November 2021 Review: The Crusader

This free games crusade I'm undertaking on the Steam store is much bigger than I thought! So much so that I'll be adding a new section to my end of month posts for them, including a "highlights" section to spruik the ones I liked the best in case you missed them.

Otherwise I've been enjoying a number of shows including the popular Squid Game. If you've already seen that or don't care to watch it at all, I recommend watching TwoSetViolin's Squid Game: Music Edition on youtube (turn close captions on for more fun). It's very cool! Here's a hint as to the other show I'm really enjoying...

Crusade of the Free: 210 games this month, 210 total.

Free Games Highlights this month that you must try:
Dinner with an Owl - show casing that sometimes less is more in this short point and click adventure.

Liquidators - a first person game where you must stop the meltdown at the Chernobyl reactor. No monsters, still horrifying.

High Entropy Challenges - first person stealth puzzler with short levels and is the best free game so far.

Most Viewed Posts in the last 30 days:
Strange Brigade
Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free II
Tales of the Blight II: Morrigan

Hmm I wonder if Strange Brigade's position is helped by DL's video link of it. Also it's not surprising that it's Morrigan's Dragon Age story that makes it to the top three, but I am surprised Sera's one was a close fourth. :)

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XXI

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Agent of Chaos: A top down action game where you are an evil spirit that must stop waves of heroes. Terrible camera angle mixed with poor controls make it a poor game.

Bubble People: An odd find the spot game where you must "pop" objects in the scene. Good thing right click lets you know what you need to look for, because some of the items are pretty hard to find.

Crystal Maidens: An adult game (which opens with an H-scene) where you must recruit a band of maidens to fight the dark wizard who has also recruited a band of maidens? Whatever, the combat missions where your girls mostly auto-fight actually does have some interaction, the art is pretty nice and there's actually a point in "getting to know" your team (using currency) as it ups their stats. It's actually a decent setup, but it is very cash shop heavy - and is one of those games where you need "energy" to do stuff.

The Debug: Um. I think you are a tripping turtle who is meant to flick moths off a tall tree. Very WTF.

Ice Demon: A pixel fighting platform martial arts game which I didn't get into at all.

Idle Pins: Definitely an idle game. Also boring. Bleh.

Priest Simulator - Heavy Duty: This is the one of the most WTF Polish first person shooter games I ever played, and is also one of the best given the graphics quality and humor. I especially enjoyed the exorcism section. Recommended!

It's time to smite evil!

Space Merchant: When its not spitting errors at me, it's clearly a mobile port of a semi idle game - or at least a game with a lot of waiting. Bleh.

Squadron 51 Prologue: A Portuguese side scroller where you take the role of a combat plane taking the fight against some UFOs. Uses live action video which is pretty cool, and while the game certainly is shiney (in a black and white / dated kind of way) the game play isn't anything out of this world.

UEBERNATURAL - Prologue: A pixel side scroller game that pays homage to the TV show, Supernatural. Wish it had a better checkpoint system though.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XX

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Chernobyl Liquidators Simulator Demo: Super long load until forever. Doesn't even start. Zzzzzz.

Kingdom Fall Dawn of the Druid: You play an archer in a pretty 3D world which is devoid of life, save for the bad guys that portal in when you get close enough. Kill of all them to level... and... stuff. Bleh.

ROG CITADEL XV: Has nice graphics but takes forever to load and goes absolutely nowhere. Garbage.

Sea of Roses: A hand drawn exploration game with loads of reading and a fair dose of backtracking. Pretty good, but not for me.

Silent Dream: RPG maker style horror with lots of text where you probably won't react fast enough and have to start again. Stupid.

Siren Head Awakening: First person horror where you must find car parts in the dark before slenderman Siren Head gets you. The low quality graphics help Siren Head blend into the trees.

Siren Head - The Siren's Forest: A higher quality version of the above with a more story based approach which leads to a better game, even if its more on the rails.

Submorse: Basically an education to learn and memorize morse code. Good if you are interested in improving that skill.

Summerland: A first person find the spot game with nice graphics and a good story. As a bonus the spots aren't that hard to find either. Thumbs up!

A modern hall of trials.

Zolaris: First person shooter with decent graphics where you must take on a cult of crazies. Unfortunately the epic music doesn't match the tedious walking / exploration segments where nothing is happening and since it wasn't made for keyboard it gets frustrating fast.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XIX

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Dark Fracture Prologue: A first person horror walking simulator set in a morgue. Didn't quite make it to the "horror" part as I couldn't find the first item - your lighter. Looks well rendered but for me find a spot games are much better when the spots are more obvious.

Eternal Dreamers: An RPG maker type game with a heavy focus on combat. As in, any time you go out of the home base there is no map. It's just waves of combat. That's... different and certainly makes things go faster. Definitely designed for those who like turn based combat and nothing in between.

Liquidators: A first person exploration game where you play as three of the guys (one at a time) sent in to delay the meltdown at the Chernobyl reactor. Graphics aren't the best and the game play mostly relies on player pathing memory / knowledge (LOOK BEFORE ADVANCING) but good premise and since the well designed compact map is surprisingly small it's definitely worth a try. Bonus points on playing archived footage from the real thing. Expect to have a few attempts at it though. Might not be for everyone, but I think it's excellent!

Down down to reactor town.

The Little Red Lie: A nice hand drawn side scroller where you are Red Riding Hood returning to the forest. Pretty good.

Little Traveler: A cute puzzle platformer where you play a tiny wingless fairy who must navigate around a kitchen. Can get frustrating if you jump into things you can't get out of, or can't work out where to jump to next.

Lycanthorn II Reign of Beasts (comes with Lycanthorn I): Retro first person shooter in the style of Hexen mixed heavily with Castlevania. Pretty cool just for the music. The straightforwardness of Lycanthorn I is an good place to start.

Puzlkind: A game that's all about solving jigsaw puzzles, either alone of with friends. You can customize how many pieces to break the picture into at the start. Decent controls too but just not for me.

Shrine and Shrine 2: A retro first person shooter much in the style of Doom II, almost to the point of being able to tell what was could simply be reskinned. Ok for what it is, and the second game improves the pickups to make them easier to understand instead of red fire for health, green fire for armor, red fire for some sort of ammo etc.

Suspicious Downpour: A game where you do nothing. Bleh.

Veneficium: A cute 3D platform puzzler where you are a witch running around on floating islands. Your fire, ice and storm spells can interact with a variety of things to temporarily alter the map to remove hazards or add platforms to stand on. It's ok.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XVIII

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Cognition Method Initiation: First person puzzler with high quality graphics, but takes really long to load.

It's very pretty.

Crystal Call: A decent, student made first person parkour game.

Destiny Island: An odd walking simulator experience. Bleh.

Digital Zoo Gallery: A walking simulator through either a jurassic or underwater zoo or a plain gallery of art. Little interaction with anything though. Bleh.

The Dream Libra Had: A very odd adventure game that lets you pick up loads of stuff to use as decorations later. Kinda strange but also kinda good.

DreamWatcher: "A gamepad is required to play this game." Fail.

Forgotten Journey: A decent platform puzzler set on a different planet. Some camera vs direction annoyances though.

Frame of Mind: A strange and artsy first person puzzler. I really liked the art but the puzzles are a bit out there.

Hello Guest, Hello Neighbor 2 pre-alpha: An interesting and well produced demo of a first person... shift worker? I wish there was more instruction on what we are actually meant to do but it's a nice concept.

Lightblue: A first person horror where you must find items in the dark (as usual) while avoiding the bad guys, or in this case - using a crucifix and praying to the Lord for (temporary) protection. Bleh.

Some Epic Misses

Games I got from Epic's freebies that I didn't get into.

Aven Colony

A space colony builder and management game where all your structures must be connected by -roads- tubes, and all your people kept happy and fed and zzzzzz... Obviously not my type of game, but the graphics and controls are ok so it might interest the builder types among you.

Guild of Dungeoneering

A card based game where you build a dungeoneering guild and send adventurers to -their deaths- collect gold from the dungeons which you also build based on a random deck of cards. Also outside of combat (again card based), you can't really control your adventurer. Instead you need to spawn gold to lure them places. While I like the funny songs that get played the rest of the game doesn't really do it for me.

That's actually a good hand.

KID A MNESIA EXHIBITION

Not a game, an experience. A trippy Radiohead experience... which is also garbage. Stay away.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragonkeep (Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure)

While I did enjoy this Borderlands II DLC and can vouch that it will have funny moments in there, I think you will be doing yourself a disservice if played as it stands here - alone. The opening cinematic basically spoils Borderlands II for you, and robs you of all the other interactions you have with the characters outside the DLC. Your call.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XVII

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Into the dangerous world I leapt: A first person adventure lacking any proper instructions which just makes it a chore to play.

The Picture in the House: A first person puzzler based on an HP Lovecraft novel. Guessing horror too, but I didn't get to that part since the "walk around in dark rooms looking for stuff to interact with" trope is annoying.

The Plane Effect Prologue: An awesome demo of a puzzle game that now has my interest. Recommended!

He's a happy chappy. Until he isn't.

Quiet Godo: A funny first person pixel horror where you need to find keys and unlock doors while being very quiet - otherwise Godo will appear! Luckily Godo is around the size of a mouse, and while it is still instadeath if he catches you all you need to do is jump on furniture and wait until he goes away.

Ruff Night at the Gallery: Another funny first person horror game, this time you are looking for keys inside an art gallery that has paintings of dogs. If the paintings see you and you don't see them, the doggy ghosts come to lick you - unless you manage to spot them first.

Secrets of the Lost Tomb: You are a soldier sent into a dangerous Egyptian tomb to recover treasure which is guarded by... ROCKS. Yep, in this endless runner, the walls and inanimate rocks are your worst enemies. Lol.

Ship Graveyard Simulator Prologue: A first person simulator where you play a sledgehammer wielding scrapper who manually breaks apart ships and sell the parts for money. Pretty cool, but still just "work" at the end of the day.

Ultreia Prologue: A point and click adventure where you are a robot out for revenge while looking for the meaning of life and death. General walk speed could be faster, and did not make me want to play full game.

Wild Dose First Session: First person walking simulator that starts off promising on a nice looking island but quickly loses quality once you get out of that VR session. Also loses my interest when the player protagonist, bored with life, decides to go buy and use illegal drugs. Not for me.

To Hell With It: Fatal Error Crash. Doesn't even start.

DARQ Stubbs Among the Sleep

A horror trio? Well one's more like a comedy.

DARQ

This puzzle game sees you traverse the realm of nightmares where you must sneak past horrors. They aren't the problem though - its the puzzles that involve requiring walking on walls and ceilings. Excellent art, easy controls and puzzles that aren't too hard (or too easy) made this game very enjoyable for me. Recommended, I give it three and a half wheelchairs out of five.

Some really strange stuff in here.

Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel without a Pulse

This action comedy sees you take control of the titular Stubbs in unleashing a zombie apocalypse upon an unsuspecting "futuristic" town full of idiots, most of whom are men. Police men. The dialogue and the powers you have are pretty funny - and I particularly loved the dance-off boss fight - but alas the majority of the game play is super repetitive in areas far too big with nothing interesting to do in them. Some even make you back track. Lol. Not recommended, I give it one and a half brains out of five.

Among the Sleep

In this first person horror game you are a two year old child that basically needs to find his mom while avoiding the many nasties lurking about. A talking teddy bear keeps you company throughout this, and somehow he's somewhat scary too! Very different from your usual horrors, and the puzzles are nice an easy. Thumbs up, I give it three bottles out of five.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XVI

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Astria: A French first person puzzle platformer that's pretty decent despite the generic cave setting and the odd way the protagonist runs.

Ball at Work: A colorful 2D platformer where you need to guide a bouncy ball across an office environment to a basket. Short levels make it quite addictive.

CAGE-FACE | Case 1 - The Mine: First person horror where you wander around a dark mine looking for keys and doors while avoiding the titular bad guy. I don't really feel for the protagonist here because the reason for being in the abandoned mine in the first place is a stupid one.

DKLS: Long load for this far out there puzzle platformer. Sets up an interesting scenario but the challenges are far too annoying.

Eternal Evil Prologue: Highly rendered first person shooter that puts you on the streets of the apocalypse against vampires! Could use a HUD though.

Die (again) vampire scum!

Flyland Wars 0 Ball Game [Trainer]: Not sure what this is other than an ugly mess.

Freaky Clown Town Mystery: In this first person stealth game you need to save your friend from a kidnapper dressed as a clown. Interesting that you have a "clown cam" so you can keep track of the bozo, but very rough graphics and places you can jump off the map.

Get Out!: Stylized escape a room puzzler where you are a spy whose cover has been blown. Bleh.

Hard Tapes: An odd first person horror which starts out as interesting but then goes into having long, pointless traversal areas and finding items in the dark while being chased by a stupid looking shadow. Bleh.

Hidden Dream: A nice Chinese themed platformer with puzzles and a faceless protagonist. Can't believe I'm not complaining about backtracking.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XV

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo Demo: In this 2.5D adventure you are a bone snake and limbo is a bright, cheery and funny place. Does a good job as a demo as it makes me want to play the full game.

Leave the Red: First person horror that I didn't get very far in, because I couldn't work out how to leave the coffin room. Nothing I did seemed to work and that's no fun so, fail.

Mirlo Above the Sun: Made by students from the Digipen Insitute in Bilbao, this action game sees you control a simple spear wielder to fight the robot forces and free your dragon friends. All it's lacking is some sound effects but otherwise it's a really good game!

Very cool.

Orion: After a promising but retro intro, this devolves into a generic and bad first person shooter. Bleh.

Praesidium: Leap across neon rooftops in the best time you can as a cyborg who looks like Batman, while carrying a round shield you can use to block attacks from drones, or to destroy them by throwing the shield which can come back to you... Bleh.

Quiet Thoughts: Someone's first attempt at making a platformer - definitely succeeded in making it annoying.

Raging Ball: Control a ball to get it across some platforms with some of the worst controls ever. Garbage.

Saving Punyville: A really bad pixel adventure game as it immediately features things like backtracking and having lots of "places to traverse that have no purpose". Shit.

Trikaya: Student made first person puzzle game which is pretty decent. Wonder if there's a way to find more university made stuff as so far they are consistent in enjoyable quality.

Wild Dive: A colorful first person runner which is ok for what it is, but is ultimately pretty shallow just like most other runners.

Dark Souls (Cards): Pursued into the Darkness

A board game session from Dark Souls: The Card Game

A staircase descends beyond the realm of fire into an impossibly huge cavern - lit only by distant fauna and skittering bugs. It is here that that the party sets up another bonfire before patrolling (level I + level I) the area and resting up. The path to the first boss here - Yhorm, the last giant, gives a choice of going the long way (the two level I areas again) or through a harder (level II) path. The team picks the latter, and while the enemies are slightly scarier they are whittled down in no time.

Whittling down is the name of the game against Yhorm as well, as the giant makes for a decent opponent with big hits while jumping around the board. Eventually with enough spells from our sorcerer (mom) and axe strikes from the warrior (DL), the giant falls to the coup de grace from our assassin (wifey). It's then back to the bonfire to prepare for the battle against the Pursuer!

To reach him is either a level III encounter or a level III encounter which makes the choice a bit meaningless, and boy are those enemies tough! Our assassin in particular takes a bit of damage before we can get past them to the boss fight. While this dark knight has less hit points than Yhorm, he has more armor making him a pain to deal damage to while his damage output is ridiculously high. Lucky the assassin could evade his impale attack because if not that does around 9 damage (around 1/3rd of someone's life).

The Pursuer then wails on the cleric (me) for a bit, forcing me to use too many heals on myself while the others chip away at him. Soon, the assassin and the sorcerer are also on the defense as their cards (life) run really low. Luckily the warrior gets his good cards just as the boss gets weak to their attack types, and DL finishes him off for a narrow victory. Mom had six cards left, wifey had TWO! 

Interesting that they made a non-boss the final bad guy over Yhorm, who gave me a hard time in the PC game. Thus concludes another exciting adventure and for the time being, this story as those are all the bosses/maps I have.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XIV

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

ArmaCulture: A complicated pixel farming game during a war with a nice soundtrack. Too much for me.

Boodunnit: A tonally jarring cute 3D exploration game where you play the ghost who must solve their own recent murder, but the find the spot nature of it is a bit frustrating.

Clash of Legions: A cash shop heavy card/idle game. Nice music and some nice art on the cards, but what's the point when you can just press "automatic" to have it fight for you - followed by waiting for "stamina" to recharge before you can fight again. Definitely a "waiting to have fun" sort of game. Bleh.

Dinner with an Owl: Short stylized point and click adventure game about being stuck in what basically is a two screen house (with a most impeccably polite monster). It's great. :)

Recommended!

EoS: A short first person walking simulator with minor puzzle elements and a decent story made by students in Singapore (which you can hear from some of the voice acting). Pretty nice.

From the Shadows: A cute platformer where you can cooperatively play as light and shadow, or in single player just flicker between the two. Some platforms only exist when in range of one of those two elements so, in single player anyway, there's a bit of timed flickering to do. Not keen on the controls and once again... backtracking. Bleh.

Gorge: A first person parkour game where you have fallen down a gorge and must make use of all your double jump, wall running, and telekenisis skills to escape. Controls well, but kinda annoying.

Hidden Lands: A relaxing "spot the difference" game with decent game play and ambient music. If you like that sort of thing, definitely check it out. Just a little too chill for me.

I'm Strongest Legend: First person Chinese sword swinger where you fight hundreds of mohawked eunochs who all have the same death sound after being hit once by your mighty sword, or by their own swords. For variety stage three has you in a futuristic jet fighter fighting the same enemies in their strong T-pose flight form. WTF.

Jack Axe the Trial: No tutorial platformer where you need to actually find the axe first. The throw axe and rush to axe interesting mechanic as it can make you travel further than a jump, but still just a cute platformer. Bleh.

Red Notice In Time

A pair of movies in the middle of the deck.

Red Notice

The plot for this action comedy where no one knows how to shoot has an FBI agent (Dwayne Johnson), thief (Ryan Reynolds) and a femme fatale (Gal Gadot) race against/team up to collect all of Cleopatra's eggs (wtf) for a huge pay day. Most of the cool parts happen near the early part of the film and some of the action sequences later on should probably just have been cut out. Annoyingly, the story itself is only mediocre with just one particular high note that makes the ending somewhat anticlimactic. Two jumper cables out of five and no, I wouldn't watch this one again.

In Time

In an alternate world where people are genetically modified to remain 25 and get a clock for only one year to live which also doubles as this world's currency, Will (Justin Timberlake) is one of the many poor people who literally lives with only the hours of the day in reserve - requiring to earn more via a low paying job. A twist of fate gives him the opportunity to try fight the system using the tried and true method of crime.

Better than Red Notice.

While this film has an interesting premise and some decent acting, it is let down by the story itself wherein every single character has the flaw of lacking foresight. So many things could have been avoided if any of the characters just had some planning skills. Ah well. It's an OK movie, but it could have been a fantastic one. Two and a half time capsules out of five and yes, I'd watch it again.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XIII

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Anarchy Wolf's Law Prologue: A pre-alpha first person survival shooter which is pretty neat, but obviously more designed for PvP. If that's your sort of thing, it may be worth checking out.

Commie Killer 2069: Terrible pixel first person shooter. Bleh.

Escape From Planet Aelea: First person stealth (more like sprinter since you can out run everything) with a decent premise: you need to escape from mining robots gone rogue. Unfortunately has game breaking bugs.

Estigma [Steam Edition]: A really strange game where you must "paint" every tile in many maze like levels with your avatar without stepping on a painted tile more than once. For added difficulty, ugly monstrous things are also trying to kill you so you can't stop to think too long. Not really for me.

Fears to Fathom Episode 1: Psychological horror walking simulator, with OK story telling but only one 20 minute "episode". Decent enough.

He Needs His Medicine: "Scary" 2D pixel explorer with little instruction. Got the "Humane ending". Bleh.

Mrs. Santa's Gift Hunt: A short, fully voiced RPG maker style game where Mrs. Claus must find all the stolen Christmas presents. Surprisingly very good!

Also decently voiced.

Spaceship Visual Effect Graph Demo: Just a sample of high rendered CGI in Unity, but still worth a peek for the five minute story.

Super Raft Boat: Pixel top down shooter where you must both create a raft to stand on (limited by cooldown) while surviving the dangers of the sea... fish, seagulls and raft eating sharks? Bleh.

Swallow the Blue Remastered: 2D pixel explorer (same as He Needs His Medicine) set in a hotel where something isn't quite right. Like when you press a light switch the entire thing crashes. Bleh.

Supergirl (TV Series)

Because girls are better.

A story of a space alien who, during childhood, fled the destruction of their home planet and crash lands on Earth to luckily be adopted and raised by a caring family. On this planet they have amazing super powers thanks to the yellow sun and so take on a dual life as a superhero and a mild mannered spectacled reporter... just like her cousin! Melissa Benoist plays the titular role in this six season series which really goes out of its way to be inclusive and LGBTQ+ friendly to the point of its own detriment, not helped by plots that have the usual problem of "Supergirl can actually solve this in 10 minutes, we need to pad it out".

Supergirl doesn't wear glasses, that can't be her.

It also falls into the hole of not really being about Supergirl later on, but about her Superfriends, because team building is a thing. Also this lets them make Supergirl continue to make bad judgement calls all the way to the end because they couldn't think of any other flaw to give the lead character. I did quite enjoy any episode with them singing though. Better in the earlier seasons than the later ones, and recommended only for fans of anything I mentioned above. And with that, another Arrowverse show bites the dust.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XII

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Andromeda Zombies Colonies: Storyless generic first person shooter with zombies in space. Garbage.

Andromeda 2 Zombies:  The second part of "Andromeda Zombies Colonies" is no better. In fact, it's actually worse. WTF.

Countrified: Is in Portugese with not a good enough English translation for me to get started.

Farming Engine: Very little instruction and a fixed camera makes this very unappealing.

Greedy Goblin: Cute exploration game where you are trying to take all the humans treasures, plagued by bad design decisions where you drop stolen gold if you sprint and poor controls (where control movement and camera movement are both manual and on the keyboard). They do recommend a gamepad though so maybe it's better there? I wonder if I can filter out any shitty game that requires / suggests game pads... because like VR, I never intend to get that tech.

High Entropy Challenges: This first person stealth puzzler is hands down the best free game I've encountered during this entire crusade thus far. Highly, highly recommended!

A great game that requires some thinking.

Jetscout Boot Camp: A sprite "don't bump the walls" game where your controls are limited to left, right and thrust. Bleh.

Penimorta: An excellent and funny bullet hell pixel game in which you are a wizard trying to escape from the titular 20 floor prison. 10 of those floors are bosses. Simple controls, difficult game. Thumbs up!

Survival Engine: Feels like a slightly better version of Farming Engine, but still unappealing.

Three of Cards: Is in Chinese with not a good enough English translation for me to get started.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XI

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

41 Hours Prologue: Long load is worth it for this first person shooter. Not only does it have good graphics and decent controls, it also features a friendly (and slightly OP) AI companion. It can autosave in bad spots though, but otherwise is definitely worth a look.

Data Jack: You are a hacker mercenary of the future employed by mega corps to sneak infiltrate, steal and sabotage competitors - but all your gadgets won't get around the poor interface and gameplay loop.

Evo\Wave: When an AI decides to put a virus into an AI only world, the reboot loads up a hero to stop him! Some pretty nifty ideas here but this 3D platformer is heavy on the jumping puzzles and instadeath fails so... not recommended.

Heart of Enya: A will-o-wisp helps some queer adventurers to fight "the frost", but are so hopeless they struggle against inanimate boxes during their first grid based combat. Easy fail for me.

Hunted: Low quality first person shooter where you set on an alien planet where you fight odd looking vacuum cleaners? Hilarious that there's a cross hair on the screen but your gun NEVER SHOOTS STRAIGHT. Instafail.

The Most Boring Game Ever: Succeeds in its title. It's a click counter.

Pocket Plants: A 3D explorer about putting plants to clear fog. Unfortunately it has bad controls in that the camera can only turn if you move so... that's already a fail for me.

Prison Simulator Prologue: Abuse your power (or not) in this prison guard simulator. Nice graphics are long to load but ultimately pretty boring as it's basically just "work".

Rokka: Cool but shallow first person shooter where you man a machine gun while enemy troops advance on your position.  

Trainslation: A first person puzzle game where you are a spirit trying to find your "exit" from a subway with working trains, but the only clue you have as to where that is is on a piece of paper you can't read. If you try this out, try get to the junction platforms where multiple lines intersect (color based). The stops on the platforms are more detailed.

So many lost ghosts.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free X

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Dear Future: Slow load. Creative photography game with low quality graphics? So, like a walking simulator but with no purpose. Not for me thanks.

Deathly Stillness: A very impressive zombie shooter made really quickly for teaching purposes. Check it out!

Appropriate zombie killing attire.

Eronoctosis Put Yourself together: Needs two players so... immediate fail.

House Builder First Job: Slow to load, and with only few available "jobs" without buying DLCs. Kind of interesting, as you need to build houses manually through the ages. I didn't make it past the very first clay house despite the unlockable skills that speed up repetitive tasks a little. Might interest builder types.

My Singing Monsters: An island management game with a focus on raising various singing monsters. While the singing is actually pretty cool, the management side which includes waiting for things to happen (make coin, build stuff, hatch monsters) is not for me.

Night in Riverager: A strange, hand drawn adventure with an interesting style but terrible animation. Also, having a fixed camera that can never be turned is fricking annoying.

P3TT: A puzzle game inspired by Portal. Since I hated Portal, I hate this one too.

SCORCH: A very stylized shooter with a stealth focus - it looks neat but the gunplay feels very lacking.

Slay the Dragon!: Beautiful kids action adventure game that can easily be won in an hour. Definitely worth a look, and don't forget to spam the immunity frames of the dodge roll. :P

UNBEATABLE [white label]: I don't play many rhythm adventure games... this probably being the first, and wow. Good art, good tunes, simple controls all get a thumbs up from me.  Ultimately still not my sort of thing but might be worth for you to check out!

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free IX

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Distancing: Silly little game that teaches social distancing due to a virus, while having a main character who doesn't wear a mask and decides to attend a party. The true win condition (which doesn't exist in game) should be to stay home like a champion.

Ghost College: Chinese side scroller with decent art and terrible English translation. That would be ok if the game didn't simply involve running around in the dark looking for key items while avoiding a giant slime baby.

Just a game to test your IQ: A horror twist for an IQ test. Silly, but well rendered.

Larry the Unlucky Part 1 and Part 2: Hand drawn "stuck in a room" puzzles that have very obscure solutions. Thank goodness there's a handy "Hints" button because there's no way I can guess scissors will come out of someone's head or throwing dice at a painting will change it.

Sillyfun Valley: Point and click adventure in a cartoony world with an obvious slant towards humor. Terrible animation though.

Soul Dossier: Requires additional login but I can't tell what. Not in English.

Space Survival: Space sim with bad graphics and even worse controls. Garbage.

S.U.M. Slay Uncool Monsters: A pixel adventurer math game where you must find the two digits to correctly get the total each monster is looking for. A good math challenge as even the easy ones like x + y = 12 might have you seeking two 6s's or a 2 and a 10, but those aren't always available.

I wonder if he's related to that vampire on Sesame Street...

Treasure of Barracuda: A lego based puzzle game which I didn't get into at all. Lack of instruction only makes for frustration if you want to progress. Garbage.

Zombie Hunter: Pretty fun sniping game where you must protect civilians from zombies. Very cash shop heavy though, not just in terms of boosts and new maps either - you run out of "power" by playing and either need to rest or pay up. Bleh.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free VIII

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Bridg: Walking simulator of going across a bridge while kicking stones. Sometimes the stones kick you though. Terrible controls & gameplay.

BustyBiz: Adult clicker game. Just... why? There are so many easier ways and better clickers.

Deepest Sword: Pixel platformer where you are a knight who has to stab a funny dragon. You cannot jump but instead have to rely on your sword like a lever to pole vault up, over and across platforms. Each attempt makes the dragon move deeper into the cave and makes your sword longer, but this also makes it much harder to maneuver at all. With no enemies except the dragon, most of your "battling" will be with platforms. I get that its designed to have poor controls, but that doesn't make it fun.

Etched Memories Demo: High quality 3D explorer where you are a cat. Unfortunately super dark in some areas and hard to find how to advance.

Girl's Lovecast: Hand drawn magic girl hunts demons in hotel? Art is ok and fighting becomes a little bullet hell type but the game almost immediately introduces back tracking. To hell with that.

Grow Defense: A very messy indie idle/tower defense game. Bleh.

NoirPunk: A very cool greyscale point and click adventure game where you are a freelance private investigator. Excellent variety of gameplay and fun puzzles that aren't too hard if you put your mind to it. Hey, I hate puzzle games and even I finished this one! Recommended! You'll probably finish it in around 30 mintues. :)

Funny and cool.

Ransack Racoon: Student made game where you play a mall thief who happens to be a racoon, while evading spotlights. Cute but repetitive.

Shattered Slime: Platformer where you are a slime that can vary your own weight, affecting your jump distance or sink capability. Poor controls never go well with a platformer though.

Stay in the Light: Fails to even install. Garbage.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free VII

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Alpaca Stacka: A short and light exploration children's game where you must find and return five chicks to mother hen. Cute but made my PC crash when trying to exit.

Cloud Climber: A very short first person story with super minor puzzles. Pretty cool and worth a look for the short play time.

Those don't look too stable.

Covid Chaos: Silly top down shooter where you must destroy all the randomly floating covids before they bump all the wandering humans. Hitting a big covid makes three little covids which are faster burst out. Bleh.

Lab Rags: First person platform puzzler where you are a disposable crash test dummy trying to get through a death maze. Emphasis on disposable as you need to die a lot to advance - usually you need your previous corpses to either walk on, throw at buttons or block gunfire etc. Bleh.

A Long Time: Award winning first person platformer featuring clocks, elongating platforms and an intentional irritating hall of mirrors effect. Bleh.

Octarina: A cute 3D adventure where you play a pink octopus trying to escape a sushi factory. Controls and camera are shit though, and often you can get stuck in geometry.

Perfect Vermin: Very strange and short first person game where you must hunt mimics in an office building using a sledgehammer under a time limit. I liked it, but there's a big WTF factor going on.

Triple Builder: Not the usual city builder. Instead this is a match three in a nine by nine grid where you are trying to put buildings of the same levels together. Do so to get points and to clear them out, though the last one you place will remain and gain one level. Interesting mind exercise.

Worn Thin: Stupid falling game where you are a pill falling down an esophagus? Lol.

Zombie Gunship Survival: In this zombie apocalypse fuel and ammo are so abundant, you spend all the action segments flying around in a gunship to cover allied forces looting and blowing up buildings? Game play gets old really quick.

Cthulhu: Death May Die - The King in Yellow

Invoking the name of elder beings isn't usually a good idea.

A board game session from Cthulhu: Death May Die.

A sound stage is the site for the next ritual, and the rehearsing actors are unwitting participants as they read out loud the play entitled "The King in Yellow". The Kid (mom) and Arielle (wifey) clear the path by blowing away the regular guards as Mario (me) runs straight for the cult leader to destroy the first of his undead souls which causes him to flee. A dimension shambling brute gives chase and hurts Mario badly, but also triggers his co-dependency insanity which safely moves him back to Arielle.

He shows up in exactly one mission. :O

Father Luke (Juris) then catches up to the cult leader and destroys another of his souls - causing him to flee more, barely slipping past John's (DL) range as he uses more cultists as human shields. It is the Kid that reaches him with her flaming hands and when he flees again Arielle manages to stab him to death - summoning a weakened Hastur into her space! She manages to sneak away from the dimensional shambler but Hastur and an extra cultist give chase and hurt her badly even as Mario provides cover fire.

John and Luke, who managed to find a boy band to help them, charge the elder one and while the boy band is slain, Hastur teleports away to where the Kid is and nearly kills her too but makes the mistake of leaving her for dead. Meanwhile Arielle manages to get away from the mob as Mario's co-dependency triggers again when as he kills a cultist and the dimensional shambler, while the remaining horde chases Luke who charges Hastur once more, and absolutely kicks his ass - forcing the King in Yellow to flee again. Somehow, the mob of cultists surrounding him are unable to kill him thanks to his holy blessings (more like super good luck dicing).

John manages to punch Hastur in the face a few times before the Kid sends her fireballs down the hallway to finish the elder one off, once and for all! MISSION SUCCESS! Though really, do these elder ones ever die? Unlikely based on this quote from H.P. Lovecraft: "That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die."

Insight: Super lucky dicing made this mission easy for us, though in truth we had three people with one HP there in the end. As usual, speed is the key so take down that cult leader ASAP.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free VI

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Coloring Game 4: Another paint by pixels, but this one comes with only ONE free image to color in before asking for cash. Bleh.

D3L3T3.exe: Walking simulator where you decide to investigate spooky happenings at a graveyard on a misty evening, bringing only a trusty rechargeable flashlight. Some puzzles and jump scares to be had. In the first section at least, the items are mostly in obvious spots. The second section is much more frustrating.

Need to be fast in those caves.

Dairy Dave: Endless pixel runner where you need to be on the right most to be able to milk cows as collecting bottles of milk and delivering them are the only way to get past levels. Bleh.

Escape the Underground: A challenging pixel platformer where you are a black slime trying to escape a death trap laden sewer. Simple story and good controls but will only appeal to those who enjoy difficulty like Super Meat Boy.

Fear Protocol Shadow Paradigm: The long, low quality unskippable intro is a bad start. Hand drawn kid level art is cool but also hilarious, just like the story and the "biomonsters". Usually best to dodge roll past all the low quality everything but you know what? I still quite enjoyed this one as it's clear whoever made it had heaps of fun doing it.

Fear Protocol Codename Omega: The first game before Shadow Paradigm, which is still all hand drawn and ridiculous. Not as fun as the second one though.

Low Light Combat: PvP shooter that enjoys playing with light using laser guns, fast day/night cycles and deep shadows. Didn't like my graphics card but no matter, all servers were empty of players anyway. Bleh.

Mi Scusi: An odd game where you play in a playdough type world, the "cool guy" helping the town and fighting mafia types. The controls and camera are terrible though, leading to a non-enjoyable experience.

OMFG One Million Fatal Guns: Generic shooter where you face little toy drone things in repetitive rooms, but the music is groovy and the controls are good. Are there actually a million guns? Maybe, because they just keep adding words like: pistol, glass pistol, flaming big-clip glass pistol, legendary epic flaming big-clip glass pistol of maiming etc. Cool but... why?

Orakyubu: A simple "push the box to the right spot" puzzle game, except played in cubes meaning you have to rotate the view to follow your action and/or join multiple cubes to find the correct path. Not one for me.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free V

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Dash Lamb: Odd sprite game where you are a lamb hopping on enemy... balloons? Camera view never changes and falling out of bounds is common. The game recommends a controller. I recommend ignoring this game entirely.

Fruit Hunter: In this first person shooter you are making salads with a fork launching bow while hunting very mobile fruits. Unfortunately level two immediately adds a jumping puzzle component which just ruins what little this game has going for it.

Hellevator: Addictive and well made platformer set in Hell, with the distinction that you must die to advance. Dying lets you posses another body, but this still becomes quite tricky when bodies do different things upon death - and when you can start controlling more than one at a time. Not one I'm going to win since it eventually introduces backtracking (always garbage), but one I did enjoy.

Some nice looking baddies here too.

My Journey to your world: Hexagonal pipe dream puzzles where you need to be fast as later some pieces turn on their own or vanish temporarily. As you complete puzzles you assemble and learn more about an all female crew for a flying ship because... why not? Higher levels get really tough despite repetitive shapes.

Nyaa-kuza!!: Arena platformer where you are a katana wielding cat fighting other cat-yakuza. Very odd. Also not very good.

The Office Simulation: This walking simulator is a poor imitation of the Stanley Parable. Neither here nor there.  

Sprite Sequence Chapter 1: A simple platformer with hand drawn sprites and vocal sound effects which only requires a low level of player skill. Very cool ideas, and makes me want to see what Chapter 2 is. Thumbs up!

Star Vortex: Ultra shallow game where, as the universe falls down the screen, you use your mouse cursor (which is now a black hole I guess) to eat as many stars as you can to gain points without sucking up any asteroids, because that immediately kills you somehow. Bleh.

Steel Salvo: Pilot a generic war mech against generic evil robot forces in this first person shooter (with a cockpit). The English dubbed over the original Japanese is ridiculous and the game play isn't anything unique. Skip it.

Unforgettable You: A short silhouette platformer with a love story and no puzzles. Finished this one as I wanted to complete the story. Still some annoying bits but much less than your standard platformer, and enough variety to keep gameplay fresh.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free IV

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

3 O'Clock Horror: Pixel art investigator heads to a haunted mansion full of corpses and decides instead of calling the police, to simply go in alone with a box of matches. Feels like the technical abilities weren't quite up to the story puzzles with poor controls and questionable design choices.

After School Murder Club!!: Interactive novel with decent writing, music and graphics that lost my interest when it introduced a talking piece of toast and a school founded by an ancient immortal cat. I think I'm going to add "visual novels" to things I skip. "Dating sim" too.

Cardiac Unrest: Hunt down ghosts in a generic school with your ghost rifle and ghost o meter? Slow to load and not worth the wait. Bleh.

Doggone Hungry: Despite being slow to load, this is a super cute game where you play as a dog that needs to eat as much as he can to get his toy duck back before time runs out. There's lots of food lying around and lots of humans too - if you dress up how they like you can play various mini games with them to earn even more food. Just don't get caught by the patrols! Recommended! :P

Cute little rascal.

GunBlocks Prologue: In this pixel game you are a gundrone that must walk forward while over coming obstacles and shooting enemies in turn based fashion. The methods to do so? Think Tetris mixed with Angry Birds. Yeah, kinda strange and didn't really appeal to me.

Momentum: Race neon cars (if you have more than one player anyway, as there are no NPC cars) in a neon city with gravity defying roads. Bleh.

Pixel Art Coloring Book: Exactly as titled. Color by number, where you can't actually make a mistake as each color is preset and won't allow you to click on the "wrong" numbered boxes. Bleh.

Tile Runner: Silent 3D platformer where you are always at full sprint and can only turn and jump to get to generic looking tiles. Bleh.

Typing Incremental: A typing game that starts with only the letter A. Typing correctly and quickly generates money to buy more letters and to lengthen the possible word size which slowly makes things harder. The problem is getting to the point where it becomes interesting is a chore in the grindy repetitive type of way. Bleh.

U Evade: Side scrolling game with the quality of a child's drawing in which you are a UFO trying to evade/hit birds? Bleh.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free III

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Digital Expo Center: Not a game, but a really cool idea. If this continually updates it might be worth looking into, but I'm not sure if that's the case. It did get me to checkout whatever "Wanted Racoon" is though! Lol!

Game for Anna: A "horror" click adventure featuring many dolls that makes heavy use of photographs and nonsensical logic. Bleh. Maybe Anna would get it, because I sure didn't.

Geadows: Generic future shooter with generic guns and baddies, whom you fight in stages and get upgrades in between. The graphics do it no favors and neither do the holes in the floor that let you fall off the map and never die. Bleh.

Obscura: First person platform puzzler where items only exist to stand on if you view them from a camera, which in theory is interesting since you need to keep looking at an item to stand on it. In practice, having a camera "window" in addition to the regular view is just freaking annoying. Bleh.

Paint Chips: An incredibly messy pixel PvP game where all your weapons are paint related and killing an enemy player (or bot since no one was playing it while I was on) "chips" them. Bleh.

The Shape of Time: Not a game, this virtual gallery features the works of a French artist who put a lot of thought into his interactive time sculptures. I very much enjoyed this one, and bonus points for some capoeira in there. Definitely worth a look.

More interesting that I initially thought.

Sheepy: Cute platformer where you are a sheep hopping over haybales to the light tunes of a lullably. Zzzzzzz.

Slow and Steady: Classic tortoise versus the hare with nice graphics. You are the tortoise, and you need to button mash per step...!? Stupid.

Survival Horror #8,436: Yep, there's a lot of shitty survival horrors on steam - heaps being variations of Slenderman (or insert whatever monster) the Eight Pages (or whatever you are collecting, still usually pages "but now with Hentai"). This one you need firewood and a lighter to signal for help, which makes more logical sense - and the lake setting gives a nice circular area to run around. Only problem? You need to pick up food cubes too or risk instantly dying from hunger. Yep I didn't even get to see if there was a monster here, and with no option to skip the "tutorial" mission - screw that.

Tanks the Crusades: Simple top down tank combat, where tank shells ricochet off walls (and can kill you too in one hit). Some variation too where different colored tanks behave differently. More a puzzle game but the chill music track doesn't really mesh well for me.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free II

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Art of Fury - Virtual Gallery: Long load to walk and admire some pretty cool art in a small virtual gallery. No real interactions though.

Ball Adventure Ball Simulator: Platformer where you are a ball rolling on basic shapes with a terrible camera. Bleh.

Bite Sized Puzzle: Tiny game of making cereal and closing drawers. Bleh.

Cuboid Bouncer: In this platformer, be a rectangle that hops on other shapes - which soon start rotating and doing strange stuff to make it harder. Highlight for me is getting the "jump booster" then jumping so high I died because going out of bounds. LOL. Not recommended.

Gordon Adventure: Platformer where you star as Gordon the loser who inexplicably dies if he gets too close to spikes or mice. And by too close I mean 10 feet. No edging closer to make sure you can make that jump, because Gordon will die. Dumb.

Hog Hunter 2021: Basic and quick first person shooter with a hunt during the day and a hunt during the night. Wish you brought a rifle that didn't jam so much though. Worth a look. :)

Last Message: A deadly zombie like infection spreads across the world. Now you are on your laptop which still has power and connected to the internet and.. are basically chatting - because there's nothing else to do right? Points for being different / different story telling medium. I enjoyed sections you step away from the laptop in this short game.

Regardless of the pandemic, it seems toilet paper is always a high priority.

Shatter Keep: Team must escape from keep while being hunted by monster. Many vs 1. Eagle eye view, darkness but need 4 players to start. Long loads. Bleh.

Smalles: A small adventure RPG maker that features: Idle fighting? LOL. Simply wait to level up, then press NEXT to fight next tier of baddies. No point as gains are faster slaughtering the weakest ones.

Snowpainters: Student made penguin racing with paint. Hitting paint puddle gives you a color. If the color matches yours you go faster. Can "sprint", leaving trail of your color behind you (making it easier for similar colors to catch up) Up to 4 players, but you can solo race vs NPCs

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free

As I've been enjoying a number of free stuff each week from Epic, I figured I'd check on the games in Steam which surely has lots of free stuff too, just not as advertised. I'm mainly using the Discovery Queue for this, but with a few filters: I'm not interested in anything PvP, anything about Sports, anything requiring VR, anything without English translation/subtitles, etc.

Anyway, I've found quite a lot so expect some short and sweet review batches of 10 as I make my way through them... starting right now! The one in bold is the best of this set.

Big Klondike: Solitaire. For vision impaired? Bleh.

Bridge of Dawn: Poor loading. Fox chasing rainbows in a valley for "points". Bleh.

Deep Night Detective: Pixel platformer where you play as spirit detective Spooky. Awesome music. Lots of reading. Dying (to gazillion other ghosts and monsters) means you need to do corpse run to get clothes, otherwise people you need to talk to can't see you. Lol :P

Destined to Die: One of those WTF games where you play as someone who "needs" to waste time on the computer (literally run the clock), over and over until you... don't kill yourself? What?

Eternal Cave Escape: Pixel platformer - miner with pickaxe that can assist in climbing against dirt walls. Lousy controls. Bleh.

Fights in Tight Spaces Prologue: Turn based, deck builder. Nice art. Interesting idea but, odd combo since you expect it to be fast and fluid. Also baddies get much less moves than you do.

Flower Girl: Nice tunes in this flower grid popper to "attack" cute female fairy demons? OH. It's one of THOSE H-games! Only one girl available in this freebie. Need to get the DLCs for more fairy demons "popping".

Goblin Stone Demo: Made by a friend of mine, control a band of cute goblins to build a base and survive against the oppressive humans. I quite liked it even if not all the features are there yet. Try it out. :)

Slightly Darkest Dungeon combat wise too.

Recursive Hate: Single player shooter with two small maps where you must survive waves of giant spiders. Crawlers abound but as long as you can sprint and reload you might be fine. The tiny spider swarms are the worst/best. Very shallow but I kinda liked it.

Samurai Shampoo: Pixel roguelike dungeon crawler of repetitiveness. Bleh.

Dark Souls (Cards): Linking the Fire

A board game session from Dark Souls: The Card Game

Having vanquished the Abyss Watchers the team comprised of a warrior (DL), assassin (wifey), sorcerer (mom) and cleric (me) continue downwards into a realm of fire, lava and demons. A quick scout (level I + level I) of the immediate areas gets us reacquainted with our gear (and how to play the game) before we resting up at the bonfire to charge through (level I) to the first boss here: the Smelter Demon.

His perk is that all attacks can only ever do a maximum of one damage to him so the sorcerer and assassin take turns bopping him until he heats up which adds a weak burn riposte to his attackers. At this stage even the lowly cleric can smack him a little with his mace, while DL having the unfortunate hand full of gear but no stamina to use it is left waiting, waiting, and waiting... until suddenly he manages to actually swing an axe to finish off the boss! Side note: he does the same thing with jigsaw puzzles where he keeps one piece hidden away to ensure he "finishes" it. LOL.

Resting up at the bonfire again it's time to head the other way which is heavily guarded (level II) with five foes! Wifey the assassin gets smashed a bit here but I can heal most of the damage, while DL goes full bankai to use his special "hit everything in the same row" ability with his best weapon which clears them out quick. After the remaining enemy knights (pontiff knights who chased us all the way here) are dealt with it's time to battle the Old Iron King, a massive demon who can only be hit ONCE per player turn since he quickly submerges into his lava lake after each attack.

Team demon.

This means the strategy is to see who can do the most damage on each turn and let them (and only them) attack. This turns out to be the mother sorcerer for majority of the fight, so much so that I have to expend many healing chimes to make sure she doesn't run out of cards (because we are defeated if she does). I also intentionally walk into some of the King's attacks now, since I'm not actually "hitting" its better if I can tank the damage instead of letting someone else (usually DL) do so. True to form, DL finishes off the monster as we complete this area. When asked, mom reveals she only had five cards left to spare which is cutting it a bit close! Makes me glad I decided to stay as a cleric instead of switching to knight or herald (the other available party members currently available).

Also we dodged all the invaders this game (previously fought Knight Slayer Tsorig and Xanothous King Jeremiah) which was a first! Lastly, for those wondering how the two demons compared to their in game counterparts they are not overly different. My team kicked the Smelter Demon's ass in the PC game, while the Old Iron King is simple to fight but managed to throw me into the lava lake a few times. Glad he didn't do that today!