henke on 15/11/2017 at 17:14
H.E.N.K.E. SYSTEM BACKLOG REDUCTION PROJECT - FINAL STATS
Backlog games played: 28 (incl. Quantum Break)
Completed: 7 (Kôna, The Beginners Guide, POLLEN, Human Fall Flat, Year Walk, Road Redemption, Technobabylon)
Discarded: 17
Still playing/haven't quite given up on: 4 (Mini Metro, Quantum Break, House of the Dying Sun, Zombie Army Trilogy)
Backlog Reduction Top 5:
Mini Metro
Road Redemption
Human Fall Flat
Technobabylon
POLLEN
Remaining backlog (14 games):
(as in, games I own that I absolutely intend to play sooner or later)
Bounce
Bound
Frozen Cortex (played 3 hours of this, but nothing since it exited Early Access)
Ghost Recon: Wildlands (played a bit, should give it more of a chance to win me over)
Hitman
Kingdom: New Lands
Landfall
The Long Dark (played a bunch last winter, but haven't tried the Story mode yet)
Prison Architect
Prototype 2
Rise Of The Tomb Raider
Scanner Sombre
Train Valley
Wasteland 2
Future goals:
SUMMER 2018: COMMENCE H.E.N.K.E. BACKLOG PRODUCTION PROJECT - PHASE 2
Neb on 15/11/2017 at 18:07
Scanner Sombre is around 2 hours, tops. Maybe less, because I played some of NG+.
Pyrian on 15/11/2017 at 20:23
I'd love to know what you think of Frozen Cortex.
PigLick on 16/11/2017 at 00:17
Henke, they ruined the Long Dark with the story mode release and subsequent UI changes. The story mode is quite crap, and the survival mode just doesnt play like it used to.
twisty on 16/11/2017 at 05:12
I've been meaning to go back to and try The Long Dark after the Story Mode got released as I threw in the towel prematurely after 15 minutes or so due to other games that came out around the same time. I was disappointed to lose my survival-mode save (+30 day survival from memory) though; I knew this was going to happen with the upgrade anyway but I found it difficult to go back and restart.
henke on 16/11/2017 at 06:14
I've concentrated on mostly smaller games during this project. A lot of the bigger titles, like Hitman, I feel I should give a proper go and not just consign to an experiment like this. Yet, this stuff has been sitting around for so long eventually I know it'll never get played if I don't do something like this. I'll start up another round of backlog reduction next summer. Might get to some of this stuff sooner. TLD I'll probably still give a whirl this winter. I liked what I played of Frozen Cortex in EA. Since I loved Frozen Synapse I feel bad for not giving it a proper go since it was released.
Pyrian on 16/11/2017 at 06:20
I have mixed feelings about Frozen Synapse. I like a lot of the concepts, but I didn't enjoy playing it; I found it too finicky.
scumble on 16/11/2017 at 17:19
Would be interesting to compare notes on ROTR when you get to it henke. I'm not quite done with it because completing the story was somewhat unsatisfying.
qolelis on 25/2/2019 at 18:30
I'm going through my Steam backlog at the moment: 2 down, 19 to go.
The first one down was Bokida, a puzzle explorer. I got stuck on a puzzle and got sidetracked, but easily solved it when I returned and finished the game. You explore a large, white world, in search of things to do and puzzles to solve. The puzzles are mostly about placing cubes, handling them in various ways, and also cut them to control the the flow of a beam from A to B (the beam bounces off of any surface, both already existing ones and the ones you create yourself by cutting the cubes you place). There are some extra puzzles, but I wasn't sure if they were just bonuses or if they rewarded me with anything (except for being fun to solve).
While exploring you'll find ruins, mountains, caves, ancient texts, secrets and so on, so the exploration factor is definitely there. The world isn't the most densely populated, though, so there is a bit of empty space to travel through. The game tries to fill these empty spaces, but with the world being almost entirely white, travelling through it can be a little monotonous -- especially if you want to find that last secret you need for what I think is a bonus ending. You can move around freely, fast travel, and even fly, which helps, but a little colour here and there, or more hints on where to go, would have been nice.
After returning to the game after a long time of not playing, the hardest part was knowing where I had and hadn't been, because the game doesn't help you much with that, so I had to fly around on random to try and find puzzles I hadn't yet solved before I could get the first ending.
***
The second game down was Four Last Things, a charming point & click built from recycled art with expired copyrights. I got stuck on it, because I had missed picking up two important items (hidden in plain sight). The puzzles are all inventory based and you get clues by talking to the NPCs you meet. In-between solving puzzles, I had fun just going around "frobbing" everything to see what would happen. I would call it pretty casual; so long as you pay attention and don't mind some slight pixel hunting you won't have a problem (no real head-scratching or WTF moments as far as I can recall).
After returning to the game, I found the missing items pretty soon, but had forgotten how to use my inventory (at first I thought it was automatic, which it wasn't), so it took a bit of fumbling around before I could get on with the game and finish it.
***
Next up is the other 8 games I liked, but forgot about, because I got sidetracked (because I either got stuck or simply switched to something else). Then I have 10 games I gave up on (for different reasons), but am going to give a second chance, plus 1 that I never even got started on.
qolelis on 27/2/2019 at 02:35
Next up was (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/532290/Dark_Train/)
Dark Train, a 2D point & click. Someone is probably going to contradict me now, but I'm going to call it unique or first of its kind. Great style and the sets are apparently made of paper. A few of the puzzle solutions were a little arbitraty and there were some repetition, but this didn't stop me from enjoying the game. After fumbling about for a bit, I restarted, because I had forgot everything and was lost. After restarting, things went smoothly. Lots of secrets left to find.
Then I played
Elegy For A Dead World, a side-scroller writing game. Nice art, but the writing part didn't work out for me, so I decided to forget it and move on.
Next in line was
Glitchspace, a platformer with programmable stepping blocks. I often complain about platformers being tedious and this was no different. The programming part was kind of fun, but the visual style used was lacking. I also continued with
Human Resource Machine, another programming game, but which uses a style more similar to textual programming and offered only pure programming challenges, so I enjoyed this more. The editing environment was most similar to old-school Basic, so also a bit tedious for the larger tasks. I decided to forget about both and move on.
I briefly started up
Small Radios Big Televisions, but was immediately reminded of why I never finished it; lots of doors in a maze-like pattern. Next was
N.E.R.O., a puzzler, which started out nice enough with environments that looked genuine and actually great, but eventually you arrive at a hospital and the game now seems to want to be a psychological horror puzzler, but failing miserably. The hospital looks like a typical, cheap indie horror game hospital, to the point of being taken straight from the asset store: the scale is noticably off and there are these random "orchestra hits" left all over for no reason, as if the devs never bothered to customize what they had bought. The game was quite decent as a puzzler up until arriving at the hospital, but then I lost all interest. Moving on.
Right now I'm playing
Quadrilateral Cowboy and, wow, it's amazing! I'm glad I gave it another try. I remember getting stuck early on last time I played, and not at all in the mood to get past it, but no problem this time around, and now I've been playing for five hours straight. Definitely a new favourite.