Half Assed Reviews

[alias_sqbr]

I have been SUPER sore lately which means I've had to put pretty much all creative things on hold and I am BORED. So here, have some half assed reviews off the top of my head.

Squeakross, Roots of Pacha, Silksong, Chants of Sennar, Blue Prince, A Little to the Left

KPop Demon Hunters

The Murderbot Diaries


Games:

Squeakross: Picross-style logic puzzles which unlock cute and often queer-themed accessories/furniture for a cute customisable rat. A little indie-game janky but a labour of love (I follow the dev on bluesky and they LOVE rats), and fun if you're into this sort of thing.

Roots of Pacha: Farming sim set in a fictionalised pre-historic culture, like a fluffier queerer Stardew Valley with megafauna. Nothing ground-breaking, and I have to wonder how indigenous people feel about the well meaning but shallow depiction of cultures inspired by theirs, but fun for what it is.

Silksong: Sequel to Hollow Knight. Challenging but beautiful and evocative metroidvania (2D platformer+fighting) about a spiderish bug figuring out why she was kidnapped by a cult of bugs from a cursed and crumbling Citadel. I am watching this via Youtube playthroughs and having a great time! I hear it's fun for people who like actually playing this kind of game, too.

Chants of Sennar: What WOULD HAVE BEEN a fun point and click game about learning various fictional languages and helping people in a divided city, but was ruined for me by scattered unskippable and difficult timed puzzles. I watched a let's play and enjoyed it but even they struggled.

Blue Prince: Roguelike puzzle game: every day you explore a limited number of semi-random rooms in a house, unlocking secrets and more abilities as you go. Fun at first but eventually frustrating, even with mods to let me explore more rooms per day, the mechanic gets old and the plot (such as it is) gets stretched pretty thin and doesn't really go anywhere.

A Little to the Left: Various cute little puzzle games. Some were fun but some were annoying and it all got repetitive after a while.

Movie:

KPop Demon Hunters: Fun but not very deep "Korean girl group are magical girls who hunt demons" 3d animated movie, I saw someone describe it as a bunch of fun music videos and yeah.

Books:

The Murderbot Diaries: I actually read them all at last! They were good! Recced for anyone interested in relatively light and readable but thoughtful space opera about an agender grumpy human/robot hybrid. Books 2 and 3 annoyed me a bit, I am getting a sense for the tricks Martha Wells uses to make her protagonists feel Special and sometimes they're annoyingly predictable, but the later ones didn't have that problem. Books 5 and 7 are basically one story while book 6 is a flashback set just before book 5, so personally I feel like it would make more sense to read them in the order 6, 5, 7.

Comments

[pauraque]

By timed puzzles in Chants of Sennaar do you mean the stealth sections where you have to get past the guards? Those were okay for me but I can see how they wouldn't work for everyone. I think it's generally not a good idea for point-and-click games to mix in more action oriented mechanics. It often clashes with the tone and/or puts off players who play point-and-clicks specifically because they're not action games.

[alias_sqbr]

Yep, I just could not get the timing right. And yeah, agreed, I don't mind not being able to play games where that sort of thing is the whole point, but its annoying when its a minor part of a game I otherwise enjoy.