What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?
November 2025
November 28th, 2025
I didn't really do a ton of gaming yesterday, but I was excited to start the just-released Picross S: SNK Classics & Neo Geo Editon. It's just a picross game with a lot more King of Fighters content than usual, and that's exactly what I wanted. I'm very happy with this so far.
I enjoyed some in-person multiplayer in Kirby Air Riders, too. City Trial makes me kind of motion sick, so I didn't play a ton, but it was still a nice time!
November 27th, 2025
I'm posting today while I boil up some cranberry sauce for a placeholder Thanksgiving ahead of a weekend snowstorm. I hope the snow fizzles out, but if it doesn't, it'll be some nice time off work anyway!
Last night, I got very amused that I had access to Silly Bandz for the DS and ended up playing it. I am maybe a bit too old to have been in on this trend, but I had some younger siblings that were and it seemed fun! Bright colors are fun, and it's cool for kids to have a cheerful, goofy fashion trend. The game is just if Angry Birds was really incompetent and only had 40 levels, of which I finished 39 last night. There's a lot of weird issues in this with the physics feeling off, or surfaces being sticky when they shouldn't be, so bad coding really brings down what could be a slight, but bright and kitchy game. I've gotta clear the last stage, though, as it is driving me crazy, so this game will appear here again.
I also played Kirby Air Riders for a while because I wanted to play something better. The top down races are super fun, so I played those online for a little bit! My skills are not really up to snuff for online competition, but I was having an excellent time. (This screenshot is from me messing around in training mode, though.)
November 26th, 2025
The wind was crazy in my area last night, so I didn't sleep well. I'm posting before work to try and have a relaxing time where it's ok to zone out after. Last night, though, I spent my very limited patch of freedom and alertness combined on Paper Picross, a 15-puzzle browser game I found on itch.io. If you're interested, you can play it by clicking on this sentence. I thought the visual style was charming, but some of the later puzzles felt like they depended on guessing to get started. That might have just been down to my being tired, though.
I did some more puzzles in My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, too, feeling like I made a real dent in this game's puzzle count. It's not a big accomplishment, but it's nice nonetheless.
November 25th, 2025
I'm in Picross mode, so my apologies for how boring this blog is about to be. Last night, I did 10 puzzles in My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess because I felt stressed and the Zelda games have really nice music. I really felt good about my puzzle solving skills last night, and am excited to play more tonight!
November 24th, 2025
I flitted from game to game yesterday, which was okay. Most of my gaming time was spent on Mario Kart World, doing some trophy races and unlocking Koopa Troopa's outfits. It was fun, but I hit a point where I don't really want to play it at all today.
I did quite a bit of grinding in Vampire Survivors, too, trying to get gold for character unlocks. It was all right, but maybe a little boring.
Other than that, I tried a couple of new games. I'd done some multiplayer in Wave Race 64, which was a lovely time! It's so bright and cheery, and it feels so good to bounce off the waves and zip around the water. I'm not fantastic at this, but it's a lot of fun. I'm not sorry I didn't play this on N64, because it's nice to try it now.
I tried River City Girls Zero, too, which was also impressive! It was much more story driven than I expected from an SNES beat-em-up, and since it's a modern port, the continue system is generous enough that I didn't find my miserable lack of skill frustrating.
To finish off the day, I played a bit of Panzer Dragoon Mini because I was tired enough that something like that seemed like a good idea.
November 23rd, 2025
I was really locked into Mario Kart World yesterday, so I unlocked a bunch of outfits and ran some grand prix and knockout tour races. I don't really think this is a super exciting game, but it's pleasant to play. Since I was slightly fried, it was nice to zip around in this.
Before bed, I clicked on the wrong game and ended up playing a few rounds of Kirby Air Riders out of indifference. It was still fun! I was just slightly too sleepy to care what I was doing.
November 22nd, 2025
I played as many games yesterday as on Thursday, but it feels much less egregious to write about. I played through a full non-bootleg game on one of my cute Famicom-on-a-chip systems, called Angel. It was only 10 or so minutes long, so I don't feel very accomplished, but it was amusing. It was the classic story of an angel throwing candy, booze, and drugs that speed you up at a mummy, who then must catch all this while avoiding the angel's lightning bolts. The angel seems super rude, honestly, but this did make me wonder more about what madness lies in the "original" games on these systems.
I was back at Paper Apps: Labyrinth again, and hit the game's halfway point! My dice rolls were super unlucky yesterday, so I'm having trouble saving up the gold for a weapons upgrade. I keep dying and losing piles of gold! I'm still having fun, but the final boss might be a bit tedious for me.
I tried a free idle game on Steam called Ani Idle, which is not much of an idle game so far. I don't want my character to die, so I have to be somewhat on top of getting her out of fight loops to rest. It's maybe somewhere between a clicker and a normal RPG.
Past that, I was just doing some driving on my Switch 2. I started Road Trip mode in Kirby Air Riders, which was really fast moving and fantastic! I had a great time zipping through the first set of challenges.
I kept going in Mario Kart World, too, and also had a lovely time there. Right now, I'm focusing in on unlocking all the character outfits, so my updates in this might be a bit uneventful for a while.
November 21st, 2025
I have no zip today and regret the amount of games I played yesterday. For a lot of the day, I let a very cute tower defense clicker called Slimeow Game run on my tablet. It runs in browsers, so you can click to play it here! I lost my first couple of runs, but I took things slowly and carefully and cleared it on my third. It was really pleasant, and the graphics were cute. I'm glad I stumbled across this!
I played a little more than I have been of Final Fantasy VII, too. I finally met Aerith, who seems lovely. I hope nothing tragic or catastrophic happens to her!
Other than that, I was in games for five to ten minutes. I got and tried Kirby Air Riders, which was fun, but also crashed! I don't know if I've had a console game crash for over a year, so I was pretty surprised by that, especially in such a big release.
After that, I wandered around Fortnite islands trying to find a Vampire Survivors knockoff until I got bored and wandered off to do something else.
I also kept playing Mario Kart World before bed. It remains perfect for this purpose.
November 20th, 2025
I am almost to the end of the week and appreciative of this fact. Yesterday, I zoned out for longer than I should have with Unfair Flips, in which I still have not flipped 10 heads in a row. I'll get it someday, though, probably!
I kept up with my nightly brief dalliances with Final Fantasy VII, moving forward towards the sector 5 Shinra reactor. I hadn't realized I'd forgotten to equip everyone with materia, so I had a very rough random battle, but I'm in better shape now.
Before bed, I played a little more Mario Kart World again. I mostly just did open world stuff last night, which was fun. It's a pleasant sleepy-time game.
November 19th, 2025
I didn't do much game playin' last night. I played to my next save point in Final Fantasy VII, which was surprisingly brief. Progress is progress, though.
I did a couple of Knockout Tours and open world missions in Mario Kart World, too, which was okay. I just needed to play something laid back for a little bit, and this fit the bill.
November 18th, 2025
I'm climbing back out of being extremely tired today, but yesterday, I was completely wiped out. I played a clicker called Cats that I downloaded free during Steam Animal Fest and am pretty sure it was more of a scam than a game. It kept dropping pointless items, and I got both of the game's achievements just from clicking 1000 times. Even zoned out and sleepy, I wasn't very impressed.
I also spent my work breaks curled up around Unfair Flips, which was a much better experience. I still haven't flipped ten heads in a row, but I feel relaxed while playing this, so I'm ok with that.
November 17th, 2025
I had a very early doctor's appointment today, and am now so tired I almost didn't post here. Yesterday wasn't a very hardcore gaming day, though, so I've got this. I played another 15 or so minutes of Final Fantasy VII, which wasn't super eventful. I got a lot of tutorial content.
For some reason, I got really set on going back to and finishing Unfair Flips yesterday. I did two full runs, but didn't get ten heads in a row in either of them. The bad endings are too goofy to be frustrating, so this was fine. I'm still kind of determined to win that 10th coin flip straight, though.
Like yesterday, I played a very small amount of Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku. I'm taking a break from this today.
November 16th, 2025
Last night, I started playing Final Fantasy VII, which I've only played the first hour of before. One of my friends was doing a replay of it and made it seem super fun, so this seemed like an ok time to tackle it. I only played for 30 minutes last night, so I'm still pretty well in the opening. It'll be cool to play this for myself, though.
Before bed, I played some of the save-point-free Vampire Survivors, properly getting into the Balatro DLC. I'm not sure if I like the new stage yet, but Jimbo is a fun new character to use, and I like the new stat boost pickups, too.
I did some minimal play in Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku, too. It was nice, and I got a few achievements taken out, too.
November 15th, 2025
I'm still so sleepy tonight! I had a blood test this morning, so I had to get up kind of early. It's weenie of me, but it's thrown my whole day off.
Yesterday, I sat down for about two hours and jetted through the Game Gear version of the first Sonic the Hedgehog. I knew it would have some different levels from the Genesis version, but I didn't expect it to have so many different worlds. So much of this game was in lovely pastels, and I loved all the fruits and vegetables around in the jungle levels! It had some hassle spots, but I was not too proud to save state through them, leading to my having a lovely time. I'm glad I finally played this!
I played a few more rooms of Labyrinth, which is still an enjoyable notebook game. My character took a lot of hits yesterday, but maybe my next play session will be luckier.
I used a morning break during yesterday's long work day to play Fitness Boxing feat Hatsune Miku, too. It was a nice break from spreadsheets, but overall kind of a bad idea. It did not help with my ability to stay awake and focused afterwards, though, so I'm probably not going to do this again.
November 14th, 2025
I worked a long shift today and didn't sleep well last night, so I don't know if this post will be coherent or not. I'll do my best either way!
Yesterday, I got a bundle of little notebook games I'd ordered in the mail, called PaperApps. They seem very cute, and I started in on them with one called Labyrinth, which is kind of an elaborate choose-your-own-adventure styled like a first person dungeon crawler. I really enjoy this so far! The art and flavor text is fun, and I'm loving mapping out the rooms I've visited, which is to the left in my "screenshot." It'll be hard not to buzz through this very quickly.
As far as video games go, I got curious enough about the Simpsons tie-in to download Fortnite and wander around Springfield. I only played a couple of matches, but it was kind of fun! I think I'll probably come back to it for a couple matches at a time, but I don't know that I'll commit to battle passes right now.
Other than that, I was just on my normal path. I played quite a few standard puzzles in Kemono Friends Picross, feeling like I needed to target finishing this game in an orderly fashion before I got so tired I just started doing random puzzles. It was a relaxing time.
I kept up with Fitness Boxing feat Hatsune Miku, too, getting two achievements for the night. I hope this is doing some good, but it's still a decent time if it's not.
November 13th, 2025
I'm posting late tonight because I ran errands, worked late, and then got way too into a cute little pen and paper game I'll write about tomorrow. I tried an overwhelmingly popular online game, too, which seems logistically daunting for this blog. It's not, really. I'm just tired and overthinking things.
Yesterday was low impact gaming, though. I decided to go back to Kemono Friends Picross, knocking out 9 puzzles. This is such a breezy, penalty-free game, but I think that's kind of nice for night gaming.
I chased achievements in Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku, too, and did pretty well. I felt good about the exercise I got.
November 12th, 2025
This week is tiring for no reason, so I'm in low gaming mode right now. I played The Casino on Switch last night until it lured me to sleep. I like the achievements in this, since they add some sense of accomplishment to the pretend-money gambling. Mostly, though, I was just playing this to zone out.
I didn't want to play Fitness Boxing feat Hatsune Miku, but I did some stretching and the shortest exercise to keep myself from giving up. It was not nothing!
November 11th, 2025
I didn't do much gaming last night, so this'll be a quick post! I tried Sine Mora EX for a few minutes last night, then very confidently decided it was not the game for me. That doesn't happen very often, so it was interesting. Some of the mechanics are cool- I like the idea of slowdown as a weapon against bullet swarms in a shmup, and using time as health, with the ability to regain it by shooting down enemies, is also neat! I didn't vibe with the story, though, especially not as black screen text dumps between levels, and the levels felt a little tedious to me. Not every game is for everyone, so I don't feel too badly about this.
I also had a pretty decent session in Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku. Achievement hunting is making this a bit more fun, so I'm not having as bad a time as I was my last run at it!
November 10th, 2025
I am feeling very sleepy and nervous tonight, but I played a lot of stuff yesterday and am going to do my best posting here. One of my big game goals yesterday was to get back up and running with Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku. I'm going to Disney World this winter, and I'm worried I'll be too much of a slug and slow the rest of my party down. Maybe it's useless, but I feel like it could help to play fitness games. I'd like to buckle down and get all the achievements in this one, and I'm so serious about it I even made a checklist. It was kind of a standard play session, but I'm going to try my best.
I was still on my game finishing quest, too, so I started My Bakery Empire, a mobile type game I paid 20 cents for and thought I might be able to beat quickly. It does not seem like I'll be able to beat this so fast, but I do think I'll come back to it. It's very ok for this type of thing, and it lets me buy clothes. It will be fine for a game to help me sleep.
I did, however, finish Summer Paws, which was a cute and lovely hidden cats game. I liked spinning around the little dioramas to find all the sleeping kitties, and a lot of the scenes were very charming. Finding the sleeping cats made me repeatedly think of David Letterman warbling "midnight, and the kitties are sleeping~," but there's much worse fates than to be reminded of old late night talk show bits by a hidden object game.
I also tried I-Chu: Chibi Edition, an offline version of a discontinued mobile game. I'm tired now, so I'll write more about this later, probably.
November 9th, 2025
I kept up with my quest to clean up some of my Switch games I'd started yesterday, starting by finishing off Purrfect Rescue. I didn't really love this, since the cats were too scribbly to easily identify as cats. I did like the idea of having one special cat per stage, having you find the items to catch them across different stages, but it needed something slighly more. This wasn't unplayable, but it wasn't my favorite cat finding experience.
I also went back to Roller Katz BF: Episode 1, which is the first few levels of one person's vision for a Dreamcast, or, more specifically, Sonic Adventure style platformer. It's very janky and difficult to control, and the story is never going to be finished, which is disappointing! I had a lot of fun with this regardless, though, and think it's cool that someone went for it and just put this out there. Plus, I got hit by a train a bunch of times and then shot a robot pirahna. I had fun!
Originally, I wanted to clear three games yesterday, but I wasn't feeling great last night and gave up. From there, I played a few rounds of Vampire Survivors and went to sleep.
November 8th, 2025
I had a weird gaming day yesterday. I played stuff way earlier in the day than normal, tackling the Retro Achievements on a game called Reels of Fortune. It seemed really funny to play another slot machine game, but it wasn't all that interesting overall. This was made for an open source console called Uzebox, though, and that does seem interesting. I might try to learn more about it later.
I tried a very simple, slippery feeling Atari 2600 Touhou homebrew, too. It wasn't awful, and I do want to achievement hunt in it a bit more, but it didn't have my attention for long yesterday.
I'm trying to be more responsible about game shopping and had some stuff I wanted on Switch, so I decided to try and clear off some games I had started on there and Switch 2 so I could do a spot of shopping. I finished off Snug Finder first, which I thought was a decent little hidden object game. I think it needed something a little more to make the time-based scoring work as more than "well, I know where all the stuff is so I'll just run it again right away," like moving objects between runs. That's basically my only complaint about it, though, especially for two dollars. It was cute.
I played some of Purrfect Rescue, a hidden cat game I'd bounced off of in seconds a few times before. The cats are really scribbly in this, so it's harder than usual to tell what is or isn't a cat, and they're extremely tiny, too. There's some simple adventure game elements going on here, too, but it wasn't enough to get me to play more than one stage of it last night.
November 7th, 2025
I started playing around with Retro Achievements in Retro Arch yesterday, which is allowing me to "finish" some strange old and homebrew games. I kicked off with Slot Machine for the Fairchild Channel F, which is actually what got me on this path. I started out wanting to play one of the weird Evangelion pachislot games for DS and just gradually got less and less ambitious until I was playing a very simple slot machine from 1980. It was a nice game to zone out with, even if there wasn't anything particularly innovative or interactive going on with it. Plus, now I've cleared a Fairchild Channel F game, thanks to the achievements, and that's kind of a neat step back into gaming history!
After that, I went through the achievements in an Atari 2600 version of Katamari, which was a blast! It focused more on being playable and fun for Atari than it did on recreating everything perfectly, looping between item collection levels and ones where you dodge the King of All Cosmos shooting lightning at you. It wasn't really like a normal Katamari game, but it was a small, cute and fun 2600 game that played to the system's strengths. I was glad I tried it.
My before bed game last night was Bishoujo Battle Cyber Panic!, because I clicked on the wrong icon on my desktop and just kind of rolled with it from there. I'm still so confused by all of these PG-13 anime girl games being super casual fluff, but this is Qix, and I like Qix. I'm sure these girls are from other games, but I would prefer to imagine that they're just mom game enthusiasts, popping up half dressed and heavily armed to cheer people on in old arcade games played at a leisurely pace and mahjong solitaire matches.
November 6th, 2025
Last night, I wasn't very focused on anything, so I played Sunseed Island for a bit before bed. I'm getting into the swing of the gameplay loop, and I don't feel like I can do much in an in-game day! It does let me fish infinitely, but I don't actually like the fishing in this, so that's not much of a plus. My cat's stamina keeps going up, though, so I think this is something that'll get better as I go. For now, I just want to be able to tend to my crops and cut down trees within the same game day.
November 5th, 2025
I got super sleepy last night, so I just played a few rounds of Meteora's Mystic Merge. I got a couple of Steam achievements, but was playing really badly. It was enjoyable, though! That's what counts.
November 4th, 2025
After work last night, I played N64 racers with one of my friends, on Switch Online. It was a good guide to games I need to unlock stuff in from here! Ridge Racer 64, Wave Race 64, F-Zero X and Iggy's Reckin' Balls are pictured below, but we played some Extreme G and Excitebike 64, too. It was a nice sampler platter! I'd never played most of these and was really impressed by the one track we played of Wave Race 64 and how fun it was to explode and die in F-Zero X. On the other end of that, Excitebike 64 was less fun than I remembered, and Iggy's Reckin' Balls was much more irritating than I could have possibly imagined.
Less pleasantly, I've been having trouble with my heart racing when I go to bed, making it tough to sleep, so I played Meteora's Mystic Merge to try to get 100% relaxed. It worked decently enough, and I could get to sleep without being haunted by the thought that I would imminently die from my heart exploding. I didn't get any new achievements, but that was the point.
November 3rd, 2025
Last night, I hit the end of KOF Sky Stage, a King of Fighters shmup, using the credit limits the game gave me starting off. This was one of the first shmups I played years ago, when I first got my PSP, and at that point I thought I wasn't having fun because I was bad at shmups. Now that I've played a few more and spent some more time with the genre, I just don't think this is a very fun game. There are a lot of shmups I want to clear as every characters, on a lot of difficulties, or with one credit. For this game, clearing it once is going to be enough. I am going to delete it off of my XBox and be free.
Earlier in the day, I saw a super casual hidden object game I wanted in the Switch eShop. I'm trying to be responsible, even about buying cheap games, so I decided to see if I could buzz through a similar game I already had first. I went with Snug Finder, which is kind of a speed based hidden object game. The first half of it was pretty fun, even though the time gimmick kind of falls apart as soon as you know where everything is. There's only 6 to 10 objects on every screen, so it's too easy to memorize after just one go. I'm still looking forward to going back for the rest of this, though. It's pleasant.
November 2nd, 2025
My internet is out, which is getting frustratingly common, so I'm posting from my phone again tonight. I dabbled in a lot of fighting game arcade modes last night, with five of them being in the Game Boy version of Battle Arena Toshinden. My only rule for myself here was that I couldn't use unlockable characters until the game gave me the go-ahead, so I targeted those "secret code" messages first. I got them both and did a slightly excruciating boss playthrough as Gaia, then an extremely cheap feeling one as Uranus. Even playing as the flying character myself, it just felt a bit unfair! I also cleared the standard playthroughs for Eiji, Kayin, and Sofia.
I also dug into Nitroplus Blasterz, a very goofy crossover fighter that's been languishing on my PS4's hard drive for years. Most of these girls are from visual novels, so I don't know their deals, but it's bright, quick, and snappy to play. I got through Super Sonico's playthrough last night, since I knew who she was and she had cats as weapons, and Anna's, too, since I felt like a robot maid run was good to finish off early on.
I might splice screenshots in if I can get online later. (Note from November 3rd: I have in fact added those screenshots now! I am having fun with free photo collage apps on my tablet.)
November 1st, 2025
Last night, I was super wiped out and spacy, so I did some of the worst fighting game arcade mode playthroughs of my life. I kicked off with the Genesis version of Virtua Fighter 2, because I'm making the most of my Switch 2 ownership, and proceeded to get poor Akira kicked in the face until he fell over time and time again. This is such a clumsy version of VF2, but I'm kind of fascinated by it! I will likely come back to it sooner rather than later.
I started really tanking after that. I played a bit of Touki Denshou Angel Eyes, which I'd bounced off of before because I felt like the final boss was brutally unfair in an unfun way. Though years and miles seperate me from that last attempt, I felt exactly the same way last night.
From there, I decided to try a Switch indie fighter called Mofumofusensen and got so overwhelmed by the big sprites and loud music between matches that I just kind of shut it off halfway through my run. This seemed super neat, and had really distinctive presentation, but I was too tired to take it all in last night. That is not the game's fault at all.
A little after that, I played a round of Spartan Survivors and fell asleep. It was a bad run, but excellent sleep.
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