☆20241020 played with bf! and i'm quite glad i did because this managed to be excruciaaating. i've talked before about dragon's lair-likes before and so far the only one i feel is half decent is road avenger. i kinda hate that this follows its formula to a t, down to repeating the same animation after each death, though i'd rather have dirk's turning into a skeleton than time gal's villain's super annoying laugh. still, it's cool as an animator's showcase, and the different settings make feel a lil more varied. also i'm her.

☆20241012 it's funny to me how this game's marketing strategy+visuals scream budget needy girl overdose, but it's actually more expensive lol. i have money now and i can afford to buy animeslop so it's cool. in any case, it's generally well-written in a way that actually makes you care about the characters and i really like how the true end with the protag ties everything really nicely, and brings in a spotlight to them that is usually skipped in most bishoujo games. it's a shame because even if they had a good writer everything else about this feels like it's very disingenuously capitalizing on different popular shit while not even trying to genuinely care about the stuff it's appropiating. you can see this in the conveniently-named amu-chan, who is a decaffeinated landmine girl. there's this otaku vibe going on, yet unlike ngo you won't see the characters reference anything at all. the girls are all into j-fashion and mention it a few times, but never go deep into the topic at all other than mentioning how they are into it. it presents itself as a copy of va-11 hall-a as well, but it seems to not comprehend the most attractive aspect of that game is the way the bartending affects the narrative, instead going for the usual vn yes/no selectable choices. and it makes me feel like all of this mostly comes from a general disinterest from the people/company making this, yknow? trying to optimize the girls' visits for each day to get the true ending could've been fun too, but alas.

☆20240919 not to be confused with moon (1997). very interesting project made by the team that would latter be known as key. not their usual style at all, this leans heavily into denpa at some point, but nevertheless they were surprisingly good at it! go in blind. recommended.

☆20240907 i feel that out of cyan's edutainment trilogy this one is the most centered towards creativity and expression, even stepping a bit into level design territory by letting the player create their own map layout. the added bit of lore were swuper fun too!

☆20240818 it's baroque. it's not as rogue-like as i expected in the sense that you can carry a lot of stuff to subsequent playthroughs, but i liked the layer of strategy this added. i loved how most items had obvious advantages and disadvantages, and how you could create really wacky combos that made the game a lot easier, but i found that getting there and understanding how all the mechanics and items worked was still most of the fun. i don't want to talk much about it because i want people to experience this work and its themes by themselves, so please go do so.

☆20240811 knew nothing about this game, randomly booted it up from mame's romset and was pleasantly surprised :3 it controls great and i don't remember if i ever saw a combo system this cool in a bemup. i love the flashy visuals, the background animations and attention to detail in the levels... and the character designs, i honestly thought this was based on a tv show!

☆20240715 played on ps1 because i don't like going like that into fanprojects too much... i do commend the dedication though, i just can't help but be a purist weirdo. also i do like the loading animations! it's a very depressing, pretty edgy story, but the way it's presented is quite original, very her story-esque, just 25 years earlier. piecing the story together is super rewarding, and it made me relate to Lain in a way that I didn't get from the anime, since I went through some similar things as her in my childhood. however it does have a... questionable plot point i pretend i do not see, although i can see how it adds into the game's themes.

☆20240715 i used to play a pirated version of this one on my ipod touch more than a decade ago nonstop at my grandma's house. it's one of the easier ones from ks (not that these games have any difficulty to begin with), and while the combo system is way more intuitive and easy to get a hold of when compared to their other games with building mechanics due to the front view, it doesn't leave a lot for customization

☆20240711 stop relying on walkthroughs and you might find the greatness in this one! just finding out for yourself what counts towards the endings and then trying to adapt when your desired run doesn't go as expected is half if not most of the fun. to me it feels like an evolution of classic score-based point n click games, but way easier and less obscure... love

☆20240709 a classic. its frustrating that it has these glaring design issues that could been easily fixed like nghhhgh it makes me want to just do my own spin on this which i might as well do!

☆20240707 i'll never be chuuni enough for vn fights man

☆20240702 very interesting project that i was 99% certain had to be one of those le lost old forgotten fake games but turned out to be an honest to god old soft, at least according to some 2002 evidence i found which i cannot retrieve rn because the archive is down so bro trust me. i really dig the artstyle and how outsider-artish looking it is. genuinely looks and plays like a shitpost but the fact that it is a genuine piece makes me :). i miss the pre-indie game boom scene.

☆20240630 the porter from aero porter is mai waifu. really fun small game that sadly gets cut short right before the frenetic gameplay reaches its peak. try it out if you like gimmicky games that make good use of your consoles capabilities.

☆20240628 now i'm not the authority on pc-98 soft i'd like to be but this is the only one i've played that has vector grafix like this. super cool and i also enjoyed reading about how this posted online and the dev kept adding updates with more tracks and stuff! i hate using the term but things like lack of collissions with the other truck makes this feel like more of a tech demo, but it's still an interesting thing to appreciate 4 research. the usa in the name is because you control trucks.

☆20240624 it's great! definitely feels like the director reccounting his own experiences. many of them are definitely very personal and private. also the clash between the kiddie (the way boku saw the world) and adult tones (the narrator, the devs, ourselves) made it super unique. the loop is very satisfying, and the way it subverts your expectations and how it always makes something special it out of routines and the mundane...i was tearing up in the end! i feel like this should be experienced on a language you understand, because i don't really feel like this is a ~vibes~ game like most people out there claim. the text is very good, and it has some other nuances like in the aforementioned tones that really elevates this imo.

☆20240621 oh i really like this! it's amazing that this runs so well on original hardware but even if we ignore the technical progress that is mode 7 the game itself is also a gem. felt rewarding as hell. i do have some issues with how the ai works though... they're a pain in the ass most of the time and i'm also not a fan of how the difficulty settings work. i feel like most of the difficulty and also the ~fun factor~ comes from the track design and not from the interactions with the cpu. like some of the road gimmicks will forever be engraved in my mind because they're so interesting (and tricky to overcome!).

☆20240621 go go momopie :] it's pretty addicting so i couldn't stop until i beat all the levels! the gameplay might seem quite simple but i really enjoyed strategizing with the different power ups, i think that's where this game's charms reside!

☆20240617 it's my first time completing a gen1 pokémon game! i enjoyed it a lot even though i'm not a pokémon adult. i really liked the lore and how it has like... this darkness around it that feels a bit more sanitized in current pkmn. not that i know much about that because i stopped playing the series at 14 but um. it also has a lot of secrets that i loved sharing with irl friends, and esp. loved how gimmicky many of the creatures were!!

☆20240612 it's a bit buggy but i think it's amazing that a group of 3 managed to make this on a short jam! super inspiring. it's def not deconstructeam's current thing but the levels and mechanics are so well thought out that i wonder how the games could be had they chosen to go on with this style.

☆20240607 don't have much to say except that i found the movement control to be pretty novel and that i liked salomé's parallelism with a current young woman :)

☆20240606 my man jeff cooked with this one. i recommend firing this up and play whatever music you're into and just flow with it. i was in a trance for a few hours thanks to this... definitely one of the better pieces i've played for the c64 even though it's not what you'd call a "game".

☆20240604 it took me a lot to finally get to this and it ended up becoming a favourite! the exploration+time management loop works great and the level design is fantastic. i actually really liked how the pikmin ai works, i like that it feels like they 100% submissively follow orders and won't even try to save their asses if you don't order them to, it's a nice difficulty layer as well. the only thing that got me a little ehh were the boss fights, since even though they're pretty well designed they broke my flow with the exploration and ended up feeling more like a chore. i managed to get the best ending on my first run but many, many pikmen died. rest in peace.

☆20240530 oo mysterious doujinsoft shmup. nice in a nuthin to write home about way n really easy also switching weapons was a pain sometimes. but level design could be pretty trollish for a 1st run at times (fun!). something about this just oozes with passion and you can clearly see it in the homages to various other games and the little pieces of art (not sure if fanart or ocs) scattered thru the levels. thinking abt a bunch of passionate nerds (non derogatory) working on this makes me feel inspired! green girl looks like multi

☆20240529 not that i play many modern aaa games (shit this is almost 10 years old) but this was super refreshing! i really liked that the campaign had many wow moments that you could *play*. even mechanically each new level was the gift that kept on giving. it doesn't overstay its welcome but also leaves you wanting more, but honestly the multiplayer doesn't really scratch the itch for me sadly. i was also surprised in terms of narrative, i wasn't expecting such a cool dynamic with the titan/bt, even if the plot itself is basic (not that it needs to do more!)

☆20240521 not to be confused with wild arms (1996). played with bf, pretty fun. also made me realize i've barely played any gallery shooters!

☆20240520 my ass really thought it'll be able to complete a recovered beta build of an unreleased 1995 project 🤣 and it did! just know that it's unbeatable without doing some tinkering (longer article covering this in more detail coming soon). even then the game certainly needed some thorough testing, not only because of unlinked scenes but also because of some completely unhinted objectives (thankfully i played it with a friend and we had the game design document at hand). the puzzles are also not quite bad, but some scenes suffer from lack of feedback (esp towards the end) while others are quite obvious, so attempting to pierce together the world's internal logic might prove fruitless because of this contrast (tho i'm quite sure this is derived from the game's unfinished state). the narrative is pretty cool and even then the brainy-psyche theme is kept consistent through it all! once it clicked i ended up really liking it. just know what you are in for!

☆20240518 genuinely think jeff minter solehandedly predicted bullet hells with a certain stage in revenge. it is pretty funny, not only on the wacky themes but making the player adapt to each small challenge (personally i am a coward and would also try to exploit the game's blind spots). contrary to other, more repetitive arcade games from this era i was constantly excited to see how minter would surprise me with the next area! controls are really messy though.

☆20240509 bought this on switch but decided to play the 3ds original first! i really like cooking mama clones and shoujo aesthetics so i was really excited to play it. it also has dating sim mechanics even though they are a bit confusing because i ended up with the guy i disliked the most somehow! while the switch ver. seems to have a few extra features and better english loc the lack of touch controls are a big letdown... anyway, as a casual cooking game it is pretty subpar because the minigames are not fun or frantic enough as in mama's games and while it claims to have more than 100 recipes most of them are reused save for one or two screens. also this dating sim loop is pretty repetitive in itself and it makes you want to optimize your time, so it really doesn't urge you to try out new recipes because you'd rather do the shortest ones and move on. not gonna pretend i didn't spend a good amount of hours w this because i love mindless tasks though

☆20240506 i already thought its prequel was perfectly fine but i enjoyed this one even more! i don't know how treasure does it but most of their games have this amount of polish (like most mini boss battles could've not gone as hard as they did but they were not messing around) while still not dismissing the value in going for unconventional game design that does not completely align with most big budget game development. also my hands don't hurt as much!

☆20240427 i learned a lot about mainstream/western philosophy with this, but most of that amounted to me taking the encyclopedia menu very seriously and thoroughly reading thru it all. while the game itself is fine and poses some interesting questions to preteens playing it, i don't think it does a good job at truly joining the education w the enterainment parts...

☆20240422 way harder (but still not that much) than radirgy but not too creative still. the balance in this is a mess but i still thought the amount of expression you're giving while switching fields was pretty cool! if only everything else was a tad more interesting.

☆20240422 y'all cowards didn't even find The End 🤣 and it kinda bothers me because it is very clearly the point of the game! each new epilogue adds just a tiny bit of context but in the end it all ends up tied up really nicely! every normal route is camp as fuck but it's prty self aware, with each consequent playthrough slowly degenerating into something even more absurd and fun. in terms of design it's also really interesting to see how the game railroads you to new routes with each new run but still gives you enough margin to move towards your desired route once you start figuring out how things work. and it even gets meta at times! recommended but please go for a full playthrough!

☆20240414 a sequel to nacah, this time the myst influence is even more obvious and it has a focused story going on and all - it even has fmv scenes with characters handing things out to you! it even manages to be intentionally funny at times. but i think he kinda dropped the ball w this one :(. the updated visuals truly do no favours to it, where readability gets sacrificed in order to attain higher fidelity graphics (still, isles is an updated version so i don't know if this also happened in the original - wanted to play that one but it's not dumped anywhere sadly). the puzzles are also way too point n clicky at times without that much regard for the bible angle the previous one had. the timed minigame is just pain. still, it does have some incredibly inspired moments... the prison scenes left me longing for more of that deliberately alienating design i wasn't expecting to find here! it's too bad mayabin is never coming out... the making of videos are pure gold though, i wish i were him

☆20240411 radirgy means radio allergy :) pretty average shmup which is quite easy once you figure out how to position yourself over enemies and to spam shields. really cool presentation too but you already knew that

☆20240318 my favourite onion games so far :) except for the racial stereotype character lol... but it's pretty cool how they manage to squeeze so much out of the genghiskhan(?)/flappybird formula. i'd recommend playing in short bursts and not grind too much for the special boss characters, but the rng can still be a pain even then!

☆20240316 silly lain dance. didn't understand the mechanics/strategy behind the shooting minigame but hey i beat it

☆20240308 i like how stupid the ai is. i wish you could play this with a friend. def style over substance but not a bad thing

☆20240306 surprisingly solid for a christian myst clone made by one dude! like it taught me how to use a bible and its game loop is pretty well thought out. it suffers from some rushed choices in term of presentation but that only makes it more endearing. i really liked the midi music. i missed a lil bit of story/better integration of its puzzle mechanics within the world (though they def manage to make you link concepts from the bible in yr mind), which is something i really like to see in myst likes.

☆20240305 oh i'm sad there's seemingly so little info online about what seemed to be a pretty important game for its time! this got translated to so many languages is unreal, and it was a little bit hard to find a working english-language copy. but it's really really good! the way the hand-drawn backgrounds contrasts with the crispy fmv for the humans and the cool as hell 90s cgi makes it one of my favourite visual styles in a game ever. the author truly loved stories and its characters and you know i'm a sucker for pieces that just *get* it. it just makes me so sad how forgotten this is, damn it's kinda like girls' media just tend to be ignored over time for some reason no matter how big their numbers of copies sold

☆20240304 i thought i was gonna vibe more w this than with ghosts but it tries to include too many different types of urban legends and there's no christopher lee in it sooo anywho. the skeptic vs truther angle is lost which i also didn't like! and it really does not get into detail at all (albeit i'd admit ghosts could get way too redundant at times)...i found myself looking up the wikipedia pages for many of the mysteries touched upon which is cool but i can't help but think that probably wasn't as ideal in the mid 90s... the x-files vibe with the british workbook listening practice narrator voice didn't match too well i think. the notes about the devs being happy about their new studio were really cute, and they were already advertising a new game about ants in the manual for this, but i do not think it ever got released, which makes me really sad.

☆20240301 i wasn't expecting this kind of puzzle game at all! it gets hard hard. i love dream themes in my games and this one definitely managed to capture how dream mechanics work without going into the weird/bizarre like many works out there, which i found to be a pretty fresh take. and i loved how the town also worked as a reflection of a child's psyche.... it's also hard to find stories about parents divorcing from the kid and their friends' pov so i really appreciated this. addie's quest can drag on for a bit but the way everything gets resolved at the end truly elevates the whole experience... i thought it was interesting to see sony produce this type of thing nearing the end of the playstation's life, and seeing that the puzzles are actually in english and how it has no voiceovers it's interesting that it wasn't localized, but thankfully we have a really charming fantran now! i like when she says jeepers :). i wish more people outside of japan would play this.

☆20240226 i love my girls but i'm glad it's over over OVER now. i definitely hated the new alien wars angle so i'm gonna pretend i didn't see it. hinamizawa bus stop was pretty interesting though, it's crazy to think how such a small theatre drama could become a +100hr piece even after being rejected at first, like you gotta give ryukishi props for not giving up. the dev rooms were really insightful too! i just love hearing about what makes devs tick...

☆20240221 i'm so happy we can emulate epoch's cassette vision now! i spent a whole day manually formatting the games' sprites into the emulator's code with a friend but it was worth it. yosaku stands out as one of the more unique games for the console even though it is an unauthorized copy of an earlier snk arcade game which is considered lost for now. all in all it is pretty fun to play, and i like how it plays the yosaku enka song :) i also played the other games for a bit, but i couldn't truly understand the sports ones nor monster block. elevator panic and astro command were highlights too, even if the former's jumps were particularly finicky

☆20240220 played both mac and dos version and i'd recommend going w mac, mouse controls are so much better for interface-based games such as this one. it's pretty good, it took me a while to win the game and made me compromise my own ideas at times so i could comply with what was promised at the start of my term... trying to manage my country's relations with the two blocs was esp interesting. this type of game makes me think of the... difference in maturity? between console games and computer games in the same era. which makes sense considering their userbases and the categorization of consoles as toys, you know! but it's still such a stark contrast...

☆20240217 NOT a glorified wallpaper...! i mean it's kinda that but it also has a pretty interesting layer of realistic simulation on top, with some confusing systems at play esp if you're not good w japanese, but super interesting nonetheless. the small amount of options when it comes to fish/customization saddened me, and after a look at my manual i realized this was an append disc-based product since they already tease the angel fish (not included w the main release) in the last page, which would be included w the first append... i found that to be a bit disappointing tbh, but thankfully it's 2024 and i can simply download those off the interweb. it's pretty relaxing to have it running on the side, and captures the aquarium feeling quite well...

☆20240216 played this because a real 1999 game being based off the y2k problem seemed p interesting but this is probably one of the most rushed games in terms of content i have ever played (though it's not too buggy so props 2 the devs for being able to finish the product in time). the runtime is pretty damn short and most of interactable objects in the world only prompt the same annoying and overly long response from the super rude asshole protagonist (what was wrong w him??). the dialogues are too long and say nothing most of the time? the original idea feels wasted as well, like this is the most straightforward point n click ever and doesn't do anything with the concept apart from ooo machine got crazy (and not even like anything relevant on a global scale, it's just some dude on a mansion???). also the mc looks like the virgin walk meme. not the good kind of kusoge i'm afraid

☆20240210 another synergy-produced cd-rom, this time with hiroyuki miura as the director (who was a visual/3d artist in refixion, l-zone (my beloved <3) and tetsujin). i found the usual point n click ordeal to mix quite well with the real time item-oriented strategy combat, but the experience is so streamlined that i don't feel like it truly takes advantage of the pnc part - i kept thinking how fun it could've been that you could return to a difficult battle with new objects to experiment with, but the game only ever lets you continue after every necessary item has been picked... it's also way too short and ends on a cliffhanger, which is made worse by the fact that two sequels were produced, but not translated into english! oh well

☆20240209 imagine the look on my face when i randomly downloaded an iso of some shovelwarey edutainment title and got greeted by christopher lee lmao... his narration is great, the art is very good and i appreciate how they give some lore to the glorified encyclopedia that is the house. however... the game makes us believe that we're going to find contrasting opinions wrt ghosts being fake/real, but it is too biased towards the later with only one true skeptic in the group of ~experts~ that got interviewed. which is pretty funny considering the fakeness of the stories being told being quite clear - the more information they gave me about the einfield poltergeist case the more convinced i got that it was all staged. moreover, i would've appreciated that the original stories for the house did a lil more than being non interactive slideshows with lee's voice on top. the inclusion of the ghost encyclopedia was a nice touch, and i found the overt britishness of it all to be quite charming...

☆20240207 i'm not the biggest dragon's lair-like fan but i gotta say this might be one of the better ones. the simplicity of the qte-based design works surprisingly well w the illusion of maneuvering a car, i found myself predicting what the next prompt would be according to what was going on @ the fmv, which cannot be said about many other games in this style! plus its timing windows are not too strict, so it's all in all pretty affordable difficulty-wise. it still suffers from the repetitiveness that comes with the genre, but i still had a fun time with it.

☆20240129 the power-up system is pretty novel but it can also be pretty hit or miss since blindly picking them can screw you over by making you miss a giga ball or a shield, but it also adds this layer of strategy to it by having some levels where certain powerups can prove to be a nuisance. sadly it gets too repetitive when they start running out of ideas for the stages. it took me a while to realize why the first girl you play against looked so familiar!

☆20240128 rare 90s shmup with the right amount of challenge that still manages to be pretty fun. super cool presentation that genuinely made me go :0 at the sight of some of its effects that idk how they managed to pull off.

☆20240127 fascinating. dunno what i expected but it tackles so much at once and pulls it off so well and manages to keep it all cohesive and i just love this, it changed my outlook in life. genuinely made me feel like i was having a one on one conversation with its dev, like i could truly understand where they were coming from, the thought process they had while working on their project... i cried so much in a good way. it's a passionate love letter to the medium and to fiction and to their characters and to creators and to players and to their own stories alike. it reinforces the fact that pure enough hearts can touch upon others' by simply not being afraid to expose their soul, an idea that keeps me going.

☆20240123 needy girl overdose's 1st fandisc. the presentation is fun and the minigames are what it says on the tin, with the amechan visual novel being the highlight. this vn, though super short, lets us see more of ame as her own character than her shallow representation as yr quirky menhera gf in the original game... it left me with some thoughts on the subject about how ~you will never be her~ because she is, after all, still an unattainable videogame character wrote by men for you to project into, and the self-awareness of it all

☆20240118 it is way too simple and easy and repetitive. once you manage to dodge/defeat each enemy type there's no difficulty in it at all. i wonder how hideki kamiya-san managed to get the guiness record for this considering how boring it gets, with it being more of a demonstration of patience than of skills i'd say. it's still fun for a while though, with most of its charm being around its visual style, with the froggy powerup probably being the most memorable thing in this.

☆20240112 1cc'd, didn't get the best ending still. it's not too difficult but i wish i was smart enough to fully exploit the combo system. story is way too edgy but i don't really mind that. the little setpieces and and hidden secrets were a lot of fun to find too, esp with everything going on at the same time!

☆20240111 it's truly impressive it is ville kallio's first foray into gamedev afaik, like he GETS it. hats off for going with an aesthetic usually only seen as alt games' visuals and turn it into a more conventional game genre but not without its quirks, it's also pretty wack and revolting and alienating in its game design thankfully! like you can tell this is an immersive sim inspired by deus ex's mine stacking but amped up to the max. it's pretty cool.

☆20240104 it's sokoban! it's amazing how so many modern titles could take so much from this seemingly simple puzzle game made by a single hobbyist in the early 80s. sadly there's so many weird decisions in this one, with the limited continues in a trial and error-based game being the most glaring issue... but it gets worse. around the middle of the game they suddenly throw in a new mechanic where you have to pixel hunt blocks to break so you can solve the puzzle, which also make them way easier but also even more tedious to navigate. i don't think they used said mechanic again in any of the following games so at least they realized it wasn't a good feature i guess!

☆20240102 pretty solid all around and rly novel control scheme if you play with touch controls, which i recommend doing! apart from that it doesn't bring much new to the table though, but it's pretty fun. dunno about the antivaxxer valensia lyrics tho

☆20240101 completely obliterated my pc :( it's not what i usually play but it was very good. having the player look out real closely for anomalies while building up a jumpscare that might never come works great.