A game about keeping a diary while working at a spaceport. As a janitor. Really it's hard to give the game a rating because on the one hand it's not exactly fun to play. The core gameplay loop involves going around and collecting trash. The next day you are given a seemingly random amount of money roughly correlating to the trash you collected. Occasionally you'll come across something worth selling. However hunger, random bouts of dysphoria, and shakedowns from guards eat away at your money.

On the other hand the frustration of grinding away for a goal you will probably never achieve is kind of the point. Diaries advertises itself as an "anti-adventure" game and it really achieves that. You're on a planet littered with ruins and teeming with the adventurers come to loot it. But you are not one of them. You are a janitor picking up their trash. There are shops selling all kinds of fantastical items, but you will never be able to afford any of them with what you're paid.

All in all, it's not a fun game to play, but that's the whole point. So at least it succeeds in what it sets out to do.

A game about apocalyptic amateur photography. Honestly, how well you like the game depends on how much you vibe with the game's style, which is a main part of its appeal. The levels are fun to explore and jam packed with little details that drip feed you the overarching story of the world, from movie posters to discarded newspapers.

Mechanically, Umurangi is a photography game that plays a bit like a puzzle game. Sometimes taking the photos the game wants is like a game of Where's Waldo, but other times it's about figuring out where you need to be to line up the perfect shot. My only real complaint about the gameplay would be the timer. While it is easy to ignore and only impacts your bonus score, on a first playthrough it can really feel like the game is pushing you to rush from photo to photo, when it really needs you to slow down and soak in all the details.