Games I played between April and August 2025

1. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes - Undoubtedly my favorite game I played this year, just barely edging out Animal Well. It is romantic, funny, and surreal. It somehow has a tone that's a mix of the mystery and intrigue of Poirot and the dread and tension of Resident Evil 2, a little bit melancholy and a little bit wry. For example, the antagonist (?) at one point says while you and he are dancing, "I dance with everyone before a project. Do you know why? When we begin to fight down the road, we know that once we danced together." In some ways, it's kind of like the polar opposite of The Witness, a game I have spent too many hours talking at friends about. Anyway, literally my only complaint is that I wish the interface for going to the next page of a document was more noticeable. I got stuck on a few different puzzles because I didn't realize there were more pages to the clue lol. It is on my Mt. Rushmore of puzzlers, and may be my favorite puzzle game of all time.
2. Bugsnax - Kinda bug and kinda snack, try to catch 'em in your trap. Feed somebody and you'll see we are whatever we eat! What an experience, so much fun! I got the plot spoiled way back when the game came out and I still loved every second. I think it even made things more interesting! All the characters are so real, you feel like you're getting to know someone with depth of emotion and a history. As someone who has struggled with addiction, I saw something of myself in each one. My favorite was at the start, and still is, Beffica, and least favorite was Wiggle, but I ended up understanding where she was coming from by the end of the game. The gender and sexuality representation is also maybe the best handled of any game I've ever played, which is not something you'd expect looking at the surface. The actual gameplay of hunting and capturing the bugsnax is very engaging and never got stale. The tools you're given are so simple but each bugsnax has it's own personality that has to be figured out, and you have to use your environment to figure out the best method for each critter. Each bugsnak teaches you a little something new, and by the end you feel like a trapping master. And the bugsnax themselves! My favorites were Baby Cake Legs and Scoopy Banoopy, but Bunger is the biggest star of the show. I would believe that this whole thing started as a Pokemon parody, but the amount of heart poured into this project elevates it to something new. And for those in the know, I'm still laughing about the SnaxScope data for Tikkada Masala.
3. Leap Year - At 96 minutes played, this might be the best single $1 I have ever spent on Steam. A definitive triumph in precision engineering. An absolutely microscopic masterclass in the exploration platformer genre.
4. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection - This is a collection of 8 alternate-reality re-imaginings of the card-game Solitaire. They were all (mostly) made as little side-games for larger Zachtronics games, which I've never played or even heard of before buying this. I wasn't really a fan of Sigmar's Garden or Cribbage Solitaire, and Proletariat's Patience and CLUJ were cool ideas but didn't have that replay value that I go to Solitaire for. Kabufuda was really neat take on Free Cell, and I LOVE the adjustable difficulty on it, but parsing out the patterns gave me a headache after a couple games. Shenzhen, on the other side of things, plays very well but is just too easy. This leaves Sawayama and Fortune's Foundation. Starting with the former, Sawayama makes the slightest adjustment to the classic Klondike but completely changes the strategy. It's astoundingly good. I have over 1200 wins, and I still lose more than I win. I'm playing a round right now. I have spent many nights this summer, tired from a hard day at work, relaxing with a movie and a hundred or so rounds of Sawayama. That alone has been worth the price of admission for me, but that's not the best part of the Zachtronics collection. The real gem of this game is Fortune's Foundation. It's a lot like Crescent Solitaire, but instead of two decks you have 1 regular deck and a tarot deck. Every move is impactful and could cost you the game. All the information is face-up at the start of the game, though, so it is truly a test of planning and strategy. You also get a little fortune from the final tarot card played, so that's a neat little bonus.
5. Nubby's Number Factory - VERY SILLY ALERT!! I am very nostalgic for the HTML era (yeah I have Dreamsettler on my wishlist), but I don't get any cynical or pandering vibes from this. Nubby genuinely loves the absurdity of geocities clipart. However, the gameplay is a devilishly sharp contrast to the bright colors and funny "3D" models. Last year I bounced off of Balatro early on because I didn't vibe with the difficulty. I just didn't get it. Since then I've gotten way more into Balatro, and I understand more how the game is built on small, crucial decisions to take on quickly scaling obstacles. Nubby is incredibly similar and has been an enjoyable challenge. I only wish the stars system scaled faster! Kinda feels like a slog sometimes when I just want to unlock more playable characters.
6. Tametsi - It's very easy to recommend this game. If the words "Custom Minesweeper" do anything for you, you're already convinced.
7. Viewfinder - Cait is the bomb and we love her. The puzzles are fun, the world is beautiful, and the gimmick of the game is inventive and fresh. It's obviously loving crafted and executes its new ideas perfectly competently. After the game was over, though, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed, even though there's certainly nothing wrong with it. I really, really wanted to like this more than I did. The closest comparison I can make to Viewfinder is Dredge. It was fun and I don't regret buying and playing it, and would generally recommend it, but it didn't resonate with me much at all. My hopes were just way too high.
8. Dead Cells - I guess I "beat" the game? Feels like I barely scratched the surface! I would rank this right up there with Hollow Knight in terms of sheer density of stuff to do and unlock/explore. Like I said about Hollow Knight, if I was 14 again and could only afford one game, this would be a perfect option. I much prefer a bespoke world to a randomly generated one, but this is done really well and has felt fresh every time. The randomness that weapons are given to you just adds to this. Trying out new fighting styles and builds has been consistently fun. My biggest bounce has been fighting with the timer, though. I just hate timers in exploration games. I don't know if I will end up going back and start chipping away again to be honest, but I had a really fun weekend with this and can certainly recommend it.
9. COCOON - There's something slightly wrong with COCOON, but it wasn't until finishing the game that I think I figured out what it was. Visually, the worlds in this game are beautiful, each of them unique in design from each other and from anything I've ever seen before. That alone is quite an achievement. The sound design is horrifying and I was completely immersed throughout 100% of my playtime. The puzzles are exactly what I would expect from the lead designer of Limbo and Inside, nothing too obtuse, but certainly engaging and complex enough that I was never bored. And the main gimmick of "world-leaping" as they call it is fresh and demands some out-of-the-box thinking! The thing that prevented me from fully appreciating this game was that I never knew why I was doing anything that I was doing. That very well could be why you are modeled after an insect in the game, going about your tasks without questioning why you're doing it. If it is the case that you're not supposed to know what the story is until you're done with the game, that is certainly an interesting and creative idea, but it kind of makes the experience feel hollow and superficial. I don't know, maybe I just didn't get it and I missed out. I definitely have a history of focusing entirely on the puzzles and sidelining the story completely (looking at you, Riven), but I really think COCOON's story is intentionally obfuscated as a larger puzzle for players to figure out.
10. Islets - Feels like a rough draft of it's successor, Crypt Custodian, except as a sidescroller instead of top-down. That's ok, though, because I love Crypt Custodian! Some of the more frustrating aspects are very off-putting, though. If I didn't already have a fondness for the dev team I would've ranked this a little lower. I'm glad I took on this game as a look back into their history and didn't play it first, sort of like Cultist Simulator. Still, I was entranced by the world and each zone, and gladly hunted down all the collectibles.
11. Crab Champions - What a goofy, frivolous game based entirely on a meme. Balance? I think I heard someone mention that at a party once. Exponential growth? Let the players figure that out, enemies don't need to trouble their little heads. Still going to unlock every weapon and have a blast playing multiplayer? You bet your ass I did. There is one thing about it that I don't think I've ever seen another rogue-lite do, though. In most rogue-lites, you grind out dozens of runs to unlock everything, incremental upgrades and all that. In Crab Champions, you only need maybe 3-5 really broken runs to unlock everything. Prove that you understand the game and it's completely opened up to you. After that, you play to beat increasing difficulty and rarer cosmetics. What a great idea!
12. Raccoin - First off, I completely understand that this is an early-access alpha build and they're still adding new features and everything. This feels right in the same vein rogue-lite as Balatro & Nubby, and if I were more cynical I'd call it a cash-in to ride the wave that Balatro started. However, in the mid- to late-game, and with the right build, your scaling quickly changes the game into an auto-battler! There's so many flashing lights and bells and whistles once you start rolling that decisions outside the shop stops mattering. I'm not sure if I even like it, but I can't call it unoriginal. Overall, the experience gave me a headache, but I will be checking back in with the game once they drop the ill full release.