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fanart i made of the scrapped pokemon “komari”

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i wannd to join the trend. *joke redacted from everyone taking it too seriously*

this is westcoast Norwegian Miku. Behold

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53. Somerville

Release: 2021, PC/Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S Beaten: November 12th, Xbox Series S (Game Pass) Playtime: 3h 45m

Did not care for this one. It was produced in part by someone who I greatly respect for his involvement with Limbo, one of my favorite games, but Somerville is just... not very good. It's not horrible, but it's far from great. It's confusing, obtuse, and--dare I say--feels somewhat pretentious. But it is a very pretty game. Visually, it is composed really well. It feels very interesting and cinematic when it's not terribly boring.

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oh..... I interrupted.

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52. Webfishing

Release: 2024, PC Beaten: November 19th, PC (Steam) Playtime: 37h 6m

I put more hours into this 5 dollar game than I do into most 60 dollar games. I don't tend to judge games by the metric of the time they demand, and Webfishing isn't really a game that asks to be "beaten," but I did sink time and "beat" the game (disclaimer: I'm not done with it), so I'm just looking at that amount of time and realizing how much value I got out of such a simple concept.

For the uninitiated, Webfishing is a game where you go fishing and interact with players on the web. It's more of a chatroom than it is a game, but it is still a game, and features game-y elements which can either be embraced or mostly ignored. And there's not much else to it. You fish, sell fish, upgrade your fishing capabilities, and sell more fish. You buy role-play items like cosmetics and toys. And you press G to meow (very important).

A lot of people are hyped for the potential of large content updates, but I think the game doesn't really need major additions to continue being enjoyable. I mean, I would love those things, but the heart of the game is already here, and it's already very solid. And wanting for more kind of detracts from that fact. It's worth the five bucks.

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how the genie looks at my when my third wish is a third global castration event

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52 days ‘til Pickles

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the sappholopods

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51. Clickolding

Release: 2024, PC Beaten: October 31st, PC (Steam) Playtime: 58m

I think it would be really easy to consider this game an extended, interactive joke. It's a cuck joke. The premise is absurd and it is not difficult to engage with that premise as something you're supposed to laugh at. Comedy-horror, maybe.

But I feel like you would be doing a disservice to yourself if you engaged with the game as exclusively a 58-minute bit. I'm not attempting to claim that the game is high art, nor that it isn't, at least partially, a "joke game." I'm just saying that the game is doing something unique, and I think it has things to say, or at least has questions to pose which have different answers depending on the player.

When you're presented with a simple premise and are forced to engage with it for an hour--in this case, the fact that you are clicking--you are also forced to address what it means. You address all the aspects of your situation, everything that changes, and the things that remain the same. The comments being made and the symbolism that could be inferred. How "deep" is the cuckold analogy? Is it a crass joke, or is it a commentary on being perceived, on power dynamics? For me, I'd sort of consider the position of a cuckold as one who is denied power, but this game flips that perception. Now, the one being watched is the helpless one. But is that really true? At the end of the game, how much control were you ever genuinely denied? Even with tension and fear, you were still the one clicking.

I feel like, in an irony-poisoned world, it's hard to engage with weird art genuinely. It's so much easier to laugh at absurdity rather than to confront what it's saying. "Cuckolding" is a concept that has been reduced to a meme, or nothing more than a derogatory way of viewing a person. But there's something interesting to it, I think. I'm not going to explore kink and what it means, nor do I think this game particularly demands or suggests an exploration of that concept, but the game is a lesson to me in how we can have a completely different experience with a piece of media if we abandon our biases, our inhibitions, our insecurities and immaturity, and instead just let the experience play out on its own terms and put an honest effort into exploring the themes it presents.

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happy halloween and happy birthday to the best jerma video

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50. Wilmot Works It Out

Release: 2024, PC Beaten: October 25th, PC/Steam Deck Playtime: 6h 9m

When Wilmot's Warehouse came out, I was interested in the game, but put off by the idea of frantically getting items for customers in a time limit. The idea of sorting things in a manner intuitive to me was appealing, though. Then this game came along. It follows a similar design ethos to Warehouse, but without any time constraints or scoring or anything like that. Instead, you're organizing and solving jigsaw puzzles.

The game does a few things that make it more than a game where you are literally just putting puzzle pieces together. I mean, you are mostly doing just that, but let me explain. You get delivered parcels that contain puzzle pieces, but the puzzle pieces you receive aren't always for the same set. Sometimes you'll get a piece or two from a set that you'll receive in the next package. Sometimes you'll get pieces for a particular puzzle that you won't even be able to assemble until you've received six separate packages. What makes this even more fun is when you receive a package with pieces from multiple sets that look like they might belong to the same set, but actually are different sets that use similar colors/patterns. And then you have to figure that out while sorting through pieces, and try to group pieces of the same set together in part of your workspace while you solve the ones you have all the pieces for. Receiving the puzzle pieces is, itself, sort of a puzzle. And the controls are nice and intuitive (on PC more so) and allow you to get into a really nice workflow.

The biggest complaint I've seen is that the game doesn't really iterate on itself at all, and that's true, but sometimes puzzle games don't. I think we're used to playing puzzle video games that build on top of a mechanic and introduce new wrinkles throughout their runtime, but like, it can also be okay to just have a game where you solve jigsaw puzzles. I don't play picross games and get frustrated when they don't iterate on themselves. I'm just solving puzzles. In my opinion, Wilmot Works It Out is that type of game. And I'd say it works. It out.

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49. Donut County

Release: 2018, iOS/PC/PS4 Beaten: October 23rd, Xbox Series S (Game Pass) Playtime: 1h 56m

This is a game I played a few times before I started documenting games for media threads and just did a replay of. I feel like it's the perfect length to tell its uniquely cute story with charming writing and a great art direction. And the game concept is so fun that it got ripped off for bad mobile games that are still really popular.

It's one of those games that is still fun to revisit even after playing it several times. I mentioned that it's the perfect length for its story, which is true, it's a tight narrative that unfolds like a good episode of a cartoon, but it's also the perfect length for a game that uses a simple concept and then iterates on it a few times without overstaying its welcome. I'm almost left wanting more, but most importantly, I'm not left feeling like my time was wasted.

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Quoll

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gupitaro line stickers

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48. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Release: 2024, Switch Beaten: October 18th, Switch Playtime: 27h 40m

One of my favorite games from this year. Really great story and art, interesting character design and development, fun an innovative gameplay (with some flaws), enjoyable to navigate and explore. I just really liked it. I don't feel like the gripes I have with the game at all outweigh how enjoyable the overall experience was. If you saw the core gameplay for this game and it completely disinterested you, you probably will not be won over. But if you've been pretty evenly on the fence, you will probably have a good time with it.

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wanted to see tomato marcille