after playing and loving Rescue Team, i was super excited to find out there was going to be another Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game. i forcibly dragged my mum into the local game store to show it to her, insisting "this is the game i want. if you get me anything for Christmas, get me this." i spent the lead-up to Christmas eyeing the presents under the tree, hoping that one of them was the size and shape of a DS game -- and on Christmas day i unwrapped my very own copy of PMD: Explorers of Time.

i immediately fired it up, much to my parents' chagrin -- Nana had gotten us kids a minibike for Christmas, and they were setting it up in the driveway and wanted me to join in. instead i sat in the front doorway, DS in hand as i completed the personality quiz, insisting that i needed to find out what Pokémon i was. the personality quiz told me i was 'naive', which meant that a Pokémon like me... would be a Skitty! and so began the adventures of Exploration Team Chirika.

the entirety of my summer holidays that year were spent playing Explorers, and i spent so much time inside that any time i went outside my eyes would hurt (our flat did not get a lot of natural sunlight). unfortunately, in my excitement to play Explorers, i'd spent many months reading a plot-heavy GameFAQs walkthrough, and so knew the entire story before i ever began playing. i have never regretted anything so much in my life; Explorers has some stunning plot twists that i will never ever know how i would have reacted to, and i wish i could erase my memory of the game to replay it blind.

the following year, Explorers of Sky came out while i was on a family holiday to Australia. my parents had given me some spending money, which i wisely invested in a copy of Explorers of Sky, and any moment of free time we had was spent embarking on an adventure with my all-new exploration team (Vulpix and Turtwig). 11-year-old me knew her priorities. i still vividly remember sitting on a train to Brisbane getting my ass absolutely kicked by the first special episode :')

Explorers of Sky is absolutely the definitive edition of the Explorers game, and it's also the best game in the whole entire world. there's a reason why fans speak so highly of it -- it takes the already-incredible story of the baseline Explorers games and expands on it further through the addition of five 'Special Episodes'; self-contained stories starring the side characters of the game. Special Episode 5: In The Future of Darkness alone is worth playing Sky for; it's such a deep and poignant story that still sticks with me all these years later.

though... i never actually played Special Episode 5 for myself. at least, not for many, many years. my first, and for a long time only, interaction with it was on my 12th birthday; my best friend and i squashed onto the couch and i watched her play through it while we ate toast and mused about the fact that in only two short weeks i would have a new baby sibling. it wasn't until many years later, in my first year of uni, when i decided that it was about time that i play through it for myself. i stayed up way later than i should have and bawled my fucking eyes out; even as an adult PMD will never fail to make me cry :'')

Pokémon Platinum my beloved ... there are very few -- if any -- games i have put as much time into as Pokémon Platinum. to this day it remains my favourite mainline Pokémon game -- though i'd previously played the Gen 3 games, Platinum was the game that took my enjoyment of Pokémon and turned it into a full-blown obsession.

i racked up hundreds of hours in Platinum playing and replaying it. it was the first time a video game had been a widespread source of friendship and connection: my friends and i would bring our DSs to hangouts and spend hours running around in the underground together, wifi battling, and egg trading. for whatever reason my DS couldn't connect to the wifi at my house, so it was always a treat to visit my best friend and attend the wifi plaza together :3

Platinum was also the point where i started engaging deeper with the mechanics of the Pokémon games. i got really into EV/IV training, breeding, and incorporating aspects of competitive battling into my in-game teams. i would spend HOURS scrolling the Serebii.net forums each night on my DSi, absorbing anything and everything i could about competitive battling. though i don't go anywhere near as hard on competitive battling these days (since i am no longer an 11-year-old with no social life and endless free time), i'm glad i went through that phase because it gave me a much deeper appreciation of Pokémon as a game series.

i love Sinnoh so, so much you guys. i love how much of the game is steeped in mythology and lore with the stories of the legendaries and the creation of the Sinnoh region; i love the Pokémon designs; i love the region and city designs; i love the music. Pokémon DPPT music goes so fucking hard my god. other generations wish they could do it the way that DPPT does it.

though i've done playthroughs with all three of the starters, i am ultimately a Piplup girlie until i die :')

for more in-depth thoughts about 999, visit my dedicated page here!

i wanted to play 999 for years before i ever got the chance to. in hindsight it's probably for the best that i didn't get to play it for a while; it made me insane enough as an adult, it would have made me absolutely UNHINGED at 13.

i don't know what exactly it was that finally convinced me to bite the bullet and play it, just tha i had returned home for the summer after my first year of uni and emulated it on my laptop. i was so determined to avoid spoilers that i initially refused to look up an ending guide ... but i quickly changed my mind when i accidentally got the Sub ending twice in a row. (while the Sub ending is a fantastic ending, and easily my favourite of the standard endings, i was uhhhh Really Irate at the fact that i'd sunk several hours into getting the exact same ending that didn't further explain the mysteries raised)

i enjoyed 999 a regular amount up until i reached the Safe ending. oh my GOD the Safe ending is absolutely cooked; i was HOOKED. despite the fact that it was the early hours of the morning, i immediately fired up a fresh file, determined to reach the True ending before i went to bed. by the time the credits finally rolled, the sun was rising and my head was spinning. exhausted, i immediately tracked down a copy of the sequel online and purchased it before passing out.

though i bought VLR immediately upon finishing 999, i actually didn't wind up playing it for several years. then COVID hit. with the entire country in lockdown and endless free time that i somehow had to fill, i found myself sitting down and committing to playing through Virtue's Last Reward.

...yeah. if you've played it, you'll know. very early on, one of the main plot points introduced is about a never-before-seen virus spreading rapidly across the globe that scientists can't find a cure for. it hit a little toooo close to home for comfort, so i immediately shelved the game and didn't get around to finishing it until the following summer.

highly controversial opinion, but VLR is asily my least favourite game in the Zero Escape series. while it's still a good game, it just doesn't hit my interests in the way that 999 and ZtD do. i tend to suffer from a case of second-installment disillusionment, especially in the case of trilogies -- the second entries generally fail to captivate me anywhere near as much as the OG installment did, and that holds true for VLR.

999 was an incredibly compelling premise that is further strengthened by a solid narrative, characters whose presence in said narrative is justified, and a solid atmosphere. VLR lacks all of that. i found the facility of the game's setting incredibly bland (visually, but also far less compelling narratively than 999's sinking titanic); many of the cast felt like they were there just because; and i didn't enjoy the puzzles and the game mechanics nearly as much as i did 999's. (the one exception being the AB Game, which is an incredibly cool means of giving the player agency over the game's multiple branching timelines.)

ultimately though, the thing i disliked the most about VLR was that the game was 40-odd hours of what amounted to set up for a sequel. i'm not gonna talk about ZtD here, neither in terms of development nor its effectiveness in concluding the plot threads introduced at the climax of VLR, because 1) that's its own conversation and 2) VLR ought to be evaluated on the basis of the game as a standalone entity. what i will say is that one of my favourite things about 999 (and which i think it did particularly well) was that it was a cohesive standalone story -- so it was incredibly frustrating to invest time into unravelling the mysteries of the VLR, only to be told "psyche! it's all part of a bigger plot that we're just Not gonna resolve in-game!" it felt like a slap in the face, tbh. (also, i am stupid and found the puzzles hard.)

for all my complaints, VLR is a fine game? it's fine. it definitely has its strengths, and it's widely considered one of the better entries in the Zero Escape series, so if you enjoyed 999 i'd still recommend playing it! i'm just a contrarian is all lmfao :')

i never intended to play Zero Time Dilemma. i'd heard a lot of negative things about ZTD online, watched a 45-minute recap of the game's plot that only left me more confused, and decided i was satisfied.

fast-forward 6 months and i'm living with my best friend, a journalist for our university's student magazine who interviewed me as a part of an article on 'pandemic gaming', as i'd spent the 2020 lockdown playing Virtue's Last Reward. shortly afterwards we wound up downloading and playing Zero Time Dilemma together -- she'd sit on a beanbag in my room, and we'd work on the puzzles together and decide which options to choose during the Decision segments. it. was. a. TRIP.

i unironically love ZTD. Mr Uchikoshi's Wild Ride. a game that has to be experienced to be believed. Betty still haunts my nightmares :')

the OG puzzle-solving adventure !!! i first heard about this game when an artist i followed on deviantART posted a (spoiler-free) reaction to the game's ending, and my curiosity was piqued. i refused to just look up the ending though, and instead asked for the game for Christmas. come Christmas day, my poor family had to deal with me intermittently reading out various puzzles from the game to see if they were able to solve them. we spent over an hour scratching our heads over 'The Camera and the Case', which unilaterally baffled and infuriated us all :')

i talk a lot about formative games, and Professor Layton and the Curious Village is no exception. it was formative for me in a very different sense, however. i was 11 when i first played Curious Village, and spent the next handful of years obsessively playing and replaying the games in the series. i spent hours of my tweenage years shifting my thinking to approach the game's many logic puzzles from a different perspective, and -- though there's no definitive way to prove this -- i think it fundamentally altered the way that i think and problem solve. the game consistently encourages if not outright requires lateral thinking skills, and to this day it's a skill that i've been complimented on. i am very, very good at dingbat puzzles at the local pub quiz lmao :')

a rumour abounds about a mysterious box that is said to kill anyone who opens it. when Layton's colleague Andrew Schrader falls victim to the so-called 'Pandora's Box', Layton and Luke travel to its town of origin, Folsense, to uncover the truth behind its existence.

Folsense is one of the coolest areas in the entire series. the vibes ? IMMACULATE. fanastic antagonist, bittersweet ending. also includes a very sexy swordfight.

Professor Layton and Pandora's Box strikes a wonderful balance between the strong atmosphere and quirky vibes of the original game, whilst solidifying what would go on the become the foundations of the series in later games. it also has some of the coolest puzzles in the series conceptually -- the game came with a paper train ticket that has to be physically manipulated in order to solve one of the in-game puzzles. plus, one of -- if not the -- final puzzles has you solving the puzzle of the titular Pandora's Box in order to open it and uncover the truth behind it.

easily the best game in the whole entire series. Professor Layton and Luke return for their biggest mystery yet -- when they receive a letter from Luke 10 years in the future, they travel to Future London to stop Future Layton terrorising the city, in an investigation that brings back the ghosts of Layton's past.

Lost Future struck the best balance of puzzles in the series, imo; they're challenging without being headache-inducingly difficult. it also has such an incredible story that finally delves into some of the mysteries of our favourite puzzle-solving professor's past.

i got this game for Christmas the year it came out, and played through it in 3 days flat. every waking moment was spent with my DS glued to my hand; i vividly remember draping myself over the seats in a shoe store, solving puzzles while my mum shopped. the night before i left for summer camp i was sat in the bottom corner of the stairwell, sobbing while i played through the ending. yes i am crying over a game about puzzles

everybody thinks that a game about lawyers can't be fun until you play the game about lawyers. is there any feeling better than the adrenaline hit of hearing Cornered after correctly presenting a piece of evidence? i think not.

the first game in the Phoenix Wright trilogy, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has you play as rookie lawyer Phoenix Wright, a defence attorney who believes wholeheartedly in the innocence of his clients and fights to prove that innocence in a court of law. gameplay is split into two distinct parts: investigation, a point-and-click adventure in which you gather evidence and question people; and trial, where you cross-examine witnesses in court, using your gathered evidence to point out contradictions and ultimately uncover the truth behind the crime.

don't let the fact that Ace Attorney is a game about lawyers fool you -- these are not games that take themselves seriously. chock-full of puns, quirky characters, and pop-culture references, they're fun and funny even as you're trying to prove who really committed a heinous murder. if you're a fan of Professor Layton, you'll probably like Ace Attorney (and vice versa!)

the sequel to Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Justice for All was the first Ace Attorney game i played -- i'd heard good things about the series, but i was 13 and stupid and couldn't remember what order the trilogy went in, so i picked up JFA and hoped for the best. ...folks, JFA is a rough introduction to the Ace Attorney series. comparative to the first game, the cases were less interesting and the leaps of logic that were required felt unfair. it must have taken me 6+ months to beat the game just because i kept getting stuck at stupid points, and i remember feeling wholly unimpressed with the game up until the final case, which to this day remains one of my favourite in the whole entire trilogy!

my gripes about JFA aside, it does do some things that i did really like. the psyche lock mechanic was super cool, and -- especially now that i've played the rest of the trilogy and have a deeper understanding of the recurring characters and overarching plot -- i really appreciated the ways it factored in characters' motivations and perceived sense of guilt as an influencing force on the narrative.

JFA also introduces Franziska von Karma, whose character i fell in love with almost immediately. while the depths of her character were originally lost on me, having not played the prior game yet, i only grew to appreciate her further upon doing so and understanding her backstory.

i might have kinder thoughts about JFA nowadays because, as i said, i was 13 and stupid when i played it. unfortunately i've just never really felt the desire to lmfao :')

an INCREDIBLE conclusion to the Ace Attorney trilogy. it wraps up the characters and plot threads woven throughout the trilogy in suuuuch a satisfying manner -- it absolutely blew me away the first time i played it!

also, you get to play as Mia in a couple of the cases and it goes hard as HELL.

Xenoblade Chronicles my beloved ... for more detailed thoughts, check out my dedicated page here!

the story of how i came to play Xenoblade is quite a cool one, imo. i'd just started watching Chuggaaconroy's LPs in 2014 when he started his playthrough of Xenoblade Chronicles, and i watched maybe the first episode or two before i realised that, fuck, maybe this was a game i really needed to play through and experience for myself. dumb bitch highschool me forgot about the tiny lil detail that i didn't own a fucking Wii -- but then the 3DS port was announced! so i was like okay, i'll get the 3DS version. except it was specifically for the New 3DS, and i only had an original -- so i figured i would wait a bit, save up some money, and grab a New 3DS when i went to upgrade my old one. except, so few (new) games were announced for the New 3DS that i couldn't really justify dropping the ~$300 on an upgrade, and by the time i had the money the Switch was a thing, so i bought one of those instead. second-hand copies of Xenoblade used to be on sale at my local game store aaaall the time, and i cannot count how many times i would have to talk myself out of buying it in hopes of '"one day"' having the appropriate system to play it on.

AND THEN. THE DEFINITIVE EDITION WAS ANNOUNCED. it released shortly after my birthday, and i hoarded my birthday money so that i could pick up a copy on release day. the hunch that 16-year-old me had was 100% correct; i am so so glad that i listened to it because playing through the game for the first time blind was a really special experience :')

i spent, no lie, 6 whole fucking years in anticipation of one day getting to play this game, and it was worth every dang second of the wait.

i first played Xenoblade 2 in September 2020, shortly after beating Xenoblade 1 for the first time. i have... VERY mixed emotions about it. the plot is slow to start and all over the place, especially in the early game. the combat system is SO unnecessarily convoluted, and poorly explained -- if it's explained at all. i put maybe 90 hours into this game all up, and never really understood how to utilise elemental orbs or chain attacks, which is an issue when the combat is designed around them; battles become infinitely longer and more difficult if you can't use them well. the blade gacha / blade switch system was just ... too much for me to wrap my head around (i may be stupid), so i found a couple of blades that i liked early on in the game and stuck with them throughout.

there were just a few too many aspects of Xenoblade 2 that made it frustrating to play for me to fully enjoy my experience with it. i recognise that many of my biggest gripes with the game are a result of the development team being short-staffed and having a rushed development schedule; considering the circumstances they did an excellent job, but at the same time i would call some aspects of the game objectively bad game design. i don't think a player should have to know a game's development conditions in order to understand why parts of the game aren't as good as they could have been.

and yet. Xenoblade 2 has an astounding abundance of heart. the jank and the frustration is worth it for the poignant story that it tells, and when the plot hits by god does it hit. it deals with themes of self-worth and finding one's own place in this world, and to this day no game has ever made me cry as hard as Xenoblade 2. i consider the ending an emotional self-destruct button; i once cried so hard playing it that my flatmate heard me from upstairs and came to make sure i was alright.

i also have a bizarre relationship with this game emotionally, because it inadvertently became my comfort media during a really rough time in my life. (this next bit is self-indulgent personal shit; CW for mentions of cancer and death)

i was playing through the end of Chapter 6 when my dad called to tell me that my grandmother was in hospital with cancer; they'd found five tumours in her lungs and seven in her brain. i had never heard my dad so distraught before. i called my friends, who came over to support me, but i didn't know how to be comforted so i just fired up Xenoblade 2 again to show them the battle announcer voice.

as spring melted into summer, my nan got worse. her cancer was terminal; she was moved from hospital to hospice. we visited her almost every day over the course of the summer, and watching her condition deteriorate towards the inevitable was one of the most difficult things i've ever had to do. i would do it again in a heartbeat.

the afternoon she died, my dad walked into my room and just Looked at me, and i knew. i borrowed my sister's bike and went for a ride through the streets of my small town; it was late afternoon at the height of summer, and the golden light streaming through the trees made the world feel more peaceful than it had any right to be. i listened to the title theme of Xenoblade 2, Where We Used To Be on repeat for the entirety of that bike ride; later, any time i wanted to process my grief about my nan, i would listen to that song. it's such a beautiful, melancholy piece, and to this day i cannot hear it without thinking of her.

for more in-depth thoughts, check out my dedicated Xenoblade 3 page here!

the period between Xenoblade 3's announcement and release was INSANE. nobody was expecting it to be announced when it was; from the very first lines of its trailer in the Nintendo Direct, my brain went "British people? -> XENOBLADE", and i screamed so loud that my mum came out of her office to check that i was okay lmao :'') the hype of its announcement was surpassed perhaps only by the announcement a couple months later that the game's release date had been pushed up by some months. y'all, the fandom was eating WELL.

the day that Xenoblade 3 came out, i'd snatched only a few hours' sleep -- i probably seemed a little feral to the poor game store employee who sold me my copy lmao :') i'd happened to arrive right as she was taking down the display they'd had up; i asked if i could have it and though she seemed a little bewildered she gave it to me and now it's hanging on my wall !!

Xenoblade 3 was the installment that nobody expected and everybody longed for. it's a trilogy ending done right. it connects the stories of Xenoblade 1 & 2 in such a definitive and satisfying manner, and (along with the associated DLC, Future Connected) concludes the overarching story beautifully. the gameplay is just so polished, too -- the quality-of-life changes introduced are just. chef's kiss !!!

TWEWY ... is a game that means a lot to me. i was its Exact target audience: 14, fresh out of my first year of high school, and misanthropic as hell. i'd been bullied quite terribly, and held a lot of disdain for my peers at least in part due to the bullying. and when i first played it, i saw a lot of myself in Neku (derogatory). he was an asshole! i was an asshole! but seeing the impact his behaviour had on others, and the way he was capable of change throughout the course of the game gave me the motivation that if he could change, then i could change too. and i did. and it wasn't easy, and it took a hell of a lot longer than three weeks, but i slowly learned how to be a friendlier, more compassionate, more open person. i learnt what it felt like to have friends for the first time in my life. it is no understatement to say that i would not be the person i am today if i had not played TWEWY all those years ago.

TWEWY is one of, if not the coolest games of the DS era. taking place in modern-day Shibuya, it follows the story of 15-year-old Neku, who wakes up with no memories and is told he's playing the Reapers Game -- and the prize is his life. though he hates people, and the world, he's forced to learn to cooperate with others if he's ever going to survive. the game is absolutely oozing with style, and the combat system is unique in that it takes place over both screens of the DS -- you control Neku via the touch screen, while simultaneously controlling his partner on the top screen via button controls. it's frenetic and fast-paced and definitely has a learning curve, but it's an absolute joy once it finally clicks.

though rare and niche during its initial run, popularity and accessibility of TWEWY skyrocketed in 2018 with the release of Final Remix, the Switch port. unfortunately, porting a dual-screen combat system to a single-screen console is uhhhh Difficult, and the Switch port loses a lot of its challenge (in gameplay) and impact (thematically) because of it. while i'd wholeheartedly recommend the OG DS version over the Switch port, TWEWY is worthwhile playing in whatever format is available to you. check it out -- you won't regret it.

i got this for Christmas 2022. i was a little nervous about playing it, because on the surface it really didn't seem like my type of game -- i'm not an action-RPG player, and i'm generally not a big fan of robots. but, a lot of my friends who have similar taste in games as me loved it, so i decided to give it a go ... and it was so, so worth it.

humanity has fled to he moon following an alien invasion. YoRHA units 2B and 9S fight in a proxy war between the humanity-created Androids, and the alien-created Machines, in an effort to reclaim Earth for humanity.

Nier: Automata plays with your expectations of what a video game can and should be. it's deep and philosophical and an absolute melting pot of video game genres. calling it an action-RPG is, while not inaccurate, also nowhere near representative of the gameplay. there's hack-n-slash. there's bullet hell. there's shoot-em-ups. there's platforming. there's visual novel segments. it's an absolute gesamtkuntswerk of a video game. the boss fights are -- and i do not use this word lightly -- epic. in any other game, the first boss fight -- where you beat up a giant mech with its own arm would have been the final fight. also, movement and combat is SLICK. it's so much fun just to run around in!

the game also has five official endings, A - E, all of which i highly, highly recommend getting. it's a testament to the quality of the game's storytelling that A ending feels like a prologue, despite being a cohesive standalone story in its own right. E ending made me absolutely bawl my eyes out, and it will probably do the same to you.

(a word of caution: when you decide to go for E ending, MAKE SURE your game / console is connected to the internet. trust me on this.)

another game that i haven't actually beaten. Octopath Traveller is one of those games that i pick up once every few months and play obsessively for a while. currently, i've finished the final chapters of some of the characters, and am systematically working my way through the final chapters of the rest of the cast.

Octopath is truly a delight to play. it's visually gorgeous, and the music is catchy as all hell. more games with the HD-2D style pLEASE, it's so so pretty to look at (and an absolute breath of fresh air in a medium that seems to veer ever-closer to realistic 3D graphics). it's also just... fun. i love how the break/boost system adds a layer of strategy to the battle system, and the job classes + subclasses creates a lot of flexibility in combat so it always feels fresh.

though the level scaling in Octopath is a little whack, and it can get grindy at times as a result, it's overall a super-solid game that simultaneously feels nostalgic and also fresh. i enjoyed my time with this a lot :>

i grew up playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl at my best friend's house. whenever we had a sleepover, we would wait until her parents went to sleep and sneak into the lounge to play Brawl until the early hours of the morning, when we'd sneak back upstairs to pretend like we'd been asleep all night (we got caught once because, while playing the Spear Pillar stage, Dialga jumped into the middle of the arena and scared us so badly we screamed loud enough to wake her parents lmao)

when Ultimate was announced, i went out the next morning and blew half my course-related costs on a Nintendo Switch, and several months later received Ultimate as a Christmas gift. i spent most of the day getting increasingly drunk off of the vodka oranges my nana kept making me, while playing through the game to unlock all the different fighters :')

Smash is my favourite multiplayer game to play with friends, even those who aren't gamers -- we'll do themed rounds like "play as a fighter who looks like your dad" and meme on the characters.

i primarily main Pyra/Mythra, and Wii Fit Trainer before that.

i found this game through a Youtube video and, coincidentally, it happened to be on sale at the time! fun little space RPG where you're an android in a failing body fighting to survive in the space station that has become your refuge. through the dice-based mechanic that determines your actions in a given day, you're forced to make tough choices to balance maintaining your own survival with pursuing various plot threads. i've really enjoyed the storytelling of Citizen Sleeper -- the stories it tells, and the characters at the heart of them. despite being a game about an android on a space station, at its heart Citizen Sleeper is ultimately a very human story.

i haven't actually beaten Citizen Sleeper yet -- though i'm pretty sure i'm close to it -- but i keep meaning to get around to it. maybe one day.

you play as Stella the Spiritfarer who, alongside her cat Daffodil, acts as an attendant to the souls of the recently-departed. sailing throughout the world, you collect their spirits -- each represented by a different animal -- and invite them onto your boat, where you cater to their final requests before finally escorting them to the Everdoor when they're ready to pass on.

a cosy management-sim game, it's one i found myself playing for hours more than i intended to in any given sitting because there was always 'just one more task' to complete. the characters are endearing, the art is simply gorgeous, and it's just. a really enjoyable way to wind down after a stressful day :')

a funky lil indie visual novel . i enjoyed this one a whole lot. it also hit hard as someone with a troubled relationship with her mother.

i am not usually a walking sim girlie, but What Remains of Edith Finch is a masterpiece that everyone should play. an exploration of family; of love and loss and grief; all through incredibly rich setpieces, environmental storytelling, and unique gameplay segments that simultaneously function as mechanisms for character work, giving the player insight into each respective member of the Finch family.

it's also one of those games that found me at the exact time i needed it, i think. the summer my Nan was dying of cancer, i spent a lot of time in my childhood home staying up late and playing video games. i can't even remember how i discovered What Remains of Edith Finch, just that i downloaded it late one night and played the entire thing in a single sitting because i couldn't bring myself to put it down. it had me crying at several points, and after the credits rolled i just sat there in the glow of my fairy lights, taking in the story that i had experienced over the previous handful of hours.

Sea of Stars is absolutely gorgeous and a fun change of pace from the 100-hour JRPGs i normally play. i can't speak to its (albeit clear) homages to old-school JRPGs because i haven't played many of those, but i really enjoyed playing something more simple and straightforward. not being struck with decision paralysis every time i wanted to upgrade my gear felt like a godsend :')

i had a lot of fun with Sea of Stars, i just wish it had been a tad shorter. the pacing kind of fell apart in he third act and the game really started to drag for me, which is a shame because the setting of the third act is super cool! i found myself pushing through the last few hours of the game to get to the end, and the final boss was so anti-climactic that when the credits rolled i went "...wait. that's it?" i know there's a true ending, but by the time i'd reached the regular ending i was so ready to be done with the game that i called it quits there, and tbh i don't think i'll go back and pursue the true ending.

don't let my gripes with the game's pacing/ending fool you, though -- Sea of Stars is a delightful little game that i wholeheartedly enjoyed my time with. it's cute and quirky and well-presented. though it can often be simplistic, that's a strength and not a weakness; what the game does, it consistently does well. the areas are super creative, and damn near every one of them had me going "no, this is my new favourite area!" it's definitely worth a play.

Neon White is SO not my usual type of game that it's not even funny. first-person shooter platformer Gotta Go Fast.

i watched Jacob Alpharad's video where he makes his friends compete in Neon White and it piqued my interest, AND happened to be on sale so i bit the bullet and tried it out.

i had fun with the time i spent with it! the artstyle and overall Vibe reminds me a lot of The World Ends With You. i generally struggle with games that require Fast Reaction Times and real-time combat -- there's a reason why i primarily play turn-based RPGs -- but i'm really enjoying the challenge that comes from playing a different genre of game than usual, and utilising different skills. i'm still building up muscle memory for the controls though, so i have lost a LOT of runs to accidentally switching cards when i wanted to discard them yaaaayyy :')

as of writing, i haven't finished Neon White. i moved on to Cult of the Lamb, and it's been long enough since i last played that i fear my already-shaky skills will once more be nonexistent, so who knows if i'll actually ever beat this one lmao

my best friend convinced me to play Cult of the Lamb by describing it as 'Animal Crossing meets Pokémon Mystery Dungeon'. as always, her game recommendations continue to be stellar.

saved from ritual sacrifice by a shackled god, you play as a lamb leading a cult. being a cult leader has never looked so cute; the game's artstyle is absolutely gorgeous, and all your followers are different animals and woodland creatures. mine are all named after different infectious diseases ; i definitely get a kick out of watching these cute little cats and bees run around with names like 'Rabies' or 'Typhoid Mary'. honestly i love spending time at the petri dish that is my cult and hanging out with all my little guys :3

confession: i couldn’t get into Stardew Valley the first time i played it. your character moved too slowly and time moved too fast for the game to be anything but a stressful experience. i played it for all of five hours, hated the feeling of constantly racing the clock in what was supposed to be a ‘”relaxing”’ game, and dropped it for five years.

at time of writing, my playtime is 105 hours.

Stardew isn’t a perfect game by any means. but it’s probably pretty damn close. it’s often billed as the alternative to Animal Crossing, and for good reason. you’re plonked into a new community filled with little guys that you gradually build relationships with, and it captures that same laid-back vibe where the game can be as chilled out or as intense as you want it to be. where Stardew Valley wins out over Animal Crossing for me (or, AC:NH at the very least) is that Stardew gives you a bunch of silly little tasks to do — i’ve found a lot of joy in having Tasks and Objectives to work towards without having to engage my brain the way the 100-hour JRPGs i usually play require me to do. Stardew Valley’s gameplay loop is mega-addictive; ‘just one more day’ I would tell myself, even in my first, failed attempt to get into it. When I picked it back up again in 2024, this same mantra resulted in me playing for 20 hours straight.

i can’t say exactly when or what made Stardew click for me. but somewhere around Autumn of Year 1, something shifted, and i began to see what other people saw in the game. perhaps it was that i’d scrounged together enough money and resources to begin to automate things on my farm, leaving how i spent my in-game days a choice left up to me, instead of forced upon me by the game.

i also don’t think it’s a coincidence that my re-entry into Stardew Valley coincided with an extremely hectic period in my life. my boyfriend’s birthday, his graduation, related family and celebratory events, and Christmas all hit at once — all while I was preparing for my driving test, wrapping up my voluntary teaching role, and trying to sort my own life out re: gift shopping and holiday plans. many days, coming home to rot in my room and play Stardew for an hour or two was the only reprieve that i had from the non-stop onslaught of social events.

for as much as I love it now, i do wish Stardew Valley was an easier game to get into. the early game is hard — as i mentioned before, you’re constantly racing the clock because you never have enough time or energy to achieve everything you want to in a day, which feels antithetical to its '"relaxing"' nature. many of the controls and in-game mechanics aren’t explained, nor are intuitive to work out. while this is easily solved with a quick Google search, it definitely contributed to why I bounced off of it the first time round. once you get past that early-game wall, though — my god is Stardew a blast. i’m so glad i gave it another shot :’)