Weekly Update 2025-11-9
I will reveal to you the Secret of the Goo
Game Releases and Updates
Abiotic Factor update – with a few new weapons, a few new furniture items, ammo crafting, and additional difficulty options, along with a host of other small fixes and changes, it seems like Abiotic Factor is really trying to get me to play it again in a higher difficulty… well, good luck, because I still haven’t finished it normally! Though, since one of the changes is incremental reload animations, the lack of which really bugged me, I might carve out the time this week to make some more progress.
Cook for Me, Grandpa release – the Machines have invaded the Visual Novel space, and, hey, what the hell, I’m curious enough to bite. I haven’t gotten around to actually trying out the full version yet, but it’s one of the things from Next Fest that really piqued my interest, so I definitely will.
Idosra: The Electric Renaissance release – speaking of Next Fest, this game was near the top of my most anticipated participants, and having played the first couple hours, I’m thoroughly satisfied. It’s a very odd game, combining a little bit of open-world ‘vania with stages formatted a bit like an old DOS platformer, and with a lot more dialogue and worldbuilding than you might expect at a glance. Even once you come to grips with what Idosra is in a game sense, though, it continues to be quite odd in various other ways. And there’s nothing I like better than an oddball.
Approaching Infinity shipyards DLC beta – in the course of finishing what I suppose will be the first mechanically impactful paid DLC for my favorite open-world roguelike, the developer has released a limited time beta of most of the features to allow players to test it out, and what do you know, as busy as I am I found the time to fiddle around with Approaching Infinity a little bit.
The new content revolves around the ability to very precisely customize your starting ship, adjusting the stats, starting weapons, intrinsic devices, and so on via a point system. There’s a bit of meta progression, with you earning extra points for future builds by towing large wrecks, and apparently the ability to build custom ships mid-run too. I don’t really know how much this will impact the game past the very start of a run, but any excuse to throw money at this dev is a good one, and I’ll take an excuse to start a new captain too.
Shadowed: The Demon Castle of Ooe patch 1.1 – the first ‘major’ patch of the game that threatened to consume me a few months ago, and what do you know, as far as I can tell, it just made shit harder! I still haven’t beaten a run! And at the moment, down a numpad, I really have to go out of my way to play it period, so I feel a bit slighted by patch notes that start out with ‘stealth attacks nerfed.’ I suppose there were buffs to blunt weapons [who uses those?] and the onmyoji class [who plays that?] but I feel bad enough having not finished a run in the starting ninja class.
Into the Radius 2 modular guns out of beta – the major update that has been in beta the past few weeks, and which I eagerly tried out before having to move to the opposite side of the country from my VR headset is now [presumably] bugfixed and integrated to the main build of the game. Great. I will, eventually, hopefully, be able to try it out, and I’m glad they included changes to the enemy density of missions, since the sheer number of armed humanoids you had to get into shootouts with was probably my single biggest sticking point with the current state of the game.
Bloodthief custom maps and Workshop – another game from a Next Fest I thought was worth tracking, although I have avoided picking it up for real so far. This seemed significant enough to mention, though – user-made content and Steam Workshop integration might add to the appeal for someone who’s more tempted by this Ghostrunner style action. I also wanted to bring it up for this custom map description:
Goo Factory by Motion
“Explore the secrets of the goo.”
Jitter early access – and finally, speaking of promising Next Fest games I’m… hesitant to take the plunge on myself, we have this odd sort of space management sim that, according to the trailer, will be ‘open world’ and also somehow episodic through its Early Access, with new sectors unlocking as updates roll out. I’m still not entirely sure what this is, or will be, or is trying to be. If it’s something like Barotrauma in space, with you exploring ruined bases and desolate hulks while struggling to keep your ship from leaking or getting infested with horrors, it could be really cool. But even then, it’s probably going to take a few months worth of genuinely substantial updates for that to take shape. As usual, I’ll keep my eye on it, and post about it in one of these articles should its course start to please me.
The State of Games Played
I spent a lot of time this week, probably more than advisable, picking away at my fresh run of Toziuha Night, stymied occasionally by very confusing progression and obtuse goals. I’m definitely further along now than I ever got during the game’s early access, and the feeling I’ve gotten is that it probably would have been more coherent and less confusing WITHOUT the lengthy EA period.
A lot of things just kind of unlock via awkward encounter with an NPC who tells you something happened elsewhere and now you have to backtrack to the hub to craft a gear or whatever, which feels like the sort of thing that is used to paper over the seams where new content was grafted on progressively. I’m still enjoying it, and especially the new spells and upgrades, but I’m really dreading what looks like a lot of grinding for certain unlocks, and I’m so utterly stumped on where to go next that I just begged for direction on the Steam forums.
I have now, definitely, for real, finished House of Necrosis, and if you ask me, was it worth the trouble? I’d say… sure. The game has some problems, but it’s also a thoroughly satisfying thing to master, so although it ended on a bit of a slog, I’m still happy I put myself through it.
I also got to try a playtest of Frogreign, an upcoming Metroidvania that mostly revolves around your ability to shoot your giant tongue out and grapple along the ceiling and to special hooks you can swing from. It seemed mostly… alright.
I wasn’t blown away by the combat or animations, but the grappling is the selling point, and it felt pretty good. I think Rusted Moss is still going to be a much stronger ‘vania about having a grappling hook, but hey, this might not be terrible.
And finally, I beat… or think I beat, BALL x PIT. Along the way I also unlocked both a building that generates resources as I don’t play the game, and a character who just plays the game for me, and can even take another character along for the ride. So, really, even if I did have more of this game to play, would I need to actually play it anymore? Survey says… no.
Writing
I’ve nearly finished my write-up of House of Necrosis, and the trickiest part is finding suitable clips that demonstrate the notable features of the game without giving away too many spoilers. That should be out early this week, and then I’ll be working on a writeup of BALL x PIT, which I’ve hit my saturation limit on and really don’t want to touch for a while.
On a parallel course, I’ve started settling in in the evenings to get back to work on my longer article fragments, and in particular working up the energy to finally finish that stupid JRPG essay I was supposed to publish like two months ago.
Other
Cursemark, yet another game I thought was worth keeping track of out of the most recent Steam Next Fest, has recently announced that they are pushing back the start of Early Access, due to a surprise publishing deal with a small publisher called Mad Mushroom. This might be good news, it might not, but either way I thought it was worth mentioning in case someone was looking forward to it coming out. Or not coming out, or kind of partially coming out. Early Access. Sometimes it’s too early, you know what I mean?
In Ball x Pit, I laughed out loud when I saw what the final character does