Johelian

This week on lovely #indiegames 💜 💚

Tales of the Abyss! I am now officially further through than my last attempt 😅 Really enjoying it - cool story, and lovely characters. Finally hit credits on Koudelka (well, in spirit, since it didn't have any) Friday, too. Finally been clearing a few games off my backlog list.

A videogame screenshot depicting an extravagant gothic monastery vestry. Golden embellishments adorn the walls. Three ragtag characters - a female psychic, a male adventurer, and a male bishop - stand in awe of a ghostly figure of a woman in white, which hovers before her portrait as she addresses them.

13. Koudelka / PSX
Fantastically atmospheric: the lore, the delightfully hideous bestiary, the lovely environments, the deliberately obtuse mechanisms. And sooo many secrets - I barely scraped the surface! It feels slow to play, and the excessive random battles were almost too much. Remaster pls!

It's so beautiful! 😍

I actually really, really love it - maybe moreso because it's unfinished and unpolished. The rawness works for it IMO. I'm smitten by the concept as a whole TBF. I feel like I hear fragments of future Hesitant Alien, too, which I really like.

TPK? 🙂

A videogame screenshot showing a room inside a laboratory. A huge machine made of metal rods and and sensors encircles a person wearing surgical scrubs, strapped to a chair. A scientist observes the experiment impassively. The subject appears to be rapt, oblivious to anything in the room. Whatever the experiment is, it appears to be tampering with their brainwaves.

12. Galerians / PSX
This game is a nightmare! I mean, I love the Akira-esque vibes at the start, and the Hotel chapter was a delightfully unexpected change of pace...but I almost got soft-locked by a lack of life-saving Delmetor in the final dungeon, and those foes?? Would love to see it remade.

This week on lovely #indiegames 💚 💜

¡Febrero en #TesuraGames! 🎮💜
February at Tesura Games🎮💜

#DeathHowl 🦌
#EVERDARK 🧛
#SwordOfTheNecromancerCollection ⚔️

I'm so chuffed to have finally played the Parasite Eves, after all these years! :D It has to be between Judgment, Parasite Eve (I), and Spec Ops so far - I had a lot of fun messing about with those. That said, South of the Circle was super-lovely, too: I will remember that one fondly

A screenshot showing 11 games I completed in January.

Nice start to the year - managed to roll credits on 11 games in January, including several oldies that were burning holes in the ol' backlog. Hoping to finish Galerians, Koudelka, and Tales of the Abyss (all currently in-progress) during February...ideally before Resi Requiem lands! We'll see. 🤞

A videogame screenshot showing a spooky high-ceilinged cave, with an arched roof and ancient carvings on the walls. Calcified corpses hang from above. Ahead, a huge stone door looms. An eerie esoteric symbol glows with unnatural light in the centre of rhe door.

11. The 9th Charnel / PS5
Last game of January! A psychological horror jaunt, with enthusiastic storytelling and an unusually hefty helping of cinematics. Enemy AI broke the immersion for me, and collect the fuses/slide the block puzzles feel a bit too dated in 2026, but not bad for a few hours play

Cassette Boy was nice!

Haha same! 😁 It's when they're so unnecessarily over-the-top mean, too! Tales of the Abyss is full of these examples (I'm playing that right now) - Luke is such a brat 😆

A videogame screenshot displaying a dusty flea market. Makeshift awnings, faded by the sun, drape over the ramshackle wooden stalls. A man, wearing goggles and thick layered clothes to stave off the harsh Jupiterean atmosphere, is sitting on the floor, playing a stringed instrument. Our character, a skeletal nomad wearing a long green coat, stands next to him. Evidently, the two are in mid-conversation. The musician is snorting: "Who? Us? I have never seen your ugly face in my whole life. I would remember!"

A simple "no" would have sufficed.
(Universe for Sale / NSW)
#gamingdiscourtesy

A videogame screenshot featuring a convenience store on the corner of a main street. Our character - a human standing in for the absent mayor - is speaking to the clerk (an anthropomorphic rabbit) about his illegal in-store lottery, while a waiter-attired mouse customer looks on. The clerk is arguing: "Are you talking about the illegal lottery? It's my bread and butter. I'll starve if I run a legit business".

10. Freak Crossing / NSW
Imagine an 8-bit Animal Crossing island filled with sleazy affair-having, waifu-buying, publicly-urinating characters and baffling WarioWare-esque minigames. That's Freak Crossing. Bizarre, crude, and incredibly rough all-round, but oddly memorable in its own way.

A videogame screenshot showing Bem Feito's interface: a windowed game in front of a virtual computer desktop. In the window, a game is playing: we see a small house and garden in simple black and white graphics. A boy with a huge, unsettling grin is talking to an anthropomorphic nose. The nose is saying: "Yaaay - we'll have lots of fun together!". On the desktop, we can see icons for other applications: recycle bin, document, and the (fictional) Garotron emulator.

9. Bem Feito / NSW
Odd little life sim, with a sort of CreepyPasta fictional history to bulk out its identity. I liked the way this was implemented, down to running the game "rom" through an "emulator", and unlocking articles about its sinister past. A bit brief, but still entertaining.

A videogame screenshot showing a isometic voxel world in simple computer graphics. A character - composed of a few white cubes and wearing headphones - is hopping across some rocks in a forest.

8. Cassette Boy / NSW
Fun puzzle/action RPG, with a cute pseudo-retro aesthetic and loads of clever world-twisting obstacles that make you feel like a genius when you work out what to do. There's no map, making it hard to remember where locked doors etc were - but otherwise I enjoyed it!

a man is peeking through a pair of wooden doors . ALT: a man is peeking through a pair of wooden doors .

Radioactive cats?

That Garurumon set is epic. I don't even like Digimon...and yet I kind of want it 😅

Totally agree - love the artwork 😍

A videogame screenshot showing an anthropomorphic koala, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shades, and smoking a cigarette. He's standing in the front room of his bungalow, in front of an unfinished abstract painting of a person that's propped on an easel. The room is in a state of disarray, furniture upturned and empty beer cans scattered about.

7. Stone / NSW
I liked the ideas behind Stone, but I found it tedious visiting and revisiting the same areas over and over just to trigger a couple of lines of dialogue. I wish there had been more opportunities to learn and care about the characters...and fewer load screens would have been nice.

A videogame screenshot showing three special ops soldiers hunkered down in a tunnel, waiting for a sandstorm to pass.

6. Spec Ops: The Line / X360
I'm not a shooter fan generally, but the reviews won me over - and I'm glad they did. A refreshingly thoughtful narrative that pulls away from the "hero soldier" motif, some truly devastating set pieces, all wrapped in decently-fun gunplay. (Image from Steam)

Futique is a beautiful album. Hope you enjoy 🥰

Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti “We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti.

"Please get the truth out about our son."

A videogame screenshot showing the inside of a small, dimly-lit chapel. Six decorative wooden pews line an ornate marble aisle, and rows of organ pipes and extravagant drapes decorate the far wall behind the lectern. A wounded special agent wearing a crisp shirt and waistcoat is sitting on the floor, while a second agent - a woman wearing jeans and a leather jacket - is standing nearby. She' saying: "I've got a bad feeling about this."

5. Parasite Eve 2 / PSX
Sooo different to the first game - a bit more Resi, a bit less Final Fantasy. Though I found PE2's gameplay more entertaining, I prefer the first game's haunting atmosphere. Some encounters - particularly late bosses - were hard: those tight fixed cameras are a nightmare!

CE Switch for sure 🥰 Yeah they look the same! I will keep an eye on Bazaar Bazaar - they're usually my go-to for Tesura CEs

@quackcat.bsky.social @axiomtrace.bsky.social 😁

Fantastic news! Loved this game - have eagerly been awaiting news of the physical. And a collector's edition, too - even better! 🔥

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