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Umineko: When they Cry

2026-05-18T21:49:01Z

I've been watching a Let's Play of the classic, epic Japanese visual novel "Umineko: When they Cry" by Ryukishi07, and am currently up to Episode 5 of 8. I'm quite enjoying it but it's LONG. The LP is 168 episodes which are 30 minutes to two hours long.

I'll try and write a proper review when I'm finally done, since the story keeps reinventing itself, but so far it's a family drama and murder mystery with supernatural elements, which explores events from different angles in ways which cleverly play around with narrative, both from a storytelling perspective and as a way of exploring how people view the world and each other in different ways.

It's very much worth going into unspoiled if you are interested. But content warnings for violence and gore (mostly just text), suicide, child abuse (well written but harrowing), gender essentialism, male gazey character designs and and "joking" perviness (sometimes condoned by the narrative, though it's better about female characters than you might initially assume)

No unambiguous consent issues so far asides from some rape jokes but it feels like the kind of story where that could definitely be a Thing.

I'm watching Jokrono's let's play, which involves two young male gamers sometimes being thoughtlessly Unfortunate, especially about Japan. I'm sure there's others out there but this is the one I was recced and I'm overall enjoying it.

( Just cut for length, no spoilers )

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Some Puzzle-y Games I Have Played Lately

2026-01-04T12:39:18Z

Spirit City Lofi Sessions is a productivity game but I'm including it anyway :P

Actual puzzle games: Strange Antiquities, Mega Mosaic, Botany Manor, Logiart Grimoire, The Roottrees are Dead
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Historical games about not being violent

2025-12-25T06:10:27Z

During the family Christmas Zoom call Mum asked if I had any recs for historical computer games in which the protagonist does not commit acts of violence. When I asked what kinds of gameplay she enjoyed she just said "nothing too hard".

So here's what I came up with after exploring the historical and education tags on steam, if anyone has any recs or anti-recs please let me know!
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Half Assed Reviews

2025-09-07T04:31:25Z

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

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Thoughts about the kinds of fiction I like creating

2025-06-01T03:53:42Z

Something I've been poking at lately is the fact I genuinely don't seem to enjoy writing original prose fiction, even though I enjoy creating fanfic, original visual novels, visual novel adaptations, and original art (and fanart). I definitely don't think it's lacking as an artform! It just doesn't fit my brain so well to make it. And I guess to some extent I also am less drawn to it as a consumer of fiction? That's harder to untangle and not so much the point of this post but I'm going to ponder it later.
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Farming/Gathering/Crafting Games: Palia and Sun Haven

2025-03-28T15:10:40Z

Sun Haven is like if Stardew Valley was made by furries who shop at Hot Topic. It's not a MMO but does have optional multiplayer, which I have not tried.

Palia is a free MMO where the world is shared with strangers and has a similar cosy post-apocalyptic fantasy vibe to My Time At Sandrock.
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Two f/f narrative games

2025-02-15T03:43:08Z

Normally I wouldn't link to games I haven't played but I know I'll forget otherwise.

Eclipse: Special Forces is butch/butch military scifi, just a demo so far but worth checking out for the trailer alone if that premise appeals.

Velvet Bite: Softly, with Teeth m/m and m/f contemporary romance with vampires, was much anticipated and just came out. But tragically the reviews look pretty bad. OH WELL at least it looks pretty and we can imagine the game it could have been.

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Why I didn't get into Dragon Age: Veilguard

2025-01-17T06:34:21Z

I've been pondering this post for a while but it's taken me a while to be able to articulate my thoughts.

So: The world felt out of character, and that threw me out of the story aggressively. I could plausibly have enjoyed a very similar game if it was an original setting.

Also I hear it has platforming, which I am very bad at, but I'd have been willing to get Cam to help with those parts if I'd been enjoying the game otherwise.

It does a good enough job at other things that I can intellectually see how someone could enjoy it, and I'm legit happy for those people. But this post is about how it did not work for me.
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JackJeanne: Initial review/info

2024-09-09T14:03:04Z

Masterlist

So after my brain insisting I watch Vampire Dormitory but not write reaction posts, it has now insisted I not keep playing this game until I write up my feelings so far?? I guess I have thoughts I want to work through??

SO HERE WE GO.

First, some non-spoilery information/initial review.

JackJeanne is a thus far quite enjoyable and VERY GENDER otome game about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to attend an all-boys acting school with a tradition of dividing roles into 'Jacks' (male roles) and 'Jeannes' (female roles) She then gets to know and in some cases romance various male classmates, who are a mix of Jack and Jeanne (and in some cases both). Afaict the English version is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch.

CW: Transphobia (it's better than the average otome/shoujo, but the bar is low) Also I don't go into it in the review but there's a minor character who's just a walking fat joke :/

( No major spoilers )

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Game reviews for the first half of 2024

2024-07-17T01:59:21Z

My internet was down yesterday and I got very bored, so I did some brief reviews of everything in my recently played Steam list for all of 2024.

Plotty (mostly puzzles):
Endless Fables 2
Fairy Tale Mysteries 2
Hypnospace Outlaw
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
Unpacking
Amnesia Memories
Agatha Christie the ABC Murders
Strange Horticulture
Epiphany city
I was a Teenage Exocolonist

Base building/crafting etc:
Timberborn
Havendock
Oddsparks
Factory Town
Autonauts
Stardew Valley
Cattails
Islanders

New plotless puzzles:
Knotwords
Cats in Time

Plotless puzzle replays:
Jewel Match Solitaire 2 Collector's edition
Loop a tranquil puzzle game
Hexcells Infinite

Other:
Trombone Champ
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The ABC Murders Masterlist

2024-03-18T08:37:35Z

Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders is a 2016 Unity puzzle game based on the 1936 murder mystery novel by Agatha Christie. From Wikipedia: The initial premise is that a serial killer is murdering people with alliterative names. The murders follow an alphabetical order, starting with a victim whose initials were A. A, and appear to lack a motive.

Content note: Sexism and iffy handling of domestic violence. A character is painfully dying of cancer. Characters express a lot of ableism though the story itself isn't too bad imo. Also, you know. Death.
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Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders

2024-03-13T07:58:58Z

Masterlist

pauraque prompted me to react to the ABC Murders or The Dig. I picked the ABC Murders since I am feeling the kind of sore and stupid today where a puzzle game would be a fun distraction. Also, the reason I bought the ABC murders in the first place was as research for a vague idea I had to turn some out of copyright murder mystery into a computer game myself (this story isn't out of copyright yet but some of her other works are), so it'll be fun to analyse it from that perspective as well.

So! Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders is a 2016 Unity puzzle game based on the 1936 murder mystery novel by Agatha Christie. From Wikipedia: The initial premise is that a serial killer is murdering people with alliterative names. The murders follow an alphabetical order, starting with a victim whose initials were A. A, and appear to lack a motive.

It was updated a little in 2020 and if often on deep sale for like $2.

I'll put major spoilers under an internal cut, so the mystery can stay fun for anyone who's unfamiliar with it.

I've played through investigating the first crime scene, and it's moderately fun so far! I had to suspend my disbelief slightly for some of the inserted puzzles but overall it's a pretty enjoyable and not too difficult mystery game, in terms of both gameplay and story.

CW: Domestic violence, more in the game itself than my post.
( Read more... )

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Some things I've been meaning to watch/play/read

2024-03-08T08:38:17Z

I was inspired to make this while writing up a reaction posts offer at the new prompts community promptmepromptly. They're currently taking prompts for text based fanworks, and apparently reaction posts count!

So I thought I'd write up a list of some things I've been meaning to try out that I think could be fun to write reaction posts to. If you want to prompt me, reply to my offer after the post opens in a few days.
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Baldur's Gate 3 masterpost

2023-08-14T02:26:50Z

Since I seem to be talking about it!
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Initial Basic Thoughts on Baldur's Gate 3

2023-08-12T22:21:07Z

Masterpost

I only just started but thus far I am having a great time, the non binary inclusion is reasonably good for this sort of AAA roleplaying game and I'm enjoying the weird, darkly humourous dark-fantasy-horror and old school D&D inspired RPG vibe, it reminds me of playing Dragon: Age Origins, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights mods back in the day, but as a modern game (albeit with all the graphics settings at lowest quality so my computer doesn't fall over). I continue to not be very good at this sort of combat, but that's what story mode is for! (It's presumably even more like other Larian games like Baldur's Gate 2 or Divinity Original Sin but I never really played those EDIT: ha, Baldur's Gate 2 was made by Bioware, guess that explains the Bioware Vibe!)

( No spoilers. Brief genital mention )

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Some puzzle/farming/sim games

2023-02-20T04:32:34Z

First, a games recs rec! Puzzle Lovers on steam have an incredibly thorough library of puzzle and narrative game reviews, and I've had a lot of fun poking the discount section to find a varying selection of fun little games on deep sale.

That's not where I got all of the games below, but I did get them all significantly on special, and I'm not sure I'd rec any of them full price. The only one which would run on my mac was Townscaper.

Return to Mysterious Island, Winkeltje: the Little Shop, Detective Grimoire, Mystery Solitaire, Nullum, Moves, Staxel, Townscaper, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town
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Reviiiiiiewssss

2022-10-25T13:21:42Z

I decided that if I could review the game about ALGEBRA BEING FUN I could probably review some things more of you might actually be interested in. So! Off the top of my head without overthinking, let's go!

Lots of m/m, some m/f, and a little f/f and gen.

Live Action TV: Sandman, Old Fashioned Cupcake

Games: Nurse Love Syndrome, London Detetctive Mysteria

Anime: My Dress Up Darling, SpyxFamily, Sasaki and Miyano, Hirano and Kagiura, Umibe no Etranger

Prose fiction: Light Tea and Sweet Wine, The Wrong Way To A Demon Sect Leader, You Boys Play Games Very Well, spit_kitten
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The Devil's Calculator

2022-10-25T12:35:09Z

The Devil's Calculator is a little algebra puzzle game about figuring out what various functions do and then using them to create the number 666. I've been having a lot of fun with it, but if you don't already think algebra is fun this game will probably not convince you otherwise.

The first 20 levels are free, and I feel like the early levels would be pretty doable for anyone with an ok grasp of basic algebra.

I'm at level 39 now and some of the later levels have been moderately challenging(*), and I'm not sure how anyone could have solved some of them without knowing (or knowing to look up) equations like the sum of all integers between 1 and x, the number of combinations of k objects chosen from a set of size n, etc. Which is still highschool level, but the sort of thing most adults will have forgotten unless they studied maths further.

(*)I have a Phd in abstract algebra, but that was a long time ago, and I'm not always great at puzzles, so it's hard to calibrate exactly how hard they are objectively. But definitely not easy for anyone who doesn't have a strong background in algebra.

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Post I am writing because I can't play Star Wars: The Old Republic

2022-10-20T03:02:21Z

I've been wanting to play this MMO for ages, since I'd heard it's a very easy to play Bioware game with an interesting plot that you can easily treat as a single player game.

But the universe kept getting in my way, mostly in the form of network problems on my PC. And then a few days ago, I finally got to play it!

BRIEFLY. Just long enough to decide I liked it enough to pay for a subscription. And the universe LAUGHED IN MY FACE and TOOK IT AWAY >:( First my computer died, and then the game went down for maintenance, and then my computer died again, and then the weather was too hot to sit in that room all of a sudden...and then when all of that was dealt with, and I sat down to play...MY CHAIR COLLAPSED BENEATH ME.

I wasn't injured, thankfully, but I still sat on the floor for a while feeling very sorry for myself.

So now I am on my not-SWTOR-capable Mac laptop writing a dreamwidth post and feeling hard done by.

But from what I have seen, it's pretty fun. Very Bioware, for both good and ill.
( Now that I'm done whining, an actual review )

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DragonQuest Builders 2

2022-10-13T14:49:49Z

I have been having a lot of fun with this game, even more than with DragonQuest Builders 1 (which I enjoyed until I got stuck) It's a sort of cross between Terraria/Minecraft and Animal Crossing with a thin RPG plot about The Power of Friendship And Cooperation to motivate all the gathering, crafting and building. There's combat, and a few other challenges like platforming, driving, and stealth, but unlike DragonQuest Builders 1 it never gets super hard and I made it all the way through without too much trouble. I'm currently noodling about post-endgame finishing up the remaining challenges and building homes and other stuff for all my villagers, which is pretty fun. There's also farming and cooking, which you can get the villagers to do for you.

It's for Windows and consoles, I played the Steam version, which I got on special since the full price is $70AU. I definitely got my $40 worth or whatever I paid, idk about $70.
( Read more... )

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Reviews August 2022, games and tv

2022-08-26T05:31:25Z

I bruised my elbow yesterday which makes typing hard so of course my brain now desperately wants nothing more but to write a review post after months of not feeling like it. This will likely be pretty succinct and stream of consciousness.

Computer games:
puzzle lines
Planet Crafter
mystic pillars

Live action TV:
Ghosts
Severence
Yellowjackets
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A big pile of Stardew Valley mods

2022-08-18T22:58:26Z

So I recently got SUPER INTO making Stardew Valley mods, and finally finished the last of the ones I super duper wanted to have made.

Here's all the mods I've made so far. They basically divide into three sets:
1) Colour changes which make the user interface, plants etc blue and purple.
2) Mods to make the monsters and mines more cute and the local animals more weird/monstrous.
3) Gender changing characters, androgynous art, and editing dialogue to be less heteronormative etc.

( Rambling thoughts )

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My Favourite Minion

2022-04-30T14:02:07Z

So Final Fantasy 14 has these things called "minions", which are entirely cosmetic but fun little pets that follow you around doing absolutely nothing but look cool/cute. Thus far I've just picked up a couple from quests: a little wildcat kitten you rescue, a wind-up airship souvenir from flying in an airship, etc. They're fun, but can clutter up the screen, and sometimes it stretched my suspension of disbelief that like...a little puppy was following me into battle with giant monsters and not being hurt. It all felt a bit silly.

But that was before I got the minion reward for the quest The Rising Chorus.
( Major spoilers up to near the start of Heavensward! )

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Final Fantasy 14: How I learned to stop worrying and play a red mage

2022-04-22T08:23:11Z

Red Mage is definitely not the best job for everyone, it just played best to my particular strengths and weaknesses. Below is a lot of technical game talk about how I figured this out, in case it's helpful to anyone else.
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Still on the Chocobo!

2022-04-22T05:47:34Z

So as planned, I tried out some other jobs in FFXIV to see if any suited me better, and one did! Red Mage, which suits me so well that I have found dungeons with real people actually...sort of...doable?? With the combination of better job, better movement, and watching guides, I've gone from visibly mediocre to just a bit below average for a noob (and the game marks noobs so that people will be nicer to us), which makes me feel much less Seen. At least so far, the three dungeons I've done have all been described by the guides as fairly simple, so we'll see how I do later.

I think being able to practice doing dungeons with NPCs also made a huge difference. I did the easiest ARR endgame dungeon a few times to grind for currency and even though it's not that different to regular combat it still made the whole Doing Dungeons thing feel more familiar and unscary.

I'm enjoying the plot so far, too! As promised, the game is poking the colonialist setting a little, though the colonised people are still, thus far, either childlike fairies or animalistic Beast Men, most of whom go around indiscriminately murdering and torturing their colonisers so, uh. We'll see.

Also, I know there's some popular characters and ships that show up later but for now my heart belongs to Maggie, the sentient magitech armour, who I ship with fresh oil and hugs.

Going to write up why I like Red Mage but I think that suits being in a separate post.

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