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Like many Gamerz I have a ridiculous backlog of games I'm going to play Any Day Now, so I've decided to go through and play them in decreasing order of Steam rating until it stops being fun.

And since Steam organises the favourites list in rows of five, let's do the first five!

20 Somehow Even Smaller Mazes: Collection of mazes which are a mix of silly and genuine challenge. Sequel to 20 Small Mazes and not quite as good, but both are free and I overall had fun even if I had to use a walkthrough for like seven of them.

Flowers -Le volume sur ete-: Soft yuri visual novel about a misanthropic wheelchair using girl and her classmate. Seemed fine but I didn't get into it. I might be in the mood for it one day!

Toem: Absolutely delightful hidden object-y puzzle game about exploring, taking photos, and helping people with their silly problems. Strong rec!

Trombone Champ: Silly rhythm game where you play a trombone. I enjoy this in short bursts from time to time. Not really in my backlog I just like keeping it around to remind me it exists.

A Year of Springs: A really lovely, gentle, short trilogy of visual novels about a group of three young queer female Japanese friends, starting with a trans woman navigating a trip to a hot springs. I played the first game, One Night Hot Springs, a million years ago and loved it and was sure I'd love the other two but my brain was being resistant so I eventually watched a voiced LP on high speed.

I don't know when I'd have gotten around to A Year of Springs or TOEM without this challenge, and am very glad I did.

Been dealing with some real life stress I do Not currently feel like talking about, so instead have some reviews of games I've been distracting myself with.

Puzzle games:
Instant Farmer
Mythmatch
Piczle Cross Story of Seasons
Polimines 2
Librarian: Tidy Up The Arcane Library
LOK Digital

Farming/base building/survival:
Subnautica 2 early access
Fields of Mistria
Timberborn
My Time At Sandrock

Other:
House Flipper

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I kept putting off posting this until I could make it more coherent but it really is just a collection of thoughts, so.

Before I get started, just yesterday I was reminded to check out goatsreadingseacats which I first saw linked before I finished the game and quickly backed away from because it is HELLA SPOILERY.

So far I've just read the parts summarised in these google docs: Episode 1 and Episode 2, while I didn't agree with all of their takes they brought up a bunch of thoughtful analysis I hadn't considered.

Chances are I will have EVEN MORE THOUGHTS later but I can always make another post.

Masterlist and content warnings.


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THE END AT LAST OMG.

I had very mixed feelings about this episode, but did cry at the end.

Masterlist.

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Masterlist.

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Masterlist and content notes.

This marks the end of the "questions" arc. In theory, the reader now has all the clues required to figure out what happened, and why.

I didn't rewatch much of this one either, but because so much of it is emotionally devastating!

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I'm working on a fic where Episode 2 plays a specific part, so went into it in more detail.

Masterlist and content notes.

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My initial review.

Overall, I really liked it!

It continued to be a sprawling, layered, long-winded but fascinating mess to the end. But some of my favourite characters and perspectives showed up quite late, and made me look back a more positively on some earlier sections of the story, so my opinion of it now is higher than it was in my last review, if still kinda mixed.

The ending made me cry in a cathartic way, and I am left with a bunch of fun chewy thoughts about stories in general and possible fanfic in particular.

Hella content warnings though, I had to stop at one point because it was skirting very close to triggering me, and then spoiled myself for the next little bit of plot to see if it was going to get Too Dark (which it didn't)

Content notes for the game, which are both possibly triggering themselves and also spoilery

Parental abuse, suicide, rape, incest, sympathetic portrayal of fascists, gore, torture, sexy immortal young girls (real young girls are not sexualised but do get joke flirted with), major character death, probably other things.

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Masterlist.

Some pretty intense scenes of children experiencing bullying and abuse in this Episode, it was well handled but distressing enough that I went through some sections at 2x speed.

This is only the a partial post because I very suddenly felt like stopping my summaries and working on my Theory instead, and want to post this part while it's fresh in my head.

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