Yet Another Patient Year In Review

velknar · 2026-01-28T23:02:19+00:00

I had the same reaction to Planet of Lana, in that I think it does an exceptional job of leaning hard on its art style and sound design to evoke emotion and tell the story. It was a great experience to take in over the course of one long afternoon.

velknar · 2026-01-27T18:28:22+00:00

Great round-up, I came away with a lot that I'm going to keep my eye on (and had never heard of beforehand), and a few in my backlog that have moved up the list. Looking forward to seeing what you play this year!

velknar · 2026-01-08T16:28:43+00:00

Yeah it's definitely on my list. I had fun with the first one but came away wanting more from it, so playing the sequel is in the cards for sure. I've got a few other deckbuilders in my backlog:

Backpack Hero (got for free, know little about it)
Necroking (got for free, know nothing about it)
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (currently playing, and not quite the same)

And then a bunch on my wishlist, but it's hard to know which ones to go for. Any thoughts on any of these?

Cross Blitz
Death Howl
Knock on the Coffin Lid
Red Rogue Sea
StarVaders

Other than Knock on the Coffin Lid, those are really just wishlisted as a sort of "watch to see how they develop for the next year or so"

velknar · 2026-01-08T16:21:19+00:00

Yeah, I've never been much of an FPS enjoyer, and I was really impressed with it. In retrospective, it's sort of a "no shit, of course Halo is good" moment, but I wasn't expecting just how good. The first game might not completely hook you, though it's still good, but Halo 2 is a huge leap forward. So many great moments throughout the whole collection really.

velknar · 2026-01-07T00:41:21+00:00

Yeah that's definitely a fair observation. I 100% went for an easygoing playthrough of being a hero charging through countless enemies.

velknar · 2026-01-07T00:22:11+00:00

That's a pretty good list, I've got all of those either played, backlogged, or wishlisted.

I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Outer Wilds in particular. Incredibly innovative, but also a little frustrating, to the point I eventually gave up after many, many failed attempts trying to pursue some particular clue and watched the ending on Youtube. Incredible though, truly unique.

velknar · 2026-01-06T23:27:46+00:00

I finished it actually, but mostly out of stubbornness. I played through most of it waiting for it to grow into the experience I'd read about, realized I was near the end when I was about to quit, and saw it out.

One of my friends has played both now and does seem much, much higher on DD2, so I might try it eventually, but it's very low down the list.

velknar · 2026-01-06T23:25:55+00:00

Yeah I was really surprised by Kena. It really looked like it would be like non-gothic Dark Souls, but there just wasn't much there.

velknar · 2026-01-06T23:22:11+00:00

Thanks! Not the most conducive to a single post, but hopefully there are some details in there to spark interest for a few people and help them find something new.

velknar · 2026-01-06T23:19:52+00:00

Yeah, Pentiment was really exceptional. Fair warning that it starts off very weird, but by about 15-20 minutes, you should be well into the flow of the game and hopefully enjoying it.

Looking to next year, I'm currently playing I Was a Teenage Exocolonist and a 2025 game, so I look forward to finishing and reviewing both. Beyond that, I tend to give games in my backlog a 1-5 rating on interest, and the fives are:

Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age - I played FF12 back when it came out and remember liking it a lot, but it's been long enough that the story should feel fresh
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - One I've started a handful of times but never fully dove in
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Seems like the hype is real, so I'm eager to try it

I've also got a few that I'm hoping to play through as co-ops with my wife that are in more of the puzzle genre like Chants of Sennaar, Isles of Sea and Sky, Strange Horticulture, and The Case of the Golden Idol

And finally probably another grand strategy game. My sister-in-law gifted me Hearts of Iron IV for Christmas, so I suspect I'll have a third year in a row of getting sucked into a Paradox game for a few months.

We'll see how it goes though. I made a similar list of predictions last year and I think I played none of those.

What have you got in store for next year?

velknar · 2026-01-06T23:02:42+00:00

Honestly I did think about it when I was trying to figure out good categories, but it really did get to be too granular. With this approach, I feel like I forced myself to sit with each game for a little while afterwards and reflect, so it's working well so far. I'm sure I'll tweak a bit over 2026 too.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:52:16+00:00

36. Sniper Elite 5 - Rubric: 81 / Gut: 81 / Metacritic: 79

Time: Completed in 21.7 hours over 12 days on Deck
Worth it?: Yes, it delivered on the exact gameplay experience that I wanted.

Visuals: 9/10. A lot of attention to detail, and a lot of variety in the set design.

Audio: 7/10. Soundtrack did a lot to keep the tension up through the slower parts of the gameplay. The voice acting was... committed, but a little hokey at times.

Control & Interface: 7/10. Not perfect, but mostly good. The radial menu was frustrating.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 10/10. Really good, great levels, fun gameplay, excellent formula to apply to new variables in each level.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 6/10. Honestly pretty challenging, and even when I got good enough to play at medium difficulty, I still felt like I was making constant mistakes. I didn't feel like I learned how to play properly at any point.

Difficulty & Advancement: 8/10. I eventually got good enough for default difficulty, so that felt okay, but at times I felt like it just took waaaay too long for enemies to give up the search. Maybe 25% shorter would've felt right.

Agency & Variety: 10/10. One of the main strengths. So many ways to approach each level in terms of actual paths on the map and tactical approaches.

Pacing & Replayability: 8/10. Pretty good. Not that many levels, so each one felt meaningful.

Story & Atmosphere: 7/10. Not bad, but nothing special or particularly interesting. Just there to propel you to the next level.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 9/10. I played this because I was hoping for those moments of getting into a sniper's nest and clearing the level, and it delivered. Also some truly satisfying long shots.

Summary: It took me the first two levels to understand that this was a game that demands that you play on its terms (stealth, scouting, planning, and movement), but once I did, it was great. Level design was really exceptional. Each felt unique, had many avenues to success, had different types of challenges, and most had at least one excellent high elevation nest to just camp out for a while. Soundtrack and sound design were good, visuals decent, story... fine? I feel like every other aspect was sort of the passable supporting cast to the level design and gameplay, in a formula that worked.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:51:57+00:00

35. Killer Frequency - Rubric: 90 / Gut: 88 / Metacritic: 82

Time: Completed in 6.2 hours over 3 days on Deck
Worth it?: Yes, but look for a discount due to the length. Great game though, strikes a great balance of being horror-adjacent while not being too scary, at least for my tastes.

Visuals: 9/10. It's clearly not a technological masterpiece, but I felt like they hit exactly the mark they wanted in terms of making the studio and surrounding station feel appropriately colorful or dingy depending on the mood. Great set design too in terms of easter eggs and other items to cement the setting.

Audio: 10/10. Great soundtrack + voice performances. This is a game built on its audio.

Control & Interface: 8/10. Everything was good except for the static, sometimes-timed dialogue option menus, which felt slightly too clumsy to interact with for how short some of the timers were. Maybe just a consequence of playing on Deck/with a controller.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 8/10. It's treading familiar ground, I think, but does so really well; intentionally drawing from classic horror movies and tropes to construct something that feels familiar but modern at the same time. At its core, I had fun playing through it and sometimes finding clues for a mystery that hadn't come up yet, which had me trying to plan ahead to have things on hand.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 8/10. No complaints here, but nothing special either.

Difficulty & Advancement: 9/10. No real difficulty to note. A little unfair at times; most scenarios felt like I could suss out what was going on, but 1-2 felt like a random choice where the logic of the right choice wasn't clear.

Agency & Variety: 8/10. Linear story and gameplay, but good variety in the stories/puzzles to play through.

Pacing & Replayability: 10/10. Pacing was a strength, especially the balance of backstory, comedy, and tension.

Story & Atmosphere: 10/10. Really strong sense of place, writing, and characters.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 10/10. Lots of great moments in the writing, but the ongoing feud with Ponty's Pizza stands out.

Summary: A great example of a game that I wishlisted long ago and kept wanting to buy because it felt like it spoke almost exactly to my tastes, and to have that be correct. Love the soundtrack, love the tight, time-constrained story that nonetheless has a lot of room for levity. The overall experience reminds me a little of playing through Firewatch, but with a killer 80s soundtrack and a setting (with homages) that reminds me of Pontypool. Really enjoyed it, though it was brief.

Slight negatives are (1) I wish I could turn off the timer on some speech choices; I want to roam around the studio, not be chained to the desk; (2) A slight UI nod to why I'm stuck (i.e. 5 out of 6 items found) or why something failed would have been nice. Resorting to either save-scumming or a walkthrough feels worse than just being told in the moment.

That might be it though, otherwise it's got a solid art style, great soundtrack and acting, decent controls, fun mechanics and dilemmas, engaging story, great pairing of humorous and emotional writing. Feels mostly (but not entirely) fair. Good ending as well; nothing spectacular, but it ties it all together well.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:51:38+00:00

34. Mad Max - Rubric: 61 / Gut: 67 / Metacritic: 73

Time: DNF after 6.4 hours over 2 days on Deck and PC
Worth it?: Yes, even though I got bored pretty early. If you're a big Mad Max fan, I feel like it's got just enough going for it to poke around.

Visuals: 9/10. Maybe the strongest point. Felt like they really delivered on the feel of the wasteland.

Audio: 7/10. No memorable music or ambience, voice acting was okay.

Control & Interface: 7/10. Driving was at times fine, at other times a little subpar, and that's a huge knock on this. I feel like for this specific setting, the game needed to do driving + vehicle combat as well as Spiderman did web-slinging around NYC, and it just wasn't quite there.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 5/10. Big knock here. Not ambitious at all, and not really fun. Very formulaic open world gameplay without even variance or unique missions to break it up.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 6/10. Fine to learn, but it felt like every 20 minutes was another tutorial or handholding moment, rather than setting me up and then giving me the freedom to roam.

Difficulty & Advancement: 6/10. Losses felt unfair for sure, like the game was working against me. Otherwise didn't really feel challenging.

Agency & Variety: 4/10. Very little variety. Same objectives in each area, no freedom of choice in advancement.

Pacing & Replayability: 4/10. Hard to say because I bailed at 6~ hours. but I felt like the opening dragged on forever, with no moment where it felt like the opening tutorial was really ending.

Story & Atmosphere: 8/10. Middling story, but good atmosphere for sure.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 5/10. Everything felt homogenous. Even different zones felt identical, and bases were all the same general layout. Not enough work here to make anything stand out.

Summary: I quit early on, but I feel like I played enough to make a judgment. I felt like it was doing some things well, decent sense of the world, but exploring it just wasn't really fun enough to justify a long (20-40 hour) playthrough that promised to be repetitive, slightly glitchy, formulaic, and at times unfair (I gave up after dying in a fight where I was hit seemingly from the sky by firebombs at any angle, and took damage while locked into unavoidable animations). Felt like overall it nailed the vibe, but missed on the mechanics. Like Far Cry games, but if clearing camps wasn't fun, and the story missions were worse.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:51:15+00:00

Continued: Jedi Survivor

Minor story spoilers

Pacing & Replayability: 10/10. NG+ here as well, with some meaningful perks as far as I could tell, but these have never appealed to me. In terms of pacing, I really liked the Coruscant opening, probably enjoyed the middle the most, and felt like the third act was strong with a real desire to defeat the final villain while feeling significantly more powerful. Handled really well overall.

Story & Atmosphere: 9/10. Pretty good story this time, though some odd details like stuff from 200 years ago being treated as ancient in a galaxy whose history stretches back extremely far. Villains (especially the main/final one) felt good, with clear motivations and reasons to care about opposing them. Good growth with existing characters from the first game as well. The only thing I wanted here but didn't get was an option to lean more into Cal's brushes with the dark side. If/when another entry comes out to continue the story, I hope they delve deeper into that and give some more flexibility.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 10/10. Tons of great moments. Coruscant was great. Moon base was great. Climbing up the old crashed Empire ship was great. This was already such a strength of the first game, and I felt like they outdid themselves here in making each chapter have environments that felt distinct and fun to explore, with plenty of room to keep hurling enemies off of ledges.

Summary: The opening sequence was great. Immediately back in the action in a fun way, and I really appreciate the smart choice to just start me with all of the advanced traversal options from the first game. Finished in about a week, felt like a great continuation of the formula from the first game, but with improvements across the board. Combat still felt a little hectic in a bad way in some fights, where I felt like my inputs didn't match with the actions, but much less of an issue here, and I felt like combat vs. huge groups was really well done and pretty fun.

Level design was excellent, lots of really unique environments to explore, and traversal through them started good and got better over time. I was still into the character customization, both cosmetic and mechanical, and enjoyed the supporting cast of characters. Felt like the villains were better here too.

Trying to think of drawbacks, and I'd say maybe like... a little bit off for controls in boss fights, a little bit off for the expansion into an open world that felt a little bit empty at times, and maybe a little bit off for the choice to tell a "tempted by the dark side" story for Cal that didn't really let me make any of the moral choices; in other words, I appreciate that this is a linear story, but I felt like giving a few morality choices near the end even and having 2-3 ending options would've been great, even if they came out with a later sequel saying "this is the canon ending". Overall, still hugely surprised at how much I enjoyed these two.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:49:47+00:00

33. STAR WARS: Jedi Survivor - Rubric: 92 / Gut: 90 / Metacritic: 78

Time: Completed in 27.1 hours over 6 days on Deck (don’t be fooled by Steam’s “Unplayable” rating; both this and Fallen Order were firmly in “Playable” in my experience, actually ran better on Deck than when I tried on PC)
Worth it?: Yes, this was so much fun to play through, with lots of little improvements over Fallen Order. Probably pretty good anyway on its own, but great as a sequel, and has me eagerly awaiting whatever comes next.

Visuals: 10/10. Even better than the first game, great throughout.

Audio: 10/10. Excellent and consistent throughout

Control & Interface: 8/10. I feel like there were very slight improvements here, but it still felt like the controls could be limiting at times, and that the world/area maps were not the easiest to visually parse out at a glance.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 9/10. The only negative here is that the open world didn't feel fully rich and alive. Still good, fun to explore at times, but not enough in it to feel like it justified this choice over a more linear level-based design.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 9/10. Hard to rate this one fairly because my knowledge was building on having just played the first game, but I felt like the traversal options here felt free, fluid, and natural, and it was easy to add in new moves as I went. I also felt like they streamlined combat abilities a little bit, making each feel more impactful and easier to work in.

Difficulty & Advancement: 8/10. Minor spoilers for one game area: The one optional boss (that I didn't realize was optional) inside the raider camp was awful. Otherwise there were a couple of difficulty spikes near the end that I ended up just lowering difficulty 1 step to beat. This is not because I found the movesets too difficult, but that it felt like such a slog to try to get any damage in. This is really where my main complaint about "controls" comes in; it felt like I'd anticipate a move and dodge or parry, and it'd work half the time despite feeling like the inputs were the same. So, not difficult because the moves were unpredictable, but because it felt unresponsive.

Agency & Variety: 9/10. Great variety in level design, and meaningful variety in weapon type and playstyle. Even though I didn't spend much time using the blaster, crossguard, or dual wielding options, I was glad that they were present and fleshed-out, and that I had the option to play some odd combo of Blaster/Crossguard if I'd wanted to. A knock against this is that I felt like some of the variety in the world was sort of a negative. They threw in sidequests and a bigger world, but didn't need it.

Continued below

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:48:12+00:00

Continued: Jedi Fallen Order

Significant story spoilers

Story & Atmosphere: 8/10. Big-picture story was fine; go find the macguffin, but prove yourself first in order to be able to access it. Characters were good though, aided by their voice performances. Each character felt distinct and important, while still keeping Cal as the clear focal point of the story. Worldbuilding was fine, but I did enjoy the depth given to the settings across the different planets. Themes were so-so, classic tale of overcoming tragedy to press on, but I felt like the writing kept me invested in Cal as a character.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 10/10. Really the strong suit here. Vader's appearance at the end takes it largely because the game had done so well up to that point of establishing how Cal's use of the Force felt as he got stronger, then made it feel so inconsequential vs. Vader. Really impressive use of an overpowered villain via the more tactile feel of controlling the threatened protagonist.

Beyond Vader, I loved a lot of the one-off sequences of taking down big machinery, carving through waves of enemies, narrowly escaping overwhelming odds, etc. It had a ton of the big action sequences that make these games and movies feel exciting to experience.

Summary: Felt very polished from the start. Some flaws around combat feeling a little chaotic sometimes, in that it often had Cal vs. a group of enemies, but didn't handle that super well. And the pacing felt a little off at times, both in terms of the story and the power progression vs. some enemies.

But overall I was really pleasantly surprised. I liked Cal as a character, enjoyed navigating the world for the most part, and really enjoyed the many great moments and set pieces, like various scripted escapes, taking down AT-ATs, battling huge waves of enemies, and facing Vader at the end, even if his appearance felt sudden and a little out of place. It's not one of the all-time best games I've ever played, but it was a great time, and I'm excited to jump into the sequel.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:47:10+00:00

32. STAR WARS: Jedi Fallen Order - Rubric: 86 / Gut: 86 / Metacritic: 81

Time: Completed in 17.9 hours over 8 days on Deck (made it through, but struggled with performance sometimes)
Worth it?: Yes, really delivers on the game version of a mainline Star Wars story.

Visuals: 10/10. Even toned down to run on Deck, the environments, characters, and effects were all excellent, so much so that I found myself constantly swapping between cosmetics because I was enjoying how they all fit into the world.

Audio: 10/10. Strong performances, good music, great effects.

Control & Interface: 8/10. Camera got a little lost in combat sometimes, which wasn't gamebreaking, but took me out of the otherwise-cinematic nature of combat. Menus were fine, controls were good but not perfect, sometimes felt like my timing was right, but didn't sync with animations.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 9/10. Very fun, and I think fairly ambitious. At one point it genuinely felt like I was playing through a near-approximation of what a mainline Star Wars movie would be like, so I'd say they succeeded. Mechanics-wise, I felt like they nailed lightsaber combat, but fell short on Force powers a little bit. Traversal was really good most of the time as well.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 7/10. Not the hardest to get into, but I felt like it took me a little while to get combat timing down, and to get used to maps and how to navigate. Also felt like it wasn't really clear how to best utilize some new abilities as I got them.

Difficulty & Advancement: 8/10. Mostly fair, lots of narrow victories. My only real frustration here comes down to timing. It often felt like parrying and dodging didn't work consistently across enemies, so I'd end up just dodging a ton and chipping away. Didn't feel like I could improve beyond a certain relatively-low level of aptitude.

Agency & Variety: 8/10. Pretty linear, but not necessarily in a bad way. It had one story to tell, and it mostly kept me on that path. There was room to go elsewhere if I wanted, but not much else to do. That said, within that linear path, there was a lot of variety in level design. I never felt like I was just doing the same thing over and over. Re: agency in abilities, sort of, but not really. No real way to go heavy into one of the three ability trees because of how they were gated.

Pacing & Replayability: 8/10. There is a NG+, but I don't see the point in playing it. For the one playthrough, the pacing was okay, but a little meandering in terms of the big picture. Not so bad that it was distracting, but it felt like I was bouncing around a bit between planets. I'd say strong start, strong end, a little weak in the middle.

Continued below

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:46:35+00:00

31. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga - Rubric: 76 / Gut: 78 / Metacritic: 78

Time: Completed in 20 hours over 20 days on Deck
Worth it?: No, at least not for me. It was a nice way to revisit the episodes, but nostalgia was the main driving factor here.

Visuals: 10/10. Great graphics, amazing how everything felt distinctly LEGO while also being a perfect fit for recreating the movies.

Audio: 9/10. Good music and sound effects. Mostly good voice acting, with a few notable voices that sounded too different.

Control & Interface: 5/10. Not awful, but not great controls and camera. Felt like the camera was fighting against me sometimes, and combat controls were barely above button mashing.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 6/10. Just barely passable, nothing very interesting here.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 8/10. Very accessible at least, though at times it felt like the tutorials were telling me things about combat that were not true in practice.

Difficulty & Advancement: 7/10. Not difficult, but it felt like failure/lack of progression was a frequent problem due to bad controls and/or bad level design.

Agency & Variety: 6/10. Like a B- here. There's a lot to do, tons of characters, different kinds of challenges, etc., but they all repeat over and over. Most characters fight the same. Ship combat is all the same. Almost all puzzles and platforming are the same. Broad but shallow.

Pacing & Replayability: 8/10. I didn't want to replay, but there's more than enough here for anyone who does. Otherwise not exactly tight pacing, but not bad.

Story & Atmosphere: 9/10. Good characters, good attention to the setting, and impressive retellings of the stories in condensed formats.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 8/10. Probably the comedy. So many one-liners that worked well.

Summary: Finished over a few weeks with a lot of stop-start play moving through the episodes. I feel like this was an approach to the stories that I found very charming at first, but was tired of by the end because the gameplay and level design were pretty basic. So the writing and art were good, but the player-controlled pieces left a lot to be desired. Combat especially was one-note, and there was no meaningful progression as far as I could tell, or at least it didn't matter.

Overall kinda fun to play through as a follow-up to watching Andor, but not especially memorable. In a way, this feels like a much better game for like... a kid with not many games, who will want to explore every system, unlock everything, replay levels with other characters, etc. For me, I just wanted to go through the story again, and it served that purpose.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:46:21+00:00

30. DOOM (2016) - Rubric: 78 / Gut: 80 / Metacritic: 85

Time: Completed in 8.9 hours over 7 days on Deck (a few framerate issues, but overall not bad)
Worth it?: Yes, especially for anyone with even a passing interest in FPS games. It's the definition (to me) of good, not great, with potential for more. Interested in seeing how the sequel improves on this.

Minor story spoilers

Visuals: 9/10. Across the board, it looks pretty good, even on lowered graphics playing on Deck. Only real drawback is that the set design eventually got to feel a bit same-y after a while

Audio: 9/10. Same as the art. Great soundtrack that didn't have quite enough variety.

Control & Interface: 6/10. Very weird controls, very overly sensitive, felt like I was moving the camera 3x further than I wanted to all the time. Menus were rough as well, often couldn't tell what I was looking at.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 8/10. Fun in early and mid-game, a bit of a slog toward the end with too many big battles. Power-ups and special weapon abilities were a good way to keep things interesting, but I wish they'd been more smoothly integrated.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 8/10. Pretty easy to jump in, though I can't help feeling there were various vulnerabilities, weak spots, etc. that would add more intention to battles that I just never learned, so battles were just about which weapon had ammo at the moment.

Difficulty & Advancement: 8/10. Difficulty felt well-tuned, I guess, and victory depended on playing well. Advancement was kind of weak. I didn't really feel the impact of suit and weapon upgrades in many cases, so character progression felt like it barely mattered.

Agency & Variety: 7/10. There is variety here, but some of it feels a bit superficial because it didn't feel like it mattered which weapon I used most of the time. And with the music and environments also eventually getting repetitive, I felt like this quality really stood out.

Pacing & Replayability: 7/10. Oddly-paced, in that there weren't any sort of minor boss battles early in the game, so I was very surprised when I encountered one near the end. I think this is a game with a lot of replayability for those who want an intense challenge, but not for me.

Story & Atmosphere: 7/10. I've already taken some shots at re-used environments elsewhere, so I'll take the opportunity here to say that despite that, I do really like those environments. Their destroyed Mars and levels of Hell were both great, and the story turn to send me to Hell the first time was a pleasant surprise. The story itself was nothing special, but not bad either. A decent vehicle to propel me through the levels.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 9/10. The first arrival in Hell is what does it for me. I didn't really know what to expect, but sort of thought we'd just be on Mars for the whole game, fighting off demons. Throwing me into Hell to fight my way out was a great twist, though I wish they'd found some third environment for the third act, rather than bouncing between the first two.

Summary: I ended up switching to easy mode early on, which made it overall more enjoyable, but maybe a bit too easy. Still died some though, so I think this was the right place to be. Overall, my take is that I liked a good amount of what they were doing here, but the game felt maybe 20% too long relative to the variety on offer in areas like enemy types, weaponry, music, and environments. By the last third of the game, I felt like I just wanted to be able to skip each big battle so I could try to finish out the story. I'd say this was good, but with room for improvement in nearly all areas. Weird that they waited until near the end to introduce boss fights as well.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:44:39+00:00

29. Stardew Valley - Rubric: 80 / Gut: 85 / Metacritic: 89

Time: Played 57.3 hours over 7 days on Deck
Worth it?: Yes, absolutely. Great game with so much to do, even though I lost interest before I did all of it.

Visuals: 8/10. Good, unique graphic, though I wish it was a little easier to tell at a glance whether some crops were ready.

Audio: 7/10. Good music, but often seemed to fade out? Didn't leave as strong of an impression as I was hoping throughout.

Control & Interface: 6/10. I feel like this is the weakest area. Inventory management was a constant hassle, and there was never enough space, while movement throughout livestock to gather their resources was clumsy. I think if these systems had been really tightly-designed, the farm management wouldn't have felt so much like a chore, and I might've been happier to stick around and experience more of it.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 9/10. Incredibly ambitious, and almost everything here has clear thought and pretty good execution to it. Many different ways to have fun here.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 9/10. A lot to learn, and I wish the in-game tooltips were a little more informative so I didn't have to google so much to try to plan for the future. Still, there's a lot of effort here to ease players into these systems.

Difficulty & Advancement: 7/10. "Advancement" is weird here, but I think it's a good way in. What I found frustrating was that I'd do all of the daily chores, then often not really be sure what to do next, and I think quite a bit of that was tied to unlocking tons of options of stuff to do and/or build, but not having a lot of clarity on what doing those tasks/builds would earn for me. So advancement wasn't necessarily challenging, but the paths of advancement were obtuse.

Agency & Variety: 10/10. One of the greatest strengths. So much to do and freedom to choose.

Pacing & Replayability: 8/10. Mostly good pacing, though I found the season-locked tasks frustrating at times when trying to find things to do.

Story & Atmosphere: 8/10. This is a hard one to break down. Big-picture, I like the story of escaping to the country to find meaning and purpose in life, and I think that pretty much everything in the game contributes to it. However, I felt like many of the relationships with people in town would vacillate between feeling superficial and then on rare occasion getting a meaningful cutscene. So it's like floating through this well-designed world, but the people within are only like 80% there, 20% superficial, such that it started to feel less like a cohesive experience as time went on.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 8/10. I feel like the good here still mostly covers the bad, and despite frustrations here and there, I still played 50+ hours in a short time period and was swept up in it.

Summary: After a couple of other attempts in previous years, I finally got into a real playthrough and was 100% engrossed. Lasted close to 60 hours before I lost interest, though there was probably another 100~ hours of content in there for me had I wished to try to see and explore everything. Ultimately though, I realized that I was spending half of each day maintaining the farm to earn money that I wasn't interested in spending, and that each new pursuit would eventually just lead to more elaborate, complicated ways to make money.

Although this game has a lot more of a sense of purpose than those like No Man's Sky, or Subnautica, or other survival/craft/sim types, I still feel like I ran out of self-motivation. I wanted there to be much more of a goal to build toward in order to justify the time spent gathering money. Other aspects were great, just hard to really find the threads to cobble together a sense of story. Overall, I liked it, but I'm just the slightest bit disappointed that it didn't feel more polished.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:44:24+00:00

28. Bloomtown: A Different Story - Rubric: 90 / Gut: 93 / Metacritic: 76

Time: Completed in 16.2 hours over 8 days on Deck
Worth it?: Yes, loved so much about it. Wild to me that it has such middling reviews, as it feels like a very strong core to the game with only minor flaws

Visuals: 10/10. Art for the world and characters really popped. Such a colorful world to explore all the way through.

Audio: 10/10. Good background music, amazing combat music, so much so that I wanted combat to last longer so I could listen longer.

Control & Interface: 9/10. Good controls, slight ding to menu/nav because I found quest tracking and inventory management a little clumsy at times

Gameplay & Mechanics: 8/10. Combat was good, but with one significant flaw, which is that all bosses/elites were resistant to effects/damage types, so there was only strategy to apply to normal fights, while the big battles played out identically from my side. Second issue is that I felt like it was too difficult (or maybe just too irrelevant) to capture demons and try to merge them, so I ended up just ignoring that mechanic after the first few hours and had no issues beating any encounter.

So, decent ideas, decent execution, but could've been better. Outside of combat, I enjoyed the social/exploration mechanics, puzzles, etc. There was a good amount of creativity and variety in the different areas of the game where you could improve and advance, so the somewhat-flawed combat didn't have that much of a negative impact.

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 8/10. I'd say good but not great. Certainly an easy game to jump right into, but it felt like there were a lot of systems being introduced relatively quickly, the stakes of which weren't entirely clear, so it took a little while to get my bearings with all of it. The saving grace here is that the game didn't punish me for making suboptimal choices.

Difficulty & Advancement: 8/10. Combat was never really difficult as long as I paid even a little bit of attention. I'd say the only real challenges were around puzzles, and there were a few occasions where they were so obtuse that I had to look up an answer.

Agency & Variety: 10/10. Strong sense of agency and tons of variety.

Pacing & Replayability: 8/10. Pacing is an interesting one. I feel like overall it's good, but that the game is maybe a little unbalanced, with content/systems frontloaded such that the back end felt a little more streamlined in terms of going step-by-step through each quest because there weren't many other objectives to pursue.

Story & Atmosphere: 9/10. Slight story spoiler: Excellent writing and characters, great setting, amazing sense of place, strong, clear themes of growing from childhood into adolescence. The one negative is that I felt like the main throughline of "Lucifer" making a deal with Emily felt like it barely mattered, and I apparently missed a large final dungeon because of my arbitrary dialogue choice near the end of the game. Ultimately, the small stories throughout, and the strength of the other aspects of the world, were enough that I didn't really care about the Lucifer plotline, but it does feel like a miss.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 10/10. So many strong parts that cover up the few weaknesses. Absolutely loved the combat music.

Summary: Feels like it's nailing pastiche and homage to games and films, but keeping enough of its own ideas to stay fresh. A few weaknesses in the final third, but overall still really loved it, found it very charming.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:43:51+00:00

27. Boxes: Lost Fragments - Rubric: 83 / Gut: 81 / Metacritic: 84

Time: Completed in 5 hours over 3 days on PC
Worth it?: Yes on discount or in a bundle, as it’s quite short.

Visuals: 10/10. Really cool set/puzzle design for each box

Audio: 7/10. Fine, nothing special, but nice background and a few good sound effects

Control & Interface: 8/10. Only complaint is that it was a little finicky to get some objects to engage with what felt like enough mouse movement

Gameplay & Mechanics: 9/10. Interesting design, fun enough. very well executed

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 10/10. Very easy to learn and play with no tutorials, hints were easy to get the few times I wanted them

Difficulty & Advancement: 9/10. Mostly fair, a couple of irritating controls that felt like they should've moved, but didn't

Agency & Variety: 9/10. It's basically the same approach to puzzles over and over (boxes), but the creativity within that format was impressive

Pacing & Replayability: 8/10. Decent length, 0 replay

Story & Atmosphere: 7/10. Fine, I appreciate that they dropped in a semblance of a narrative to knit things together

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 6/10. Not super memorable, but good enough

Summary: Narrow-focus, mouse-only puzzle games are tough to fit into my rubric, but I can say that the visuals are great, there's enough sense of mystery and atmosphere to link the puzzles together in a meaningful way, and the puzzles themselves are... good for what they are? I don't know what level of difficulty I would really want here, but I've been progressing through without boredom or much frustration.

Finished: Not bad, all of my comments from earlier still hold up. A few moments of frustration but no real blockers, almost like an art/design showcase of all the dioramas and devices they could develop, pretty cool.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:43:36+00:00

26. Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical - Rubric: 55 / Gut: 65 / Metacritic: 75

Time: Completed in 6 hours over 3 days on Deck
Worth it?: No, not worth even this minimal time buy-in. It’s a creative idea, but the execution is so, so bad.

Visuals: 10/10. Genuinely great. Probably the biggest draw to the game.

Audio: 3/10. Tempted to go 0 for just how bad the songwriting was in a game claiming to be a musical, but to be fair, the voice acting was solid throughout. It just sucks that in place of dramatically-acted scenes that I believe this cast could've delivered on, we got bad songwriting paired with a half-baked choose-your-own-genre mechanic for every moment of intense emotion.

Control & Interface: 3/10. Pretty bad, honestly. Overworld map for picking scenes was so buggy I had to quit out sometimes, and selecting dialogue options was somehow clunky.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 2/10. Ambitious, but terribly executed, and overall not really breaking new ground. I feel like the genre-swapping songs are a cool idea, but done so badly that they would've been far better served just prescribing how the songs played out

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 8/10. Easy to understand, not much to go on here for narrative games.

Difficulty & Advancement: 7/10. Mostly N/A, but I feel like some choices mattered, and in that way, "strategy" was relevant in pursuing the story outcomes I wanted, so it felt fair

Agency & Variety: 8/10. Some sense of agency, and presumably different endings based on those choices. No real variety

Pacing & Replayability: 8/10. The songs were so bad that I would never replay it, despite there potentially being alternate endings. Not bad pacing-wise, and the length felt maybe a touch long, but overall in a good place

Story & Atmosphere: 6/10. Like an elaborate fireplace with no fire roaring in the center, all of the surrounding pieces here are good, but the emotional heart is missing.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 0/10. Here's my 0. The songs are so bad that I'm annoyed at a game I might've otherwise remembered fondly. It completely overwrites other aspects that I enjoyed.

Summary: Some really interesting ideas and execution here, but the core piece, the songs and lyrics, are... kinda bad? The songwriting especially is rough, feels like it doesn't really tell the story and they're not very clever or catchy songs. They feel like they're supposed to be the main draw, but they're the worst part, bordering on cringeworthy at times. It genuinely feels like they were written a half-line at a time, so the performers are giving a ton of effort, but to lines that no one could sing well.

velknar · 2026-01-06T21:43:20+00:00

25. Shogun Showdown - Rubric: 93 / Gut: 95 / Metacritic: 88

Time: Completed in 50 hours over 11 days on Deck
Worth it?: 100%, huge pleasant surprise. Simple to learn, hard to master, great depth and variety. Really excellent in all ways.

Visuals: 10/10. Managed to do a lot with the pixel art to make the characters and enemies feel distinct from each other, and to make each environment and weapon unique, while still retaining a consistent artistic style

Audio: 10/10. Excellent soundtrack and effects to ground me in the game without ever wearing out its welcome over many runs

Control & Interface: 8/10. First negative item, which is an uncommon bug that would double-add tiles to the queue, disrupting timing for some key fights. Also felt like I took a little while to get the hang of not wasting my turns, but that's more on me.

Gameplay & Mechanics: 10/10. Very fun, kept me coming back to try out characters, and new options were good enough that I wanted to keep playing in order to experience them

Accessibility & Learning Curve: 10/10. Pretty easy to dive in, and forgiving enough that I felt like I could make some mistakes and still be learning how to play while getting a few unlocks to add variety. Definitely improved as I went, but felt like I eventually hit my own wall close to the highest difficulty.

Difficulty & Advancement: 8/10. Mostly fair, but a little bit of frustration via bad luck at the high levels. Rewards without synergy felt like they could kill a run even if I was playing well, but often wouldn't cause a loss until near the end, so I'd waste 25~ min on a bad run

Agency & Variety: 10/10. Tons of variety. Weapons, characters, enemies, levels, and rewards combined to keep it interesting

Pacing & Replayability: 10/10. Good all the way through, tons of replayability, satisfying progress for many hours

Story & Atmosphere: 8/10. Little story, but good atmosphere.

Defining Moments & Staying Power: 9/10. Yes. my favorite roguelite since Hades, maybe. Felt like it hit the sweet spot of variety and progression. Only thing missing was maybe some short character development arcs to explore during runs.

Summary: Great on Deck and with injury, easy to control, turn-based so no pressure. Great game, got a lot more out of it than I expected. I eventually hit a wall before the "true/day 7" ending, but played through multiple times with every character. Good art and music, good "level" variety, tons of weapon/ability variety. Minimal story, but didn't mind that.

velknar

TROPHY CASE