games ive played past few weeks #2

hi guys!! its been a while!! ive played some games lately and i want to talk about them!! ive been sitting on this blog for slightly too long but i did it cuz im awesome anyway heres the blog

Pseudoregalia:

played on steam deck

full price: $6 USD | price i got it for: $6 USD | historical cheapest steam price: $4.50 USD

Pseudoregalia was a game i was actually really excited for on launch, as i had been following the developer, rittzler, on twitter (formerly known as 𝕏) for some time. i originally followed to watch progress on another 3D platformer they were developing, but was very surprised to see them talk about this entirely new title for submission into a game jam, and was even happier to hear it was getting an extended release. the day it dropped, i made sure to get a copy, and i remember playing it the same day. unfortunately, i didn't stick to it for very long, as the game didn't actually come with a map at launch, so exploring the huge castle and trying to find the game's upgrades ended up feeling like a pain. after getting my deck, like Lunacid, i decided to give it another shot.

thankfully, upon returning, i quickly found out that Pseudoregalia DID add a map!! its a bit finicky but its still a great tool to streamline your exploration. i was also playing on the deck this time, and while it isn't technically verified, and i had some issues with the resolution, the game looked and ran great. i had no major issues of note with the game and my experience was practically bug free.

as for the actual game itself, Pseudoregalia is pure platforming fun. it uses its toolkit to inspire creative solutions to platforming challenges; it even allows you to skip required items if you're skilled enough. if that isn't enough: to further test your abilities, the game has challenges scattered throughout the map that reward you with new outfits for the goat-bunny-cat-lady protagonist, sybil. with the items you unlock throughout the game, sybil's movement evolves into some of the smoothest, fastest, and most responsive movement in the variety of 3D platformers i've tried. its mechanics can be as deep as the player desires, making Pseudoregalia excel in player freedom and expression. it is difficult for me to undersell how amazing the game feels to control, and is absolutely where the most enjoyment is to be found

however, in many other aspects, i feel like Pseudoregalia could have been far greater than it is. it is marketed and is structured similarly to a metroidvania, and has all the aspects of one, but it never realizes most of the potential in these mechanics. there are many buffs one can find to strengthen combat ability, yet nothing else in this game signals that combat is important. the tutorial caps off with a simple mini boss to introduce the combat, and there is not a single other boss in the game except for the final one. the tutorial is also littered with plenty of interesting setup for a story, and Pseudoregalia fails to deliver on that either until the end of the game. the game also has an interesting variety of enemies that (mostly) make sense in the context of the castle, but you end up meeting all of them within the first 30-60 minutes and spend the rest of the game going into dungeons, a town, theatres, and libraries fighting the same gauntlet of enemies instead of an area having an exclusive defender or, maybe, any boss fights to shake up the combat?

to be clear, i don't think most of these are huge issues. for what Pseudoregalia is truly trying to be, which is a 3d platformer with an unlockable moveset, i think it does amazing. the movement is as smooth and as fun as you can ask for, and if that's what you want, i cannot recommend this game enough. but for all the great things it does, there is something it wanted to do, could have done, but did not. if there is ever a sequel to this game, i would LOVE to play it, but as this game stands, i think everything averages out to being just a pretty good game.

playing this on the deck went mostly fine, the game ran well and everything worked. i DID have resolution issues, but this was before i found out the deck has a stretching option. running at the native deck resolution made the game blurry so i recommend running at 720p and stretching the rest out if you want a full image, or just playing at 720p :)

i give it aaaa 🐐🐇🐈 7 out of 10 !

Animal Well:

played on steam deck

full price: $25 USD | price i got it for: $23 USD | historical cheapest steam price: $23 USD

"dunkey made a game guys !" -🤓☝️

billy basso's animal well reached my ears through word of mouth via twitter (formerly known as 𝕏) this past may. after hearing some info about it, it sounded like a game with deep exploration comparable to something like yume nikki. and that made me Excited. so i grabbed a copy and i played it. and i beat it! but not really.

animal well is huge. its a HUGE HUGE game with puzzles in every corner of every room. sometimes you have to do puzzles to get to puzzles to find the most random bullshit on earth and its some of the best bullshit i had pleasure of going through in a minute. even beating the game only gives you more stuff to find and solve. i reached the end credits, saw the fireworks, and thought it was all done, but that is only animal well's surface. it contains puzzles that span the map and even some that required community effort, and none of it is annoying or badly designed. every time you discover something it feels like a huge Ohhhhhh moment. i DID unfortunately have to use a guide once or twice, but not out of anger, just genuinely being stumped. it is safe to say that my expectations for this game were high but they were met, and it loved my time with it.

i dont want to give too many specifics of the gameplay away because i think a big contributor to my enjoyment was the total blindness i went going into it, but you are looking for 4 flames across the map to descend into the well of animals. to get to them, you will be finding and using new items to solve new puzzles and to access new areas. each of the four flames will test different skills and have you coming up with varied, fun solutions and encourage you to explore more of the games massive, beautiful map. there are also collectable eggs throughout that unlock new mechanics at certain milestones and test your knowledge and mastery of your tools. art style might take a sec to get used to but i LOVED it, same with the SFX and music. its a very detailed and crafted experience that it was a delight to beat.

i wish i had more to say about this game but i dont have the time or energy to fully dive into the real meat of the experience, and i played a good majority of it in airplane flights and while waiting for some friends in a hotel, so i will admit i did "rush" through it a good bit. regardless, if i were to ever revisit a game in the future, this is among the top of my list.

since i played this on steam deck, i just wanted to note that i had a great experience on it, no bugs and ran great. thank u mr basso

i give it a chiller 8.5/10

Crow Country:

played on steam deck

full price: $20 USD | price i got it for: $18 USD | historical cheapest steam price: $20 USD

my wonderful amazing beautiful girlfriend bought this game for me when i was deciding between getting animal well or this game so thank her for this short little review 💞

crow country is a survival horror game that takes place in an abandoned theme parked called CROW COUNTRY. one look at the gameplay trailer for this game and i dont think it takes a rocket scientist to find out why a signalis/RE fan would instantly need a copy!! if you like either of those two you can go ahead and just go buy the game, and if you dont like it, ill give you your money back. otherwise,

crow country promises and delivers an amazing, faithful resident evil inspired experience. it find itself in a perfect blend of equally friendly towards newcomers of the genre as it is interesting and fresh for veterans of survival horror. gameplay wise, this game is very simple, but of course, brilliant. it utilizes a similar stop, aim, and shoot system as something like the OG RE4, but adopts a top down camera and allows you to choose between modern and tank controls. this control scheme encapsulates what crow country does so well; blending the old with the new to create something truly unique and innovative. throughout the amusement park, you will find a suspiciously familiar and well rounded arsenal alongside many environmental hazards to use to your advantage to take care of the dangers within. the game is also chock full of cool secrets to upgrade your weapons and gear, and features unlockables based on your final ranking just like the RE franchise, promoting fun repeat playthroughs. there is also an Ultra Hard mode difficulty known as Murder of Crows, which may appeal to hardcore fans of survival horror or anyone interested in putting their unlockables to the test. HOWEVER. i thought id be prepared for it on my first playthrough. and it MIGHT be skill issue. but my ass couldnt get past the first few enemies 😞 (maybe i should do a repeat soon!!)

i think the story is fairly good, but it's greatest accomplishment is that your intelligence is never insulted during the runtime and it all culminates in a satisfying conclusion. you will be able to pick up and piece together many plot points fairly quickly and tear down the veil of crow country, but it is written in such a way that tells itself in the background to a degree, very similar to signalis. characters are hiding things from you, and you'll learn to piece together the full picture by reading about everyone throughout the park. as a device to hold the backbone of the game upright, i think the story excels in its purpose, and you will learn to love the modest cast of the game. the soul of the story also bleeds into the structure of the games puzzles and setting, which are both fantastic, and everything is wrapped up in crow country's impeccable graphics. this game looks like it lives and breathes final fantasy seven, except all of the locations are actually rendered in 3D !! its great

i should also mention this game was played on steam deck, and it was fantastic on the console. ran great, looked great, genuinely loved playing it on there. ran at the native resolution and was just wonderful!!

overall, crow country comes off as an extremely solid experience. before writing this review, i wouldve said it's greatest flaw was a lack of innovation, but id like to take that back. crow country is innovative in invisible ways, and when it isnt, its for a reason. i really only wish that there was a difficulty between normal and murder of crows, but thats literally just about it. i can recommend this game to almost anyone interested in survival horror, there is something for everyone here.

i give it an EIGHT POINT FIVE !!! OUT OF TEN

Picayune Dreams:

played on pc

full price: $5 USD | price i got it for: $4 USD | historical cheapest steam price: $4 USD

i dont remember when or how i found this game, but when i did i was immediately hooked by its presentation and found itself at the top on my wishlist for a number of weeks. picayune dreams advertises itself as a blend of vampire survivors, touhou, yume nikki, and diablo. what it MEANS is that it is a surrealist horde survival rougelike with bullet hell mechanics. what i READ was that there was another game inspired by yume nikki and i had to play it now, so i eventually got my copy during the summer sale and tried it out. and picayune dreams is kind of awesome!!

to start off, ill talk about the story first. obviously i dont want to spoil much, but i will say that the story was pretty great and caught me by surprise. the main character shares a confused and curious position alongside you, with no memory of who or what they are, and learn about both via the past and present. i loved some of the memory sequences, and the dialogue during gameplay and said memories of your past friends / crew mates you recover bounce off each other well to create an interesting bigger picture. you unlock these memories by killing bosses and progressing further into your runs, and you get the true ending by completing a run without getting hit once. defeating a boss was always exciting because i knew id be able to cap off my run with further insight into the truth and meant i was a pace closer to the final memory, and made the ending itself so much more important to me. unfortunately i havent gotten the true ending yet!! but i did really love the main one, it was extremely fitting and capped off the game well.

the gameplay of picayune dreams will be familiar if youve played vampire survivors or any other "survivor-likes" (?), but picayune dreams has a good number of cool twists to it. enemies are fast and try to horde you, and to defend yourself you will create a build that is effective in both taking care of hordes and also clearing the periodic bosses. to unlock new items youll complete challenges and you will also level up using xp you received within your runs for new perks. you also have black holes, which function similar to touhou bombs, allowing you to ease pressure from either hordes or bosses. the formula does not stray very far from other "survivor-likes", but the boss fights are super fun to learn, and even more fun to abuse after getting used to their bullet-hell style. i would say the item synergy in this game is pretty good, but it shines even more with the perks you get

besides overdrive runs, which make everything faster and stronger but give you far too much XP to care and allow for truly broken builds, there isnt enough in picayune dreams to make worth caring about after clearing it a few times besides shooting for the true ending or getting all the weapons. titles like Hades offer the heat system to massively shift your gameplay in a challenging more light, but offers you full control of that difficulty. vampire survivors itself offers new characters, maps, optional objectives, and more secret hunting than picayune does by a long shot. there isnt enough different between runs in picayune dreams to encourage long term play, and while this does disappoint, i am not particularly upset by it. i dont think picayune dreams is a title that Needs all of these features.

picayune dreams is a game that is just alright when you focus on one of its aspects, but the sum of its parts creates a compelling and wonderful experience to go through. its not vampire survivors and its not yume nikki and its not touhou and its CERTAINLY not diablo. picayune dreams is a project you can tell had lots of love poured into it, maybe had a scope larger than itself, but does not disappoint with the final experience. especially with a price tag of less than 5 dollars, it is beyond worth a try and is a must play for anyone remotely interested in any games in this genre.

i think itd be hard for me to deny that i really fuck with the vibes and music in this game and made everything just so much cooler, but who cares this game is great i really loved when they pica dreamed all over the place

i give it a

picayune_rating = 9
picayune_rating/10

psst! i didnt realize this while writing this review but a small note before i put the blog out! there is going to be a massive update sometime in the future that addresses late game concerns and adds new items, enemies and possibly mechanics, which is my main gripe with the game right now. if the game sounded interesting to you, i think it will be a very safe purchase with the post game update confirmed !! i love picayune dreams!

Please, Touch The Artwork 2:

played on pc

full price: its freeeee !!!!

so this game was recommended to me by silas who is very cool you should add him

this game is very short. its so short that it should be one of the first things i remember looking on it, especially compared to everything else on this list. but when i do reflect on it, i actually remember its wonderful playful soundtrack. i remember all the beautiful paintings i got to breathe in and pass by during my time with it. i remember all the characters i got to meet for, realistically, a few seconds before i had to move onto the next painting. but i remember it all so very clearly with such a fondness to everything.

please touch the artwork 2 is a point and click hidden object game that takes more or less an hour to beat. you pursue an art thief through many of James Ensor's work. he rips and tears many pieces to halt your progress, but you will often find a method of slipping by or mending his terror by collecting a certain item throughout a few paintings and presenting them to someone inquiring about them. a very, very simple premise. but the beauty of this game is its trickery and tactics. i do not think i have EVER stared at and appreciated paintings so deeply like i did during my time with this game in my life. by making you look for tiny matchsticks in such tranquil and beautiful pieces like Ensor's, it is hard to not sit back for a second and really take in a scene.

i dont have much more to say about this game. but its free. its like an hour long. you should play it. you dont even have to finish it. i think youll find something out of it.

i give it an 8.

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AND THATS EVERYTHING FOR NOW!! it took me way too long to write these! but i think they are written much better than my first batch :) id love to hear any of your thoughts on them, and if you end up trying any of these, let me know and we should talk about them!!

eventually i am intrested in moving these to my neocities, so if anybody knows about running blogs on that id appreciate any advice about it, but i like how available they are here on my page because you guys left really nice comments on my previous entry so we'll seeee 🐈

one last thing! my next blog might be a more long form deep dive into two games ive played recently (its a secret (its start again and in stars and time)) but yeah hopefully that will be a fun read because those games are brilliant :) anyway i hope you guys have a great day thank you for reading!! bye bye!!