Let's Talk About Games

I had never heard of The Last Campfire until a few months ago. Got it for the Switch for a few bucks. Well worth it.

Greedfall was a decidedly eurojanky AA game that came out in 2019, but I will always have a soft spot for it. Perhaps Spiders bit off a little more than they could chew (and yes the English lip-sync animations are atrocious) but the game has a lot of charm and clearly a lot of heart.

Set on a newly discovered mysterious island in a fictionalized world reminiscent of early 18th century, the world building they did was great and in particular the fictional language they invented stood out to me. Clearly having consulted with linguists, they managed to not only create a distinct language but also make sure all the various VAs for the indigenous people spoke with the same (invented) accent. Very impressive and immersive, and was a stark contrast to the Witcher 3 Blood & Wine DLC I played where everybody in Beauclaire uses their own different "vaguely foreign" accent.

The gameplay is fun enough though not groundbreaking or that challenging and there definitely could be more enemy variety, but there is enough there that (combined with the charming characters and interesting enough story) I think you'll have a good time. Especially since you can probably pick it up at a cut rate price - it was just a £50 title at launch if I remember right.

The sequel is supposed to come out this year and I'm excited to see what Spiders has learned the past 5 years.

I've reccommended these a couple times already but I think they're worth mentioning again. I gotta find some more good ones though.

• The Upturned - A cartoony horror-comedy game with a great sense of humor.
• Withering Rooms - The story is interesting and the atmosphere is great.
• Your Spider - This one is possibly my favorite indie horror game.
• Exanima - Read about the features. This one is more impressive than the screenshots make it look (at least for me).
• Lunacid - I love the visual style and atmosphere of this. I also enjoyed Lost in Vivo by the same developer.
• Praey for the Gods - This one is for anyone who's looking for more games like Shadow of the Collossus.

Horizon's Gate seems to be practically unknown, but it's a wonderful mix of Final Fantasy Tactics style combat/character progression, Golden Sun's "use battle magic in the overworld for traversal and puzzles" mechanics, and a whole bunch of mechanics from the Uncharted Waters games for the SNES (sailing, ship battles, location discovery, influence management with the major factions, trade routes with simulated economy where you can flood a market and drive prices up or down).

I was looking for a spiritual successor to Uncharted Waters, saw it reccomended, and got something so much cooler and mechanically deep than I bargained for.

There's also a small, but high quality modding community for it that manages to roughly double the amount of content in ways that usually appear as if they were vanilla.

The graphics are nothing amazing, but are more than functional.

Overall it's been my favorite "lets take a chance on an obscure indie title" purchase in the last five years or so.