At the end of every year, I do a year in games review before handing out funny awards to games I’ve played over the year. The running gag is that a FromSoft game wins every year for game of the year, even in a year when a From game isn’t released (which isn’t many years).
This year, however, I don’t feel much need for that. Why? One, I did not play many games this year. Not many new games, that is. Two ,the ones I did, for the most part, did not captivate me. There is one glaring exception, but I won’t be talking about that in this post. Probably.
There were games I played that were just continued from last year. Dorfromantik by Toukana Interactive. Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (yes, I know it’s Repentance now and that’s what I’m actuallly playing, but, ugh. I really think the game peaked at Rebirth) by Edmund McMillan, and Cozy Grove by Spry Fox. The last came out with DLC in April which I did not pick up until late October. It’s more of the same with some fairly big bugs (and not the kind you catch with your critter net), and I could have taken or left it. Except for one thing. My absolute favorite character in the whole game came with the DLC. She’s an introverted, anxious, low self-esteem writer/science person who makes origami to soothe herself and I love her. She broke my heart with her story and I just want to wrap her in a comfy duvet and make her tea.
In general, though, it’s just more of the same. My island is stressing me out because you have to constantly feed the different animals, and it shows what they want above their heads. I know you don’t HAVE to feed them, but it’s ugly to have their wants broadcast in that way.
Before I started playing the DLC, I was excited for the announcement of Cozy Grove 2. It’s coming out next year sometime, I think in the first quarter. Is it just going to be more of the same?If so, then I may pass on it. I think I have hit my limit on the game.
To be clear, I love the concept of helping ‘stuck’ bears to the other side. I adore their stories and helping them do the last thing they need to do before moving on. The stories are varied, and one is truly shocking.
I have to say, though, the negatives of the DLC really turned me off. One of them was the persistent bug with the collector’s request to find the piece of the puzzle and finish the puzzle. It’s a take on a puzzle in the original game.
The finst time it came up, I found the puzzle piece, but not the puzzle. I looked in the Discord and it said the puzzle should have been near the puzzle piece like the other puzzle. It wasn’t. I could not find the puzzle anywhere on the island. Anywhere. I went over the island several times. I. Could. Not. Find. It. Anywhere. I satrted the game again. I tried to put it in a save slot and start it from there. It was not to be found.
So. After several days, I decided I’d do the very tedious job of moving everything movable (all the decor) and do a pixel hunt. My absolutely favorite part of adventure games bar none–hunting pixel by pixel for something. That’s obvious sarcasm, if you can’t tell.
I have played this game for nearly a year. I have bought many many things. Many. Placed them around my island. I barely have a square inch of space on my island. So, having to bundle them up and move them around was a pain in the ass. A huge pain. And this was supposed to be fun!
It wasn’t. It took me hours, but I finally found the puzzle and got it done. I was relieved. I did not realize that it would happen more than once. It did. It happened several times. The second time, there were two versions of the puzzle side by side. The third time, I found the puzzle piece and when I picked it up, the puzzle disappeared. It disappeared! I had tweeted the devs the first time, but they didn’t really have any tips other than pixel hunt.
I will say. I swear the puzzle was not there the first time. I looked over my island for hours. Hours. I believe it was the reloading and maybe the shifting the saves around that made it pop up again. The fact that it disappeared the third time before reappearing convinced me even more that it happened the first time.
This was annoying as fuck, honestly. I play the game to chill out and relax. It’s supposed to be a cozy game. Having an obvious bug like that six months after it was released did not add to the cozy feeling.
In addition, there were quests for one of the other bears that included an extra step that wasn’t really explained. I just did one. You were supposed to get an origami sculpture from my favorite bear for another bear. But she had gone gold already! How was I supposed to get it for the party bear? The party bear explained it might take a while so I waited a few days. But then I realized that she was already golden. She was not going to get more options. So whatever I needed from her–it already had to happen.
I Googled it. I could not be fucked to figure it out. She had given me an origami sculpture right after she was Raptured. I vaguely remember that. And I had promptly placed it near her. Well, that was the origami sculpture that the party bear was asking for. How the fuck was I supposed to know that? And where the hell had I put the sculpture? I knew it was by her, but not exactly where. So I just picked up every piece of decoration near her until I found it.
That’s not fun! It’s the opposite of fun. There was a Discord post by the devs that there was no way to find it other than just randomly looking for it. That is not a good use of my time!
I’m so frustrated because it’s such a good game in general. I played the vanilla game every day until I ended up in the hospital. Then, it was my comfort game after I got out of the hospital. To have the DLC be so busted is a disappointment. I’m not going to lie.
I will say that I tried a bunch of games that I fell off pretty hard. I’ll rattle them off. I’m looking at my Steam library so I can’t promsie you these were all this year, but either this year or last. They are *deep breath*: Bear and Breakfast, Cult of the Lamb, Dinkum, Kaichu Kaiju Dating Sim, Monster Hunter Rise (thinking of trying this out again), Steelrising, Stray, Tinykin, and two Yakuza games plus Judgment by the same developer.
I fell off all of them for one reason or another except Stray (BlueTwelve Studio). I got about 2/3rds into it and wanted to finish it, but I just could not do the quicktime events. That’s when the stupid Zerg rush happens and you have to repeatedly hammer B in order to keep the Zergs off your cat. I was rabbiting B as quickly as I could, but I kept failing. I literally could not do them correctly and I finally stopped playing the game before the final act.
Look. This isn’t supposed to be a hard game. It’s supposed to be an emotional journey about a cat who is separated from his friends. You’re taking him back to where he belongs. There is no fucking need to have sections that are literally unplayable for some people.
I have hit that message hard several times. In games that are not supposed to be, ah, gameplay forward, the actual gameplay is often hot trash. I have pleaded with cozy game devs to just bypass it because you don’t need it! Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) is one of my favorite games of all time, and I hate the gameplay. I nearly quit playing the last DLC because of the trash jumping bits.
The other thing I did this year was play Dark Souls III. It’s my ultimate comfort game and (still) my favorite game of all time. I played it on my PS4 so I could help Krupa with his plat run which will be concluding next weekend. I have mulan rogue in NG+ and ready to help him storm it. I also got the Bloodborne plat after being inspired by Krupa and his DS III plat.
And, of course, I played one other game a little bit this year and got the hundo chievo for it to boot. It’s a little-known game that didn’t get much pub or much love. I’ll talk about it in another post. Because, yes, it’ll take a whole post for me to talk about it properly.