Weekly Update #6: First Game Completion!

February 2-8, 2025

You may have noticed that this post went up on Monday instead of Sunday. I’m thinking of doing this going forward, so I have the full weekend to write my weeklies instead of staying up late on Saturdays to get it done. I actually got sleep Saturday night, so it seems to be working so far. On another note, the inevitable finally came to pass. My employer has ordered everyone back to the office full-time no later than March 17^th. This is a huge blow to my way of living and will likely affect my blog as well. They’re still working out the specifics on how it will be implemented but just know that changes are coming. Game time will probably go down as well. Why the government seems hell-bent on making everyone’s life miserable I’ll never know.

I waited in line at Microcenter again on Thursday and still came away empty-handed. No GPU for me for at least another week. I won’t be able to drive up there before my workday once office work starts so if I don’t get one by March, I suspect it’ll be quite some time until I can get my hands on one. The old PC lives for a while longer. Sorry for the downer mood, life has been rough the past week. Let’s get on with game acquisitions.

Game Acquisitions

Once again, all of these titles were free, so I spent nothing 😊 Two weeks in a row without spending money! A welcome streak. I did try to buy the Safe In Our World Charity Bundle 2025 from Fanatical because it had a ton of great games for $15 but it only lasted for a few hours so I missed it 😩 Not like I need more games but I’m bummed to miss out on games like A Space for the Unbound or Little Kitty, Big City for cheap. Maybe they’ll pop up in future bundles. Oh well, more money saved, and still some interesting looking indies here.

# of Games: 13

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

Game Recaps

What’s this, a third game!? 👀 Does this mean what you think it means? If you read the title, I think you know the answer to that question. I had a decent uptick in game time compared to last week as well. Let’s start off as usual with…

As soon as I left the power plant at the end of the last session, Mx. Two was waiting for me. They said One doesn’t trust us and they were coming with us to the negotiations with Faeona. Honestly, that’s fair.

Wow, that is some serious falling out between Two and their mother. The deal went through but tensions are high. Now I need to raise 6,000,000(!) coin to get enough large power gems to meet demand, and that’s on top of the 5,000,000+ I need to remove my cursed accessory. This game is getting expensive. After the meeting, I meet up with Queen Biremue in the abandoned castle and fill her in on the details.

She’s got even more Bureau blackmail for me, very nice. I wonder how that will come into play. I met up with One to be briefed on the threat that supposedly only the Bureau can eliminate.

The threat sounds serious, but I still don’t trust One. At least now I’m holding four of the five business cards of the Lords of Business. That happened way quicker than I expected. Maybe I’m close-ish to meeting the fabled CEO? I’ll need to raise quite a bit of money before I get there though. In the meantime, now that I’m back in the capital, it’s time to run a few errands. I fulfilled the various marketplace quests, although I still don’t really understand how the marketplace works and probably won’t spend much time there. I also gave Lady Plenty the money necessary to clean the water system and Refrain the tokens necessary to purify the gem outside the museum.

Biz and Refrain finally tell each other how they feel about how the previous queen treated them, although it looks like that hasn’t eased the tension between them yet. With the errands out of the way, I headed back to the gem lab to see what Odina wanted to show me.

Yikes, I burned that thing up immediately. Removing free will is a big no-no for me. We’ll need to use other tactics to deal with the Bureau. I explored for a while and ran the shops to raise coin and while doing this, I found the green horse! He’s just hanging out in the first shop.

He wants me to wear three specific accessories at once, but I can only wear two right now and one of them is cursed! I’ll have to come back to him later, but at least I know where he is now. After running the shop for a while, I got a message that I sold 100 permits and to go the Bureau office in Enterpriston. I head over there and run into the Representative.

He has now usurped the Legislator and become the new Legislator of Enterpriston. I also set him to visit the store twice as often to buy even more permits. They get a nice 25% price increase too! I also got enough levels to unlock the next area with the ghosts to continue that storyline.

Biz’s grandmother’s fancy axe is in there, but I still don’t know how to move the black spheres. This will unfortunately also have to wait until later. While grinding away at the shop for more coin, I finally finished up Tinto the Dragon’s hoard and unlocked a new area.

I can wear three accessories now! And I can sell Tinto even more things to earn money even more quickly. Now I just need to remove the cursed accessory so I can reunite the green foal with his father. I’ll need to grind for some coin. In the meantime, I decided to pay the Owl Lich a visit since I have enough health to continue his quest.

I completed the quest, got a ton of money, and learned the whereabouts of the Owl Lich’s friend. I headed to Enterpriston to find her. While searching, I ran into the skeleton looking for accessories and completed her quest too!

I probably should’ve completed this quest sooner but oh well. I found Rebertha and had a chat with her in the café.

She won’t hurt the Lords of Business directly, but she will let me use her power as a demonstration when the time comes. It’ll have to do for now. With that out of the way, I head to my shop to grind for a while and raise the coin necessary to decurse my accessory.

Alright, I can earn quadruple XP from sales now. Not sure how useful that’ll be since I’m past level 80 at this point, but we’ll see. Now that I’m curse-free, I can wear all the accessories the green foal wants me to wear. Let’s pay him a visit.

I completed the quest and unlocked the ability to…bake bread. I can trade it to other horses, but I’m not sure if it’s worth spending the time to do that. I’ll have to look into it. With my levels up, I decided to unlock the last areas of the mysterious cave and talk to the ghost some more.

That record keeper was infuriating! It was a funny bit though. And with that out of the way, I’ve completed the ghost storyline. I also have a new customer for my shop! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that entity though. Next, I head back to Faeona and have a chat with Divina about her murderous plot.

I’ve learned how to exploit the shield gems, and Divina learned some self-reflection. Continuing across the treetops, I found the area where the game began, and Biz has some reflection of her own.

With that tough talk out of the way, I head back to the horse dimension to pick up the final cursed accessory.

It costs a whopping 40 MILLION coin to remove the curse 😭 It better be worth it. At this point, I decided to look around for some apples because I’ve been close to clearing out the labyrinth. I finally found a couple more and unlocked the next area with a little surprise.

I finally learned how to lift those black orbs! That should open up some new areas, if I can remember all the places I’ve seen them. I decided to head back to the mysterious cave because I know there was an orb blocking an apple chest there.

That was a funny conversation. Just north of the chest is the gauntlet to get grandmother’s axe. I have a Life Insurance Policy now, and a decent amount of money. Let’s give it a shot.

Oof, that was a million-coin endeavor right there. The axe doesn’t seem to do anything so not sure if it’s important beyond 100%ing the game. At this point, I finally decided to head back to my shop to earn some money. I got a few commodity upgrades in the process.

Those are some nice upgrades. As you can see from that last pic, I headed back to the capital. I decided on a whim to buy the VenDRANK! factory because I had just enough coin. Turns out there’s a whole money-making venture in there regarding vending machines.

It looks like the next thing on my agenda will be raising the money to install these things. Another successful bout of capitalism! Let’s move on to my next game.

When we last left off, Finley finally went home after a very long and exhausting double (triple?) shift at the hospital. After finally getting the sleep he needed, he heads back to work to find that it’s still just as busy.

Looks like it’s going to be another long day. Let’s head to the break room to see what Dr. Krokowski has to say.

So, the cause of everyone’s illness is being narrowed down, but the hospital is reaching capacity and staff are starting to get sick. Karl has the idea to open up the ward on the fifth floor to let in more patients. Finley tags along to help out.

With the cleaning all done, Finley heads down to the basement to turn the power back on.

Well well well, look who finally decided to show up. Dr. Theobald, the chief physician, has finally come back and explains his absence to Dr. Krokowski. The hospital conspiracy was revealed to be the building manager pulling money out of the hospital for personal reasons and blackmailing Dr. Theobald to keep quiet about it or risk losing his job and taking the blame. Dr. Krokowski isn’t taking any of his shit though and demands he shut up and helps out. The power goes out and Finley heads up to his ward to check up on Mia.

The hospital caught fire! It must’ve had something to do with turning the power back on. Everyone needs to work together to evacuate all the patients. Finley heads back up to the fifth floor to check up on Karl.

With that out of the way, Finley heads down to the ground floor to help push patients out the door. He stops to talk to the doctors of the other wards on the way down.

After the last patient is wheeled out, Finley heads back in to check that the rooms are empty. He runs into Dr. Theobald before he can make it very far.

I have a bad feeling that Dr. Theobald isn’t going to make it. Finley does as he’s told and takes the next ambulance to the school.

He’s having a rough day, poor guy. Finley arrives at the school and receives orders from Dr. Krokowski.

The mini-games to treat patients are fast and loose now. Something interesting happens in one of them.

The mini-game petered out because the patient died. That never happened before. Finley rushes to the front to help out Dr. Krokowski as the screen fades to black. On fade in, Finley heads out of the school.

 

Finley, Karl, and Mia look up at the smoldering hospital as the game fades to black. I wanted to write something here about how exciting it is that I finally beat my first game since starting my blog, but then the ending was all somber, so I don’t want to ruin the mood. A few pictures pop up during the credits depicting what happened after. I picked out two notable ones.

The hospital building manager was arrested for his crimes, and Giuliano is seen visiting his mother’s doll in the forest. There’s a post-credits scene too.

So, it’s confirmed that Dr. Theobald didn’t survive the fire, but he died a hero. It looks like the lab tech that works in the basement may not have made it out either if the other doll is any indication. A sad ending to be sure. With my first game completion here, I can finally add my first game review section. But first, let’s quickly recap the third game I played this week.

After beating Fall of Porcupine, I pitched my friend the idea of playing through the Tales of series together. As a completionist, I wanted to play all the main games in the series with an English translation after I got Tales of Vesperia in a bundle back in 2023. He foolishly agreed, so now we get to play through the very first game in the series 😈 First impressions are actually pretty positive so far!

So, my plan for the blog was to use shorter clips with explanations between them for Final Profit and Fall of Porcupine because I started those games before I started the blog and so didn’t have any footage for them. Going forward, I planned to post full plays on my YouTube channel and embed them on my blog with a brief overview of what I did. This might increase my editing time, but it should severely decrease my writing time so I’m not spending my week writing instead of playing. This will be especially important now that I’ll have to be in the office so my free time will be limited.

Notice in my previous paragraph that I said planned past tense. This will still be my plan mostly, but I hit a snag with my OBS recording when we played this week. I’ll put the details in the Conclusion/Upcoming section at the bottom of the post. I can post the recording I have too but as I said, it’s just the beginning with no commentary.

The game starts with two boys (teenagers?), a swordsman named Cless and his friend Chester the archer, who leave their village to go hunting and bring back food. We renamed Chester to Festerr because both main characters’ names starting with C was confusing when voicing the dialogue 😋 We successfully caught a boar but when we came back to the village, it was burned to the ground, and everyone was killed! This included Cless’ parents and Festerr’s little sister. Cless finds a knights’ sword in his fireplace and tells Festerr he’s going to go to the town nearby to ask for help. Festerr says he’ll be along in a bit after he’s done paying respects.

Cless gets to the town and runs into his aunt and uncle and tells them about the situation. His uncle says he can stay there that night but then stabs us in the back by telling the knights where he is. The uncle is killed, and Cless is thrown in the dungeon, stripped of the equipment he had on him. In there, he meets a woman prisoner that helps him escape. Unfortunately, she’s killed before he can return the favor, but he does find her daughter Mint and teams up with her to escape. We renamed her Minty just for funsies. I continue controlling Cless while my friend controls Minty. We fought through the dungeon, defeated the Clay Demon prison guard, and escaped, but then Cless collapsed. Minty carries him to the house of a man named Trinicus Morrison to recover. Festerr shows back up here too. Morrison runs off to find the special amulet that Cless was wearing when he was captured but tells the kids to stay behind. Cless’ old master from the village shows up and tells them to meet him at a cave nearby. This is where we ended our session. Here’s the footage of the gameplay I captured.

Game Review

Fall of Porcupine

Ooh boy, my first review. I’m so nervous! Fall of Porcupine is a story-driven game starring Finley, a bird who has just moved to a new town to work at the hospital as a junior doctor. The gameplay consists of talking to other anthropomorphic animals at the hospital and around town as well as little mini-games when treating patients at the hospital. It is a very simple gameplay loop. There’s a setting to make the mini-games even easier but considering that how well you do at them doesn’t seem to affect the story, I’m not sure it matters.

I thought the story in this game was just OK. It starts off fairly strong as you meet all the characters and explore the town, but it doesn’t really expand beyond that. There’s a turn-based bar fight as well as a festival partway through where you can talk to people in a certain order to get a special item which mixes things up a little bit. It also escalates at the end, but then just abruptly ends with little resolution.

The gameplay is about as simple as it gets. Anyone looking for a game that’s mechanically engaging should look elsewhere; this is definitely story-driven first and everything else second. Technically speaking, there was a minor bug with the phone where when you tried to scroll up to read the latest text message, it would jump to the bottom making it nearly impossible to select it. The text messages are very few and far between though, so this did not really affect the game.

I played this one with a friend who works in healthcare, and we voiced the characters. I felt that this escalated my experience of the game over if I had just played it by myself. I likely would have been pretty bored by the end if this was a solo experience. Still, if you’re looking for a story-based game with some heavy themes mixed with light-hearted humor and simple gameplay, give this one a shot.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 14h:41m

Rating – 7/10

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episodes 2-6 (still watching, show ended)

·       American Dad Season 21 Episode 15 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Episodes 3-4 (still watching, show ended)

·       The Boy and the Heron

Not as much watched this week. Skeleton Crew has been much better than I expected it to be. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is an interesting twist from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I like it, I just find it weird how little Scott has actually shown up so far. Ramona tracking down and reconciling with her exes instead of Scott fighting them gives some much-appreciated characterization. The Boy and the Heron is the latest Studio Ghibli film and the third one I’ve seen. I watched Kiki’s Delivery Service and Ponyo before this. So far, I love all of these movies. I’m glad too because I have many more on my list to watch in the future.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Going back to my OBS troubles earlier, I found out after the fact that the save state button in Duckstation (the PS1 emulator) was the same button I programmed to stop recording in OBS before I automated everything. That means the first time I used a save state, my recording stopped, and I didn’t notice 😭 I had the first half hour of the game recorded, but when I went to check the footage, I found out that my mic wasn’t working either! That means it’s just straight gameplay with none of our fantastic voiceover work ☹ We had a lot of fun with those voices too. I really wanted to see how well my mic performs with two people too.

These hiccups made me realize that my recording setup is less than ideal. I already knew my microphone situation was bad since I started using it a couple weeks ago, but now I realize how important it is to see that OBS is working while playing. There’s no easy way to do this because I only have a single TV that I use as a PC monitor so I can’t have it up on a second screen. Right now, I’m thinking about buying a second monitor and a small desk to put next to my couch in the living room and running a 25ft cable from my PC to it. I’m also looking into getting a couple dynamic mics to cut background noise and improve voice quality. Let me know if this is a good idea or not.

As for what’s coming up this week, I plan to finish Skeleton Crew (spoiler alert, I already have but not by the end of last week) and start Skull Island. The next movie on my list is Stardust. I have no idea what that is but I’m looking forward to it! I plan to get more game time in with Final Profit and continue Tales of Phantasia if my friend and I get to it. Thanks for reading this extra long post that includes my first completion and review! See you next week!

Backlog total: 3,080 (+19)