Already the end of 2024? I thought I posted a mid-year summary this year, but with everything else I had going on, I’m not surprised I forgot.

I didn’t get stuck in a single game the last half of the year and while I managed to work my way through a bit of my backlog, I ended up picking up/being gifted more games than I could play. Go figure…

The start of the year was focused on a couple of games, but then I branched out a little bit. Work got a little exciting in June so I needed some distractions to avoid ruminating too much on it.

Figured I’d close out the year with a final gaming summary since my last post.

I’ve lost more than 100 hours each on a couple of games and I’ve sampled a few others. With the pandemic and burnout, followed by furious studying and interviewing, I’m in a better place (mentally and professionally) now though I have a ways to go. Here’s a list of what I’ve played since my last gaming post.

I picked up a couple of games for free and gave them a try. Region of Ruins (RoR) was a surprise hit for me. The Search was thankfully short (finished it in about an hour).

I’ve been working through my backlog of games. Sometimes I will accept that it’s not worth finishing. Sometimes I will be stubborn and finish a game, even if I don’t enjoy it so much. Simply to say I finished it. I’ve noticed that while that stubbornness used to result in a sense of accomplishment, these days it’s just another box to tick. I think it is more due to being burned out than living through pandemic days, but I won’t rule out it might be a combination of both. There is a lack of emotion tied to completing a game I wasn’t having fun playing other than I can move on without feeling guilty. But sometimes I can move on without feeling guilty and without completing a game.

I’ve survived the first week of shelter-in-place. I was hoping to get a Nintendo Switch so I could play Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but I got a $20 Steam card and got myself a copy of the Definitive Edition of Ori and the Blind Forest (Ori) instead. I shy away from platformers because often I’ll end up yelling at whatever unlucky gaming platform I happen to be playing it from. Though, strangely, while I was yelling at my poor PC, my Garmin watch was telling me I was actually quite relaxed. I think it has to do with the beautiful artwork and relaxing music.

I took a risk on Whispers of a Machine (WM) which has good reviews and is of a type that I generally like to play. I wasn’t expecting to like it since the overall premise was iffy (detective work? Okay, but I’m really not that great at it..), but I finished it in the span of a weekend. I really liked WM. Part of it may be attributable to growing up with the Monkey Island games. It was one of the first games my sister introduced me to and we’d play together whenever she would visit home from college/work on the weekends. Of course, being a young child, I got impatient and didn’t want to wait. Curiosity and all that. Eventually she let me loose by making me promise to write up a summary of what I did while on my own. This game, WM, even though it is short, is worth playing, especially if you can get it for free on Twitch Prime.

Hot on the heels of the last game, I either really enjoyed Epistory or I’m really burnt out and spent my PTO day finishing the game and writing up this review. Or both. I haven’t played a typing game since Mario Learns Typing back in early elementary school. Epistory is nothing like mindless drills and repetitions–learning home row and where all of the letters are in relation to it. It’s more of an isometric adventure/RPG with interestingly beautiful graphics. I found myself recalling back to the short period of time where ambient games were popular (think Eufloria, World of Goo, Splice) as it’s really easy to get into the Flow of typing.