I normally play FromSoft games and a few indies here and there. I feel like I might play a huge chunk of ten games a year at best? And any year in which a FromSoft game is released (that I actually play, that’s a hint for later), that’s basically all I play other than casual games to change it up. In 2022, I played Elden Ring all year long. My guess is that I might have played one or two other complete games that year. I’m not sure, though, because my memory is completely shot now.
Ha. Yesterday’s post was supposed to be about the games I’ve played this year, but it really was not. I’m (probably) going to tackled that topic today and why I don’t usually play that many games a year. Why? Because I tend to get obsessed with one game at a time, plus a casual game on the side.
I’m fascinated by people who hop f rom one game to another because I can’t do that. At one point, I was playing Dark Souls III when Geralt showed up Monster Hunter World. Trying to switch between the two games was very hard. That’s on me, though. It’s hard for me to go back to some games once I’m done with them.
Side note: I have wondered if I have ADHD, but I don’t think I do. I have some of the traits, but not the main ones. Also, once I learned that ADHD and autism have several symptoms in common, I leaned more towards being on the spectrum than having ADHD.
Here are some games that I tried this year, but did not finish for a variety of reasons.. I will explain why I didn’t finish each one.
The big one is Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games). It sounded right up my alley. Quitting your job and going to a bucolic beach town in order to set up a mobile bookshop. I tried the demo and did not love it, but I decided to give it a go when the game came out.
I got into it more than I did in the demo, but it was so stressful. Why? For several reasons. One, there are very few save slots. This matters because of the next point. There are several side missions/character side quests that are very elaborate/involved/labor intensive. Also, the game does not adequately explain what you need to do for these quests or even the main mission sometimes.
This all matters because I was trying to do everything as I went along because, yes, I was trying to 100% it. That’s on me, obviously. There are so many side quests and different events, it’s hard to keep track of them. Plus, you can only go to one location a a day, which makes the quests rather tedious.
Plus, there are days where you have to sell all your inventory to get your achievement for that location. One of the dev tips for this is to have a smaller shelf (and throw away a day by trying to get this achievement)–which I did not know you could get for quite some time. Why? Because i was using my money on books and other decorations. I did not realize that you could at some point buy shelves in a very specific way. The way that I ignored for the entire first season.
I enjoyed the game for the most part, but then I hit a specific event that I completely forgot I had to do in order to get the achievement. When I realized I had missed it, I tried to find a way to get back to where I needed to be, but as I mentioned above, saves were, ah, not a thing in this game, really. And the only way I would be able to get this achievement would be to start over.
Also, the game was getting even more complicated and stressful, and I just gave up. I have toyed with starting it over again, but I think I’m more than halfway done. Not sure I have it in me to do it, and I did not like it as much as I wanted to like it. But! When I got in the flow of it, it went well. And it’s lovely to look at, so I would recommend for people to give it a go.
Another one was Carto (Sunhead Games). BIG sigh. I played the demo of this and was really charmed. The art design is lovely, and the idea is novel. there is a child named Carto who is flying on a plane with her grandmother. The plane crashes, and she’s separated from her grandmother. She’s on an island, and the conceit is that you have to get map pieces which you then add to the map wherever the terrain matches up.
It’s so charming and fun–until I got to the third or fourth area. Then, it all fell apart in a very fast fashion, and I just could not do it any longer. I don’t want to get into it because it just makes me sad. The dev team is an indie dev from Taiwan, so big ups on that. I am glad I played what I did of it, and as I have said many times, I would rather a game try something different and fail then just stick to something safe and boring.
Despite my interest petering off over time, I am eager to see what they do for their next game. They are definitely on my radar.
The next game is one that I could not play because it’s first person and it gave me crazy nausea. Much more than many first person games. I fiddled with it as much as I could, but it just messed too much with my head. It’s Blue Prince (Dogubomb), and it’s the game this year that I really wish I could have played. I hate that my brain is like this, but there’s only so much I can do to mitigate the nausea.
This game is clever, and it made me feel clever when I figured out puzzles without brute-forcing them. I gritted my teeth through four runs (days) onver two days, but then I had to throw in the towel because it made me feel awful. In looking it up, other people who did not suffer from first-person perspective issues said this game made them feel ill.
I gave up, reluctantly. I tried one more time with one more suggestion, but that didn’t work, either. I don’t want to talk about the game, even the basic premise, because it’s best to go in spoiler-free. If you like puzzle games with elements of roguelike action, this might be the game for you. Oh, and I wish there had been a way to save during a run because that might have at least cut into the nausea a bit.