going to start logging all the games i play this year!!! i want to try and experience more games i have in my backlog (at least until hades 2 likely causes me to black out all other earthly desires again). i neglected to do that for so long. one major reason was my steam list was sooooo messy - i constantly opened steam and felt immediate decision fatigue becuase i couldnt really pick out what i was looking at
recently i learned you could categorize games on steam. this made all the difference to me! i made categories for favorite games (so i could look at them fondly at any time), played games, want to play games, and games that i'm personally ambivalent about but somehow still ended up in my library. i also made a separate selection for co-op games so i can keep track of games my partner/friends and i can play together.
with all that out of the way, below are the games i finished and some thoughts (or not! it's all freeform babey)
CITIZEN SLEEPER
the first game i finished this year. clearly very disco elysium inspired in its formatting and some of the gameplay elements, which i say not as a critique insofaras i think this layout really works great for narrative games & i think more games should riff on it. loved the setting. what initially feels like a hostile deathtrap of a space station organically grows (hehe) into a cozy community that does feel alive, even with the limited visual specs and interactions. the gameplay cycle was fantastic, loved the 5-roll limit, the use of cycles, etc - the gameplay path was very clear right from the start. the character art was very cute, and i give kudos to the devs for including multiple nonbinary people especially! i also absolutely LOVED the biofuturism angle and the characterization of data as living, thinking entities. that material was probably my favorite part of the game overall.
unfortunately, given the format and writing, it's hard not to compare the game to DE, which...... isn't fair, for a lot of reasons. still, it's hard to ignore that the main character never felt like a real character, at least not one you could choose your way into. most of the time the character's dialogue is spent asking questions ("what is that?" "the x?") instead of offering opportunities for character-building interjections. even the archetypes you choose in the beginning don't seem to differentiate this much, and i thought that was a bit of a lost opportunity.