What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Kemono Friends Picross (Switch)

April 20th, 2025

Yesterday, I played 10 different games, which was fun while I was in it, but a little daunting now. I'm just gonna go in order, though, and start with my morning coffee over cat finding games. I started the day with Cat Search in the Wild West, which was a cut above a lot of the hidden cat games I've been playing. Most of them were just hidden with color tricks, but that was fine, and made it a little more challenging. There were also humans around in a town with cat wanted posters, and I wanted to know how the cats managed to disrupt human law and order to such an extent that this measure became necessary.

After that, I played 100 Waiting Cats, which was not super standout in any way. It was cute, and I got to find cats, but there was nothing particularly good or terrible about it.

My last game of the morning was Cat Slide Tiles, a little path building puzzle with controls that were driving me crazy. It's cute, and I played 15 of 80 levels, I think, but the touch screen tile sliding was super finicky! I will come back to this, as the puzzles are decent, but the controls make it a lot less fun.

After a small period of productivity, I picked up a cheap lunch from Taco Bell and booted Metro Quester back up. I quit this game in frustration about six months ago, feeling like I was backed into a corner with a build that couldn't beat the final boss. I just started over rather than trying to rebuild my whole party in the game's last stretch. Since I understand the game's systems better now, it's going to be a much less daunting journey, and I'm going to be more careful about what items I get, too! It's still fun, and I am going to beat it this time.

My allergies were bad and I was feeling a spot tired, so I played Rabio Lepus Plus at random on my Miyoo Mini+ before taking a longer-than-intended nap. It was challenging, but I had a lil' bunny ship and it could get a bow for its ear as a power-up! I didn't get past stage 1 yesterday, but I can see coming back to this when I'm feeling slightly less miserable.

While I had Metro Quester back on, I picked Ensemble Stars Music back up, too. The rhythm game is still fun, but sadly, I have forgotten how this game works and who the vast majority of these characters are. That won't really stop me, but it was a spot weird to consider how long it had really been since I last played, towards the start of this blog. It's cool to play this on a tablet that can handle the stage animations, either way.

After dinner, when I intended to post here, I played Luck Be A Landlord for hours. I cleared a few floors of the apartment building, and got the in-game info that if I clear any floor six times, I'll get a new item type to use, which'll be my new mission in this. It was really excessive, though! My play session in this is maybe my only actual regret from yesterday's gaming marathon. My ability to moderate was broken.

From there, I got some stuff done before hitting my final patch of gaming for the night. That kicked off with the Atari 2600 port of Astroblast, which I'd never played before and am awful at! I started to get the hang of the paddle control sensitivity and the game as a whole after 30 minutes or so, but I think it'll take me quite a lot of time to get even okay at this. That is totally fine, but I was a little shocked by how awful I was at it.

I bounced over to Switch after that, and was enough in a mobile rhythm game headspace from Ensemble Stars to try Hypnosis Mic Alternative Rap Battle: First Period. It's flat out just a Switch port of the mobile game, with event stories and 73 songs if my late night counting was correct, which is great! I think more mobile games should have ports like this, even if they are low effort cash-ins, for preservation's sake. I can't wait to put 500 hours into this nonsense without worrying about paying into the gacha or anything.

Finally, I did a few more puzzles in Kemono Friends Picross before passing out at the end of my day at excess gaming. It was an appropriate end to things.

April 19th, 2025

I have played a lot of games today, and I am going to be mad about this when it's time to post tomorrow. Yesterday, though, I was pretty reasonable. I spent a lot of time on Luck Be A Landlord, because it is fun, but didn't clear any runs last night.

I played a few easy level missions in Skycat right after work, since my lunchtime had been pushed pretty late, but got a little bored and quit.

I played Kemono Friends Picross really badly before bed, too. If this game penalized errors, I would have been on each puzzle ten seconds at a time. It doesn't, though, so I was fine.

April 12th, 2025

Last night, I wanted to try to clear a beat-em-up, so I turned on The Gladiator in the IGS Arcade Collection, a set of Taiwanese arcade ports for Switch. It's a bothersome game collection, with bad sound and game screenshots blocked, but I liked the game anyway. It had cool sprite art, good character variety, some fun boss battle dialogue exchanges, and nice combat, too. I decided I wanted to take a little more time with it, so I set it aside after two levels and will go back to it when I have a decent chunk of time.

I did some more Mega Picross puzzles in Kemono Friends Picross, too. I'm starting to get the hang of the "this number stretches two rows or columns" patterns, which makes me feel smarter than it should.

April 9th, 2025

I'm pretty sleepy tonight, but last night, I ran through Where Ferrets on my Legion Go. It was extremely cute, but lacked the "side missions" the other Where Insert-Animal-Here games I've played so far had. That doesn't make this game worse, but it does mean it only took me five minutes to get through. As crummy as I felt last night, that was totally fine.

I played a few stages of Kemono Friends Picross, too. This game is serving me very well before I go to sleep lately.

April 8th, 2025

My brain is melted tonight, but I played quite a lot of stuff yesterday. I will do my best for a decent post! I played a short adventure game on my Switch yesterday afternoon, called A Cat and His Boy. It was a very small, focused, and sweet game about a cat's ability to share good vibes, and I'm glad I finally sat down and played it. The controls in the platforming section were slippery, and some of the game story sequence bits were somewhat funky, with characters being in two rooms at once. I like having the chance to play smaller, more personal games like this on a console, though. A bigger variety of games on hand makes this hobby more fun!

I also tried Lawn Mower on my Tetris mini arcade machine yesterday. I've actually played some of Lawn Mower before, on more traditional Famicom-on-a-chip systems, and it's ok for an unlicensed game. The timing is tight on grabbing fuel cans, but since that's basically the whole game, I don't have a problem with it. What I can say about this play session, though, is that the joystick on the mini-arcade cabinet is excellent! I could move my little lawn mower with so much precision, and though I still suck at this, it was a much better play experience than I've ever had with this game before.

The rest of my gaming for the night was all before bed business. I did a couple rounds of Pokemon Pinball because it's very fun, but played them badly. It would be kind of fun to fill the whole Pokedex in this, but I don't know how possible a goal this is.

Finally, I played Kemono Friends Picross until I forgot what the concept of numbers represented, and passed out for the night directly afterwards.

April 1st, 2025

Today got off to a weird start! I've been having weird dreams lately, so I was looking at my Neocities feed this morning and saw "this website," but with a different screenshot on it. My first thought was, "Oh, I played this in a dream where I go to a weird abandoned shopping mall and I'm not awake yet, but I'm in a different dream-zone. Got it!" I then clicked on it and it was Skep's website, so I realized it was probably not a dream, but did briefly assume it was an early "birthday prank," the normal thing everyone does and that I'm certainly experiencing annually. I realized it was an April Fools Day joke pretty fast from there, but it was a longer journey than it needed to be.

Aside from my being impressed that it was a pretty detailed and personalized match to this site, screenshotted below for posterity, I can't say enough nice stuff about Skep's site, which you can visit by clicking on these words! It's one of my favorite sites on here, and has a lot on offer: classic Chinese literature, pasta sauce, lizard noir, booze, and more! I can't recommend the site strongly enough, especially the fantastic in progress Romance of the Three Kingdoms piece.

Anyway, it was cool, and I was excited.

My gaming last night was not so exciting. I got really tired and decided that it would be a good idea to see if I could 20cc, or 20 credit clear, Space Harrier. I couldn't, as I am terrible at Space Harrier, but I did have a lot of fun. Tonight is the final night of Astro City Mini week for me, and I'll probably just give this another shot. I hit level 14 last night, so it would be nice to at least match that tonight.

I also tried Power Rangers: Dino Thunder for Game Boy Advance on my Miyoo Mini+ because I was in a weird rabbit hole after watching some Kamen Rider on Sunday. It's not very good, but it's also excellent. It's a mediocre beat-em-up/platformer where a guy tells you to believe in yourself over and over and then you can spam summon a dinosaur mech to kill everything on screen ten times straight. I didn't play this for a massive amount of time, but I felt I was truly gaming.

Before bed, I played some more of Kemono Friends Picross, but it's picross, so for today, I have no real notes on it. I clicked on some boxes and made some little pictures of anime girls.

March 31st, 2025

Yesterday afternoon, after a roughly five year break, I picked Kemono Friends Picross back up like I'd never put it down. I don't know why I quit, but I like picross and it's a cute theme, so I'm glad I went back to it! My gaming habits are normal and mega efficient.

I also decided to try The First Descendant, because I was itchy for something shiny and new but didn't want to spend any money. There's something very similar about all these big free to play semi-RPGs, and it seems bizarre to me that my giant demon-horned mech man in this felt the same double jumping in this as my tiny, fashionable girl in Infinity Nikki. I also forgot the gun controls and accidentally called for backup about 30 times straight in an early mission and felt guilty for interrupting people's monster shootin' time with all my nonsense. This is very okay, though, and I think I'll go back to it.

At the end of the day, I got out my Astro City Mini and actually had an excellent time with Fantasy Zone, wiping out some of my bad feelings about the system. The first stage gave me tons of trouble, but the second was way easier. Clearly, this was down to poor difficulty balance and not my skills improving as I went. This is a cool game, though. It's satisfying to knock out all the bases before a boss fight, and it made me feel like I was making good, steady progress, even as I repeatedly exploded. I don't know if I'll focus on it right now, but I definitely want to play more of this!