Update: Out of the house for a week.

    Well, everyone. I regret to inform that I'm going to be out of commission when it comes to reviews for this week because I'll be in a hotel for a few days.

    About a month ago, me and my family noticed that the floorboards in the kitchen were making strange cracking noises and were pretty warped. It turns out that our dishwasher broke some time ago without us noticing it and it's been slowly soaking the boards without us noticing. Of course, this means we had to get a new dishwasher and new floorboards. The problem is that about 85% of the first floor of our house is made up of wooden floors, so in order to replace the warped boards, we have to replace ALL of them.

    Because of this, we spent the past couple weeks moving various things and lugging furniture around so the floor guys can fully replace all the floorboards. Today is the last day of moving stuff, and we'll be going to a hotel for a bit while the floor guys do their work. Because of this, I'll be unable to do much blogging until I get back. Hopefully during that time I can find something good to review. I heard that old game Drakkhen was released on Steam recently (the PC-88 version,) but that probably won't be my choice. It's not really a good game, it's pretty buggy (from what I've seen/heard of the SNES version,) and I would rather not face the wrath of...

LASER PANTHER!! (And that's not getting into murderous constellations or the just plain weird/creepy (Amiga version.)

    Hope to be back soon!

      - Brian Renadette

My Most Anticipated for 2018

    Well, the review I had lined up for this week is going to be a blank page, as it turns out. I had read on Twitter that a certain game that is in development was going to release a new demo version last weekend, but "work-related stuff happened" according to Twitter, and I've been left dry on the game. I thought about reviewing something like Celeste or Iconoclasts (a game with no relationship to the branch of Christianity noted for its belief in the destruction of idols,) but it seemed too easy. When games that are small yet highly-acclaimed come out, everyone reviews them. Not to mention everyone's mother, the mothers' cats, the chew toys owned by the cats, and all the tiny yet durable tardigrades that may be living on the chew toy.

"I can survive in the vacuum of space. What can you do, monkey?"

    While volunteering at a local SPCA by walking the dogs before today's big snow storm, it occurred to me that I never talked about the games I'm really looking forward to seeing this year. So, let's go with that. In no particular order, here are 10 Games I'm Hoping to Play This Year!

(Trailers provided where available)

Haque Review: Not Actually A Hack-and-Slache (PC)

    There are quite a few games out there that take on a purposefully glitchy aesthetic. One of the first I remember is IMSCARED, a horror game that also engaged in some meta-horror by messing around and creating new game files, but there are some other ones out there. I've also seen ones like Pony Island or the highly popular Doki Doki Literature Club, a cute anime visual novel with a twist that is decidedly not sexy. Today's game is a roguelike that happens to also have the same aesthetic. It's Haque (pronounced like hack) by SuperTry Studios!

Hidden Folks Review: Here's Waldo After All These Years (PC, iOS, Android, Mac) (Played on PC)

    As a kid, I was a big fan of the Where's Waldo (or whatever your country calls him) books. To those of you who weren't lucky enough to have those as a kid, they were a series of large picture books where you had to find the titular bobble-capped man in each scene, along with other people or points of interest depending on the book or scene. They were widely popular due to their entertaining nature and their whimsical art style, which sadly didn't translate well to the NES Waldo game made by Bethesda. There are video games like Where's Waldo today in the 'hidden object' genre, but I never got into them. I think it was because I couldn't really see any way you could spice up what was basically a glorified Where's Waldo, and they always seemed to have a story that triee to offer a weak justification for why I was looking for completely random trash:

    "Okay, we've finally found the suspect's hideout. If our sources are correct, he should be in there along with the kidnapped pilot. Time to move in."

"Now, hang on, rookie! Before we can move in, we have to follow proper procedure. Let me check my phone...okay. We need to find two pine cones, a metal water bottle, a Webster dictionary..."

"Sir, we received a call from the suspect. He's threatening to kill the hostage!"

"Dammit! Has anyone found that pool cue? We cannot move in until we found that pool cue!"

(Yeah, someone made a hidden object game about a real-life killer who's still alive and in prison. Probably not the most respectful thing you can do for the deceased, their family, or the killer)

    But back to what we're talking about, it's Adriaan de Jongh and Sylvain Tegroeg's casual hidden object game Hidden Folks!

This is actually a late-game puzzle, but it featured the title, so I figured it'd work for a title screen

I Am Overburdened Review: Unluckily, it's Burdened by its Predecessors (PC)

    Well, 2018 is finally here! We all had our nice holiday celebrations and traditions, but now it's time to get back to work. I celebrated my holidays with my family and got some books and a few movies, including the hit anime movie Your Name *cue Zenzenzense by the band Radwimps*. I know for Logan Paul, his holiday had him going to Japan, testing the patience of Tokyo's citizens via his antics, and trying (and miserably failing) to have a serious moment in Aokigahara Forest when he found someone's lynched body. Classy AF. While Logan caused me to fail my resolution to not be bothered by junk on the Internet, I can still work on my resolution to play more video games so I can review them (and clear my huge backlog.) Today, that game is the satirical dungeon-crawler I Am Overburdened, by Magic Item Tech.

The old tavern that also serves as the main menu. That's Joey in the lower-middle.