I played classic, and the only time I got really stuck (had to use a walkthrough) was because I didn’t pull the stone in the walkway. I felt so ashamed. 
Consistently great puzzles in that game. Hard but fair.
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Even though I got it -40% off, it would have been worth paying full price, to support the developer. Hopefully they’ll have another game/Kickstarter where I can contribute.
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This weekend I played The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, an atmospheric point & click with nice graphics, music, and good voice acting.
The puzzles aren’t overly interesting for the most part and you can see the ending of the story coming from the beginning, but the way you get there is what it’s all about and that’s mostly fairly well done. Flashbacks interrupt the rhythm of the story rather frequently long after it seems they served their purpose. The game is quite a bit talk to everyone and exhaust all dialog options, and I think the third day was just a series of fetch quests that I could’ve largely done without. The main problem there perhaps is that rather than having several different things to do you’re really working on only one or two things at a time, making it very linear.
So would I recommend it… I’m not quite sure. It’s reasonable as horror and the production value is fantastic, but as game design I find it wanting.
I never actually finished the previous game by the same developer, Sumatra: Fate of Yandi, so it did something better anyway. 
But I think what I consider the flaws were mostly the same.
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Finished System Shock (2023) yesterday. Such a great remake! More accessible than the original, but still very true to it’s core.
What I liked: Very little hand-holding in it, just like games in the 90ties were. No silly way pointer that always tells you where to go and what to do, no silly linear map design, where you basically follow a long tunnel from start to game’s end.
Instead, you have to find out yourself what to do, from logs and messages left behind by the people before you. They had failed to stop SHODAN, but had some pretty good ideas how to do it. Interestingly, the content of the messages & logs depends on the level of difficulty. On easy, it’s pretty plain, on regular, you have to read more carefully.
Exploring the station is fun & non-linear. You can and must go back, move between levels, solve puzzles across several levels, etc… But luckily, different elevators are relatively close by, and you always open passages between sections for faster navigation through explored areas.
Graphics look modern and retro at once, which is also pretty cool. Modern engine and hd graphics, but intentionally pixelated stylised textures.
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I’ve been nonstop playing DAVE THE DIVER. It’s like a fun, casual non-punishing story-based strategy game that continuously morphs into other genres and has incredible artwork. It also works flawlessly on the Steam Deck, which is far too well-priced and consumer-friendly of a product to even exist in the modern world, so it is worthy of suspicion at the very least.
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i think i’ve finished Dreams in the Witch House about five times, honestly the best lovecraftian game and one of the best PnC games i’ve ever played in my life, you HAVE to try it.
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I’ve been playing some Nier: Replicant.
I’ve seen this game on Steam but have no real understanding of it. I loaded it up and the title was, i thought hilariously, listed as NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139
I hope a junior dev didn’t lose his job but i got a chuckle
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Nope, that’s Yoko Taro - Wikipedia
Playing Baldur’s Gate 3, and will be for a while. Right now I am still in the part of the game that was showcased during development, and while I did not follow too closely, a lot of it still feels vaguely familiar, somewhat lessening the experience.
So far, I’m also missing the connection to the original games, and the overall feel is more like a Divinity: Original Sin with D&D rules (though I do enjoy turn-based battles more than realtime nowadays). It’s just that Pillars of Eternity captured the essence of the originals so much better.
But despite all that, BG3 is rather excellent. The die rolling mechanic must have taken a queue from Disco Elysium, with added fluff, and I love it. There’s plenty to explore, and exploration is rewarded by revealing hidden areas to explore even more 
.
I could go on and on, but I better stop and go back to playing …
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I understand it’s from Ghent, so in the grand scheme of things it’s basically local.
While I’m still in the process of finishing Nier Replicant (or rather, there are about five endings and you need to replay annoyingly much of the game for it), I also just finished Stray Gods, a game I purchased/funded on Fig a few years ago. I thought it was pretty decent, think a bit Walking Dead but with songs.
Besides that I started on some Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane, but I didn’t even get into any actual game yet due to how long the intro is.
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I’ve finally played an adventure game after ages (the previous one was RtMI) because its setting and perceived quality suggested that it could have been the perfect game for me:
All my impressions were confirmed. The English setting and small town atmosphere reminded me of “The Lost Crown”, which also has the king of eerie vibes usually associated with horror stories.
It’s definitely a slow paced game, where you have to listen to the dialog to reveal the story and unexpected twists. The puzzles are OK, but nothing spectacular; it’s obvious that the game is mainly supported by its strong narrative, which is the aspect that interests me more.
I don’t usually buy games with Lovecraftian tones, but this one is so masterfully made that I made an exception and I don’t regret it at all.
There must be something about adventure games set in small towns that draws me in for some reason (TWP, The Lost Crown, Kathy Rain, etc.).
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Yeah, I don’t know if you saw but I basically leaned toward not recommending it (as a game anyway) despite the graphics, sound, and atmosphere being quite good.
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I see a trend emerging here 
.
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Heh, I missed or forgot about that one!
I read your post (and now Kaiman’s) after I wrote mine and I can understand your conclusion.
Reading the reviews on Steam, it seems to me that those who appreciated the game were fine with accepting it as an atmospheric “visual novel” that slowly unravels the story without demanding much effort from the player.
The lack of challenge doesn’t reach the level of a “walking simulator” like “Tacoma” or “Gone Home”, but in my opinion the recipe used to lure players is not far from the narrative-heavy ingredient and low challenge that walking simulators usually adopt.
It’s also the kind of game that has turned into that kind of cultural rabbit holes that I usually explore a bit. For example, I discovered that the church in the game is based on St. Edmund’s Church in Castleton:
This is another similarity to “The Lost Crown”, whose backgrounds are made entirely from photos of a real town, Polperro.
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I think we’re talking past each other a bit, or at least I suspect what you describe wouldn’t have felt tedious.
What an incredible coincidence… Tom Scott just published this video about a barrow.
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Fascinating. I especially liked how the guy says "and when a century has gone by, the ashes are respectfully [dramatic pause] scattered around here". I guess like so
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