Plans are nothing; Planning is everything.

When I wrote my first blog I must say that I was anticipating a better update than I have today. I had delusions of cracking through one or two titles with my new found fervour towards my gaming library and the hobby in general. In less than a week into my new mission it became apparent that I needed much more than just the idea of hitting through my library. I had the plan to achieve what I wanted to achieve, but no planning actually went into it, just the vague goal of "complete some of these cool games".

Now, don't get me wrong, it has not been a complete miss. While I have not really explored any of the bigger games in my library I have been chilling with a few of the smaller logic style games, I have a little bit of a week spot for these types of games even though they make me feel like I have the intelligence of a sandwich.

With that being said I can't help but feel a little bit of disappointment with my AAA game progress. With this being said however, I don't want this new effort to turn into something that becomes more of a chore than a joy, after all games are for fun so I'm not going to be too militant around getting through things to the point where I'd rather not just play games.

It is worth noting, I am basing all these thoughts on my free time that I actually get to get into some games. We all know that life gets in the way so I am not basing any progress whatsoever on the amount of hours played, more on the amount of my allotted game time wasted by staring at my library and watching you-tube instead!

Now, onto the bits that people actually care about... What have I been playing?

I've really tried to split my available game time over a few different games, my main plan is to focus on one single player / story experience, and have a few smaller puzzle or quick play games on the side.

Patrick's Parabox

This is a pretty simple box shuffling game, Well it at least starts simply but very quickly it becomes a bit of a head scratcher. You play the role of box and you have to move other boxes into a marked zone in order to complete the level. As the game progresses more interactions are exposed to you, such as going inside other boxes through channels that are cut out. Your controlled character (a box) will shrink down in order to fit into the available space. This adds in quite a lot of puzzles that at first glance look easy to solve but you soon realise a certain path is blocked if you try your first idea. I have managed to get to the title credits after around 10 hours of gameplay but there are still a fair few side puzzles I have yet to defeat. I may return to this one to finish off the odd puzzles but I am considering this one complete.

Railbound

The second of my more light hearted playthroughs is another logic puzzler, Railbound. This one, like most of the genre, start easy enough but soon escalates. Your role is to complete rail tracks connecting a numbered Cart to the waiting Train engine. A simple click to place track mechanic is the only thing to do however depending on the layout of the track it can vary the route taken. The complication comes in pretty quickly as more Carts are placed on the map and they must arrive to the engine in numerical order, any variation to this ordering results in a fail. I'm not that deep into this one just yet, around ~90 minutes of play time currently has me at world 5 of 14. I have not touched any of the optional side levels in each world yet so I imagine there is still a fair bit of gameplay to go.

Sea of Stars

This is my game of choice to put the most focus into, I intend to play this one until completion before moving on to another, This is the plan at least.

I am currently around 3 hours in and so far this game has captured my attention more than I thought it would. It seems to be compared a lot to RPG's of old like Chrono trigger or the original Final Fantasy games. Growing up I did not have much time for these games, my older brother did but I think at the time I was likely too young to appreciate what was going on, I preferred jumping on goomba's heads. With this is mind I wasn't entirely sure it would be a game for me and my somewhat short attention span, and it still may not be. But so far I am really enjoying it. It's seems pretty atypical with the overworld navigation, you move around a 2D map and if you bump into an enemy you enter into the turn-based combat mode. The combat itself adds a new layer, essentially a QTE for each situation. Press X at the right time while attacking and you will do extra damage, press X at the right time when being attacked and you will take less damage etc. It's not much but it definitely keeps me more engaged than I otherwise would be, and there may be expansions above this as I get deeper into the game (Again, I am only 3 hours in right now).

The story is interesting enough, the characters are nothing to write home about, with the exception to the warrior cook, he is my spirit animal. The graphics are pixel style but the presentation is very good. Some of the bosses look really good and have pretty cool mechanics, but these were just the tutorial ones so far.

All in all I am looking forward to playing more and hope to get a big chunk out of it in the next month or so.

What's next?

In order to stick to my goal I am going to avoid starting or playing a second single player or story experience game, so I will be sticking with Sea of Stars. I will likely find one or two additional smaller games to chip away at as I think I will knock railbound on the head in the next two weeks or so.

Happy gaming everyone :>