I really liked the puzzle style and the atmosphere of the game. I also liked the core ideas in the story. That said, the story feels like it isn't fully fleshed out, as if perhaps the writers decided they didn't have time to really establish all of the ideas, so they just cut some out. The result is a basically good story which feels less than fully supported. Its far from being enough to ruin the game, though, and I would absolutely play through more of the same if the developers ever released an expansion or sequel.

As I was playing this my boyfriend looked over and said "Oh, you're playing a game about tidying up... that's very on-brand for you." He's wrong that the game is about tidying up, but he's right about my tastes.

Organising things neatly is very satisfying. So this game of unpacking objects and finding homes for them was bound to be fun for me. It's so relaxing to play, and the pixel art and music match the relaxing feel (although I have some notes about the song for the closing
credits). I only wish it was longer. I would absolutely play some extra levels if any were ever released.

I'm not sure how "clever" the storytelling is. It perhaps feels more innovative to see it in a game, but telling stories through objects is as old as the hills. On the other hand, the sparsity of the story still works well. It leaves the player's imagination to fill in the gaps, and I found myself projecting my own experiences onto the character. It's no surprise that I then felt an emotional connection to a character who we never meet in the game. I hope she's ok.

I liked parts of this. The art style I could take or leave, but the music was good. I mostly liked the characters (although the character you play, Lafcardio Boone, lacks personality). I also enjoyed ~80% of the story. Some of the puzzles were better than others, but on the whole, I thought it was pretty decent.

Until the ending. The ending does so much damage to this game. It could have been so interesting, but instead, it literally dismantles a lot of what was interesting about the story up to that point.

Oh, and I played this on Switch which it didn't perform great on. No catastrophic crashes, fortunately, but I expect it runs better on other platforms.

A week after "playing" this, I've decided I like it. I like the atmosphere, the music, the film noir feel. I like that it makes use of no more than the 15 minutes or so that it needs to tell it's story. Sadly, the story is weak, but that's kind of ok. A weak story that takes 15 minutes to tell is more forgivable than a weak story that goes on for hours.

I'm never sure that things like this really count as "games" but that doesn't mean they aren't worth spending time with. Any new and interesting way to tell a story is ok by me.

This was one of those games that I picked up in a Humble Bundle and which then mouldered in my Steam Library until, finally, something prompted me to play it. In this case, the prompt came in the form of the planned release of The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe reminding me that The Stanley Parable even existed.

And you know what? While it has obviously aged, it's ok. The concepts which must have felt new in 2013 are a little frayed around the edges in 2022, but that's fair enough. The humour might not be appreciated the way it once was, but it was made nearly a decade ago. It could be a lot worse. I still laughed at a few of the jokes and only really remember wincing at one (the click-on-the-door thing).

I played through every ending I could immediately find, grinned at the daft jokes, and enjoyed doing so. Will I play Ultra Deluxe? Eh, maybe give it 10 years.

This is the third of the Rusty Lake games I've played and my favourite so far.

We're back to the eerie little stories, this time with a sort of twisted fairytale theme which I liked. I also really liked the art style, music, and the small amount of voice acting.

Here, your character arrives at the hotel, spends time with each of the guests, collects items, and solves puzzles. The puzzles generally made more sense to me than those of either Samsara Room or The White Door, although I would say that "making sense" is not always the same as "being easily solved." The beetle puzzle in particular took me longer than I'm proud of.

End result: Renewed enthusiasm for playing through the rest of the Rusty Lake games.

I picked up a Rusty Lake bundle on Steam after having stumbled across Samsara Room. I'd found Samsara Room equal parts intriguing and unsettling, so was curious about the other Rusty Lake games.

The White Door was the first I've played in the bundle. It was... fine. It's neat and compact, and it's playable with a spare couple of hours. The puzzles are inconsistent and it often felt like I was controlling the character when I shouldn't really have needed to, for example, why am I dragging a toothbrush back and forth? Or lifting a dumbbell up and down? Does this add anything? Really? In a longer game, I would have found this infuriating. Here, with a short game, it's just irritating.

The story is interesting but didn't make nearly so great an impression on me as Samsara Room. If I'd played this one first, I doubt if I'd have been prompted to play any of the others. That said, I'm still planning to try the Cube games, so I guess it hasn't completely put me off.

This is too many words about this game already. Conclusion: Skip it.

I remember finding this game via the old fullyramblomatic website, which probably tells you too much about how long I've been online. Anyway, it was particularly memorable for being a surprisingly playable and funny free game. To my mind, it was amazing that it made by someone who wasn't even a professional games developer. That meant I could make games too! I mean I didn't, obviously. But I could have. Probably.

Anyway it was fun. Good scary bits, nice atmosphere, some puzzles that worked, some which... didn't, but that's true of a lot of games.

This and Wor*l*dle are the best of these games, as far as the ones I've played go.

My goal is to get the answer in under 50 guesses, but sometimes it takes me well over 100 guesses and that's just fine.

Pro tips: The words are chosen from news articles; a word can be semantically similar to its antonym; and if you're stuck, take a few guesses in random directions and review.

While in general I prefer to explore this kind of game unguided, Stardew Valley has so much in it that using the Wiki is a really good idea. The game is bigger than you'd expect, and you'll miss stuff without the Wiki.

Otherwise, it's a very lovely farming sim. The mechanism for slowly teasing out the backstorys of the NPCs is particularly fun. I also found that the length of in-game days was long enough to get things done, whilst being just slightly too short to finish everything you might want to do, which leads to wanting to play "one more day" for much longer than I ever planned to.

Now I'm looking forward to Haunted Chocolatier!