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draknek · 7 years

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My 2016 - videogames played

In 2016, I kept a record of what media I consumed, with a short record of my thoughts about some of them (one or two sentences only).

This is every videogame I played for longer than 30 minutes, and some of the games I spent less than that with.

This is part five of my 2016 retrospective. The other parts:

games I made

books I read

podcasts I listened to

films/TV I watched

videogames I played

boardgames I played

January

Imbroglio (beta) Ushered in the new year by playing this until 4am.

Patchmania Cute presentation but I'm never going to sit through hundreds of easy levels to get to the interesting ones.

Kaodoku Just as mind-numbing as normal Sodoku, and that's not a compliment.

Streamline (beta) Initially seems samey but there's a nice combination of mechanics here.

Land Sliders Nice UI, but unexciting game.

Divide By Sheep Seems like a puzzle game that doesn't take forever to get interesting?! Shame about the linear level structure and inability to queue moves up, but overall this was really enjoyable.

Go To Gold 2 The puzzles themselves seem like decent Sokoban-with-pressure-plates levels. But the controls are really bad, which exacerbates the tediousness of Sokoban.

Inch By Inch Nice idea, but the controls give no feedback for when you can move, which feels awful. Also a very ungenerous F2P lives system.

Does Not Commute Fun and full of flavour.

Luminare Surprisingly interesting for a short while, but quickly becomes samey.

Churchill Solitaire It's solitaire.

The Witness It's a shame that the most impressive part of this game is not also the most interesting. Overall I had a good time with this game, but towards the end my feelings soured somewhat.

February

CLARC [first three levels] Nice graphics but terrible writing and I don't have confidence that the puzzles will get interesting.

These Robotic Hearts of Mine [my own game] The damning problem with this is that finding optimal solutions is so encouraged, but largely uninteresting and a waste of time. If you ignore that part it might be okay as a storygame though?

At Dawn, Pistols Now that I think about it, I realise that the turnips/pumpkin controller doesn't fit the framing of this game at all.

Worlds Fastest Pizza Did a good job of making me not sure how much stuff there is to do.

The Greatest Voice of All A well-scoped jam game. Has some niggles, but overall it's fun.

DANCE DOOM Without strafing, this is really awkward. Entertaining to watch though.

Snow Cones Ridiculously cute.

Killing Time at Lightspeed Great concept! Not much resolution at the end though.

Skorpulac Ugh, it has a lives system :(

Swing Copters 2 I played for 15 minutes and didn't score higher than 1.

Arrowance Fairly standard play-indefinitely-to-score-higher game. Doesn't seem to get any harder over time.

Induction (beta) Smart time travel puzzle game! Sometimes hard to reason about, but worth playing.

Tomb of the Mask This would be great if it didn't have a permanent global points multiplier that makes scores meaningless.

PUSER TOH Nice idea.

March

Rust Bucket New levels introduce some interesting enemy types but could do with more checkpoints. Roguelike mode seems mostly unchanged in the early stages, which is maybe a shame.

Blackbox: think outside the box Seemed like an okay implementation of the "every puzzle is a different system to work out" thing, but I never felt compelled to go back to it after a very brief play.

Tacoma (beta) Main takeaway: it's cool to watch conversations split/rejoin. I've not played either, but it felt very much in the vein of Gone Home/Firewatch.

20something Hard to tell how close the fiction is to being autobiography, but it doesn't really matter. The end result is something that feels very real.

Unnamed Pokemon-like game from unnamed team (preview) Lotsa numbers, not really my thing.

Discharge Looks great for a jam game. Level design wasn't great at teaching what you're trying to do a lot of the time though.

BBTAN I played this for about 10 seconds before putting it down in disgust.

Semispheres (preview)

Metareal (preview)

PSHNGGG! This is really great but I uncontrollably grip the controller so hard that it's physically painful to play more than a few games in a row. This is the only game that has caused this problem, and I think is a sign of how engaging it is.

Knittens

Armed and gelatinous

Lazy Village

Planetary capacity

It's spring again

Wibble wobble

Orchids to dust

Lumini Very pleasant.

Please stand by So dumb and so entertaining.

Hello, operator!

Linelight

Octobo

Rotator

Planet licker

Palimseste

Threadsteading A strategy game played on an embroidery machine, in theory about claiming tiles but in practice more about denying them to your opponent. One of my best GDC anecdotes was the cliffhanger when the machine ran out of thread in the middle of sewing the scores.

Disc jockey jockey

Wiz

Dobotone

Von Neumann personality test

Mr Heart Loves You Very Much Nice mechanic.

Redder Good level design, a solid exploration of toggle switches and one-way systems.

Decodoku

West of Loathing (beta)

Journey of 1000 stars

Dungeon of the Endless Seemed to be easing me into it gently, up until I tried to move on to level 2 and got massacred on the journey there. Not my kind of thing.

Abzorb I want it to control like Helix, and the fact that it doesn't apparently makes this kinda unplayable for me.

Two Interviewees Not very subtle, but that helps get its message across I guess.

April

Mario Kart 64 I haven't really enjoyed dipping into any of the more recent Mario Karts, but this was enjoyable enough. One big difference is that less focus on drifting makes for a much more accessible game.

forget-me-not I gather from hearsay that playing well is all about grinding, but I found that kinda awkward with touch controls.

No Pineapple Left Behind

Say When

DivCircle

Dolfin Trash

Four Horsemen

Get Lost!

Telefrag

Niña Nueve Some "wait around for something to move slowly to the right place" tedium, but otherwise fairly stylish.

Pretender to the Crown Lots of puzzles! And nice graphical touches

Clickmazes BoxUp Nice idea, but maybe a bit too prone to "just do the only thing that doesn't make things unsolvable" syndrome.

Net I wouldn't want to do a larger size, but with edge-wrap even a 5x5 grid is surprisingly challenging.

Isles of Color Nice concept but ends up being more focused on backtracking than hard puzzles. Worth looking at as an example of exploring the intersection of mechanics.

Craequ I guess I can't ever relive the experience of playing it for the first time. Still neat, but short; I can't help but wish for harder puzzles.

Helix This game is crack to me. Everything about it just feels right.

Mammoth Monkey Mole Levels are too big, controls are too awkward.

Slayaway Camp (beta) Lovely theming of an otherwise not particularly novel game, but then it ruins it with "tap the grave for coins". Hopefully that'll be removed for the actual release.

PRISM Feels a bit like a more abstract/geometrical The Room. Satisfying, but not very challenging so far.

PROMESST Would be much more comfortable with a better map. When the midpoint hits, it hits hard and intimidatingly; I don't think I got much past that point the first time I played either.

Wobble Yoga Nice QWOP-like, though the shape detection could have been better.

shapeshit Really hard! That shape in the top left really doesn't want to be hit.

Stephen's Sausage Roll Even the tutorial area would be a great game on its own, and then it just keeps asking more and more and more of you.

Hanano Puzzle The less-well-known fiendishly hard game from the creator of Jelly No Puzzle. After a rough first level it's not so bad so far though (up to level 25).

Jelly No Puzzle Also not that bad!

Fish Fillets NG I just bounce straight off this level design: too-big levels, too-fiddly object shuffling. I remember trying it before but I'm not any more likely to stick with it second time round.

Chairs This is based on some chemistry principle but it didn't succeed in teaching me anything.

Tripad

Anamorphine

Sec9

100ft Robot Golf

Loud on Planet X

Ape Out

Bound

Swing Star VR

Not Everything is Flammable

Yesteryear

Marble Madness 2

May

Budget Cuts Only having one checkpoint felt punishing but it probably wouldn't have been that bad if I was playing in a home context. Really nice UI.

Robot Heist Nice ending.

Quick drop

Block swap

Cupkins

Balloon buoyancy

Sky rogue

Uh oh love comes to town

Hue

Windowframe One of the best puzzle platformer twists that's happened for a long while. Shame it has to use fake windows though, and I'm way more into the puzzley side than the action side.

ᗢ Cute! 1.5 years after playing I'll hear from the creator that some of my games inspired it, which is cool.

SHRUBNAUT

Cavern of Flight Some people will go "nope nope nope" because of the enemies, but they're pretty well done. I didn't get far due to the unforgiving time-pressure platforming.

There is no game I've played this before, but it's really well done.

June

A Rose for Icy Heart

The Maître D' This is fantastic themeing, good art and sounds, pretty solid work for a jam. Unfortunately it's let down by level design, there's too many levels and they're all kinda samey.

Size Matters Not sure how far I got, I bounced off an execution challenge level that felt way too finnicky.

Morphblade

Experiment 26 Incredibly disjointed, it gets slightly less so towards the end but probably not enough so for me to recommend. I think it could have done with more application of "yes and".

Time machine VR [first two missions] underwhelming to be promised time travel but then get the second mission be indistinguishable from the first

Lands end [first two chapters] soothing, not hard but I didn't really mind

Audioshield Does what you want it to.

The Lab The robot repair demo was significantly shorter than I was expecting.

pico park

Quasi

Dark Souls I think this caused longterm damage to my hands, and yet I can't entirely regret my time with it.

July

The Temple of No

Leap Day

One Last Cup (preview) Ridiculously ambitious.

39 Days to Mars (preview)

Modulus

August

Duck Roll Decent mechanics, but the difficulty curve is basically flat and it has a move counter :( Touchscreen controls aren't great either, but I still played most of the way through.

Overcooked

Puzzlepops Good thinky puzzle game.

Spaceplan First idle game I've played in ages, probably the last in a while too but it was fun enough. Nice aesthetic design.

Pole riders

Vacuum Really neat interconnected-world puzzle game! Lovely theming and attention to detail.

September

Fathom

4fourths

Multibowl

Super hexagon

Samurai gunn

Wibble wobble

October

Game Title A nice interconnected puzzle.

Life is Strange Lows: some time travel inconsistencies, not being able to rewind to mid-conversation, some really tedious filler content. Highs: overall good pacing and cliffhangers, good characters, I'm glad I got around to playing it.

Circles (beta)

Shadow Bug Rush Not my kind of thing.

Really Bad Chess I wish this didn't take so long to calculate AI moves, it makes it kinda unplayable on my old iPad.

Mallow Drops (beta) Too samey for my tastes

Game Title: Lost Levels Really neat interconnected puzzle about exploiting glitches.

The Trials Short and simple puzzle game.

Disorient on the murder express

Redirection

Four floors of doors (preview)

Snake pass (preview)

Mordheim

Sure footing

November

So Broken

min! Not my kind of thing.

Spider's Hollow Solid PuzzleScript game.

Integer Snake Not my kind of thing.

Knot Fun Nice enough idea, not much there though.

Sara Is Missing

December

Lara Croft GO Prettier than Hitman GO, and thankfully gets rid of "do it in x moves" challenges. Not as hard as I'd like, but enjoyable enough to keep playing.

WitchWay (beta) Cute, neat, wish the secrets were more puzzley though.

Blocky XMAS Decent version of the "Sokoban + things stick together" genre

Rose

Induction (beta)

Klocki Slooooow start which was very tedious, but gets more interesting.

Nest (watched) I can't tell if there's something I'm missing or if it's really just asking you to do what it seems like it's asking you to do.

The Last Guardian (watched)

Blarp!

Xortex

Firewatch (watched) Beautiful world, but plot didn't really come together for me.

Boats Cars & Trains

Noleap

Hanano Puzzle 2 Good set of levels for a game I already liked.

Tiny Heist Really solid stealth roguelike. Happily rung in the new year while playing it.

#2016 #videogames

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