Game EXP: The 18th Attic (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for [HERROR] Gas Station Case through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

The 18th Attic
Systems: Windows
Release Date: January 23, 2026
Publisher: Steelkrill Studios
Developer: Steelkrill Studios
Time Spent: 2 Hours 45 Minutes
Playlist on YouTube

Before starting The 18th Attic, the visuals and description looked to me like a mix of the gameplay loop of P.T., the 'notice something wrong' of The Exit 8 and MADiSON, and some semblance of the camera mechanic often used in the Fatal Frame series.  We could even just start listing games that have similar elements to different aspects of this game, but then we'd be here all night, so let's get to the actual game.

The 18th Attic is a narrative walking sim with paranormal 'spot the difference' mechanics as you climb the stairs to the same attic space over and over again.  The first time you enter the attic, you pick up a Polaroid camera and continue climbing the stairs at the back of the attic to find yourself back on the floor of the attic that you originally entered.  You cannot climb back down the stairs because the door leading up to the attic space closes behind you.  Your only way out is to continue up the stairs at the back of the attic.  The function of the camera is to take pictures when there are differences in the setting, and the attic is full of objects to be out of place or just completely missing.  When there is a difference between the first (default) attic space, you have to take a successful picture (more on that one in a bit) of the anomaly and if the picture is taken correctly, you are awarded with a flashback voice over from the player character's past, and a notification that the anomaly was found and you can safely proceed to the next floor.

If you fail to find the anomaly and walk up the stairs, you are assaulted by a humanoid creature that drains you of 40 points of health; you start at 100 health.  Thankfully, scattered throughout the various attics are bottles of pills (health) that are stored in your inventory and when used can restore 40 points of health.  Your inventory is made up of five slots, although two of those slots are taken up by your camera and an optional lighter to use for illumination in darker areas of the attic.  In typical survival horror fashion, you cannot stack either extra film or pill bottles, so at any time, you can only have an additional three consumable items.  One nice mechanic that isn't explored narratively is that while the camera only holds five photos, those photos are only consumed when you take a picture of something that isn't an anomaly.  So hypothetically, if you only take pictures of anomalies, then you'll never use up any of your film, meaning that the pack of film you picked up never gets used, and I never found a way to drop unwanted items.

While not being able to drop unwanted items was an annoyance, I certainly wouldn't call it an issue.  One other thing that I became frustrated with during my playthrough in Chase Mode was that I was unsure why the picture of the anomaly I was taking was not registering with the game.  I had something similar happen when taking a picture of an anomaly, and I was sure that it wasn't accepted because the object wasn't centered, but it was accepted after another take.  This time, during the Chase Mode, I saw something that should have been in the attic, but it wasn't; it was missing.  So I took a picture at a slight angle because there were other objects in the way for me to be head-on and get a full picture.  I tried again, and the picture was again not accepted, which left me with 0 remaining pictures.  I ended up having to go through two attic spaces where I saw anomalies, but without film to take pictures, I ended up taking 80 points of damage and only found some extra film four floors higher. The thought of dying and ending my run because the game didn't recognize what I thought was a successful picture, and being forced to take damage didn't feel great.

My only other critique was that after the second time of not recognizing an anomaly and taking damage from the jump-scare, goopy-looking-creature in the stairwell, I wasn't so much scared about going up the stairwell as I was annoyed at myself.  The feeling of "please don't be there, please don't be there" out of fear was replaced by annoyance at myself for not recognizing that something was out of place.  That's not a great feeling to have with a horror game that uses jump-scares as one of its primary sources of terror, but I also felt the same way in the last third of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, so I think it's more that it's an issue within the nature of horror games rather than something specifically wrong with The 18th Attic.

I do applaud Steelkrill Studio, though, for the slight variance in anomalies between the two different game modes.  Because the gameplay loop is centered around looking around a room for differences and there might be a span of two attics where there haven't been any changes, followed by four alternating rooms where there is an anomaly, then there isn't, then there is, and then there isn't, means that you're frequently wondering if you're missing something.  In the Chase Mode, you're doing this while facing where the creature is coming from because it has a "only moves when you're not looking" mechanic, and while some of the anomalies are identical between the two modes, there are several that are unique to that particular mode.  In one mode, I had noticed that a drape/towel/blanket had been placed differently, so when I saw it the same way in the other mode, I knew what to take a picture of.  What I wasn't expecting and gave me a fright was when I turned around and saw the attic now filled with this same draped asset all around the attic, which I then had to navigate like a maze.

Without getting into spoilers for the content of the story, I will say that I liked that there was a story here that felt relatable in some sense.  It wasn't a game where a mechanic existed just to have it, but the anomalies existed to help tell the story, which unraveled as you progressed through the 55 attic spaces.  I also appreciated that the game didn't overstay its welcome, even though at first 55 floors felt like an annoying amount of floors to trapse through looking for differences from the original floor.  About an hour to complete the Story Mode and just over 30 minutes to complete the Chase Mode felt like the perfect amount of time to dedicate to a single run without feeling that there was chuff added to pad out the game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Alley" - Chicken Little (NGC)

 

"Alley" from Chicken Little on the Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Windows (2005)
Composer: Billy Martin
Album: No Official Album Released
Publisher: Buena Vista Games
Developer: Avalanche Software

One of the reasons I love listening to music across 30 years of consoles using an RNG is coming across songs like "Alley" from Chicken Little.  I probably wouldn't have listened to this soundtrack because this isn't the type of game I'd ever really play.  I wasn't the target audience for the movie when it came out, or this video game adaptation.  That being said, "Alley" actually never made it into the final game because it was cut at some point.  There's speculation as to why it was cut, but nothing definitive.

I find it really interesting, though, that after listening to the entire soundtrack, this one song stuck out to me as one of my favorites, and yet it's one of several unused tracks in the game still in the game files before it was shipped.  Over the years, I've come across several songs that were cut from games for various reasons, and I'm at least happy that these pieces have been able to see the light of day in some form, even if that form is not in the video game they were originally composed for.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Night Is Spreading

Game EXP: Mindway (MQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Mindway through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Mindway
Systems: Meta Quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3 & 3S, & Meta Quest Pro
Release Date: January 24, 2023
Publisher: Mindway Studios
Developer: Mindway Studios
Time Spent: 
Playthrough Series on YouTube

On some level, I don't think I'm the target audience for a mindfulness and meditation virtual reality app, but at the same time, that's probably why I'm the perfect audience for this.  I'm turned off a bit by the concept of a mindfulness app or actively meditating, as it's something that I've done in the past, so it's not entirely new for me.  When I lived alone after college, I had made a space in my living room where I would meditate after work, and I would sit and focus on my breathing.  I did this for a couple of months on my own, but found that I would get really sleepy and actually fall asleep a few times, so I was convinced I was doing something wrong and stopped.  On the Quest 2 headset, I had tried two meditation apps, but both ended up going under, and they're no longer supported on the Meta Quest store.  So I'm open to the idea of meditation and open to the prospect of using the Quest 2 VR headset as an avenue to practice meditation, but not overly excited about it.  I was also a little disappointed to find out that it requires a connection to Meta's servers to verify that you have a paid subscription (more on that down the line), which means that I can't use this app while at work (we have all Meta platforms blocked on our WiFi).

That being said, I don't find that the Quest 2 headset is overly comfortable for an extended period of time, and I would like to think that I would want to be as comfortable as possible when I meditate.  The Mindway VR app, though, offers a multitude of programs/avenues to practice mindfulness and meditation practices, some that are easily transferable outside of the VR space, while others are not.

I spent most of my time with Mindway doing their "30 Days of Mindfulness," which I also found to be the most approachable if you're able to accept several flaws up front.  First, the narration is a flat/neutral-sounding and emotionless AI-generated voice.  Maybe that's something that can help people relax, knowing that there's not a real person gently talking them through ways to practice mindfulness outside of the VR space.  The second thing is that every day has you in a different location, and the majority, if not all, of the vistas and 2D backgrounds consist of AI-generated artwork.  So if you're not keen on your game not being upfront about containing AI-generated content, then the developers have already lost you on two fronts.  I personally will not advocate for using AI-generated content over someone who could do a much better job creating art, but I will admit that most of the time, I was able to accept it.

What I liked about the "30 Days of Mindfulness" was the fact that it felt like you were learning these short 5-10 minute strategies for being mindful out in the real world.  There were breathing exercises where you would just focus on your breath, paying attention to how your body moved and reacted to taking purposeful deep breaths, not the usual shallow breaths our bodies automatically take without our noticing.  There was a walking "exercise" of sorts that had you focus on how your body felt while walking (or walking around in a circle around your living room), what your body felt like coming into contact with the ground, and how the rest of your body moved when you focused in on it.  There were several sessions dealing with self-affirmations and how to deal with thoughts that might intrude on your otherwise mind-quieting meditation.  I will definitely be pulling up some of these videos from the playlist while I'm at work from time-to-time, so there is some benefit.

I dabbled a bit in some of the VR-centered sessions, such as an ASMR walk, an ASMR labyrinth board game (you know the kind), and even the sessions that focused on helping you fall to sleep.  For the latter, this was the one I was most skeptical about, mainly because I couldn't see myself falling asleep with the bulky Quest 2 VR headset strapped to my face.  Maybe the experience is different and more enjoyable with one of the newer Meta Quest headsets, but with the Quest 2 headset, it wasn't going to happen comfortably or naturally.  The walking ASMR really wasn't that comfortable either, since you weren't walking in a traditional video game sense, but it was more like you were stationary on a moving walkway with footfall sounds.  And the sound effects used sounded like there were only 2 different footfall effects per type of terrain, so the sounds got old and repetitive really fast.  The marble maze ASMR wasn't very pleasant, as I found trying to rotate the board pretty awkward for my hands, and the sound effects used didn't create a soothing atmosphere.  I guess that's pretty subjective, though.

You also have the option to create a customized mindfulness session, but you're severely limited in the locations where you can have your session.  I would think that you could pull from any one of the locations in the "30 Days of Mindfulness," but instead, you have fewer than 10 options, and none of them felt very inspiring to me.  Nothing like the rainy campsite from Day 23, or the sweeping forested vistas of Day 15, but locations more akin to the pink gummed hills of Day 19, or the empty villas of Day 28.  You are able to customize sessions by time, or limitless, as well as having guidance by a male or female (AI-generated) voice, or no voice at all, and just take in the ambiance and scenery.

For a lifetime membership/access to Mindway, $79 is more than I would pay for what this app has to offer, but maybe there's more to the Fireside chats with a Mindway mindfulness coach and a group of other people logging on at the same time that helps to bring up the value.  Maybe the experience is better visually and comfortably with the Meta Quest 3 headset, but with the Quest 2, I didn't notice any shortcuts that I hadn't already experienced with other games/apps/experiences in the last year.  I genuinely think that Mindway should offer one week free for people to test out the product before moving on to any paid models, but that's also coming from someone who didn't have to pay for the product at all.  And what I keep coming back to is how calm I often felt at the end of most of the mindfulness sessions, so there is some level of benefit.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
To Find Peace Among the Rotting Corpses

MIDI Week Singles: "Big Iron" - Fallout: New Vegas (PC)

 

"Big Iron" from Fallout: New Vegas on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows (2010)
Composer: Marty Robbins
Performed by: Marty Robbins
Albums: Big Iron and Saddletrap, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, and Songs from the Mojave Wasteland - Music as Heard in Fallout: New Vegas
Label: Columbia, and X5 Music Group
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

I don't know why it hadn't registered when "Big Iron" played during the first episode of season 2  of Fallout, when The Ghoul and Lucy had a shootout in Novac.  I really like this song for a couple of reasons, and despite The Ghoul shooting people in this shootout, it felt more improvised weaponry than him using his actual gun.  A little boot pistol here, a shotgun there, a grenade here, exploding rounds there.  But we're here for New Vegas.

"Big Iron," along with "Johnny Guitar," (and maybe "Jingle Jangle Jingle"), was one of the more frequently heard songs on several of the radio stations throughout the Mojave wasteland, and I love a song that tells a story, because it's easy to let your mind wander with music in the background.  "Big Iron" also reminded me a lot of "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, not so much musically or thematically, but more in its telling of an unnamed focal point of the song with a red hand/big iron being the defining trait that's sung about frequently, although significantly less dark and forboding tone overall. 

It also sounded similar to something that would be played in a Tarantino film, circa Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.  It's just got that vibe to it, I find.  Maybe if Tarantino directed an El Mariachi short.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And the Only Price You Pay, Is a Heart Full of Tears

Monthly Update: February 2026

 

It was an interesting month, to say the least.

Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both US citizens, were murdered by Trump/Miller/Noem/Bovino's Gestapo.  The Trump Administration immediately went into "they were domestic terrorists" mode, even as multiple videos were being released refuting all of their statements to the nth degree.  Trump's Gestapo then used five-year-old Liam Ramos as bait to have his mother open the door to her house so that they could "legally" enter and arrest her and her other child, all the while claiming that the father, Adrián Alexander Conejo Arias, had fled the car when approached by ICE to leave Liam in the car by himself.  We've known for a while that ICE/DHS will lie to save face, but to this extent has been something else.

It is incredibly fucked up how our neighbors have been forced to make daily patrols of the blocks surrounding the nearby elementary school out of fear that SUVs full of uneducated, out-of-shape high school peaking law enforcement dropouts will snatch up a parent as they're dropping their kid off at school.  On a beautiful January day when it's 55 degrees, the sun is out, neighbors from all over are playing at the nearby park, and there we are scanning for SUVs driving in groups.  Not that we have to worry about The Squire being taken, but our community and school have plenty of people who don't look anything like a current ICE employee, and we look out for our neighbors and fuck all if you support any of this; and by "this" I mean the whole of the Trump administration.  Your views aren't needed here.  Are your groceries cheap enough now?  Fucking hell.

And I played some video games last month, too.   

And after some corticosteroid injections in December to combat carpal tunnel symptoms, I feel like I'm just below my peak at bouldering from just before the pandemic.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: The Shaved Ice Shop (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for The Shaved Ice Shop through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

The Shaved Ice Shop
Systems: Windows
Release Date: December 3, 2025
Publisher: Holitass
Developer: Holitass
Time Spent: 2 Hours 12 Minutes
Playlist on YouTube

The Shaved Ice Shop is a strange little game from indie developer Holitass.  It's part cafe sim (because the shop sells coffee, milkshakes, and shaved ice), part life sim (because you buy groceries and walk from the cafe up flights of stairs into your apartment), part thriller, and part retro atmospheric-horror (because of the aspect ratio and film grain).  The majority of the game, however, is spent in the cafe fixing drinks for customers before heading home for the night, and it was only during the second-to-last chapter that I realized that the game takes place at a night cafe, not that time is incredibly wonky.

Before we get into the actual game, I need to preface a few things.  First, of the six times I played this game, I became nauseous 75% of the time and was thankful that each chapter only lasted about 18 minutes.  I have some theories as to why this happened with this game, but nothing conclusive, so keep that in mind while I speculate.  First, I couldn't invert the y-axis, but I've played non-action games with a non-inverted y-axis before, so I don't think that that alone would cause my nausea.  Second, the formatted screen ratio could have had something to do with it.  The screen ratio itself didn't bother me as it added to the aesthetic, coupled with the graininess of the "film," which helped to contribute to a sense of unease.  Lastly, there was no reticle of any kind.  I remember Jenna Stoeber (when she still worked at Polygon before they were bought out by Valnet and fired 25+ of their existing staff) did a video highlighting the effect that having a reticle in video games (not just first-person games, you plebian pus rats) and how it can help reduce motion sickness (aka simulation sickness).

The gameplay is primarily centered around taking three to four orders to complete a shift, which seems rather odd for an entire night shift, but, going back to the motion/simulation sickness, this ended up being the perfect amount of time I could spend playing before I would have needed to quit altogether.  Also, not being able to invert the y-axis played a bit with navigating behind the counter.  Not having a reticle, apart from the above paragraph, played havoc with being able to pick up packs of ice for various drinks, and clicking on which particular kind of syrup you want to add.  I found being able to click on the small target to open the gate in the back of the shop somewhat annoying.  All of that aside, once you finish the first day, which is the last day in the timeline, I felt more comfortable operating the machines and how the game wanted me to make drinks, except that on the second day (being five days before the first day; trust me, it makes sense), I got confused and had to look up the steps to take to make a flavored milkshake.  I also greatly appreciated that I never felt that I was going to lose the game or customers if I took too long to make a drink, and that there was only ever one customer at a time, probably due to in-game limitations, but it was still nice.

If you want an accurate cafe/shaved ice shop simulator, though, you should look somewhere else, at least because of the three/four customer shifts.  Recipes are not real-world accurate.  You don't have to account for the amount of liquid in a cup if you're going to be adding additional liquid.  When drinks pour out of the blender into cups, the hole is at the upper portion of the lid, which wouldn't make sense from a physics standpoint.  And as we're in the blender, there is no cleaning of the equipment between drinks.  There's one blender for making blended coffee drinks and ice cream.  Later in the game, your character makes instant ramen a la Cup O' Noodles by placing an unopened container in a microwave without opening the lid to add water, and the animation of you drinking straight from the cup keeps the lid closed; also, without boiling the inside of your mouth with scalding hot sodium-rich deliciousness.

I lastly wanted to touch on the story, which will probably be the briefest section, as I want to avoid spoilers.  Since the bulk of the game is preparing drinks for customers, the story that happens in the background happens when you're off shift and heading home to your apartment in an alley behind the shaved ice shop.  The events are not overly complicated, but still land with an "oh damn," but not in a way that's surprising.  I'm not at all disappointed that I saw the story unfolding the way it did by the end of the third episode (Four Days Before).  If you watch the final episode (One Day Before), I decided to choose the response I did because I felt that the character would still be in shock and likely have experienced forms of relationship abuse from the same source for a while now, and standing up to their abuser wouldn't've been a choice that they could make on their own without a significant suppport network.  I did try to get an alternate ending, but something wasn't happening in the game the way I thought it should (is this too vague?), and I gave up after four attempts.

The Shaved Ice Shop, despite all of the inaccuracies in the actual running of a night cafe, and the frequent simulation sickness, and the missing reticle (see paragraphs two and three), was a nice and short comfy thriller.  If you like your comfy couch stories to include abusive relationships, murder, and suicide.  Actually, now that I write that out, it doesn't sound like a cozy game. . .  It was a nice game, though, once I was able to stomach the nausea.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
One Day Baby, You Ain't Worry My Life Anymore

MIDI Week Singles: "Ending 1" - Adventure Island 3 (NES)

 

"Ending 1" from Adventure Island 3 on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1992)
Composer(s): Miyoshi Okuyama, & Hirohiko Takayama
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Developer: Now Production

I've never played any of the Adventure Island games, probably because six-to-twelve-year-old me didn't want to play a middle-aged man running around a series of islands in a hula skirt; I prefer my nearly naked men to be wielding spears and lances.

Like a lot of ending themes from NES (and some SNES-era) games, the ending theme to Adventure Island 3 is an entirely original theme that wasn't compiled from songs earlier in the game or the series.  What I like about this song is how the melody line takes on the galloping role that is typically handled by the bass line.  There's another flittering tone there in the middle doing runs of a sort, tucked in between the galloping piano (MIDI piano?) and the wonderful clapping percussion line.  "Ending 1" is a pretty short song, looping after only 25 seconds, but for me, it's one of those songs that doesn't let you realize you've been listening to the same melody six times over the last three minutes.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I'll Leave Behind

Game EXP: MANDAGON (PC)

MANDAGON
Systems: Windows, macOS
Release Date: August 4, 2016
Publisher: Blind Sky Studios
Developer: Blind Sky Studios
Time Spent: 31 Minutes
Playthrough Video on YouTube

I don't remember where I first heard about or acquired MANDAGON, but it's likely that I saw that the game was free and added it to my Steam account.  Then, I promptly forgot it existed until going through my Steam library from the bottom up (when sorted by recently acquired) and didn't recognize anything about this game.  The game is described as taking inspiration from Tibetan Mythology, of which I know absolutely nothing about, so I'm not even going to try to make connections between the visuals and gameplay and anything to do with Tibetan culture.  There is a thread on the Steam forums that delves into the symbolism that I didn't catch, and I'd recommend reading through it if you want a 100% deeper analysis than what I have here.

MANDAGON is a pretty simplistic platformer.  You control a square-shaped bobbing head capable of a massive vertical leap.  There are no power-ups, no enemies to fight.  There are collectables of sort, in the form of totems scattered around the map that either give hints to the story or nuggets of Tibetan philosophy.  There are also six tablets that you have to collect to open the final door at the center of the map.  There are elevators you can unlock (although I didn't unlock them all), ladders to climb, water jets that propel you out of the water, and, for lack of a better term, a tethered jetpack to help you reach out-of-reach platforms.

I don't really know what else to say about this game.  It was short, just over 31 minutes, and was not at all complicated.  When I used the first of six tablets the illumnated the central door, I was afraid that the subsequent tablets were going to be more difficult to obtain, but that wasn't the case at all.  The map is helpful in this regard, as knowing where buildings are that you can enter (to find the tablets) and where the tablets are supposed to go is visually obvious; doors are black on buildings, and pedestals for tablets are white buildings.

It was just really nice to sit down and play an entire game in just over 30 minutes.  To experience a work of art that integrated symbolism and meaning from a culture that wasn't my own, but that I could still appreciate on several levels.  Reading analyses from the Steam thread above offered more of a heartfelt story than I knew existed.  Kind of similar to how I interpreted the story in Last Labyrinth, or really a lack of interpretation.

That's really all I've got.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Rapture of Grief is All

MIDI Week Singles: "Burns' Mansion" - The Simpsons Wrestling (PSX)

 

"Burns' Mansion" from The Simpsons Wrestling on the PlayStation (2001)
Composer: Christopher Tyng
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Fox Interactive, Inc.
Developer: Big Ape Productions, Inc.

I've had this article on the back burner for a while in the hopes of interviewing Christopher Tyng about this particular composition.  I was trying to find out if he had written songs for a Simpsons video game and the songs were plugged in after the fact, or if he had written specific songs for specific locations, knowing ahead of time how they were going to be used.

Because!  While I really like this song and find it super catchy, I find it hard to actually place this song within C. Montgomery Burns' massive mansion east of Springfield Gorge, just outside of town.  I can't really see either Mr. Burns or Smithers sauntering out to the wrestling ring to this song, or even when Mr. Burns chucks a nuclear bomb into the ring.

The song is high energy, if somewhat subdued during the actual gameplay, and works well with the campiness of the entire game, i.e., Simpsons characters beating the crap out of each other in a very slapstick manner, so I'll give it that.  And while having a theme performed on an evil-sounding harpsichord is more appropriate for the characters and setting, it makes for bad video game wrestling music.

Which is probably why I'm not the producer or sound designer picking out music at a video game company.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Nothing You Can Say, But You Can Learn

Year in Review: 2025 Part 2: The Data & Analytics

 

Well, Nintendo finally released their Year in Review this week, which is the reason why this article was pushed back an additional week, but I'm kind of okay with that.  So many companies that collect data on their customers (Steam, Spotify, FitBit, Reddit, etc) and a lot of those, possibly thanks to Spotify, are released around the beginning of December, so it was nice that Nintendo actually waited until the beginning of the new year to post our collective data on the previous year.

That being said, let's start off this year with Steam's RePlay for 2025:

No real surprises here, although I probably would have the first Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster as coming in fourth after Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster; although I'm still a little surprised that I clocked 64.9 hours in FFIIPR; maybe I left the Steam Deck on?  But 23.5 hours in Final Fantasy is still very respectable for a 38-year-old video game that I've beaten just over half a dozen times.  Resident Evil 6, it turns out, I spent 36 hours on.

The breakdown between Classic Games, Recent Games, and New Games seems pretty accurate as far as play time goes.  Although I wonder if Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls Online are considered Classic Games, as they were released 11 and 10 years ago, respectively.  Regarding the genres, JPRGs at the top felt pretty accurate, although apart from Resident Evil 6 and some early dabbling in The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series that I started (and have yet to finish) might've been the only Zombie-related games....oh wait.  I did play/The Squire played quite a bit of Plants vs. Zombies, so there's that too.  And I guess you could say that there were zombie-adjacent demon-like creatures in HELLBREAK.  I don't know, who am I to argue with the data that Steam's collected?

And then there was Nintendo.

Yeah, no surprise there with Super Mario Bros. Wonder taking the top spot.  The Squire received that game for Christmas 2024, and we play it at least once a week.  Or we did until a couple of weeks ago, and now LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is on heavy, almost daily rotation.  The Squire loves to choose different characters to play as, so be prepared for multi-hundreds of hours going into that game in order to unlock as many of the characters as we can get.

But that's this year, so let's go back to last year.

There were a lot of games I played on both the Switch 1 and the Switch 2, partly to try and beat Triangle Strategy, and while I did make a huge chunk through that game, I do feel that I ended up making so many bad choices that that game felt like a huge tragedy. 

Oh, by the way, purchased a Switch 2 last year.  I'll preface that I 100% don't regret this decision.  The system feels and plays great.  I'm still a little annoyed about the whole game card only being playable by one system at a time, even when it's only being used by one account.  You know, this whole article.  I guess the only other thing is that the only dedicated Switch 2 game I've purchased over the last six months was Mario Kart World, although I did recently purchase Star Wars: Outlaws because it was on sale for only $5 more than the lowest price it's ever been on Steam, and the port does look really good.  And lastly, we don't have a camera for the Switch 2 and have never used that dedicated C-Button to chat up our other friend(s) who also have a Switch 2.  I think Duke has one.

Okay, we're getting away from our original mission.

I felt pretty good about some of the progress I made through previously purchased games like Car Quest, Lords of Exile, and (partly) happy with 9 Years of Shadow, except I did hit a skill wall about 75% of the way through, so I might need to put that game on perpetual hold.

Jumping down to the genres, I'm guessing Action was from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Lords of Exile (need to write about that one), 9 Years of Shadow, and I did start Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus back in February, although that didn't go too far for reasons I can't remember.  The RPGs I think were from several games I received from Keymailer that didn't quite stick, although I did put a fair amount of time in Collection of SaGa: Final Fantasy Legend to get in the right headspace for Romancing SaGa - Minstrel Song - Remastered International, which again, was another Keymailer game that I thought was going to be better than it was, at least for me.

The last thing I want to talk briefly about is selecting LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga as my favorite game of 2025 (that was released in 2022).  I feel like it's just been a really fun game for The Squire to play, and the couch co-op aspect has been a lot of fun too.  One thing that I hadn't anticipated was that it's helped develop his navigation of menus, as within a few seconds, I'll see our stud count (in-game currency in LEGO games) drop by roughly 25,000 because The Squire has purchased an in-game rumor on how to unlock any given character he wants to play as.  And I really think that playing this game will get him used to playing a game in a 3D space with dual joysticks (one for moving, one for camera; and yes, the y-axis is inverted).  So we're teaching skills over here too.  So that's good.

Let's finish things here.  It's getting late on Thursday night, and I would like a few hours of sleep before waking up at 6:30 AM.  So thanks for sticking in there with us through a few thousand words and 10 minutes of non-doom phone on my part (see above videos if you haven't already) set to some groovy tunes.  Here's hoping 2026 is a good one.*

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

This is a Cobra Bar

*Before our shit-stain of a President and his administration really gets everyone else in some deep(er) shit.

MIDI Week Singles: "BGM #09" - Gonta no Okiraku Daibouken (GBC)

 

"BGM #09" from Gonta no Okiraku Daibouken on the Game Boy Color (2000)
Composer: Unknown
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Lay-Up
Developer: Lay-Up

If I were to tell you that there was a Game Boy Color game that centered around a canine mascot heavily featured in dog food commercials in Japan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you'd likely believe me.  So now that you're on board, we're featuring "BGM #09" from Gonta no Okiraku Daibouken (Gonta's Great Adventure).  I couldn't find a whole lot about this game or the golden lab Gonta whom the game is based.  Apparently, Gonta was a very popular dog on the Japanese TV program Mezamashi TV during the "Kyuo no Wanko" segment that would feature good doggos. This might even be the same "Gonta," but from what I was able to find out, "Gonta" is a modestly popular dog's name in Japan.

As for the music, from what I was able to find out, some of the music in Gonta no Okiraki Daibouken was adapted from the music that was used during the "Kyuo no Wanko" segments, so it's likely that "BGM #09" was pre-existing music written for Mezamashi TV and not specifically for the video game.  But as for who the composer was, I wasn't able to find any reliable leads; although there were some AI-generated leads that were all further unverifiable.

So all we're left with is a catchy little chiptune from an obscure Japanese Game Boy Color game about a popular dog featured in a segment about good dogs, and continues to grace the labels of Sunrise brand dog treats.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And Feed It Unto You

First Impressions: ACE COMBAT 7: Skies Unknown (VSD)

ACE COMBAT 7: Skies Unknown

Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Steam OS, Linux

Release Date: January 31, 2019

Publisher: Bandai Namco Studios Inc.

Developer: Bandai Namco Entertainment / Project Aces

I love it.

I was tempted to leave my first impression as just that, but we'll expand on it just a little bit.

I was a bit worried going into this game, as I've mentioned before, chasing that high from ACE COMBAT X: Skies of Deception and being pretty let down by that last batch of games in the series.  But I'm, I think, about halfway through my first campaign playthrough (on Easy because I was worried the game was going to try to be violent with me; looking at you ACE COMBAT: Assault Horizon) and apart from being afraid of some missions on higher difficulties and even what I would need to do to get that S rank, I'm having a blast.  I love the gameplay so far, I love the music.  I'll often sit and rewatch the mission I just played with the radio turned off and toggling the slow motion to make the videos all dramatic.  For instance:

and

And then there are plenty of stills too!

So yeah.  I just wanted to say that if you're on the fence like I was prior to the Steam Winter Sale, the game is great, and I'd be surprised (and deeply saddened) if the next 15 missions go downhill really fast.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S.  And it plays great on the Steam Deck.

First Impressions: Romancing SaGa - Minstrel Song - Remasterd International (NS2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered International through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Romancing SaGa - Minstrel Song - Remastered International
Systems: PlayStation 4/5, iOS, Android, Windows, Nintendo Switch 1/2
Release Date: December 9, 2025
Publisher: Square Enix, Red Art Games
Developer: Square Enix, Bullets Co., Ltd.
Time Spent: ~ 5  Hours
Highlight Videos on YouTube

Some brief context.  I've not played many games in the SaGa series, only Final Fantasy II, which I'm told is often considered to be the progenitor of the SaGa series since FFII designers Akitoshi Kawazu, Hiromichi Tanaka, and Koichi Ishi all worked on/directed several SaGa games, and The Final Fantasy Legend.  I did have some assumptions about this game, such as maintaining the mechanic of usage-based leveling that existed in both FF II  and  TFFL, but I wasn't expecting so many hidden mechanics that feel integral to both sucessfully progressing and enjoying the game.

When I started the game, I decided to choose Albert out of the eight possible characters, mainly because all the characters are numbered, and Albert is number one.  From what I read online after selecting Albert, this seemed like the best choice since it sounded like you learn a lot of the early game mechanics with Albert's story, so I wasn't too worried about not picking up the game or not being able to follow any mechanics.  That ended up being a huge mistake, as I've since found out that with Albert in the third area, Valhalland, that I never picked up or learned Jump before leaving for Yeoville, I never picked up Smoke Bombs, I've never heard about ER (Event Rank, and if you know, then you know that it's a key quest tracking and progression mechanic), and I had the Minstrel join Albert in Bruelle because I didn't know that he's likely gone for good in Albert's story which means I don't have any spell casters in Valhalland which is inundated with SaGa's versions of Final Fantasy's Slimes/Jellies/Mousse/Flans.

From this alone, I feel like I'm playing a game where I should have already read an instruction manual, or that I'm coming into a game that's already steeped in mildly obscure mechanics that you're already supposed to have known ahead of time.  Should I have taken a course beforehand?  At worst, it feels like I'm playing a game that's meant only for people who already know what they're doing.  That this Remastered Romancing SaGa is meant for people who have either already played the original Romancing SaGa or want to learn key game mechanics from outside the game.  It's not a great feeling to have going into an established JRPG series from a developer that I, for the most part, love.

But then you ask yourself, now that I know all this information, where is the problem with either starting a new game file or creating a new character?  And I could, lord knows I've restarted many a game in the past (Dark Souls glowering from the darkened recesses of my brain), but there's no drive behind that desire.  There's no desire, right now at least, to either restart Albert's campaign or choose to start as Claudia or Hawke.  And that's a pretty bad feeling to have.

Sadly, this is where I'm at with Romancing SaGa - Minstrel Song - Remastered International.  Albert is stuck in Valhalland with Sif and a random Valhallan Warrior, somewhat underpowered and feeling like I'm digging myself into a progression hole.  I'm not completely turned off to the entire Romancing SaGa series, though, and looking at screenshots of the original Super Famicom version does make me want to play that.  Who knows?  Maybe Square Enix having seen such a positive reception towards the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection, they might put out a pixel remaster collection of the first three Romancing SaGa games, or at least, something similar to their Collection of SaGa.   That would get me excited to play this series, because we all know that I love a good old retro JRPG.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Under the Sky a Coal Black River