yes, you create weapons, but that’s nowhere near as in-depth as it was before. So was I disappointed? I was. Very. But only for a while because once I got over the fact it was a totally different game (albeit with at least one connection to Weapon Shop), I really got in to the way it all worked and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Except for one thing.
As part of the plot, you’re being constantly hounded by an evil organisation. You warp to a solar system, then have to travel round the planets, complete some tasks, and then warp out before so many “sols”, the unit of time here, run out and you’re caught. This mechanic totally ruins the game for me. You’re always short of time and every time you fly to a planet, or explore one, or return to the “hub” in the system to refuel, repair your ship or buy resources, you use up sols and there just doesn’t seem to be enough. You go into battles feeling unprepared because you’ve gambled that you might waste too many sols recuperating after the previous one, and you never get a chance to properly explore each region of space as there simply isn’t time to do it. Luckily, you can turn “limited sols” off, so I did. Much better.
That aside, it’s a nice little game with some silly characters and homages to, well, everything, and a really good battle system with action points and stuff.
#completed #holyPotatoes #switch -
Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! (Switch): COMPLETED!
89p? Well why not. The two other Holy Potatoes games were also 89p each, so I got them as well. Yes, I know I have them on Steam already. Shut up. You’re not my mum.
I’d played a little bit of this before and seem to remember it’s one of those management type games, like the Kairosoft ones, only you’re potatoes and you run a weapon shop. I mean, you could have discerned much of that from the title of the game, but I was right. That’s exactly what it is.
You make weapons, sell them to heroes, they pay you depending on how well you made it and how close to their preferred weapon type or attributes it is, and you use that money to hire and train staff, buy materials, and purchase shop upgrades and holidays for your overworked tubers. As you advance, you open new areas and have more people to please, weapons to make and so on.
it’s pretty addictive, if a little clunky (it’s clearly designed for a mouse driven system and joypad controls aren’t great), but definitely worth 89p.
#completed #holyPotatoes #switch -
Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! (Switch): COMPLETED!
89p? Well why not. The two other Holy Potatoes games were also 89p each, so I got them as well. Yes, I know I have them on Steam already. Shut up. You’re not my mum.
I’d played a little bit of this before and seem to remember it’s one of those management type games, like the Kairosoft ones, only you’re potatoes and you run a weapon shop. I mean, you could have discerned much of that from the title of the game, but I was right. That’s exactly what it is.
You make weapons, sell them to heroes, they pay you depending on how well you made it and how close to their preferred weapon type or attributes it is, and you use that money to hire and train staff, buy materials, and purchase shop upgrades and holidays for your overworked tubers. As you advance, you open new areas and have more people to please, weapons to make and so on.
it’s pretty addictive, if a little clunky (it’s clearly designed for a mouse driven system and joypad controls aren’t great), but definitely worth 89p.
#completed #holyPotatoes #switch -
Virtual Boy Wario Land (Switch 2): COMPLETED!
Yes! I was one of those idiots that paid SIXTY SIX POUNDS for a piece of plastic that you put your Switch (or Switch 2) in, so you can sit awkwardly while playing games made for one of the worst consoles ever made! It’s like having two red-tinted Game Boys stuck in front of your eyes that you can only really play at a table (or, as I did, on the sofa with a teetering pile of lap cushions), all so you can get a not especially impressive 3D effect in some poorly realised games. Idiot.
Just lookit though. LOOKIT.Although I’ve never owned a Virtual Boy, I have played on a few and can say that this Switch peripheral manages to recreate the ridiculous of the original flop console admirably. With my Nintendo Online subscription I also get access to 7 games (about a third of those ever released – most of the rest are on the way), and having tried them all only Virtual Boy Wario Land really works.
And, against all the odds, it’s great.
It’s a pretty straightforward platformer, with about 20 levels and some power ups that let you smash blocks or shoot fireballs, but the 3D comes in as there are “front” and “back” layers to the playfield. Much like Mutant Mudds, I suppose, which I know came much later. There are special blocks that “throw” you in and out of the screen, as well as pipes and doorways that sometimes do the same. Some of the levels are almost 3D mazes as you try to find a key to open the lift to the next level. Every few levels you get a boss, which also tends to swap plane in some way or another.
The 3D effect is subtle, but it’s nice. I don’t think the game would have suffered by being a straight Game Boy or SNES title, though. It’s hard to see from the screenshots how well it works because it seems so damn dark and the dual-screen thing (one for each eye) means you lose the 3D completely. But anyway, nice game shame about the delivery mechanism, I suppose.
#completed #retro #switch2 #virtualBoy #wario -
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time (Switch 2): COMPLETED!
Almost exactly 11 years ago, I played and completed (and then played some more) the original Fantasy Life game on the 3DS. I really enjoyed it, and after all this time I was excited to play the sequel.
Only, it isn’t really a sequel. There’s nothing, plot wise at least, that links this game to the previous one. Sure, the mechanics and graphical style are nearly the same, but there’s no story continuation or even, as far as I can tell, any shared characters or history. Actually, “history” is one of the main plot points in “i” (no, it’s never explained what the “i” is for), since the game takes place in two different eras, 1000 years apart. Gameplay-wise, it isn’t too different from before – choose a Life, level up by doing Life related things, complete quests for people, and so on. So it’s similar.
One big difference, is that you’re pretty much forced to change Life (a Life being a trade or character class) as you progress. In the first game, I completed the story without ever swapping from my Paladin Life, but in “i” you can’t do certain story-based things without changing to be a miner or an alchemist or whatever. Swapping between Lives is a big thing, and as each one levels up separately, there’s a lot of grinding. Certainly more than I remember from the original, and my play time – over 50 hours by the end of the game (with some Lives still untouched) compared with less than that to 100% the original – showing it in cold hard stats. Some of that extra time is that there’s more to do, but a lot is grinding.
Thankfully, a lot of the grinding is done by exploring a separate, and huge, game area called Ginormosia. Here you can level up by chopping trees and swording bees and whatever else, unlocking new companions when you complete shrines you find, and making areas of this continent level up too. It’s fun to just wander and complete challenges like fighting or farming while you grind. I also found a way to quickly level up a new Life. Get one of your miner companions to mine ore while you hang around as an artist or carpenter, and when they are done you get a all the XP. With a miner on level 50 and some level 40-50 ore, you can get your “new” Life from level 1 to level 40-odd in minutes.
In terms of plot, there’s stuff about you and your archaeologist mate flying a dragon to an island, then getting separated as you end up in the past, and then lots of back-and-forth between eras while you build a new village in the present (in a definitely not Animal Crossing type way) whilst finding items and advancing your Lives in the past. There’s loads to do, millions of items, weapons, foods and furniture to craft, people to meet, side quests to complete, and that’s before you even hop over into Ginormosia or do the dungeon tree thing or the dream world stuff. What are they? Well, Google exists.
So, I completed the game as (mainly) a Mercenary, swapping to most of the other Lives along the way. I’ve already made a start on trying to get them all up to at least Expert rank, and have started the other Lives too. Still lots to do, and still having a lot of fun. Is it as good as the original Fantasy Life, though? Well, there’s certainly more, but I’d say overall, it loses a bit of focus as a result. Still excellent, but not quite as excellent.
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Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time (Switch 2): COMPLETED!
Almost exactly 11 years ago, I played and completed (and then played some more) the original Fantasy Life game on the 3DS. I really enjoyed it, and after all this time I was excited to play the sequel.
Only, it isn’t really a sequel. There’s nothing, plot wise at least, that links this game to the previous one. Sure, the mechanics and graphical style are nearly the same, but there’s no story continuation or even, as far as I can tell, any shared characters or history. Actually, “history” is one of the main plot points in “i” (no, it’s never explained what the “i” is for), since the game takes place in two different eras, 1000 years apart. Gameplay-wise, it isn’t too different from before – choose a Life, level up by doing Life related things, complete quests for people, and so on. So it’s similar.
One big difference, is that you’re pretty much forced to change Life (a Life being a trade or character class) as you progress. In the first game, I completed the story without ever swapping from my Paladin Life, but in “i” you can’t do certain story-based things without changing to be a miner or an alchemist or whatever. Swapping between Lives is a big thing, and as each one levels up separately, there’s a lot of grinding. Certainly more than I remember from the original, and my play time – over 50 hours by the end of the game (with some Lives still untouched) compared with less than that to 100% the original – showing it in cold hard stats. Some of that extra time is that there’s more to do, but a lot is grinding.
Thankfully, a lot of the grinding is done by exploring a separate, and huge, game area called Ginormosia. Here you can level up by chopping trees and swording bees and whatever else, unlocking new companions when you complete shrines you find, and making areas of this continent level up too. It’s fun to just wander and complete challenges like fighting or farming while you grind. I also found a way to quickly level up a new Life. Get one of your miner companions to mine ore while you hang around as an artist or carpenter, and when they are done you get a all the XP. With a miner on level 50 and some level 40-50 ore, you can get your “new” Life from level 1 to level 40-odd in minutes.
In terms of plot, there’s stuff about you and your archaeologist mate flying a dragon to an island, then getting separated as you end up in the past, and then lots of back-and-forth between eras while you build a new village in the present (in a definitely not Animal Crossing type way) whilst finding items and advancing your Lives in the past. There’s loads to do, millions of items, weapons, foods and furniture to craft, people to meet, side quests to complete, and that’s before you even hop over into Ginormosia or do the dungeon tree thing or the dream world stuff. What are they? Well, Google exists.
So, I completed the game as (mainly) a Mercenary, swapping to most of the other Lives along the way. I’ve already made a start on trying to get them all up to at least Expert rank, and have started the other Lives too. Still lots to do, and still having a lot of fun. Is it as good as the original Fantasy Life, though? Well, there’s certainly more, but I’d say overall, it loses a bit of focus as a result. Still excellent, but not quite as excellent.
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https://www.kpopnsfw.com/205442/260130-livenationkpop-twitter-update-built-with-passion-powered-by-energy-and-completed-by-once-thank-you-for-making-this-show-unforgettable-on-to-dallas/ 260130 LiveNationKPop Twitter Update – Built with passion, powered by energy, and completed by ONCE. Thank you for making this show unforgettable. On to Dallas! #Built #Completed #Dallas #energy #LiveNationKPop #making #passion #powered #show #Twice #Twitter #unforgettable #update
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Tennessee Titans complete several interviews, with more scheduled for new head coach ahead of pivotal offseason
What This Story Is AboutThe Tennessee Titans have completed interviews with more scheduled and requested to fill the…
#NFL #TennesseeTitans #Tennessee #Titans #completed #Football #headcoach #headcoachingsearch #interviews #listofnames #Local #news #Offseason #requested #scheduled #wsmv
https://www.rawchili.com/nfl/674689/ -
Tennessee Titans complete several interviews, with more scheduled for new head coach ahead of pivotal offseason https://www.rawchili.com/nfl/674689/ #completed #Football #HeadCoach #HeadCoachingSearch #interviews #ListOfNames #Local #news #NFL #Offseason #requested #scheduled #Tennessee #TennesseeTitans #TennesseeTitans #Titans #wsmv
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Mr Driller 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!
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!
#completed #gba #mrDriller #retro #switch -
Batsugun (Evercade): COMPLETED!
Well isn’t this a slick little arcade shooter? I’ve heard of it before but never played it, and I don’t generally get excited over shoot ’em ups as they’re not really my favourite genre, but I couldn’t help be impressed with just how much is going on at any one time on this.
I suppose in some ways it’s an early bullet hell shooter, in that there are so many bullets coming at you the main focus of the game is avoiding them rather than shooting stuff (as that happens mostly coincidentally). Actually, having now stopped typing and looked it up, it seems that Batsugun is generally considered the first bullet hell shooter and not only that, but the development team later became Cave who are synonymous with bullet hell shooters. Well, it shows.
On the Evercade EXP you can play it in TATE mode, which I did, and it’s lovely. There are huge things to shoot, things to collect (which may improve my shooting skills but I couldn’t figure out how), massive bosses, and three different characters with different weapons to choose from. I chose Type B, the big laser cannon thing.
It’s a bit short with only five (I think) levels, but you can’t really complain as it’s an arcade game. It is, like most arcade shooters, impossible to complete without pumping it full of coins, so I was thankful for the unlimited virtual pennies.
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Super Mario Land (Switch): COMPLETED!
Ah, who doesn’t remember the chart-topping MC Mario “Folks round here think I’m crazy, but I gotta rescue Daisy” song that was based on the music from this, slightly odd in hindsight, Game Boy Mario game? Kids, that’s who. Tch.
And it is a bit odd. Super Mario Land starts out as a seemingly normal, low resolution […]
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Rental (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
Rental is (or at least, was at time of writing, who knows what the Terrifying Future holds) a free game on Steam and nothing is more important in gaming than low, low prices. So why the hell not, eh?
Perhaps the best way to describe the game, assuming you can’t see the screenshots here, is What if Animal Crossing was Resident Evil on the PS1? Or maybe, […]
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I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
Once upon a time, in a different era, this game was a viral hit on the Xbox Live Arcade Indie Games service. It was that platform within a platform that let pretty much anyone publish games for the Xbox 360 and sell them for peanuts.
Well, I recently discovered it still exists – for free on Steam! And here we are, after I’ve […]
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Splatoon 3 (Switch): COMPLETED!
Unlike 99.99% of Splatoon players, the game has always been about the single player game to me. My understanding is that most players aren’t even aware there is a single player mode. I don’t dislike the online multiplayer, and sure, I supplemented my solo play through Splatoon 3 with a few online games, but it’s not where all the fun for me […]
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Doors: Paradox (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
This game …
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Doctor Who: An Unlikely Heist (iPad): COMPLETED!
This is a …
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I'm not crying, _you_ are crying!!!
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Vampire Survivors (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!
Let it be known: I actually spent actual money (rather than money gained from selling farmed trading cards) on this Steam game. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. The things a Steam Deck make you do. I’ve wanted it for some time. Yes, it looks a bit pants …
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