this game. this fucking game. this game has forever changed my life.
in flesh blood and concrete, you play as lera, a woman whos car ran out of fuel in the middle of a mostly vacant russian town. she wakes up to find the singular resident, a girl named nika, standing at her window and trying to make sure shes alright. nika takes lera in to her apartment after finding out that her car ran out of fuel to try and help her find motor oil. she eventually does, but that apartment is not what it totally seems to be.
i loved this game. it took me about an hour to complete and really hit home as an eastern european living directly next to the hungarian-ukranian border. the game is heavily influenced by russian culture and is beautifully illustrated with some very well-drawn gore. the endings break my heart, and i loved seeing lera and nikas friendship progress throughout the game. i loved learning more about why these two ended up here, and the surreal elements of the game near the end are phenomenal. the talk about mental illness also shoved in is amazing and not horribly done. if yurucamp sees this i love your art and your games so much, youve inspired me so so much.
i wouldnt recommend it for anyone struggling with psychosis/derealization/depersonalization as theres a huge part of the game where the environments decompartmentalize and theres a lot of talk of losing your sense of self, but if youre a fan of beautifully sprited rpgmaker horror walking simulators then this is a game i heavily recommend. its so good and i cant even stress this enough.

plok is a strange little game. i love it.
its a goofy platformer with so much personality and some questionable ethics when you really think about it. our main protagonist and player character, plok, commits genocide and makes an entire species die out because they stole his flag. and he got angry.
still, the game's very charming and the art and atmosphere is wonderful. i love the "crafted" or really "hand-made" feeling it gives off, like an elementary school art project made out of clay and felt.
i wasnt able to finish it yet because the two difficulty options create such a difficulty spike that one is too easy and the other is too hard. i get it was marketed towards children, but come on. this is something you should expect from nes/snes/gamecube era games though, so its not a major complaint on my part. i guess i just have to get good.
other than that, the soundtrack is also amazing. i get that theres a whole meme around the follin brothers musical prowess, but tim genuinely outdid himself with this one. its so perfect. my favorite track is probably beach just because it gives off undertale end credits energy, if you get what i mean.
the gameplay is also phenomenal. its a sidescrolling platformer but manages to have its own quirks and gameplay mechanics that make it stand out like the limb system and those clotheshanger machines that take your limbs and open paths for you. whatever those were called, i genuinely forgot their names.
overall interesting game with an extremely interesting concept, good engaging gameplay and a silly story to wrap it up nicely. it obviously has the faults of every game from the 90s, but its an extremely impressive game for its time, hardware limitations and target demographic.

i think this game is phenomenal. it was extremely violent for its time and it made some serious waves, mostly because of that. sure, its violent, but thats the whole point. postal shows you what a mass shooter on a rampage is like with zero glorification and what can happen if someone with mental illness doesnt get the help they need. the art direction is so good and so gritty and it fits so well. the ambiance adds to the experience, and postal dude is such an enigmatic character(especially when compared to his later iterations).
truly one of the games ever :thumbsup: