April 16, 2026

My reaction to seeing this game on steam was "Is this some kind of dungeon crawl through the Denver Airport Catacombs?" My reaction to actually playing this game was "Oh my god its the Denver Airport Catacombs."

You are an unnamed schizophrenic woman who has gotten so paranoid about all the secrets people and the government are keeping from her that she decides to create a machine to discover these secrets. She names it the "Psychopomp." It allows her to see all the hidden things in the world that people weren't intended to see. With her machine and trusty rusty hammer, she breaks into different government buildings and enters their basements to uncover what secrets they might be hiding...

Or at least thats the premise. After around 2 hours it starts breaking away from that. It all still feels very conspiratorial, but just more... insane. You're no longer learning about the horrors the government is doing to people, but rather about the secrets of the world and the very earth you stand on. It creates a world so strange that it ends up absurd. It doesn't take itself very seriously and there's a lot of funny characters and dialogue. I've personally became a fan of the Innermen and the Men of Stature. The main character is a joy too. I know there's a common fan name for her, but I've started calling her "Jane Psychopomp" because it's just so much funnier.

It's a very short game, only around 5 hours if you're trying to get everything. Or 9 hours if you are a massive coward like me and was sobbing every time I had to turn a corner. The main thing that got me to try this game out was the fact that its a first person grid based dungeon crawler. I'm already massively obsessed with that genre, as you can see from this entire website, and knew that it was a good gameplay style to make a horror game with. Psychopomp is just the first time i've ever seen it. The controls are just clunky enough to make you feel helpless against approaching enemies. Luckily, you have a hammer! Make sure you actually click on the enemy though. I've seen a few playthroughs where people aren't clicking on the enemy at all and are frantically screaming and questioning why nothing is happening.

Despite not being very melodic, I love the music in this game. Most tracks are some haunting ambience with the sound of metal and industrial work, but it's just a satisfying noise. Shoutout to the songs used in the trailers, it's just a very tense drum beat of metal and I really wish those songs were longer. Other song shoutouts are the elevator song "Down We Go" which I've been using as homework music and the secret song you get after beating the game which scared my friend as he screamed "How did they get lemon demon in this game?!"

Overall, I love this game. The lore is just out of reach where you can piece together the story but you're still left with questions. Good thing the GOLD version leaves with a small teaser for the upcoming sequel. I'm sure the surprise was way cooler before the trailer for Psychopomp 2 came out, but it still surprised me to see the teaser already in the game. The creator released a demo of a song to be used in the sequel named "ToeWalker" on Soundcloud and I'm obsessed with it. We already had the instrumental in the first game but the lyrical version hits different.

Real World Tip: If you don't have money, you can play the original on itch.io!

November 17, 2025

Закры́тое администрати́вно-территориа́льное образова́ние, or a closed administrative-territorial formations, is a russian name for a closed city, often shortened down into a ЗАТО́ or ZATO. These were quite common in the Soviet Union where entering and leaving was extremely difficult for the average person.

Z.A.T.O. // I Love The World And Everything In It is the story of Asya Shubina, her life in a Soviet closed city, the mystery of a missing classmate, and her overwhelming love for the universe despite it all. The story is a slow burn despite only being around 7 hours long. Small pieces of mystery are sprinkled all throughout, but nothing truly massive happens until around the 5 hour mark for me. Before then, it almost feels like a slice of life.

Most of this game involves Asya, the forever introvert and doormat, stumbling her way through friendships and school. She spends plenty of the time trying to find answers about her missing classmate, Ira Grachevskaya, but it's all intertwined with her spending time with new found friends at the cafe or the movies, something she isn't very used to but has fun with nonetheless.

Past all these events in her life, Asya has a goal that she must complete over all else. She must tell the universe how much she loves it. She spends time every single day walking all over her tiny, closed off town admiring every small detail of it. She takes every event, joyous and painful, and sees the beauty in it all. Everything happens for a reason right? The universe's all powerful equilibrium affects every part of her life and she is always enamored with it.

There's plenty of existential ideas and questions from Asya that kind of require you to have an open mind about it. Some of it makes sense, some of it doesn't, some of it forced me to sit back in my chair and really think about what she was saying, but I suppose that's bound to happen when you are looking at the world through someone else's eyes. Hell, the game begins with Asya's ramblings about the workings of the universe. I've seen many people call her delusion (which she kinda is), but there's something special there. It's delusion that is so passionate that it circles back around to being admirable. A love for something so powerful that you strive to understand it and accept any wrong it has done to you because it isn't wrong. It's more knowledgeable than you after all. It almost feels wrong. It almost feels abusive. Asya is a very confusing person and I suppose that's why I was so obsessed with understanding why she's like this. We're not so different in that aspect.

Admittedly, I haven't really talked about the big draw of the game, the disappearance of Ira Grachevskaya. And thats because, honestly, I don't think it's the thing that will truly get people to play it. It's like telling someone to play Monster Hunter for the story, that's just there to give the in game character a reason to continue forward, but it's not what the player is there for. This isn't to say Ira is unimportant. It's just that the parts I find important are difficult to talk about without spoilers.

This world is massive. This world is beautiful. This world is cruel. Some say that's just how things are. Some believe that there must be evil for all the good that exists. To love the world, you must love every part of it. All its glories. All its cruelties. All its creatures. And you are a part of that world.

.-.- / - . -... .-.- / .-.. ..-- -... .-.. ..--

August 13, 2025

An incremental game where you play as a little unicellular thingy and you gotta grow up and evolve. As you travel your environment, you gain skill points to spend to make your journey easier, but make sure to grab the skills to help you in your current stage. Every now and then, you'll find something trying to fight you from bigger cells to strange animals, all to be defeated for your path to power.

Honestly, I think the combat is so cool. Most encounters feel like a puzzle where you have to figure out what the enemy is trying to do and how you should counter them. For example, an enemy may be very bulky so you have to time your attacks to hit it once its vulnerable, or an enemy will dodge a set amount of attacks before taking damage so you have to use multi hitting attacks against it. After every battle, you gain the attacks of that enemy which you can keep for your future runs to make each subsequent run even easier. Also, it's very funny to think about a little rat with the power of a nuclear bomb.

As you evolve, you become more and more intelligent and capable. Even how the game looks will change depending on the eyes you have evolved from a blurry monochrome mess to what everything accurately looks like to red filter. Certain events throughout the game require a certain amount of a stat that is impossible to reach on your first time or even some events that punish you if you have evolved too far. There's 12 ending, 2 for each evolution and each very interesting to see the effects of your chaos onto the world. Which means that, yes, you do have to escape the facility as a unicellular organism to get 2 of the endings. Imagine military personel trying to shoot at a bactirium, its hilarious but they're still beating my ass.

Overall, fun little game that has made me think more than any other incremental game I've ever played. It took me about 2 days to 100%. There is a bit of lore and story, but you can experience it yourself. You can find it for free on the creator's github.

June 18, 2025

On June 17, my pal learned I was a really big coward about horror games and wanted me to play something from Itch.io. I spent way too long being picky with what I wanted because I knew if it was too scary I would play it for 5 minutes and immediately leave. Suddenly, I saw a few rpgmaker horror games pop up. I've had experience with the Witch's House (which scared the shit out of me) so I figured I might choose one of these. From that list, I spotted Hello Charlotte. I already knew about the game from fanart on tumblr which I kept thinking was fanart of Marry Kozakura from Kagepro. All I knew about this game was gore, psychological horror, and eldritch gods, so I figured I would like it. I ended up playing all 3 main story games and the 2 spin offs within 2 days. On that note, Happy 10th anniversary to this game! Glad I managed to play its release day.

HC1 was a pretty simple game with a very confusing world. You are a puppeteer who controls a puppet named Charlotte. She lives in the House with all her friends! One day, her friend Felix goes missing and she jumps into a TV to save him. The TV has a lot of different worlds one can go through and none of them make sense. One of the worlds was very similar to the Witch's House and I was a whimpering whelp over a teddy bear chasing me. Luckily, There's only like 2 chase scenes in this entire series. Charlotte and Felix eventually reunite, find the world of a dead god, and Charlotte absorbs the dead god into her body. You know, normal activities. It's a very confusing game but a very interesting one nonetheless. The thing I really like about this series is how you can stop playing anywhere and it would still feel like a satisfying ending. I could've stopped playing at the first game and I would've been satisfied with the story of a dead god in the Persona 4 TV world. But theres more games to go through.

HC2 is a vastly different game from the first. Charlotte, after absorbing a dead god into herself, now has to go to school and pass her education while getting enough points so she doesn't get executed. Or something like that. You meet her girlfriend Anri who is kind of a bitch and a bullied boy named C who says he is the god of this world. Charlotte and C become good friends to the chagrin of everyone around them. This game is where the eldritch god theme really starts to kick in. Using the power of the god inside her. Charlotte can change the world to her whim, but only once. Honestly, this game is where the real meat and bones of Hello Charlotte begins, and despite having a much more clear story, it gets even more confusing with every passing second. The themes of depression, escapism, and overall shittiness of other people can be both so blantantly obvious and weirdly metaphorical everywhere you look.

HC3 is when everything begins to unravel. This is not the Charlotte you know. This is not the Anri you know. Is that still C? You, the puppeteer, have lost most of your control over this girl. Charlotte seems to have started a sort of cult where the undesireable people are executed live on television. You find yourself randomly transported to a story of a boy named Charles in a land unlike yet adjacent to the one you are familiar with. The way I feel about HC3 is the same on how I feel about Danganronpa V3. Its twist is so 4th wall shattering that it ruins everything you thought you knew about this game, yet manages to perfectly stay within the established themes of the story. It's a very personal story and one that I can't really type out everything I feel in one blog post. This is a game I feel like I'll be picking apart for years to come, and maybe one day I'll reach a point where this tale will truly resonate with me.

May 12, 2025

An incremental game I finished in 2 days. You are an adventurer who was given a map to this hole and you start exploring it for treasure and riches until you build up your own city from your profits.

It's the type of incremental game that requires a lot of active play. You look away for 10 minutes and suddenly you find yourself in the negatives in 4 different items because you were digging down too fast. Things are too fast to tab away from, but too slow to constantly be doing something. Alas, the infuriating addiction of incremental games.

There's a pretty interesting story. In the beginning, a lot of the plot is just in the background but it slowly gets closer and closer to you until it starts to actively affect your game. Even when delving into the hole, a lot of the information is just tidbits of mystery and cool writing of fantastical locations. In fact, many of the different layers of the hole are so interesting with a lot of imagine about. I might steal a few for my own DnD campaign.

My biggest issue with the game is the use of AI art, however. I just dealt with it until the end because I didn't spend money on the game and decided that if I'm not giving the creator any money, I'm fine enough with continuing to play it. However, I do subtly recommend that if you want to play it, maybe consider getting a download from somewhere a little less official. It's hard to notice the AI art in the cave layers, but it gets really obvious with the smaller images such as the projects and weaponry. The composition and lighting looks so much like AI art that it's hard to ignore. It's all covered up with a pixel art filter so no one notices it at first.

Nonetheless, an interesting story and world building but I would not spend money on this. I don't particularly think I would support the developer's other games either if they also use AI art.

July 18, 2024

Let's start this with the last game I finished uh.. last year

Honestly, this game fucking rocks. It's almost 20 years old and it still holds up pretty well. I've known about Ys for a while because I was looking through Yuzo Koshiro's wikipedia page and saw the game there. I thought it had a weird name, so it managed to stick in my head for a while. A lot of people said to start with this game and I think it's a great starting point.

It's a pretty simplistic action game about running up a tower and beating up demons. Just a run, jump, and slash with some magic abilities you unlock later on. There's also this dash attack that lowers an enemy's defense that's way too finicky to use consistently. You can play as 2 characters: Yunica, a little girl with a big axe, and Hugo, an angsty boy with ranged magic. There's also a secret third character that you unlock after beating the game once. Although, I think it would've been better to unlock him after beating the game with both main characters, but it's fine.

With 3 characters going through the same tower, the game does get really repetitive. Luckily, playthroughs are only around 10 hours and get even faster once you memorise the layouts. There are some changes between characters though. Aside from the obvious gameplay and story changes, they have a few different bosses between them and even different story beats. Some of them you get to see the same event at 3 different points in time. Overall, that doesn't really matter as the gameplay takes more of a focus than the story.

I haven't gotten around to playing the other Ys games, but this game is supposed to be the predecessor to all the lore in the series. Well, whatever lore consisently exists. So just the first two games. As this game is supposed to be a "myth" of some sort, the 3 POVs we get are just different retellings of this story. The true story obviously goes to the mysterious third character. I think it's a good way to add in all these different characters and plots and still make it canon. It also means that Yunica and Hugo were just lying for the sake of it lmao.

Overall, it's a fun game that made me put in 40 hours so far because I decided that 100% completing all the achievements was possible. It was not. Or at the very least trying to beat the game 3 times on nightmare difficulty is hell itself. And don't get me started on whatever the arena is. I still don't know how I'm supposed to beat those. I apologise to everyone on my steam friends list that had to see me reopen the game every 5 minutes just to restart a boss fight for an achievement.

Hmm. I’m in my Joker arc right now, and there are a lot of rich people here as if they are in a society or something. I do- I know I like making pranks and everything, but uh… rich people, I can’t tolerate. Let’s just say uh.. society treated me in a very bad way. That’s why I lash out with my funny pranks. Now, I ran out of uh pianos, so I’m gonna have to improvise here. Let’s see.. hm.. I could go for the usual cream pie, but I feel like those big, glass windows right in front of you might stop that. Man.. Coming up with good material on the spot is not easy. Man, if only that other person was here. The one with the- that got struck with the comically large anvil. I bet he’d give me some inspiration right about now. Yknow what, let me tell you a story while I’m here. My father- oh what the fuck?

Why are you stealing my spotlight? Get back to me! Elena, what are you even doing? Man whatever. Alright, back to my story- Why am I talking about Pluto right now? He doesn’t even know how to make pranks. I set up a twitch stream for him and everything and he just abandoned me. Honestly kinda rude of him. He said he was moving to Kik though, good luck with that I guess. Anyways.. uh.. where was I? Oh right

My father was uh.. was an alcoholic drunk and uh one day he came back a little extra angry and he told me “ I don’t know how I got these scars-“ wait no, I got these scars wait fuck. Back to square one, fuck. God, this Joker arc is not going well for me. Anyway uh.. fuck, where was I? Alright so my father came over and uh.. said why am I not smiling cuz yknow I’m the Joker, I’m supposed to smile. And then he picked up a knife and uh.. you- you know the rest. You saw Joker. You saw Batman, right? Yeah, you know how the rest goes.