I've been thinking of the LIS games more in terms of the locations than the characters. Obviously the characters are the focus and are almost universally compelling but the towns they exist in are the critical backdrop that make them pop. Max and Chloe need Arcadia Bay for their story to work. Sean and Daniel are sculpted by every place they pass through on their journey.

Haven Springs doesn't exist. Yeah, I've seen photos of the place it's based on, it's kinda similar, but visual similarity only goes so far. It's a town "where everyone knows your name" to such an extreme that it has a dedicated social media app. Leisure activities include city-wide LARPs and going to the record store. It's a fantasy, I suspect a particularly generational fantasy, and it's taken for granted that you will love this place, because you, dear Life is Strange player, fall over for mountain aesthetics and alternative music, we know this. And, look, they're right. I'm not immune. I want to live here.

Also taken for granted: Typhon's motivations. We understand they are evil with little more setup than the words "corporation" and "mining." I finished episode 5 still trying to puzzle out if the grand conspiracy was actually worthwhile to any party involved, and at that point the game had long left me behind.

Those complaints aside, what kept me invested was the same thing that's kept me invested for the other 3 or 4 games. I liked spending time with Alex. And Duckie. And Steph and Ryan and the ice cream shop owners and that guy who lost his cat. Disappointing as the plot may be, the crew that guides you through it almost make it work. If anything I'm bummed we didn't get more time with the supporting cast. (The game runs short compared to the previous entries.) Charlotte seems like she has a lot going on, should I do another playthrough and see what happens if I choose other options for her?

I probably won't, because I'm too satisfied with the route and ending I got. I thought a lot of the decisions were fairly obvious, but the end-of-chapter stats screens tell me the masses were surprisingly split.

Part of me is worried what I'm actually describing is growing up. The other part of me is booking a flight to Colorado.

spent so much time with this (and the two following games) across platforms in my childhood but never finished any of them until now. got 101% completion in this over the past few days.

the music, overall sound design, and aesthetics are absolutely incredible not only for when this released but in general. each game in the trilogy is stellar with presentation but i'm particularly fond of the abstract feeling here. 2 and 3 have more cohesion in the world and level designs within said worlds but i loved bouncing from a treetop level to an underwater one or a mine one with no rhyme or reason. there's not a ton of settings or level types to be found here but there's a ton of diversity in how the levels show up in terms of gameplay or mood which helps a ton.

some of the stuff with going for full completion is a bit rough in terms of how overly obscure it can get. the worst of it all was the bonus room within a bonus room which just who knows... i think i prefer the bonus rooms in general in the next games but i'll have to see when i get to them.

can't wait to play 2 and 3, hopefully sometime this year.

Being trans is hard.
If it's not someone being hostile just because we exist, then it's ourselves putting up non-existent obstacles that can only get worse depending on our self-esteem and self-confidence.

one night, hot springs stars Haru, a rather shy and introverted trans girl who just wants to live without bothering others, but today she has to go to the public hot springs because it's her best friend Minami's birthday.
Naturally, the hot springs are divided by gender, which naturally causes anxiety for our protagonist.
"Should I put my name and legal gender?" "What if they see me?" "Is it really okay to be here on a girls-only trip?" are so many of the questions Haru asks herself inside her head. With 7 different endings of a rather short duration, our protagonist faces such imaginary obstacles that her own head makes her suffer.

A very nice experience that won't take too much time out of your day and that I will always remember when such imaginary obstacles invade my mind and want to make me feel bad.
If you are not a trans person I still recommend it, as I feel it is positive to be able to understand even more how the people around you feel and how can you help.

Der "etwas andere" Space-Shooter
Schwarzer Humor pur!
-The german tagline of the game.

One shy evening while I was being grilled alive at 35°C in my room, fellow gamers (non-derogatory) @'d me on discord to go and play "Killer Baby" under the pretense of "I know German so this should be fun".

Intrigued as I was, I couldn't find a game DL of it for the life of me. Aside from this very humble game cover, there was no info to be found about it on the vast interwebz.
I did however find out that Amazon was selling it a discount of 100% off, FOR A WHOPPING 0.01 CENTS

After 8.01€ spent (8 Euros on shipping, capitalism smh) and also getting an external cd playa for my puter, it arrived

Now I could finally answer this burning question that was lingering inside me:
Is this an actual game, or is this just malware?

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.
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It's fucking boring, that's what it is.

Here some gameplay I recorded to see for yourself. For archiving purposes, I put the zip of the CD-ROM and the game (and the games front and back of the packaging) on Archive.org so that you too can play mid.