It began on July 4th, a three day weekend. Was there a better time to plan an attack on my terrible foe? I don't know, but the time felt right to me. The steam sale was less than a week past, and the enemy had made a strong push into our heartland. The only thing to do was counter attack, for the first time in a long time. Between July 4th and July 6th, I pushed back against the backlog. Here are my memoirs:

Steamworld Dig: I put in a lot of time with SteamWorld Dig over the weekend, and that game is oddly satisfying in ways I'm not sure I understand. In the end, you're just a robot digging deeper and deeper down on the trail of treasures left behind by your uncle before his passing. As simple as that sounds, the digging is satisfying, carrying sacks of gems and minerals back to the surface is enjoyable and the world design has just enough behind it to be worth a damn. The pace on the upgrades is just right, I was happily kept on the trail of the next shiny new toy or upgrade for an old toy. Following the trail of increasingly impressive tech your uncle left behind and hearing hints of what happened to the humans civilization gave me just enough of a story to piece together to keep me interested as well. I haven't quite made it to the bottom, but I feel I'm close to the end of this one. My only real concern with the game is that the combat is.... well.... weak in a word. Outside of chunking some dynamite at someone, there's not much there to enjoy.

Doki-Doki Universe: I like Doki-Doki so far, as odd a game as it is. QT3's quest across the universe to discover his humanity is pleasantly charming, and I found QT3 and Balloon to be really easy to root for and like. Gameplay wise, you mostly wander space, solve simple puzzles for the inhabitants of various planets, fill out personality quizzes and mess around with the various critters and objects you can summon. It may not qualify as exciting, but it is charming, and I'm a sucker for simple loveable characters. I look forward to slowly plinking my way through it, but I'm only through about half of the planets and quizzes so far.

Organ Trail: Director's Cut: I've only gotten partway through my first go around, so I'm still learning how to do this right, but Hulk Hogan and my best friend are dead and I don't know if I can go on...

Dear Esther: I'm not sure I liked Dear Esther. It had all the right things for me to like it, a moody atmosphere, an introspective story, and some freedom to poke around. It perhaps didn't do well enough at any of those things however. The path was largely linear, at least after the first chapter. The writing I found unfortunately overwrought and of a navel-gazing nature. The atmosphere was pretty good, and it looked very pretty at times. The caves in particular were very good to look at. I dunno, I guess I just wasn't very impressed. The best description I can think of for the game came from a Steam community member: Dear Esther is like the video game equivalent of an existentialist poem. This seems right, it's pretty, has some good writing and garnered an emotional response, but not one that's going to stick with me like a true story.

The Stanley Parable: I did enjoy the Stanley Parable, even if I found the game occasional outright vindictive. That's perhaps part of the fun however. There's no real way to explain the Stanley Parable to someone who has no idea what it is other than an exploratory first person adventure game. You are Stanley, your coworkers have vanished, and you leave your comfortable, mind-numbing job to figure out what happened as The Narrator describes your actions. It's easy to "finish" a game of the Stanley Parable, but it's not a game to be beaten in my mind. I don't know if I found everything, I probably will never know. I did see around 6 or so endings, maybe that's just scratching the surface, maybe it's everything. My first ending perhaps set a rough tone for the game; my willfulness led to the game ending me in a particularly drawn out and vindictive way. My favorite ending was my second, dubbed the "confusion" ending. I managed to finish my play with another harsh, cruel ending, and it perhaps left me a little sour on the game. I wish I'd ended with a better way out, but that's just part of the madness I suppose.

Always Sometimes Monsters: I only played the through the first day of my game of ASM, and learned some important lessons. ASM is a depression simulator, and as someone who's spent years of his life grappling with depression, that really hits me. There's a few other details that make it hit even harder at home, but that's personal. That being said, I think it's a really interesting game, and I look forward to trudging onward after I get up from my mattress in the alleyway. Gameplay wise, it's kind of like old flash games where you wander around a town looking for people and things to interact with and trying to make money to get where you need to go. I can't play too much of this at once though, this one might take awhile to get through.

Gunpoint: By far my favorite game of the weekend, Gunpoint was a lot of fun. As Conway, the snarky spy with the super jump and hacking chops, I treated each building full of guards as a puzzle to be solved. Whether I was shocking them with a booby-trapped lightswitch, or pouncing on a dude and flattening them with one punch, or taking a hapless fool on a ride through a window, I was a surgical instrument made for removing guards. The story took a few twists and turns I didn't quite expect, and the final payoff when I defeated my enemies was deeply satisfying. I would happily pay for another Gunpoint, or more content for it. Only complaint was that I done with the missions within 2 1/2 hours.

I'm pleased with the progress that was made against the dreaded backlog, but now I'm without a clear choice of where to go next. I can only hope I can make more ground in the coming weeks.