Monthly Update #18: June 2026

We’ve officially hit summer now, my least favorite season. It’s so hot 🥵 I know, I’ll stay inside and play video games!

Game Acquisitions

Yet another month with a ton of game bundle purchases. I guess I won’t be slowing down on that front after all. I even redeemed the June Humble Choice, my first Choice redemption since last October. Octopath Traveler II was too good to pass up, and Life is Strange was in my wishlist. There’s a lot of variety in my acquisitions this month. Octopath Traveler II is probably the highest profile game here and the one I’m looking forward to the most.

# of Games: 89

Total Money Spent: $93.50

Price/Game: $1.05

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

# of Games YTD: 518

Total Money Spent YTD: $368.15

Price/Game: $0.71

Game Recaps

The first couple weeks of the month were dedicated to finishing up Final Fantasy V. It’s the longest game in the series so far, and my favorite by far. I’ve heard great things about VI though so maybe it will be dethroned quickly. Before that though, my next game in the series I decided to play is Final Fantasy Dimensions, a mobile spinoff inspired by V. I’ve heard it’s a long one but worth playing. I’m not too far in yet so I don’t want to form a definitive opinion. It’s OK so far, but it controls weird due to playing on an Android emulator on PC and I’m sorely missing the quality of life features from the Pixel Remasters like quick save, dungeon maps, and being able to turn off encounters. I’m also not a fan of having to spend job points to continue leveling up jobs. I’m worried I’ll pick the wrong jobs and end up wasting a bunch of points and making the game harder than it needs to be. Hopefully that won’t be the case and I’m able to get through it. I just made it to the World of Darkness in Chapter 2 so I’m still pretty early.

I had a couple co-op gaming sessions of Tales of Destiny: Director’s Cut as well. We finally have a full party! Fuller than full actually, since there’s one person on the sidelines providing passive perks which is an interesting mechanic. I practiced a little bit with one of the new characters since he unlocked a more powerful heal arte and I’ve been mostly playing as a healer. The arte is really expensive and time-consuming to cast in the heat of battle due to the CC combat system so it’s really hard to pull off which severely limits his ability to heal. My co-op partner instantly latched on to the latest party member though due to him being used to playing a magic user in Tales of Phantasia. I’m proud of him being flexible like that due to this game being harder than most he’s played since he isn’t much of a gamer. In the story, we just made it to the desert continent and met the corrupt bishop Greybum who stole a powerful magical artifact. We’re about 10 hours in so still pretty early here too.

After beating Final Fantasy V, I decided I was going to let my Game Pass subscription lapse since Dimensions isn’t on the service, so I didn’t want to have it active if I wasn’t using it. Before it ran out, I got a couple sessions of Balatro in. It was fun enough, and I managed to complete White Stake difficulty for the first three decks. Anyone in the know would say I’ve barely even scratched the surface, so I’ll probably get back to it at some point after beating Final Fantasy Dimensions and VI. Before I could start my third session of the game though, Microsoft announced the games leaving Game Pass at the end of the month and Volcano Princess was on the list. That one was pretty high up on my list of Game Pass games to play so I played through it right away. I didn’t record my gameplay for that since it played mostly like a visual novel which probably wouldn’t be very exciting to watch.

Lastly, I played a handful of shorter games that I wasn’t expecting to play. These were emulated games that I’m continuing to slowly test and add to my backlog but ended up playing a little more than I meant to. The first of these emulated games was Dungeon Clawler, which you may have noticed was one of the games I just acquired. Android was having a sale for a bunch of games for 10 cents, and I have tons of Google Play credit to spend so they’re basically free (the other two purchases being Hitman: Sniper and SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated). It’s a roguelite somewhat similar to Slay the Spire except with much less depth and a unique combat mechanic where you use a claw machine to pull the items out the inflict damage or boost defense and hope for the best. It seems OK so far, I ended up playing one run which took almost two hours, and I failed around 70% of the way to the final boss. Since I meant to just be testing the game instead of playing it, I’ll get back to it at a (much later) date. The other two emulated games I unexpectedly played (and beat!) were the Bust a Groove games for the PS1. Like the other emulated games, I meant to just play one level to make sure it works before moving on, but it turns out the whole campaign per character has to be beaten in one sitting with no saves so that’s what I ended up doing. I played through both games as Kelly on normal difficulty. I was originally planning on keeping them in the backlog to play as other characters, but I decided that the gameplay was barebones enough that I didn’t feel like playing it over and over again. Here are links to every game I played and recorded or uploaded to my YouTube channel in June. Please note that the first part of Tales of Destiny is going live on July 7^th, Balatro on July 31^st, and Final Fantasy Dimensions on August 21^st so there will be a bit of a wait for those.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game Reviews

FINAL FANTASY V

It seems that the jump in quality I was expecting from the NES to SNES transition came one title later than expected. While I’ve enjoyed each game in the Final Fantasy series a little more than the previous, and that continues to hold true with this entry, I didn’t like Final Fantasy IV as much as I thought I would. It was still a good game, just not the generational leap I thought it would be. The ATB system did fundamentally change how combat works, but I struggled with it and didn’t see much merit over the traditional turn-based system of the previous games. Final Fantasy V, however, combined the ATB system from IV with the job system from III to change things up. While I didn’t care for either system on their own, combining them together somehow elevated both to create the most fun I’ve had playing Final Fantasy by far.

While Final Fantasy III technically introduced the job system to the series, V is often the one credited with turning it into something special. Now that I’ve played both, I can see why. In simple terms, jobs in Final Fantasy are like classes in other games. You have basic melee units like the knight, basic magic units like the white and black mages, and more specialized units with unique abilities like the dragoon or geomancer. The job system in III was extremely underbaked in my opinion, which is understandable since it was on the NES and the first game in the series to have it. There were a lot of jobs in that game, but I felt that they were either completely useless, designed for one extremely specific scenario (i.e. use it for one boss and then never again), or replaced by a job introduced later that was better in every way. V fixed all these issues by making every job viable as well as unlocking new abilities for every job as you levelled them up and transferring those abilities to other jobs, so everyone was essentially dual-class. It was so fun unlocking new abilities in one job and using those abilities to enhance other jobs. I felt like I was able to spec everyone out to my specific playstyle which helped me feel closer to the characters oddly enough. On top of that, when some harder late-game bosses demanded a different strategy to defeat them, I didn’t feel like I was being punished for only playing a certain way up to that point. I could assign a job to a character who has never used that job before and still reap most of the benefits from doing so while also keeping the ability of one of their other jobs they were working on, so I didn’t feel like I was starting from scratch.

The depth of the job system was the main driving factor for my enjoyment of the game, but that’s only one side of the coin. The characters were another highlight. They each have their own personalities and desires, and I think the smaller cast helped put each one into the spotlight a bit more. The story was classic Final Fantasy and nothing too special. The crystals that were protecting the world have been destroyed (the crystal shards actually represent the different jobs which is fun) and it’s up to the warriors of light to band together to stop the bad guy from engulfing the world in darkness. Individual character moments were good (Gilgamesh in particular was a joy), but the overall conflict was pretty meh. There were still a couple moments where I couldn’t figure out where to go, but for the most part the game directs you pretty well. The final dungeon dragged on for too long, and that unfortunately seems to be consistent for the series so far. It wasn’t as egregious as previous entries though, and the ability to turn off encounters and quick save that the Pixel Remasters introduced made it less annoying than it could’ve been. Overall, having now played I-V, I can confidently say that V is by far my favorite Final Fantasy game, and I highly recommend any JRPG fan who hasn’t played it yet to give it a shot.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 36h:33m
Rating – 8.5/10

Volcano Princess

Volcano Princess is a self-described “parenting-simulator-RPG adventure” where you are tasked with raising a daughter in a medieval fantasy town from infancy to 18, although most of the game takes place in her teenage years. I put the descriptor in quotes because I don’t fully agree with it; the gameplay is mostly in a visual novel format. The general gameplay loop consists of walking around town talking to people to raise your relationship level with them and participating in various side activities to raise your stats and make money like horse racing, cooking, and working a job. If you’ve played other life simulators like Growing Up, you’ll know the gist of what you’re getting into here.

I found the gameplay of Volcano Princess to be extremely repetitive. Everyday plays out in almost the exact same way: wake up, greet any visitors, talk to your daughter, send her on her way to talk to everyone in town, complete a couple side activities, go home, schedule classes, go to bed, repeat. There’s hardly ever anything thrown in to break up the monotony and even then, it takes the form of more reading and a couple different side activities. On top of that, the English translation leaves a lot to be desired. It’s legible most of the time, but sometimes I had to look up a guide just to understand what the game was trying to tell me.

You would think a visual novel with a lot of repetition and a mediocre translation would be a dealbreaker, and it might be for some people. Despite those issues, I couldn’t help but grow attached to a couple of the characters. I was interested in seeing how some of their stories played out. Some of the side activities level up the more you do them and I was just intrigued enough to see what the late game versions of those looked like (spoiler alert: they were mostly disappointing). I think the most impressive part of this game though is the artwork. The character designs all looked good, but the CGs looked phenomenal. I wish more of the game could’ve been presented in that style. It’s clear the game is meant to be played through multiple times because there are almost 100 endings and you can carry over some stats into new game plus to keep going. I can’t imagine wanting to go through the game more than once though, the repetition for one playthrough was more than enough. I’m probably scoring this higher than I should, but there were just enough positive aspects to warrant placing it slightly higher than the standard 7/10 “good” game. If you already know you enjoy life sims and anime art, you’ll probably like this and it’s an easier recommendation. If you aren’t, Volcano Princess likely won’t change your mind.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 20h:40m
Rating – 7.5/10

Bust a Groove

Bust a Groove is a PS1-era rhythm game with the core premise of the campaign being 1v1 dance battles. The gameplay consists of hitting a series of directions to the beat of the music and finishing with pressing square or circle on the fourth beat. Hitting multiple sets of notes in a row increases your combo which is necessary to score high enough to beat your opponent. Unlike scrolling music games like Guitar Hero or DDR, there’s not really any timing involved in hitting the directions and long as you get them all in before hitting the button on the fourth beat. As a result, it doesn’t feel much like the gameplay matches up with the music very well. Even worse, gameplay never evolves past this core concept which leads to a high degree of repetition despite the short runtime. There is a gameplay mechanic where you can press a different button on the fourth beat to dodge an attack from your opponent, but that mechanic is neither explained in the game nor necessary to beat the game on normal, so I did not engage with it.

On the plus side, the music is usually catchy, the environments and camera work can be fun, and the short CGI cutscenes for each character upon beating their campaigns are kinda fun to watch. I only beat the game with one character, but I looked up the other endings because there wasn’t enough variety in the gameplay to warrant playing the campaign over and over again. I wouldn’t recommend spending much money on this game if you plan on only playing it through once like I did. However, if the idea of playing over and over again with different characters and honing your skills through higher difficulties sounds appealing, I can see this being a more worthwhile purchase. Just know going in that there isn’t going to be a lot of depth.

Time to beat (Main) - 1h:1m
Rating – 6/10

Bust a Groove 2

Bust a Groove 2 is a PS1-era rhythm game that plays similarly to the first game. So much so, you can read through my review of that one and get the gist of what this game is about. There are a handful of differences between them though. In addition to dodging attacks by hitting a different button on the fourth beat, you also have two charges per dance battle to attack your opponent by hitting yet another button. Unlike the first game, I found it necessary to engage with these mechanics to beat the last few battles of the campaign on normal, despite the fact that they are still not explained in game. This added slightly more depth to the gameplay, but not enough to stave off the repetition. Second, as I was playing through the campaign, I noticed there were branching paths. I assume your performance dictates which path you take, but since I only played through once, it still felt just as linear as the first game. I was placed in the top path which allowed me to battle the secret boss at the end. The third major difference, and the biggest disappointment, is that the special character endings from the first game are completely removed. After I beat the game, it cut straight to credits and then back to the main menu. This would’ve been my main motivator to play through multiple times with different characters, so it’s a shame they’re gone. I found out after the fact that there are individualized character endings in the form of a TV show host spouting tasteless jokes and going over the character’s backstories in the original Japanese release, but they were all removed when the game was ported over to North America which is a shame.

This was a long-winded way of saying that both games in the Bust a Groove series are very similar. I played them both in one sitting a day apart and if I didn’t know any better, I could mistake them for being the same game. The music is still catchy, and the environments and camera work continue to be engaging, but the gameplay doesn’t evolve and the main incentive to play through the campaign multiple times with each character was completely stripped out. Even the final boss is the same in both games if you don’t count the secret boss. As such, my score and recommendation for this game is the same as the first one. If you only plan to play through it once to reach credits, don’t bother spending money on it. However, if you plan to hone your skills by playing on higher difficulties and want to see the different routes for each character, you might get more out of it. Just make sure to play the Japanese version of the game (which has an English dub) to see the original endings.

Time to beat (Main) - 1h:3m
Rating – 6/10

Stats

No new games entered my top five most played of 2026 last month, although Volcano Princess did sneak in at #7. I suspect Final Fantasy Dimensions may be my most played game by the time I beat it, but it’s still way too early to tell. My game spending continues to be elevated but averaging just over $1 per game shows that I’m still getting a lot of bang for my buck in my opinion. My gaming time for June continued to be on the higher end of average for me, which is nice, even if a lot of it was still spent on games that aren’t even in my backlog thanks to Game Pass. Unlike my spending, I hope this trend continues.

Conclusion/Upcoming

I can’t believe 2026 is already halfway done. Where is the time going? It’s been a somewhat productive gaming year for me as I’ve already beaten almost twice as many games as I did last year. Game Pass continues to be worth the $0 I’m spending on it since it’s allowing me to play higher quality games I wouldn’t’ve tried otherwise, even if I’m neglecting games in my backlog as a result. My plans for July will likely consist mostly of playing Final Fantasy Dimensions as I imagine it will take up most of my time. Since Game Pass is on hold, I’m not sure when I’ll resubscribe to it and if there will be a good enough game announced to be leaving the service that will cause me to resubscribe earlier than expected. That’s the nature of subscriptions though unfortunately. My current plan is to beat Final Fantasy Dimensions, then resubscribe and play any games announced to be leaving the service, then start on Final Fantasy VI. I have high hopes for that one, and it will be the last Final Fantasy game I play for quite some time, so I hope it’s as special as people say it is. That’s all for now, thanks for reading everyone!

Backlog total: 4,373 (+102)

Monthly Update #17: May 2026

I want to start this update by pointing out a milestone I reached on the HLTB site. I mentioned this briefly in the previous update and I thought it would take some more time and many more emulated games under my belt, but it happened way sooner than expected. I have officially entered the top 50 most backlogs of any user on the site. This is not a milestone I planned or expected to hit, but it looks like my cataloging and purchases have caught up to me. I’ll definitely get through these someday, right? Anyway…

PC Game Pass continues to be worth the $0 I’m spending on it. And the new Xbox CEO actually lowered the price in a surprising move so Microsoft Rewards will continue to be enough to pay for it for the foreseeable future. I still think I’m in for a reckoning by the time Project Helix comes out since it’ll play PC games too. They’re gonna have to combine PC and Ultimate tiers at some point and raise the price. I’ll continue to focus on Game Pass games while I still can, and I feel like I’ve barely made a dent in my list. In other news, I’ve finally started the next Tales game! I was gonna go with Eternia next, but with the rumored remaster on the horizon, I’ve decided to skip ahead to Tales of Destiny: Director’s Cut, a Japanese-exclusive PS2 remake of the second game in the series. Of course, I am playing it in co-op with my friend too just like Phantasia. More on that in the game recap section.

Game Acquisitions

Holy consumerism Batman! I spent way more than I thought I did. There were so many good bundles last month that I just couldn’t resist. My spending continues to trend upwards. At least my Steam family expressed excitement at some of these. A lot of deckbuilders too, or would dicebuilders be a more accurate descriptor? This might partially be because I enjoyed Inscryption so much and am trying to chase that high. There were a good number of freebies too from Epic, Amazon, and itch.io. Going back to the topic of deckbuilders for a second, I think the game I’m most looking forward to from this month is Wildfrost. It looks super polished and has great reviews.

# of Games: 97

Total Money Spent: $98.57

Price/Game: $1.02

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

# of Games YTD: 429

Total Money Spent YTD: $274.65

Price/Game: $0.64

Game Recaps

May started with my playthrough of Inscryption, which was everything I hoped it would be. I had one session of Tales of Destiny with my friend too. We fought our way through the snowy forest, reached the first town, met up with new party members to explore a hidden temple, and were about to head to the next town when we called it for the day. The combat is taking a lot of getting used to with the CC (Chain Capacity) system. Instead of having a fixed TP pool to cast artes, you have a counter that cycles between your minimum and maximum CC (say 2-5) as you perform actions. A basic attack will use one CC, base artes use two CC, and stronger artes consume more. This encourages faster combat and lets you use artes much more regularly and apply pressure on enemies. It all sounds good in theory as I felt in Phantasia that I shouldn’t use artes at all as Cless since my friend played Arche and needed all the TP we had to cast spells. I tend to play games more defensively and slower paced though and this system actively discourages that. We’re still early in the game though and practicing our skills. I’m just worried about the pace of combat outstripping my friend’s ability to play it. Here’s hoping we find our groove!

Next on the list are a few smaller indie games that left Game Pass in May: Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo, Go Mecha Ball, and Crypt Custodian. I wasn’t planning on playing them so soon, but that’s the nature of games leaving the subscription service which forces me to reprioritize my upcoming games. Kulebra was a fantastic adventure game, maybe the best I’ve ever played in a genre I’m admittedly not too familiar with. Go Mecha Ball was an OK twin-stick roguelite, nothing too special. Crypt Custodian was a solid metroidvania, niggling navigation issues aside. It was mercifully easy compared to Nine Sols. I don’t know if I would be able to handle another game of that difficulty anytime soon. I played an idle game in the background at work called Universal Paperclips as well. Play might be a strong word as I only occasionally interacted with it, but there was an ending so I guess I'm counting it. And last but not least, I of course had to continue my Final Fantasy journey with V. I just got the airship and I think I'm about to fly up to a floating city to protect the earth crystal. As always, here are links to playlists of any let’s plays for games played or uploaded last month. Expedition 33 is finally done uploading! About time, I finished that game forever ago. I made the decision a while ago that I didn’t want to move around all my uploads whenever I start recording a new game because it was a huge hassle, so a lot of these aren’t public yet. More specifically, Final Fantasy V will be out June 16^th, Inscryption June 19^th, Tales of Destiny July 7^th, Kulebra July 11^th, Go Mecha Ball July 13^th, and Crypt Custodian July 20^th. I swear I am still slowly catching up with my upload schedule now that I’m not limiting myself to one hour per video, especially now that Expedition 33 is done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game Reviews

Inscryption

Inscryption is a roguelite deckbuilder with escape room elements and a whole meta-narrative filmed in live action about a content creator who finds the game itself on a floppy disk buried in the woods and records himself playing it. That’s as much of the story as I’m willing to give away as I believe it’s best experienced first-hand. Rest assured that it is a good story worth experiencing, even if the acting in the live action segments is somewhat cheesy. The escape room elements can mostly be ignored if that’s not your thing, although you do uncover fun bits of lore and some cards you can use. The meat of Inscryption is the deckbuilder, and it is probably the best deckbuilder I’ve ever played.

If you’ve played any roguelite deckbuilders, none of this is new information. You start with a small number of cards with various stats and abilities. The card will show you how much health it has, how much damage it does, the requirements needed to play it, and any special abilities it has which the game refers to as sigils. There are a large variety of sigils like making the card fly so you attack your opponent directly and automatically moving the card to an empty space to block a hit that would’ve hit you. You progress along a map that occasionally forks which allows you to decide if you want to collect new cards, modify existing cards, pick up items, craft totems which affect all cards of a certain type, and so on. The health and sacrifice systems are unique. Unlike many other deckbuilders, you don’t have a pool of health that stays between encounters. Instead, there is a balance scale off to the side that starts in the neutral position. The goal is to tip the scale to the opponent’s side by five notches to win. That means it’s possible to take out or be taken out by one powerful attack if you aren’t able to block it. A card can block the full brunt of an attack at least once no matter how much health it has left which allows you to throw out weak cards to block powerful attacks while you hope to draw a better card to counterattack.

Each turn, you have two piles of cards to pick from: your regular deck or squirrel cards. A squirrel is free to play, has no attack value, and one health. They can be used as a last ditch effort to block an attack as mentioned earlier, but their main purpose is to be placed and immediately sacrificed to play a more powerful card. Sacrifices come in the form of either bones or blood. Whenever a creature dies by any means, you get one bone token (or more if their sigil is a pile of bones). The bone tokens can be used at anytime to play a card that requires them. Blood on the other hand must come from living creatures that are actively on the field and can only be obtained by sacrificing them and immediately playing the card that needs the sacrifice. As expected, more powerful cards require greater sacrifices. There are four spaces you can play a card on, so the most powerful cards require four blood to play. Another interesting wrinkle is that while the opponent also has four spaces to play cards, they have another row where the place cards they want to play next. This lets you plan out how you want to tackle the next turn, and you can even affect these cards that aren’t technically in play yet. If you card damages an opponent card enough to kill it, any overflow damage can also target the card waiting to be played which allows you to take out both in one powerful swing. Another strategy I came across was seeing a powerful card being queued up behind a much weaker card. Instead of killing the weak card like I normally would, I could keep it in place to do chip damage to me while allow me to focus on other lanes to hopefully do more damage to them and keep their powerful card at bay. If you are defeated, you get to craft a new card by mixing and matching stats, sigils, and sacrifices from other cards which can lead to some extremely overpowered combinations. This is where the roguelite aspect comes in. As you can see, there’s a ton of strategy involved, as well as some luck of the draw and what cards you have in your deck.

While I maintain that this game is extremely good and everyone who likes deckbuilders should play it, it still isn’t perfect. As with any roguelike or roguelite, there are some runs where you just don’t get the cards you need and lose through no fault of your own. The optional Kaycee’s Mod, which is a pure roguelike challenge mode unlocked by beating the game, was way too difficult for me to beat even level one with the luck I was having. There was also no roguelite element to it, so I wasn’t getting more powerful over time and kept running into the same brick wall over and over. While I beat the main game in 15 hours, I spent another seven hours on Kaycee’s Mod just because I was having so much fun and that still wasn’t enough to beat it once. The most egregious negative that I have for this game though, and this is partially a sign of how good it is, is that the ending feels rushed. Without going into spoiler territory too much, the game hints that there are four opponents you must defeat to win the game. Each opponent has different mechanics introduced that added fun new ways to play. Most of the focus is on the first opponent, but a good amount of time is spent with the second as well. Then you fight the third and fourth opponents one time each and the game just ends. I almost felt like I played half the game the developers wanted to make before they ran out of time or money. The combat mechanics seemed completely fleshed out for these opponents too, you just spend so little time with them that it felt like a waste. I would love to see a sequel that either lets you fight them properly or introduces new enemies to face. Even though it felt like I played half a game, that half was very enjoyable and I look forward to Daniel Mullins’ next project.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 14h:59m
Rating – 9/10

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo

Kulebra is an adventure game about helping souls find peace so they can move on to what’s next. The game starts with you waking up in Limbo as a skeletal snake and immediately coming across a mysterious old lady tied to a rock who asks you to free her. After a super simple tutorial on inventory and exploration, you free her and the two of you walk down a long dark corridor as she explains how you’re a special soul and you need to help the other souls. When you enter a clearing and see the outside world for the first time, the old lady vanishes and you’re greeted by a friendly crow named…well, Krow…who lays out your basic objectives, provides a notebook guide, and explains that time slowly passes and certain events can only be completed at certain times of the day. You’re then free to explore, talk to people, and solve puzzles. I felt that this was a great introduction to the game. The bright colors as you exit the corridor and humorous dialog from Krow conveyed a lighthearted tone, while the rambling from the old lady just prior hinted at a darker mystery under the surface to unravel.

The gameplay is standard for anyone familiar with adventure games. You walk around environments picking up anything you can squeeze in your inventory, talking to NPCs to get hints of what to do next, and solving puzzles by using and combining the items in your inventory. This is normally where adventure games lose me because most of the puzzles in these types of games are extremely convoluted and impossible for me to solve without having a guide open the whole time. Thankfully, I didn’t have that problem in this game and almost everything was easy to figure out. I’m not sure if that will turn more hardcore adventure game fans away, but it went a long way to pull me in. When you solve the conflict in the first area, you unlock the second one, meet all the new characters and solve their conflicts, then unlock the third and final hub area. Along the way you can find hidden collectibles, solve hidden temple puzzles, and complete side quests by doing favors for optional NPCs.

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows in the world of Limbo. The puzzle selection is rather limited, and the gameplay doesn’t evolve much over the course of the game as a result. The boss battles at the end of each chapter are mostly just quizzes about what’s happened up to that point which was kinda lame. The number of areas to explore is rather limited. While there are five chapters to the game (plus an epilogue and conclusion which are somehow different things), there are only three major areas. The first area encompasses chapter one, the second area chapter two, and the third area chapter three. I assumed that the fourth chapter would lead me to a new area but nope, it was just the third area again just slightly different. Chapter 5 at least introduces what is essentially a haunted mansion at the end, but the large maze-like layout was frustrating to navigate. The mansion also exacerbated these issues by just recycling the puzzles from previous chapters, having multiple quiz boss battles, and making you navigate the entire mansion again while being chased by several monsters. As you can see, I had many gripes with the final area, and if the game had ended there, I may not have been as positive about it as I am.

Luckily, a large update titled Closure added several hours of content that I enjoyed. It introduced slightly harder puzzle challenges that while they were still mostly variations of puzzles in the base game, they provided enough mental stimulation to keep me engaged. More importantly though, it also wrapped up the fantastic story in a much more satisfying way. You finally get to the bottom of the darker mystery hinted at in the beginning. More story threads are tied up, although perhaps in a lengthier way than what I felt was necessary (looking at you Plaza hotel). Characters you’ve grown close to are set up to continue their work helping people in the world of Limbo. I didn’t touch on the story too much, but that’s because I feel it’s best experienced first-hand. It was my favorite part of the game and what pulled me through. There are plenty of laughs and more than a fair share of tearjerker moments. I think the Pixar movie Coco is the closest comparison to Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo. If you enjoyed the themes in that movie, I think you will enjoy this game too. Just make sure to stick with it through the Closure Edition content to see the true ending!

Time to beat (Completionist) - 15h:3m
Rating – 8/10

Go Mecha Ball

Go Mecha Ball is a twin-stick shooter roguelite. It starts with a short motion comic showing anthropomorphized adolescent cats playing when they’re interrupted by a giant portal opening and robots spilling out to wreak havoc. The cats create mechsuits and fly through the portal to take out the robots and save their world. After this intro, there is no more story in the game so you can safely ignore all of that. If you’re looking for any kind of narrative thread to pull on, you won’t find it here. However, if you’re looking for fast-paced, pinball inspired shooting action, read on.

The structure of the game is simple. There are four worlds with a boss fight at the end of each. Each world is divided into three stages, and each stage has three waves of enemies you must defeat to progress. There are four classes available, although you only start with the first one unlocked. Each class has slightly different stats and a starting weapon. I only played with the first class so can’t comment on the others, although the weapons seem to be the most important thing and every class can equip any weapon. The two ways of attacking enemies are either by shooting them (duh) with one of the two weapons you can have equipped or by ramming into them while in ball form. This is the one thing about this game that I felt was unique. You are heavily encouraged to make use of the environment and your abilities to zoom around the map and slam into enemies to do damage or knock them off the map. Even if you completely run out of ammo, you still have a way of doing damage. The movement is the one thing I felt that this game absolutely nailed. Zooming around the map slamming into bad guys always felt satisfying, and I never experienced any slowdown no matter how fast I was moving or how many enemies and projectiles were on screen.

Anyone who knows roguelites will be familiar with the gameplay loop. After each stage, you can pick one of three powerups like more collision damage or getting a special ability. Before every boss, you stop by a shop to spend coins you’ve collected to buy up to three randomized items like a health refill or gun. You can also choose to put extra money into unlocking another character. After that, you fight the boss and move on to the next world. If you lose a run, you can spend a different currency at gacha machines to unlock more guns, abilities, or powerups to find in your next run. Unfortunately, that’s the extent of the game as it is extremely basic outside the movement. All the runs felt the same since the world order is unchanged, levels felt samey, and you only encountered the same four bosses in the same order every time. Most abilities I came across didn’t seem super useful, and only the starting machine guns felt like viable weapons. I never unlocked anything that felt like a gamechanger and ended up beating the same on my third or fourth attempt. I spent the currency I accumulated afterwards to unlock more stuff at the gacha machines but none of it felt like something that would provide a fundamentally different experience. There is an option to increase the difficulty but after the first run, I didn’t feel the need to continue. I would only recommend this on a deep sale if the pinball movement sounds appealing to you, otherwise there are way better roguelikes/roguelites out there to sink your teeth into. There is not a lot of depth here.

Time to beat (Main) - 3h:1m
Rating – 6.5/10

Crypt Custodian

Crypt Custodian is a metroidvania where you play as Pluto, a cat who has just died and sent to what is essentially the pearly gates to decide his fate. Kendra, the frog in charge, appears receptive to letting Pluto into the fabled Palace until she accuses him of smashing her statues on his way there. She then sentences him to be a janitor cleaning up garbage outside the Palace forever. From the moment you enter the Inn and speak to the people inside, you suspect that maybe Kendra is hiding something. You meet up with ten other ghostly animal friends throughout your journey and conspire to break into the Palace and steal the Crystal Mirror, an artifact that lets your soul travel back to Earth to feel the presence of those you left behind. That’s basically the entire story, there’s not really much intrigue here and the story is presented in a funny, simple, and lighthearted way despite the heavy focus on death.

Gameplay is your standard metroidvania fare. There is a large, interconnected world map you can freely traverse with some areas gated off until you unlock certain abilities. You fight enemies with your trusty broom while making use of a slam attack, a special ability, jumping, and dashing. Defeating enemies or cleaning garbage provides currency which you can use to buy powerups or hints to collectibles and the next major story beat. Combat is fairly simple due to the limited moveset; there isn’t even a charged attack, and you can only equip one ability at a time. Despite some light bullet hell moments, especially in the boss fights, the ability to dash or jump over every attack meant it was simply a matter of learning patterns and wailing on them until they die. There’s always a checkpoint right before a boss too so you can try again quickly without the pain of having to get back. I remember the first time I died; I checked the map to find my death marker which wasn’t there and my first thought was “Wow, that’s brutal. Now I have to try to remember where I died so I can get my currency back.” I quickly found out though that you don’t lose anything on death and thus it has no consequences. This was a relief to me, and a realization that perhaps I’ve been playing too many soulslikes lately and forgot how normal action games used to operate. I don’t really view any of this as a negative per se, although hardcore players probably won’t find enough challenge here to keep them engaged.

My biggest complaint about this game is the navigation. There’s a lot of little things about using the map that bothered me. The world map has two levels of detail: a zoomed out view that removes most details and shows every room as a plain rectangle and a more zoomed in view that shows everything as it actually is. There’s also an optional minimap you can enable (which I did) that always sits at the corner of the screen and shows a small section of the zoomed out view from the main map. In the zoomed out view, the exits to other rooms are shown, but they aren’t always to scale with the actual room layout. For example, it might show an exit in the bottom center of the screen when it’s actually more to the left. This is exacerbated on the minimap by your player icon not always lining up with where you are in the room, which made it almost useless. Additionally, there’s not enough detail on the zoomed out map in my opinion. Nothing is labeled, although you can hover over the fast travel points to get the name of the area they’re in. The areas are color coded but there’s no legend anywhere so you kind of just have to memorize where everything is to get around. In the zoomed in view, while the accurate room layouts are shown, that’s the only new detail you get from it. Looking for areas you haven’t been to yet, NPCs you’ve met, special locations, or items are nowhere to be found. On top of that, when you’re in the zoomed in view, panning around is extremely slow and there’s no diagram of the zoomed out map to show where you are in relation to anything else. There are up to 50 markers with a few different shapes you can pick from to mark important points on the map, but you can’t see them if they’re in an area you haven’t been to yet and there’s no way to label them. If you die, you aren’t automatically sent to the last shrine you visited. I found that it would send me to the one before that so I would always have to open the map and teleport to the place I was just at manually. Lastly, if you pan to an area on the map you want to go to in one view and then switch to the other view, the cursor resets to your current location for no reason. These are all little things I feel should have been caught in testing and patched out, but either these problems are unique to me or nobody found them annoying enough to address.

I know I went on a huge rant in the last paragraph, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy my time with Crypt Custodian. Despite the simple story, lack of serious challenge, and annoying navigation, it’s still a solid metroidvania. The combat is enjoyable, the characters all have unique personalities, and I was interested enough in the elusive Palace to press on. If you’re in the mood for a metroidvania and don’t want your brain or reflexes tested too much, I can recommend this one. And if you finish this and want to graduate to a more sophisticated metroidvania with challenging combat, better quality control, higher production values, and a less predictable, mature story while still playing as an anthropomorphic cat, check out Nine Sols. Kinda weird that both games came out within three months of each other, right?

Time to beat (Completionist) - 12h:58m
Rating – 8/10

Universal Paperclips

I wasn't planning on adding this one to my completions as I mostly had it running in the background at work. I don't have much to say about this, it's an idle game that runs in your browser about making and selling paperclips as fast as possible. New mechanics are introduced as the game progresses but they all basically boil down to new ways to make money and are pretty hands-off. There is a twist right when you think the game is over that takes the game in a new direction that's kinda cool. The ending was neat, but a couple late-game mechanics leading there were confusing and I had to look up a guide to finish it. Overall, an OK way to waste time while you're doing other stuff.

Time to beat (Main) - ???
Rating – 5.5/10

Stats

No huge heavy-hitters on the long game front last month. Inscryption just eked into the top five most played of the year at 22 hours. I suspect Final Fantasy V will shoot into the top three by the time I’m done with it, I think it’s a pretty long game. You can see the insane jump in spending last month, with a modest jump in games acquired to go with it. The first half of the month especially had a lot of bundles I didn’t want to pass up as mentioned earlier. Who knows if the summer will slow down but probably not? I imagine there will be a few bundles launched to coincide with Summer Game Fest and all the new announcements coming out of that. My gametime took a dip after I unexpectedly didn’t play anything over Memorial Day weekend. Too busy with other stuff, I guess. Maybe summer will give me some time to get more gaming in.

Conclusion/Upcoming

I didn’t think this update would be so long, but my Word document is 11 pages. That’s crazy! It must be all the YouTube links and game reviews. If only I dedicated the time spent on those things to playing more games I might actually make some progress.

In other news, I’m looking forward to Summer Game Fest this week, although I find it difficult to be excited for new games when I know it’ll be years before I buy any of them while I wait for sales and many more years after that to play them due to the size of my backlog. I’ve been feeling this way for a while now and wasn’t sure how to bring it up. There are so many good games coming out this year that I want to play (Pragmata and 007: First Light being recent examples) but I haven’t even added them to my wishlist because I’m getting to the point where I don’t know if I’ll ever get to them. Something’s gotta give at some point, and I’m guessing my content creation will be on the chopping block. Still thinking about it though, nothing is set in stone yet.

For June, my plan is to finish Final Fantasy V and start the next game in the series (which won’t be VI!) I’ll also keep an eye on the games leaving Game Pass to see if there are other unexpected games I need to move to the top of my upcoming games list. I didn’t expect to play Inscryption, Kulebra, and Crypt Custodian so soon but I’m glad I did because they were all great games. Inscryption is even in my #1 spot for the year so far! Will it be dethroned? I guess we’ll all find out. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 4,271 (+120)

Monthly Update #16: April 2026

Thankfully, I got back to a more regular gaming routine last month. That also includes the number of games I usually get too, for better or worse. At least it was a normal month 😅

Game Acquisitions

It’s fewer games than February, but there were also no itch.io bundles so these games should be meatier. Speaking of meat, I made a pretty beefy Reddit trade for six of these by trading away 10 of my old keys I’ve had for years that I couldn’t get rid of. This also includes my first console game purchase in who knows how long, a couple more Steam family games, a lot of giveaways, and of course a couple bundles because I still can’t help myself. Lastly, I made my first Tales of purchase! The Graces f remaster from last year dropped in price quickly and my co-op partner committed to playing through the series with me. Woohoo! I’ll probably pick that for game I’m most excited about from this list, although I’m really looking forward to quite a few of these. I wish I could say I’m planning on spending less this month, but I already have two bundles lined up that I’m gonna purchase depending on what is included in the May Humble Choice. Consumerism will never fade I suppose.

# of Games: 43

Total Money Spent: $47.76

Price/Game: $1.11

# of Games YTD: 333

Total Money Spent YTD: $176.08

Price/Game: $0.53

Game Recaps

Only focused on three single-player games last month, but they’re all bangers. Death Howl weaseled its way into my GOTY so far, but Inscryption will likely surpass it when I finish that one. I also played a couple short indie horror games with my co-op friend with Static Voice and The Boba Teashop. We really liked the Boba Teashop, helped only a little by our mutual love of the drink. Static Voice on the other hand, not so much. It’s now officially the worst rating I’ve given to a game so far, a feat I didn’t think possible after the disaster that was Code Alkonost. Sorry friend. On the bright side, we’ve decided that we’re going to finally play the next game in the Tales of series! I was going to go for Eternia (Destiny II) next since it’s the only other PS1 game after Phantasia, but rumor has it that it’s going to be next in the remaster project since a rating popped up on the PEGI website a few days ago. This throws a wrench into my plans so maybe we’ll skip ahead to the PS2 era with Destiny Director’s Cut next. We once again didn’t record any footage for the co-op games, but the single-player games continue to be streamed on my Twitch channel and later uploaded to my YouTube channel. Here’s everything I either uploaded or recorded this month. Please note that the first video for Final Fantasy IV will be up on the 5^th and Inscryption won’t be up until June 19^th. Sorry about the delay! The last Expedition 33 video will finally be up on May 18^th so I should start being able to catch up quicker after that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game Reviews

The Boba Teashop

The Boba Teashop describes itself as a cozy horror game, two genres that seem impossible to combine. At no point during my short playtime did I feel cozy though as I was always on edge due to the increasingly disturbing visuals and character interactions. If you’re looking for a cozy game, look elsewhere. What is here, though, is a competent but slightly underbaked indie horror experience. You play a girl who just opened her own tea shop which is supposedly her lifelong dream. The first couple of customers are innocent enough, but it quickly escalates when they start being demanding, insulting, flirty, and downright disrespectful. As each day passes, the store gets darker and darker. The main character has internal monologues about how she’s not feeling great but still wants to run the shop. Eventually, she seeks professional help when she starts hallucinating.

The gameplay consists of customers coming into the store one at a time and asking for a specific drink. There are several drink combinations you can make, with a handy whiteboard in the back that acts as a cheat sheet. Some customers order something very specific that can only be made one way while others might just say something vague like they want something sweet or something with strawberries in it. After making the drink and handing it to the customer, they’ll remark about something, put down their money, and walk away. Occasionally you’ll start hallucinating and have to look away to preserve your sanity before resuming filling orders. After serving a handful of customers, you close the store, clean up, and leave for the day. After one in-game week, there is a final cutscene and the game ends.

There are some things that I think this game does well, and others I felt could’ve been more fleshed out. On the positive side, I thought the art style was great. It looks like you’re playing through a VCR. I like how everything gets darker as the game goes on to show the main character spiraling. The scares were effective and infrequent enough to keep the tension high without relying on jumpscares. Making the drinks for the customers was another highlight, and I enjoyed the open-ended orders that allowed me to be a bit more creative. The story was fairly barebones, but it was enough to keep me invested despite the numerous grammatical errors.

My main gripe with the game was that the “cozy” simulator portion feels like there’s some lost potential. When a customer places an order, there is no rush to fulfill it, nor any penalty for getting the order wrong and having to start over. There’s also nothing to do with the money they give you, including having to make change. You just click on it and it goes into the register. Maybe having to make change and using profits to unlock decorations for the store or new ingredients for drinks could go a long way. If this was marketed as purely a horror game, I might’ve glossed over it, but it isn’t. Lean into it! I think there’s a competent simulator hidden under this horror game that never comes out. There is also little variation in the day-to-day gameplay, with only the last day offering much in the way of variety. This is somewhat forgiven by the short length, but it still felt repetitive enough to be worth mentioning. If you’re in the market for a short indie horror game with an unconventional gameplay loop for the genre, I think The Boba Teashop is worth looking into. Just don’t be fooled by the cozy marketing term, there’s very little coziness here.

Time to beat (Main+Sides) - 1h:16m
Rating – 7/10

Death Howl

Death Howl describes itself as a soulslike deckbuilder, and I can see where they’re coming from with that description. You collect souls (known as death howls) by defeating enemies which you can use to craft cards which act as your actions in combat. If you die, you drop your death howls on the battlefield and have to pick them up again (and win the fight) or else they’re gone permanently. There is also an oppressive atmosphere throughout the experience, another common characteristic of the genre. I wouldn’t call the gameplay itself soulslike though since the combat is turn-based with no dodging, parrying, or quick reflexes required. The deckbuilder descriptor is much more accurate though, and if you’re looking for a new deckbuilder to play, I highly recommend this one.

You play as Ro, a mother who recently lost her son in a terrible hunting accident. Stricken with grief, she travels to the spirit world to try and get him back before he moves on to the realm of death. The map is one big open world divided into five different realms that each have their own set of cards and enemy types. You craft cards by spending death howls as mentioned earlier, and as you gather materials in each realm, the more cards become available for you to be able to craft. You can use any card in any realm, but if you are in a different realm to the one the card came from, the cost to play that card increases by one mana. Mana determines how far you can move and how many cards you can play in one turn and is a limited resource. To help offset this, there are also a small selection of realmless cards that carry no penalty and are generally pretty good but not amazing. Each realm has its own gimmick for how to tackle enemies such as focusing on blocking, high movement, or poison. There are also totems you can equip that offer passive abilities such as more mana in exchange for curse cards or gaining block for every kill in a turn. All of these factors encourage crafting multiple decks and experimenting with different cards depending on the challenge and what realm you’re currently in.

I don’t have a lot of experience with deckbuilders in general and as a result, I was initially overwhelmed by the sheer number of cards available combined with the difficulty of the battles. I initially failed to reach the boss of the first realm you start in and, feeling deflated and on the verge of giving up, decided to move on to another. That one was also a struggle, but I managed to defeat the boss there after a few attempts. Equipped with newfound optimism, more combat experience, and better cards in my deck, I traveled back to the first realm and finally managed to beat the boss there as well. This is when the game finally clicked with me, and I found the remaining realms to be much more manageable. I was consistently engaged by the combat and loved learning what the gimmick was and exploiting it. Some of the side quests were cool and granted temporary powerful cards, but others were a little too vague for my liking and I ended up having to look up guides for a lot of them. The main story was fairly basic but relatable, and the ending was exceptional in my opinion. While the gauntlet of consecutive battles in the last realm was frustrating with a little too much RNG due to randomized enemies and card pulls, the final two boss fights were super fun. If you want tactical, turn-based deckbuilder with a good story and aren’t put off by the difficulty, Death Howl is a pretty easy game to recommend.

Time to beat (Completionist) - 42h:42m
Rating – 8.5/10

Static Voice

Static Voice is a small indie horror game about a factory explosion in Soviet Russia circa 1998 (yeah, try wrapping your head around that one) that released a gas on the nearby town that turns people into monsters. At least the game claims they’re monsters. There’s only one “monster” that roams the halls of the apartment complex the game takes place in, and it mostly looks like a pale human that just cries and won’t bother you if you stay out of their way. When you figure out the stealth in the game boils down to “don’t run close to them,” it almost makes you pity them which isn’t usually the intention when it comes to horror monsters.

The gameplay consists of listening to your buddy and the radio in your apartment complex about how to build an SOS device to signal the government for evacuation, then putting on a gas mask to leave and find the parts to build at a workbench. The map consists of four short hallways in the complex with very little of the rooms actually being enterable. Sometimes you’ll find an item that needs broken down at another workbench which may or may not actually contain anything you need which was an unnecessarily annoying way to pad game time. When you find enough parts, you combine them at the workbench, then listen to the radio broadcast for a small snippet of story before moving on to more searching. Eventually you build the device to signal for rescue and the big ending cutscene is instead reduced to a wall of text.

I won’t beat around the bush any longer: this game is terrible. The dialog is filled with typos and poor grammar. The worldbuilding makes no sense (Soviet Russia in 1998, seriously?) The monster that roams the halls is a complete non-threat. Even if you are careless and get caught, the only thing that happens is a jumpscare and then you’re teleported to your room. You don’t even lose any items you’re carrying which actually makes the monster a convenient teleportation option if you need to head there anyway. There’s a lot of back-and-forth trying to scour the complex for the items you need to build the device which led to repetition and annoyance when you can’t find what you’re looking for. There’s a major bug that occurs when you listen to the radio next to the workbench before the game signals for you to do so for the first time which caused a softlock that required me to restart the whole game. Looking up a walkthrough on YouTube to try to figure out how to back out of the radio showed they ran into the same issue but conveniently faded to black at that moment to try and hide it. As if this wasn’t all bad enough, the developer also admits to using AI in the creation of the game if that is an issue for you. My playtime is much longer than what it should take to beat it as I was stuck watching that same video to find whatever it is I needed to find to progress. It was often that the item was small like a key and would just randomly appear after I had already searched the room which made me think I didn’t need to go in that room again. There’s nothing of value to see here. I recommend staying far away from Static Voice.

Time to beat (Main) - 2h:45m
Rating – 2/10

FINAL FANTASY IV

The jump in quality from the NES to the SNES is noticeable in Final Fantasy IV. The graphics are improved of course, although not as much as I was expecting. This is probably the Pixel Remaster collection pushing everything up to the same level of quality. The character models look roughly the same, but environmental detail was improved. The story is also a big step up from previous entries. This time, there’s actually a full cast of characters with their own motivations and personality quirks. The biggest change, however, was to the combat system. While the first three games had a strictly turn-based system where you had all the time in the world to make your choices, IV introduced the active time battle (ATB) system.

With ATB, every character has separate gauges that count down to when they’re able to act. Faster characters will have faster gauges while slower characters have to wait longer. Once a gauge fills up, that’s when you pick an action like attacking, defending, or using an item. The gauges continue to fill up for everyone including the enemies while you decide, although thankfully everything still stops when you farther down in the spell or item menu to avoid being too overwhelmed since there are so many to choose from. Some actions take longer than others so even when you do pick an action, you might have to wait a little bit for it to happen while gauges continue to fill up which risks being interrupted by the enemy. A basic attack is performed instantaneously while a high-level meteor spell takes a few seconds which is plenty of time to be countered by something like confuse or charm to being killed outright. This wasn’t too much of a problem for most of the game, but some of the final dungeon enemies/bosses had me juggling quick, low-level spells with slow, high-level spells depending on their attack patterns which added another wrinkle.

In all honestly, I struggled with ATB for at least the first half of the game. While I was busy staring at gauges filling up and quickly trying to pick something to do, enemies wouldn’t hesitate to act on what I thought was my turn and possibly killing the character I was picking an action for. I would then have to switch to the next character and quickly rethink what to do next before it snowballed into a party wipe. It was very overwhelming and I found myself dying a lot while I got the hang of it. Thankfully, it seems like the developers thought about that because I also noticed that items in this game were way cheaper than previous entries. A phoenix down, the item that revives dead party members, only cost 100 gil whereas it was 1,000 in Final Fantasy III. As a result, I used items liberally as I fumbled my way through. I think I still prefer either strictly turn-based or strictly action, but I do admit it opens up the combat a little more.

There are other factors at play here that impacted my score. Spells were seemingly laid out haphazardly in the menu, which made it difficult to tell from a distance what level they were supposed to be. I feel like previous entries did a good job of categorizing and listing them so you could easily tell exactly how much more powerful one spell was compared to another. Here, they just looked like a jumbled mess with possibly the worst presentation out of any game so far. There were also several difficulty spikes in dungeons that ground my progress to a halt, even after I felt I had a grasp on the combat. If it weren’t for the Pixel Remaster ability to turn off encounters, I have no idea how I would’ve gotten through some of them otherwise. When you lose to the final boss, you have to sit through the entire cutscene before you can act again. I died several times and ended up timing how long it took from death to first action in combat: three and a half minutes! Excruciating. On the flip side, this game did a better job of making me care about the characters than previous entries. From the very beginning, the story is presented in a way to make me invested in what was happening. As a result, I recommend Final Fantasy IV to anyone in the market for an old school JRPG to get into.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 22h:53m
Rating – 7.5/10

Stats

 

A few interesting observations to be had here. First of all, I want to congratulate Death Howl for becoming my most played game of 2026 so far. Still not an RPG which is very strange. Final Fantasy IV makes it into the top five. My games acquired went back down to what is apparently considered normal for me, although I’m still not limiting my game purchases, so this continues to be a fun coincidence. I think March will continue to be an outlier due to the itch.io bundle, unless another huge one comes out or I just go insane with other bundle purchases which is unlikely. That being said, I do have a couple bundles lined up as mentioned earlier so that will get me a jumpstart in May. My spending also seems to be slowly increasing, which is a concerning trend. To put it into perspective, I spent $64.96 by this time last year and I’m averaging $44.02/month right now. Still not enough to make me destitute, but a noticeable jump regardless. Lastly, my playtime jumped back up to slightly above average for the year, which was nice. Imagine if I could game for 100 hours per month though, I’d finally start making a dent in the backlog 😅 Darn you adulthood!

Conclusion/Upcoming

Another month, another Final Fantasy game down. I’m still working on Inscryption so that may end up making it into my most played games, we’ll see. It’ll likely be topping my favorite games of the year regardless. I’ll be playing Final Fantasy V later in the month, but there are a couple shorter titles that were just announced to be leaving Game Pass soon, so I’ll try to play those first. Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo could be a fun adventure game, a genre I’m not super familiar with. The story looks really good though. Go Mecha Ball is another game leaving the service in the middle of May. It doesn’t really stand out much but could be a competent roguelike twin-stick shooter regardless. Plus it’s short so I should be able to finish it in time. On the co-op front, I’m super excited to finally get back into Tales with my friend after a string of short indie horror games. I’ll want his thoughts on which one to play next. I may skip over Tales of Eternia for now due to the rumored remaster and instead move onto the next game in my play order which is Tales of Destiny Director’s Cut. This is another Japanese-exclusive remake like PS1 Phantasia, but this time we’re moving from the PS1 to the PS2. I’m hoping this isn’t too much of a leap and will still be simple enough for him to get the hang of. On another note, you may notice my backlog increased by a lot more than my acquisitions show. I’m continuing to slowly test out emulated games whenever I don’t have quite enough time to stream but don’t want to go to bed yet. I apparently managed to test like 20 games last month which was way more than I expected. I think this strikes a nice balance between regularly playing games and not playing anything and only testing for months at a time. We’ll see if I can keep up the momentum. If I manage to beat Final Fantasy V before the end of the month, I’ll move on to the next one. You may think that would be VI, but I actually have a much more obscure entry I want to play next. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out 👀 That’s assuming of course that there aren’t other games leaving Game Pass before the end of the month that I want to quickly get through. Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading my ramblings!

Backlog total: 4,151 (+63)