I was going to call this one “Oops all Almost All Resident Evil” but I already did that bit recently so I must wait a little longer for it to cool down. But this month was really, oops all Resident Evil. I played the new Requiem RE to death. Took a look at myself and was like “huh which Resident Evils have I missed” so I played Dead Aim and am currently working through Outbreak and how to get multiplayer to work in this day and age. I also Played the Shadow of Rose DLC I missed out on when village released. So yeah lots of Resident Evil, Oh and I went to San Francisco for Day of the Devs! Lets talk about that.

I Went to Day of the Dev’s!

I went to the San Francisco Edition of Day of the Devs earlier this month. Usually Day of the Devs is a virtual event but Double Fine Studios has decided to rent out the Midway in good ol’ SF so that we can all come together and play demos of indie games. The event was completely free so I made my way to San Fran to attend.

I arrived about thirty minutes after the event started and it was jam packed. Wall to wall people and clusters of folks just vibing out in the middle of walkways. I honestly couldn’t tell if there were any lines, just groups of people standing by booths and the bar. There were a lot of games to check out, I believe around 67. They were spread out to different rooms. Some of the games I already played the demos for Steam NextFest even more I had on my wishlist before going to the event. Some booths were giving out little trinkets for playing their demo. I didn’t get any of those, so I can’t share pictures but I did see them floating around.

I ended up watching a lot of the demos being played because I guess I didn’t figure out the line system and felt awkward standing around in a clump for thirty minutes to an hour (some of those demos were not short). I didn’t get to check out every game, but in this article/video are some that I saw then played when I got home from the event.

Resident Evil Requiem Review

Honestly the best Resident Evil I have played in a while. It feels like the perfect send off for the Racoon City Indecent and the whole reason we were getting all these remakes. Mix in those first person experimental Ethen games and you get one of the greatest Resident Evil games of all time. A mix of action and survival horror tied in a perfect package. Check out my full thoughts in this article or the video above.

A Look Back at Resident Evil Dead Aim

Resident Evil Dead Aim is a nice condensed Resident Evil experience with an amazing atmosphere. Dead Aim is an entry in the Gun Survivor series created by Capcom for use of the GunCon and GunCon 2, light gun peripherals made for the Playstation. Dead Aim was the last entry in the Gun Survivor series, but its legacy lives on as a sort of beta Resident Evil 4.

Dead Aim has a unique hybrid aiming system. When aiming you enter first person light-gun mode, traversing is RE4 style 3rd person tank controls. While it was made for the GunCon and probably plays better using it you can use a traditional control or with a USB mouse. Photosensitivity warning when using the assault rifle, it will flashbang your screen with every shot leading us to have to take slow controlled shots with it to avoid headaches.

It is known for having one of the greatest Save Room themes out of all the Resident Evil games. The save room theme is an instrumental version of the song Heroes Never Die, which was the cut ending song for the game sung by Bruce’s voice actor Raj Ramayya.

In Dead Aim you follow Bruce McGivern, a US STRATCOM member who is after an ex-Umbrella employee named Morpheus D. Duvall. Morpheus took a lot of T-Virus samples from the Umbrella Headquarters in France and is currently blackmailing the US and China. In response the US sent Bruce to intercept Morpheus on a Umbrella owned cruise ship named Spencer’s Rain, China sent Fong Ling, a member of China’s Intelligence Agency. She’s the second playable character also after Morpheus and chooses to help out Bruce since they have essentially the same goal. Both of them end up kinda ignoring the mission for each other which leads to Fong almost getting taken out by a Chinese satellite and Bruce being slow to take out the missiles Morpheus launched.

Overall, I had a pretty good time playing through this one. It’s got a real early 2000s vibe with its opening movie all the way to its nu-metal ending theme about getting shot. Bruce and Fong are no Leon and Ada, but at least Bruce and Fong actually have chemistry.

Resident Evil Village: Shadows of Rose Review

I Jumped back into Resident Evil Village before I play Requiem, tying up loose ends. I played Resident Evil Village’s story DLC Shadows of Rose that came with the Winters Expansion. In it you play as Ethan and Mia’s daughter Rosemary as she goes through wonderland-like areas based on locations from the main game. She is trying to find a magic crystal inside the mind of Mother Miranda that will get rid of her mold powers forever.

The plot is one of the silliest I have played in a Resident Evil game which is impressive. Rose does have combat training but not enough I guess because the weapon handling is worse than the main game. The idea to make it third person was an interesting choice. This coincides with the third person mode for the base game, meaning you can now play Village with Ethan visible. I find it strange that even though Ethan as a character is now visible to the player they still try really hard to hide his face in media and cutscenes. He is a character not really a player insert, you can’t really customize him but it’s definitely an artistic choice.

The stand out area in this DLC is definitely the mannequin level. It’s the classic having to keep your eyes on it otherwise it moves and kills you. This is a cool effect however it loses immersion points in third person because you really shouldn’t be able to see it move. They did animate them extremely well, their jarring janky movements are really scary.

It was fun to get back in the saddle and play a Resident Evil game again. They have a fun gameplay loop however this one seemed a little bit raw and unpolished. Multiple sections felt like they didn’t test it especially at the end. I was surprised they chose to do the classic yellow paint to tell you where to go when they had a guardian angel type character writing on the walls, they could have used to point the right way. I ended up blocked by the creatures, trapped in a corner or not being able to get past them to progress, Too many of them were lumped together and they blocked you, even when on the floor because Rose can’t be bothered to step over them. The death animations are pretty nice to Rose compared to other Resident Evil games, she really just sinks into the mold screaming. I don’t know if it was just a me problem but the death animation sounds are way louder than any of the other sounds. Could be an audio bug or just a choice to punish me audibly for getting caught.

This is a DLC that I would skip. It doesn’t really add anything new or interesting, the plot is kinda dumb, the gameplay is worse. The struggles of a kid getting picked on for having superpowers is old hat and unsympathetic. Unsure if Rose will ever be used again in a Resident Evil game she might just go the way of Ashley or Carlos and disappear into obscurity.

Myst: The Book of Ti’ana

Myst: The Book of Ti’ana is a disappointing sequel/prequel in the Myst book collection. It follows the story of Ti’ana or just Anna as the first human in D’ni society. This leads to racial tensions and the fall of the entire D’ni society. In the previous novel The Book of Atrus, the story of Ti’ana is told but a little differently. Of course we could have been told a lie by Anna and Ghen and this is the actual truth of the matter. The Myst books were written by the creators of the game Myst along with a third party author David Wingrove.

While it is interesting to learn about the fall of the D’ni since in most of the games we are wandering around the ruins of their civilization, this book doesn’t paint them in the greatest light. In fact they lead to their own ruin. It doesn’t answer any of the questions from the Book of Atrus in fact I feel like it just leads to more confusion. In all honesty this one should be skipped when reading through The Myst Reader.

Little Chef: Cozy Cooking First Impressions

A demo I played for Steam Next Fest that I forgot to mention is Little Chef: Cozy Cooking. It’s a physics-based sandbox style cooking game that feels like one of those flash browser games I used to play as a kid. In it you throw ingredients into a pot to see what the results will be. The item descriptions give a little flavor text about the person you are playing as. In this demo level you are a college student in a dorm kitchen trying their best.

It has escape room elements in which you mess around and find out. If you think, “what would happen if I cooked the sponge and the knives together?” You can. What if I use the knife to open this sack of potatoes? It works. It’s a game that really rewards goofing around and I love that. The demo is available on Steam and Itch. The game is set to release March 16th of this year and I’m excited to see what else this game’s got cooking.

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Sea of Thieves, Iron Lung, a robot dating sim for valentines day and a whole bunch of demos I played for those Steam Fests. Lets get into it.

Steam Next Fest February 2026

Time for the first Next Fest of 2026 starting off strong with some demos for games that I was already interested in that are coming out this year.

ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies

The Disco Elysium publishers trying to make another Disco Elysium. I know the main worry people have for all the Disco Elysium likes is if the writing is going to be as good. It is not the original team, but it is following the aesthetic really closely. I’m going to be that guy and tell you that you have to play it for yourself to decide if the writing matches your personal expectations. I can tell the team tried really hard to match and I personally don’t have a bone to pick. You can be a silly little spy or a straight shooter. I messed up a roll and now my spy believes this is all an illusion. I enjoyed the demo and will be playing the main version when it releases, hopefully it will be fully voiced by then. Love the name though very No Truce with the Furies.

Mama’s Sleeping Angels

Probably one of the creepiest demos I played. Mama’s Sleeping Angels is a dream exploration type game where you and up to four friends wander around a Y2K nightmare-scape. The demo was only the tutorial but I’m intrigued albeit a little disturbed. The fingers on the side of the screen slowly getting closer to my face the more items I collect and having to decapitate myself to solve puzzles is certainly unique. I’m excited to see how combat works and to see the wild enemies this team dreams up. I think this will be a fun LSD/Backrooms simulator to play with friends.

Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth

From the creators of Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley comes another retelling of a classic Moomin tale this time its going off of the Moominland Midwinter book. You play as Moomintroll in this one as he braves the winter to save the spring. The demo was the inciting incident and had a lot of fun horror elements to it. Instead of instruments Moomin has tools like matches for light and gloves so he can throw snowballs without his hands getting cold (he is a summer creature after all). Similar gameplay to the Snufkin Melody of Moominvalley, I know I’m going to play this at release because I played their previous Moomin game, but I greatly look forward to seeing Hyper Games version of Moominland Midwinter.

Bobo Bay

Ah Bobo Bay, I talked about this one when its first demo went public. It’s a virtual pet simulator game similar to the Chao Gardens in Sonic Adventure. You raise these little creatures called Bobos that you find in the woods and enter them in competitions for money. It has a whole new opening cutscene and new characters to talk to. Sagas are now playable. That’s where you can have your Bobo enter multiple competitions at once instead of just one. I’m excited for the full release of this game although I am unsure based on the demo if it’s going to be ready by Q2 of this year but who know they may surprise me.

Steam Typing Fest

I’ve always been a fan of typing games. I had a SpongeBob typing game I bought from the scholastic book order, do you guys remember those? Little forms that you would circle which books you want, sometimes they would have educational video games. Anyway, I played that game to death. I also got second place at my school’s typing competition, and I use JumpStart Typing to train. Personal stories aside, Steam had a Typing Fest, and I was interested in some of the games here are my two favorites out of all I played.

S4U: CITYPUNK 2011 AND LOVE PUNCH

Your day job is an architect but your part time gig is an “online mouthpiece” which seems like a hacker who helps people. You have to juggle working on your office job and dishing out justice online through instant messenger. While not really a typing game, it does have an immersive keyboard. You hit random keys on your keyboard and it will input the options you can choose from on the screen. You do have some choice in the matter as to what you say, you just don’t get to type the exact words.

After work it switches from a desktop simulator to a side scroller where you can go for a walk, smoke your e-cig, use the vending machine and chat with people. This game was recommended to me and they were so right, I loved it! The full release is out, and I look forward to getting punched with love.

MINDHACK

Out in early-access is Mindhack, a game where you, well, hack into the minds of criminals to rehabilitate them. When you hack into an evildoer’s mind you type out the words that appear then use what you learned to erase all their negative thoughts turning them to flowers.

The demo lets you play through one hack, there are supposed to be 8~9 chapters but this game is still in early development. As of writing this they recently added chapter 6, so they are still working on it. I love the art and I’m excited for the full releases. Honestly this game hacked my mind because I can’t stop thinking about it after I played the demo.

Check out the article on SGN if you want to see all the demos I played. I got a lot to get through and Substack has an email limit that feels like its getting shorter and shorter each newsletter.

CloverPit Review

Played this demo for one of the next fests, enjoyed it enough to play the full release. It’s a never-ending escape room that slowly reveals its plot the more you fiddle around with it. It can get frustrating and a lot of time you will just get unlucky, but man does it feel good when you’re winning. I’m not much of a gambler but that’s only because I know myself and if I won I would chase the high until I die, it’s probably a good thing that I always lose at actual casinos. At least I can get that urge out here in a hellish jail cell. It’s easy to get hooked, every time I thought I was done I would just reload the game like an hour later, for just one more run. I couldn’t really get into Balatro but I sure as hell got into CloverPit. Check out the full review on SGN.

Warm Like Flesh Impressions

Played a free robot dating sim on itch.io for Valentines Day’s. In it you play as an unnamed technician who must maintain CATHODE, a flirtatious computer who murmurs cryptic lines. You are sent to reconnect CATHODEs wires that keep mysteriously coming out day after day. This consists of a wire connecting mini game where you just match the wire to the correct color, or maybe experiment and put them together wrong or don’t put them in at all and get another ending. This game has multiple endings depending on how to talk to CATHODE or how you deal with his wires.

The Problem with Sea of Thieves

I played Sea of Thieves since I was reading one of the novels for the book club and the cookbook for my other book club. This article is just me complaining about it. Its PvP is unbalanced and poorly optimized for online play, the gameplay loop is boring and does not respect your time. The price of items is outrageous, and upgrading your faction reputation is a joke, you can spend 7 hours grinding away, getting treasure and bringing them back just to have the reputation go up a micrometer. Whole rant is here on SGN.

Sea of Thieves Heart of Fire Novel

The Sea of Thieves Heart of Fire Novel is a decent enough book telling the tale of why Flameheart needed to get a second Burning Blade and who Duke is. It is related to the Heart of Fire and Fate of the Morningstar Tall-Tale. The book came out 2 years after the Tall-Tale in game, basically giving them backstory. While you don’t need this book’s backstory to understand the Tall-Tale you do need to have played Sea of Thieves to understand the novel. It is advertised to be an origin story of Flameheart but it doesn’t really explore his past before becoming a skeleton, it’s more about his first failed takeover of The Sea of Thieves.

Iron Lung (Film) Review

What I actually did on Valentine’s Day is go see Iron Lung in theaters. I prepped the day before by playing Iron Lung and it 100% payed off. This isn’t an episode of our A/V club just my thoughts on the movie. The article is here but the TLDR is I liked it.

Nearing my email length had to take out some of the pictures but we got through it together! I was really worried about this newsletter because of the two whole Steam fests I wrote about. Anyway I wanna spend my last words saying thank you for reading I appreciate every one of you who is subscribed <3

Halo really took over my month, we read a book about Guilty Spark and it got me in the mood to play some Halo. I thought I have played all the Halos but nope there were two that I have never seen before. Two Halo phone games ported to Steam. We also reviewed the Halo cookbook and it had some surprisingly good recipes in it. On top of that I played through SOMA for the first time and Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Oh and AGDQ as well as Fallout season 2 happened. Lets get into it.

Halo: The Official Cookbook Review

For SGN’s bimonthly Cookbook Bookclub we read the Official Halo Cookbook by Victoria Rosenthal. It is written from the perspective of a new character to the Halo Universe, Arturo Bustamante. He is a retired corporate manager of the fruit company Yaka Frutas. This book is a collection of recipes he has collected doing business across the galaxy, from outposts to UNSC vessels.

This cookbook is sectioned by restaurants around the Halo universe, such as Fronks, a fish restaurant on Mombasa and World Cuisine, a fast food chain on Reach. They also have some weird ones like vending machine drinks. Halo seems like a difficult universe for a cookbook but I think Rosenthal did a good job. I enjoyed almost everything we made, but like the Fallout Cookbook Rosenthal wrote her portions are a little off. I also ended up changing some of the ingredients, but what is cooking if not changing the recipe to make it your own.

This actually has a lot of good recipes in it but my favorite is Groob. Not only because its funny sounding but because every Groob is different. According the the recipe you just have to find an ingredient for each letter. This is what I came up with on short notice with items I found in my house. It turned out pretty good, a nice (Pillar of) Autumn themed cocktail. Here a link to recipe for the SGN’s version of Groob.

I would love to hear what ingredients you used to make your own Groob!

Halo: Point of Light

For the actual book club we read the last book currently out their about Guilty Spark. I saw it at the book store and he’s my favorite character so I impulse bought it but it turns out its the third and last book in a series (oops). It was really good nonetheless especially the audiobook narrated by Guilty Spark’s voice actor Timothy Dadabo.

For full discussion check out the VGBCs Youtube or Spotify. For what we are currently reading check out GoodReads. If you wanna join in the conversion we can talk chapter to chapter on Fable . Oh were also on Apple Podcasts now.

Assassin’s Creed: Shadows

Getting away from Halo for a sec, me and my sister finally finished out playthrough of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. We were pretty disappointed. She wrote a detailed review over on SGN.

While Shadows has the traditional Templar and Assassin troupe, it feels like it was an afterthought to tie it into the series. The influence of the Templars and Assassins does not appear until the end of the game although the Animus appears throughout although mainly as a way to collect items. What is missing, which also did not appear in the previous game Mirage, is the tie to the modern day story with Layla and her team in the impending end of the world. The story itself is not bad, the most disappointing part is the ending.

Due to the setting, AC Shadows will be compared to Ghost of Tsushima. It is my opinion, Ghost of Tsushima is a better game, story wise. Both games are very repetitive with the tasks the character performs in each section of the map. As part of the new reprise of Assassin’s Creed with Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla I enjoyed the game but was also disappointed, although I did enjoy it more than Mirage. I expected more and was left wanting and confused.

Halo: Spartan Assault

Back to Halo. I played the Halo Spartan phone game series. Halo Spartan Assault is a top-down twin-stick shooter that was the first mobile Halo game. While it was built for phones you can also play it on Xbox and Steam, and I played it on the latter.

I’m lucky I didn’t play it at launch because apparently the Steam version took away all the microtransactions they are still there if you play on Game Pass though. I know there is a stigma to mobile titles, in fact you can’t even download this game as an app anymore, but it was a fun little game to play on the side and I actually enjoyed the plot. It was also a decent challenge that I wanted to get better at. I remember getting frustrated at a level thinking “why am I playing this ported mobile game I should just uninstall it” but the next day I woke up with the urge to play it again.

The game is split up into mini missions perfect for on the go mobile gameplay. There are 6 operations with 5 levels in each with additional Flood co-op missions if you’re playing the Xbox edition of the game. When you start a mission you can use the XP you gain to change out your starting weapons as well as add boosters to help you such as increased damage. You can add skulls to make it more difficult if that’s your style. It can get pretty challenging the further in the game you get. The red Elites with the lasers and the buggers are by far the hardest enemies in the game to deal with. While this game is designed for touch screens the mouse and keyboard controls port over pretty well. You use the mouse as a reticle to aim and click to shoot although you have to hold it down for a while to actually get it to work. Specifically, the bugs are difficult to target, it might be because of their height difference since they are airborne. That and they swarm in large groups.

Halo: Spartan Strike

The sequel to the game above, honestly I didn’t like this one as much. You play as this random creamsicle Spartan man. You play as him simulating events done by a group of ODSTs during the Covenants invasion of New Mombasa in Halo 2. Your whole goal is to acquire a Conduit and the game is mostly just passing it back and forth between you and the Covenant until you actually figure out what it does at the end. The second half of the game takes place after the events of Halo 4 where you pass the Conduit back and forth once again but this time on Gamma Halo. I think the plot of Spartan Strike is much worse than its predecessor.

There are 30 missions in the game and in order to unlock the final mission you have to get all gold stars on the pervious missions. This isn’t too bad especially if you use upgrades like score booster when redoing levels. The controls are a little different then Spartan Assault. On PC you use your mouse to aim and left click to shoot. Right click to throw grenades. I felt there was much less of an input delay then in Spartan Assault plus less flying enemies to deal with which was nice. They added Forerunner enemies which added new challenges as well as a whole new arsenal of Forerunner weapons which were actually pretty fun to use. They change the way you swapped weapons and grenade types to the number keys. Now turrets don’t overheat making them very over powered. The missions also seem a lot longer.

I would say the gameplay was an improvement while the story was much more lackluster. Plus this game has no multiplayer which was a down grade from the last one. You could play co-op in Spartan Assault but not in Strike. Of course if you bought it on steam like me you couldn’t play the multiplayer at all, that is reserved for the Xbox players. It has a lot of gameplay improvements but takes away a lot of what made the first game fun. To me this one felt like more of a drag to finish. While you can get a lot out of this one, especially for the price I think you would be better off just playing Spartan Assault. Unless of course you would rather roleplay the creamscicle Spartan.

SOMA

Finally played through SOMA! Decided its time since the spiritual successor is coming out soon. SOMA is an incredible experience. It’s got great atmosphere, story, voice acting, writing and the signature Frictional games physics that I can’t get enough of. I’m glad they added a safe mode so that people who can’t handle monsters and chases get to experience the narrative as well. I honestly wish all games had that, it’s a great accessibility option. It is full of dread and existentialism and will make you think about your existence, that is if you haven’t had this kinda crisis already by now.

Savvy’s Top 5 AGDQ 2026 Runs

Love GDQ watch it every year, we got ADGQ this month and I just made a list narrowing down five speedruns I personally enjoyed. These lists have almost become a tradition in themselves. In no particular order and the reasons why are in the article.

• Animal Crossing: City Folk by Bluekandy and DrewPag

• American Truck Simulator by anarchy and Lazlo

• Small Saga by Queuety

• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker by EJ125 and TrogWW

• Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti by TheRetroRunner

Fallout Season 2 Episode 1: The Character Assassination of Mr. House

Finally I’m one of those people who don’t like season 2 of the Fallout TV show. From episode 1 so this episode of the A/V Club but more this article is me going into detail as to why the first episode didn’t understand the character of Mr.House. Just wanted to get it off my chest, viewer discretion advised.

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Ended up playing a lot more horror games then I thought this month. Only got around to playing one Christmas themed game. We got a lot of small indie titles to get through and also of course The Game Awards™.

Tiny Bookshop

It took me forever to finish Tiny Bookshop. I played it when It came out in August on and off and I was surprised by the sheer amount of content in this game! And now with the Winter update there is even more.

The game mostly consists of you picking a location in town, picking the books you want on your shelves and then waiting as people pile in your store. Sometimes people will ask you for recommendations and the star levels will let you know how difficult the request is. It really comes in handy to be a bookish person since the books you are stocking are based on real books so if they say they want something like A Court of Mist and Fury, it’s really helpful to know that is.

You can purchase accessories and more books for your shop either from the daily paper or from the markets Bookstobury holds. On top of Markets the town also has festivals and other events that you will most likely help set up. The townsfolk absolutely love you and need your help with every aspect of their life. As the seasons change you get to really know this cast of characters. There are so many little side quests to do in this game and some of them are seasonal. It seems impossible to roll credits within the first in-game year.

Overall it is a fun little management sim. It can get a little tedious but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun, it just means I had to take a lot of breaks.

Light up the Town

The last cute game I played this month is actually Christmas themed! You play as a young ferret named Bean who is throwin Christmas lights up all over their hometown. Beans dad used to be the one to put up all the lights but he can’t because of his injury now it’s up to Bean to get the town ready for the Winter Festival.

The game consists of opening the map, picking a spot in town, then throwing lights and Christmas decorations everywhere until the cheer meter reaches green. Once the cheer is high you unlock a different section of the map. Even after the Winter Festival story event is over, there are still locations around town to unlock and decorate. The townsfolk are very appreciative of Bean and her quest to light up the town, they may even give you decorations and lights if you talk to them enough. You can also buy more material at the mid-town stores. You don’t really get paid for this but there are coins just floating around town and on people’s roofs. Bean does a lot of platforming around to get to hard to reach places to decorate.

This is such a wonderful game to play during the holidays. Great voice acting, great story, fun gameplay. It’s a little rough around the edges and still has some bugs that need to be worked out but nothing game ruining, just some quality of life things. It took me around three hours to complete the main story and another two just running around town finishing up decorating. This game really brought back my Christmas spirit and actually caused me to put up my Christmas lights because Bean is right, they are more than just lights.

Inscryption

This is actually my third time playing Inscryption but my first time playing Kaycee’s Mod. In case you don’t know, Kaycee’s Mod that lets you play a repeatable roguelike version of Act 1 with more cards, items and challenges. It can be accessed after beating the game and allows you to unlock additional lore.

Inscryption is still good, the games first act is incredibly strong, the other two acts, while fun, are a little long making the games pacing seem a little off. I still am not a fan of the in game ARG stuff mainly because, in the game you are technically playing as Luke. He will interject with his opinions however when the game goes through computer files its going through your computer not Luke’s. It’s accessing your files, not Lukes. It seems like the game has two minds. It wants you to feel like the game is messing with your computer but also that you are Luke looking into this old computer game. It could do a fine job with one or the other but it does a terrible job of doing both.

The gameplay is great and very easy to understand, it reminded me of my old Yu-Gi-Oh days. If you haven’t played Inscryption yet I would highly recommend.

Escape the Backrooms

Played this with a group of friends last month we finally finished it this month, just in time for the Winter update. I had heard that this is the best backrooms game out there currently. With over 30 levels and co-op with friends I can see the appeal. But like a lot of these types of games there isn’t a lot of substance, you and your friends’ shenanigans are what really make this game worth playing. You basically go through random areas inspired by the backrooms lore and solve puzzles, or just try and find the exit. The backrooms have a lot of entities you have to worry about. If the monster catches you you explode. It’s not just the monsters you also have to watch your sanity level. Looking at monsters or even some rooms themselves causes your brain to deteriorate, to fix this you need to drink almond water thrown about. But if you’re like me and playing with four friends there is a high chance all the almond water is snatched up but pretty quick. If your sanity reaches max you explode.

The amount and variety of levels is impressive. Each level is unique so much so that I had trouble figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. Sometimes there is a nice little note with a drawing giving you vague hints on how to solve the puzzle or how to deal with an entity but other times I just had to run around a deal with it myself. It’s a lot of trial and error.

I hope this isn’t the best backrooms game. For a game with a major emphasis on multiplayer its net code seems janky. It crashed on me constantly and we had major issues with the VoIP system. An example being when we took a raft in the pool room. If you were a passenger on the raft your VoIP doesn’t work anymore, it seems to be broadcasting from the location where you first got on the raft so If you wanna use the proximity chat you have to stand up on the raft which causes you to fall off and die. I also had a lot of issues with the spectator screens, a lot of the time once you died the spectator screens would glitch out and show you an empty area of the map and not your friend, a minor problem but still a shame. I wouldn’t recommend playing alone.

Missing Banban

Yeah I think if you read my other newsletters by now you should know I am a fan of Mascot Horror. Garten of Banban is kinda the Mascot Horror punching bag but it is honestly one of the funniest game series I have ever played. Missing Banban is a 2D side scrolling action platformer spin off to the mascot horror series Garten of Banban. It is separate from the Garten of Banban plot, opting to make its own universe with the characters instead.

If you are not a fan of this series or Mascot Horror I think this is still a pretty solid stand alone platformer. Although I do think you would get more enjoyment out of this game if you knew these characters already.

It’s a fun, silly, difficult little platformer that I would definitely recommend if you are a Banban fan but even if you just like games like Mega-Man or Pizza Tower.

Night of the Extinct

So yeah here is another Mascot Horror, I actually found out about this game because I follow the games art director artofgerald. Night of the Extinct is a horror game about a mid-2010s live streamer sneaking into a museum at night for the views. It has beautiful art in almost a Laika stop-motion style.

The little characters you meet while trespassing are fun. They are the fake taxidermized creatures of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras that are on display. They come to life at night, some are friendly while others are hostile.

The stealth mechanics are rough. It’s hard for me to understand their line of sight. It seems a little too wide for the small rooms you’re in. Even though they tell you to do stealth it seems the best option is to just run. In the hardest stealth puzzle in the game ( the Kiona section ) stealth almost seems impossible. If she makes eye contact with you at all she comes barrelling over and she’s a lot faster than you. There isn’t really anywhere to hide and she clips through all museum objects so you can’t use them to block her.I read a steam review saying you can just use hold a vase out to separate you and her and that works sometimes but other times she just randomly clips through them. The real trick is that she can’t really see through glass so when she notices you just duck behind any of the glass exhibits. It would be handy to have an indication that that is how you solve this boss fight.

It’s a fairly short game and easy to 100%. It’s the first chapter in a potential series and I do hope that they continue with it. It has promise and I would love to get to know these characters more. I feel as though I hardly know these guys and isn’t that the point of these mascot horror to get to know the little guys trying to kill you. A museum is a perfect place for that, it has plaques and audio guides, maybe an informational pamphlet. The little guys also talk to you so they can tell you themselves. It seems like the next chapter is gonna have more interactions and I look forward to it. I do appreciate that your urbex paranormal investigator man does not really talk unless you click on a certain object. I feel like they could have really made him annoying. Don’t get me wrong I love the aesthetic but I appreciate the choice to be a silent protagonist, especially if you’re going to have quirky talking dinos around to fill the silence.

2025 Game Awards Announcement Highlights

I made one of these as well, couldn’t help myself. Lots of good looking game coming out. Especially excited for the new Knights of the Old Republic. After the scare we got when they canceled (kinda) the Knights of the Old Republic remake, I’m glad to see this series is getting another entry. I love love love KOTOR and having KOTOR’s original director back is great. With Bioware’s future looking a little iffy after everything that’s currently going down with EA it’s nice to see IPs may not be lost. Here is hoping this one doesn’t get canned as well.

The new Divinity game is looking pretty gross. After the massive success of Baulder’s Gate 3 people were chomping at the bit to see what Larian is going to do next. No surprise they are continuing their Divinity series, saying It’s going to be even bigger then BG3. So we probably won’t be seeing this one for quite a few years. I’m a big fan of the Divinity series, jumped in during the Original Sin 2 hype back in the day, and really liked Divinity II ( the Ego Draconis one). For some reason I just keep playing the sequels, I think now might be the perfect time to jump into Divine Divinity or Original Sin in preparation for this new one. No rush though I probably have about 4 years.

I’m also very hyped for another Frictional Game. I will play anything Frictional Games makes, they had my heart and soul after I played through Penumbra. I was so excited that they are making a spiritual successor to SOMA. Seems like there are gonna be a lot more NPCs in this one then normally in a Frictional game. This trailer was less gross to me then the Divinity one but it is still pretty gross so viewers discretion advised.

I have a couple more I talk about on my list here if you wanna check it out.

I wanna just say from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for reading my Newsletters this year ❤. I started this around October of 2024 and since then we have gotten over 50 subs! I appreciate every single one of you and if your another video game writer here on Substack, thank you for being so welcoming and also for being such amazing writers.

I started Savvy Gaming Network because I didn’t really click with games journalism over on the big sites so I thought I would throw my hat in the ring but every writer I have seen here is so passionate. Its a joy to read through all your posts. Thank you for all you do!

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The month of November is not only the month of Thanksgiving but also its my Birthday and its seems that I’m making it a tradition to go down to Goodsprings Nevada every year for the Fallout Fan Event. So to prep for it this month I did/played a lot of Fallout related things. If Fallout it not your cup of tea no worries, I also talk about Artic Eggs and have some Five Nights at Freddy’s things I did. Got a lot of food related articles this month in honor of Thanksgiving, so lets dig in!

Arctic Egg

Arctic Egg is a fun little mini-game turned full game about cooking eggs (and other things) around a dystopian Antratica. The game is in first person, you walk up to townsfolk who will give you a weird sometimes philosophical line then you start the cooking mini game. You have to cook the egg on both sides so you are going to have to flip it. As you start to master the art of flipping an egg, hazards are introduced to keep you on your toes. Cigarettes are used as a sort of timer, you have to cook the egg before the cigarette goes out on the frying pan. Fish will wiggle a bounce around making it harder to balance, but don’t worry if they fall out it automatically resets and you can start again with no penalty.

As you can probably guess this game is very surreal and it made me giggle quite a bit. The dialogue is just like when you talk silly hypotheticals with your friends. I can tell the devs had fun with the crazy camera angles during dialogue, especially during the night club section. The soundtrack is incredible, every song is bop.

Overall this game feels like one of the Adult Swim bumps you would see really late at night and wonder if it’s actually real or you dreamt it. It’s a fun way to kill three hours and get a few chuckles in. It looks boring if you’re just watching someone play it but it’s a really fun little mini game and it is skill based. You get better and you feel good about your poultry prepping skills.

The Official Five Nights at Freddy’s Cookbook Review

We have two video game themed cookbook reviews we did for our new Podcast, a spin of of the Video Game Book Club, can you guess the name? That’s right its the Video Game Cookbook Book Club! I try to keep it straight forward, easy to understand, you get it. So we started with the Fnaf cookbook because we were reading Fetch last month so this one is should have been posted in October but here we are.

The first one we decided to check out is the official Five Night’s at Freddy’s cookbook. We cooked the Official Pizza of course as well as Moondrop’s Blueberry Pancakes and Fazbear’s Dunking Cinnamon Sticks. We also made one of the beverages, the Sodaroni. We had to switch up the easy plex pizza sauce since it was a little too thin. The recipes we followed to a tee, turned out very bland. I would recommend spicing it up. When it comes to the theme of the cookbook its really allover the place. It has both older Five Night’s at Freddy’s characters as well as the newer ones from the Pizzaplex. Its really all over the place with random recipes with characters just kinda slapped on. Such as Bellora’s Salmon Burgers or Balloon Boy’s Chicken & Chorizo Fajitas. I wish these recipes were from the actual Pizzaplex from in-game restaurants like the Faz-Pad. A lot of the food doesn’t seem like things I would find in a Kids Arcade.

We have the recipe for the Official Fazbear Pizza right here if you wish to try it yourself

Fallout: The Vault Dweller’s Official Cookbook Review

This one suppose to be the one for this month but hey why not both. For the Video Game Cookbook Book Club we experimented with The Official Fallout Cookbook. The narrative of this Cookbook is were following a Vault Dweller as they explore the wasteland changing recipes from this Vault-Tec cookbook to more fit with what’s available in the wastes. Since we are presently in the times before the apocalypse we can use the ingredients from the cookbook but this Vaulty has to swap out ingredients left and right to get a similar taste. An example being Sausage Manicotti being changed to Mole Rat Manicotti, since I guess pigs are no longer a thing in the wasteland.

We made a whole bunch of items from this cookbook, Nuka-Cola, Instamash, Blamco Mac & Cheese, Mole Rat Manicotti, Fancy Lad Snack Cakes, & Ware’s Brew. I talk about the triumphs and struggles in the full article here and also on the Podcast that you can find on YouTube and Spotify.

I use to do a cooking show back in the day called Cutscene Cooking where I would make video game themed food and drinks. I decided to bring it back in collaboration with myself and this new spin off podcast I’m doing so I made little tutorials on how to make the pizza from the FNAF cookbook and Nuka-Cola from the Fallout one.

Fallout New Vegas All Roads

Sadly there is hardly any Fallout book out there but their is one prequal comic for Fallout New Vegas and since New Vegas is so hot right now we decided to check it out for the book club.

Overall the comic is a really great introduction to the game. It lays out of the games factions in a short and matter a fact way. Its a pretty short comic only about 47 pages. We go over the whole thing in our podcast as well as weird experience I had visiting the Tribal Village during my playthrough.

I Went to the Fallout Fan Celebration in Goodsprings (also known as New Vegas Day) again

Another year going down to Goodsprings, Nevada to hang out with a bunch of Fallout fans in and around the Las Vegas area. This year was a little different and a lot of other places got involved in the festivities. The Hoover Dam, The Atomic Museum and the Old Mormon Fort all had little Fallout shrines in them. That most likely has to do with the TV show’s second season taking place in New Vegas and less about the game because the world still mostly cares about TV and movies but I digress.

This is the 4th annual Fallout New Vegas fan event to take place at the Goodsprings Saloon. It’s also the first one to cost money to attend. I don’t blame them, the small little tavern is getting overwhelmed and they have to pay for shuttle buses somehow.

They had more things to do this year, such as panels with voice actors and face actors (from the TV show). A film festival and cooking challenge. It was like a real convention. They also changed the name to encompass all Fallouts and not just New Vegas but lets be honest, we all know where we’re here and it’s not because of the Capital Wasteland. Although next year the owners of the Goodsprings Saloon are throwing two Fallout Fan Events. One on the East Coast in West Virginia in May and of course the one in Goodsprings in November.

In my article on SGN I go over the whole trip, my journey to get a star bottle cap, me joining the Enclave, the flash flood during the event etc etc…

Fallout 76: Appalachia Travel Log # 1

Before I left for the event I wrote about my experience getting really into Fallout 76 for about a month. There was ups and downs. It’s weird to come back to post-apocalyptic Appalachia. I got Fallout 76 as a gift back when it was released in 2018. I booted it up immediately and wandered around an empty West Virginia. No NPCs, hardly any players, just me, my fiancé and a friendly wandering Super Mutant named Grahm. There wasn’t much to do, It felt like I was playing an abandoned MMO.

I decided to sit on it and wait for Bethesda to fix it and add more content. Fast forward 8 years later and I decided to jump back in. By now there has been multiple updates and new content and it feels like a completely different game. It’s strange to go back to once abandoned locations and find that people have set up shop there. Abandoned houses are now occupied and NPC get mad that you dare be on “their property”. New enemies have moved in making the land even more hostile. Quests changed from their original intent. The Overseer quest used to be the main quest now it has been downgraded to a side quest and I’m pretty sure the outcome is different ( I actually didn’t finish the Overseer quest back in 2018).

I came back for the C.A.M.P update to my rinky dink shack in the Ash Heap. When I started 76 I didn’t much care for base building. Which is strange because I loved settlement building in Fallout 4. But grinding in a MMO type game just so I can craft a toilet didn’t sound fun at all. It’s still not fun but I think I understand the appeal. Fallout 76 has turned into a based building game, everything you do in this game is for your C.A.M.P. or at least it feels that way. Once I got into decorating my base, I got hooked. Fallout 76 is the type of game you pick up for about a month and put down for a year or two just to pick it back up again for a month and get sucked in all over again.

I had fun but my main beefs in the article was the romances being really awful and same goes for the Ghoul update. This isn’t the last time I will play Fallout 76 but I think I’ll take another break. Check out my full thoughts here

The Freddy Fazbear Crunch of 87 Box at Popeyes

Finally on my way back from the Fallout event in Vegas I got a message that they had FNAF crunch boxes at Popeyes, I didn’t believe them so I took a detour to Popeyes and they did so I just wrote an article about the promotion because I figured if it was good enough for GameSpot to post about then its good enough for me to talk about, although I’m not getting payed to talk about it unlike GameSpot.

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Happy Halloween from Savvy Gaming Network! We obviously played a lot of spooky little horror games this month. We also took a trip to Universal Studios Hollywood for Halloween Horror Nights since they had both a Fallout and a Five Night’s at Freddy’s Haunted House! And of course we gotta go through all the demos I played for Next Fest so lets get to it!

Steam Next Fest October 2025

All right, lets get right to the big one that takes up most of my newsletter space first! The last Steam Next Fest of 2025 has come and gone. This time I only got around to playing five but I’ve got a lot to say so lets just get into it.

Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori

Windstorm is a German movie franchise turned video game series about a red-headed horse whisperer named Mika. The latest in the Windstorm game series is The Legend of Khiimori, this entry in the series is unique as it isn’t based on any existing films or even about Mika it is an original story about a mongolian girl named Naraa. I backed its Kickstarter and got an email stating they have a demo for Steam Next Fest so of course I had to check it out. Although I think they dropped the word Windstorm from the title.

The gameplay consists of riding around delivering things to villagers nearby. At one point you run into a bear and it spooks your horse. You also have to deal with your horse being stressed out by difficult terrain (and of course the previously mentioned bears). Your horse also gets stressed by too much cargo on its back. You can balance the cargo by moving it equally from one saddlebag to another. This isn’t just about the horse though Naraa can wield a bow and arrow to kill enemies. I never ended up doing that but I assume. Overall looks promising but a little rough, I’m excited to see the final product when it launches.

Duskfade

The first Kingdom Hearts like I’ve seen since Final Fantasy 15. You play as Zirian trying to find his sister in this giant clockwork tower. It has the fluid hack and slash combat and floating platforming of KH. Instead of a keyblade Zirian wields a sword that can turn into a gear-ish hammer.

In the demo you playthrough a condensed version of the first level. While I enjoy a floaty platformer as much as the next guy, I had a lot of issues falling off in this one. I think it would have been better if I didn’t respawn right at the point I had solid ground last, because a lot of the time I fell into the solid nook or cranny then I couldn’t go anywhere but down hoping it would spawn me back up instead of in the place I got stuck. Luckily you can just restart from the last check point. As a huge Kingdom Hearts fan who needs something to tie her over until Kingdom Hearts 4 comes out, I really am looking forward to this game’s release in 2026.

Elfie: A Sand Plan

A cute little game I believe I saw on Itch.io at some point. Elfie is a small rotund elephant who needs help building sandcastles. According to this steam page this was going to be part of Elfie’s minigame collection and they decided to make a standalone version of it. This is the first game in the Elfie series and is the world wide debut of this little gal.

Elfie is a real cutie from the way she sounds to the way she dresses. You can unlock different swimsuits for her as you progress through the levels. It seems like a simple concept: just place the correct style of blocks in the spot on the grid, but once perspective comes into play it gets much more difficult. You have to approach the sandcastle from multiple angles in order to progress the level.

It’s a cute little title, reminds me of the flash games of old. It’s unknown when this game is set to release but the Steam demo page states sometime in 2025.

Tides of Tomorrow

Tides of Tomorrow is an interesting multiplayer experience where you follow in the footsteps of a previous player as they navigate an ocean planet full of plastic. This plastic has caused a disease to spread and the only way to temper it is this gas called Ozen.

You start the game by picking a player to follow, I choose someone named SpongeBOb who made pro humanity choices. If your friends have this game their names will show up first on the list. You can see the previous actions of the last player reflected in how the world treats you. If the player was kind to people they will be more likely to help you, if not it may be a more difficult journey. You can see major and minor choices by clicking Q but you can’t fully ignore the previous player you actually have to see certain events such as where they hide during a stealth section because you can’t hide in the same spot.

It’s mostly walking around (or boating around) talking to people and at one point I had to do a stealth section. I had like a boss conversion where in order to get out of it I had to choose the correct options to simmer him down. It felt like a boss fight but with words and I failed it I think. I am unsure if there is a failure state in this game or if it just leads to a different outcome.

It’s an interesting concept that I’m sure will lead to a lot of replayability to see the different outcomes and If you’re playing my seed I’m sorry I don’t think I played very well ;p. This game is set to release soon, actually February 24th 2026.

A Better World

A Better World is a management sim where you are a new Time Stream Manager changing the course of history with your mascot sidekick Globos. The demo asks you to make this ordinary man named Henry in New York extraordinary by changing not only events in his life but events that affect the whole world. Like changing the assassination of JFK just so Henry could have a better time watching TV!

Globos is your tutorial robot and will be the one doing most of the chatting and man is she a chatterbox. She is voiced by an actual AI from Elevenlabs and honestly they picked a really bad choice for the voice. No expression, no sound effects, it’s a very bland mascot which is a bummer because I really enjoy the idea of having a little friend help you but Globos was not very charming.

It’s played like a VR title where you just sit in a chair and can look out a window or look at your computer screen to change history. Your little computer device has buttons to change world events or individuals. You really only get two choices on how certain events can go and you can see mild changes out your window (or Globos will just tell you what is going on out the window).

I like the idea of a secret company changing world events throughout history. I just wish Globos was a better, more interesting mascot character.

No, I’m not a Human Review

Yeah I’m not immune to hype. I played No, I’m not a Human. Its an is an interesting visual novel where you play as a hermit during an apocalyptic event where you have to let people into your home to survive. The sun is burning people up during the day so everyone must shelter in place but to make matters worse there are creatures that look a lot like humans coming up from the soil. They are called visitors and some of them are hostile. There is one in particular, a tall pale man, who shows up and will kill you if you are alone in your house. So this game is like a visual novel strategy game about who you can trust.

Your house is a 3D environment you can explore. You’ve got 6 rooms you can have people stay in. During the day you can walk around and talk to them about their life and personal philosophies. You can also test them to see if they are visitors. On the TV every once in a while you will get a new way to spot a visitor such as dirty finger nails or pearly white teeth. As you progress the game you are going to get quite a few different ways to test. Funny thing is some people just have whiter teeth or dirty finger nails, that doesn’t always mean they are a visitor. So you have to be careful not to shoot someone just because they brush their teeth.

I tried to get every ending but I missed out on one because you have to roll a specific character and throughout my multiple playthroughs I just never got her. That’s another thing about this game, some characters are random. You won’t see them in every run. You have some absolutes that you are guaranteed to see but the rest are completely random, same goes for if they are visitors or not. Some are coded to always be a visitor or always be human while others are randomized each playthrough. This gives the game a lot of replayability and suspense because someone you are sure is human from your last run could turn around and be a visitor in the next.

This game is very scary and very doomer. It has a fun grotesque set of characters to get to know and honestly after my first run I had to sleep with the lights on that night. The uncanny character design is honestly brilliant for a game like this because you really can’t tell who among these absolute freaks is not human. The tension is so thick throughout this game without relying on jumpscares. I will be thinking about this one for a while.

Finding Frankie Review

Finding a VHS tape in a box of Frankie’s Fruit Flakes you get invited to participate in a parkour game show, hosted in the (abandoned) Frankie’s Trampoline/ Water Park. It’s privately streamed and the winner gets five million dollars cash. I have no idea how this show has lasted for 57 seasons since all the contestants get killed within minutes, but you’re about to change all that.

The gameplay consists of jumping, dashing and sliding around the trampoline park avoiding obstacles and (mostly) hitting a certain number of breaker boxes to open doors. Your player character is very floaty and doesn’t take fall damage (unless they fall into a pit). It’s like Wipe-Out if you are also being chased by a murderous animatronic rabbit.

I think a parkour horror game is such a good idea. The frantic movement and chase sequences really up the suspense. The movement can be a little janky at times and takes getting used to but once you find your flow state the game is addicting. It ended too quickly, I wish there was more Finding Frankie.

My Experience at Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood 2025

I said I would never go to Universal Studio’s Annual Halloween Horror Nights unless they had a haunted house with an Intellectual Property I care about. I was very sad that I missed out on the Resident Evil: Escape from Raccoon City house back in 2013 and the The Last of Us house in 2023. This year we not only get a house based on the Fallout TV show but one based on the Five Nights at Freddy’s film, both of which are coming out around the end of this year. I was lucky enough to get to check out these houses and all the food and merchandise that goes along with it.

I’m nearing my email length here so if you want the full run down of the event you will have to check it out on SGN . Long story short, the houses were cool, but the lines were too long. The houses were more based on the movie and shows then the games (no surprise there). The themed food was pretty good (but expensive). The Fallout food was….weird. The merchandise was really neat sadly a lot of it was sold out. The puppets in both haunted houses was the coolest part!

Fazbear Frights: Fetch Review

We usually read only one Five Nights at Freddy’s a book a year, mainly because there are just so many. We broke that rule this year because well we keep getting requests to read more of them. Last year we read the first in the Fazbear Frights collection Into the Pit and for this Halloween episode of the Video Game Book Club Podcast we decided to listen to our audience and read the second in the Fazbear Frights series, Fetch.

Here is the run down,

1. Out of Stock is the best one out of the three novellas

2. Fetch was the second best one

3. Lonely Freddy was the worst one and therefore last on my list

For full discussion check out the VGBCs Youtube or Spotify. For what we are currently reading check out GoodReads. If you wanna join in the conversion we can talk chapter to chapter on Fable.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds First Impressions

Earlier this month i participated in the Open Network Test for Sonic Racing CrossWorlds and overall it looks very promising but very expensive. During the test we were only able to try out 12 characters, 16 courses and 42 gadgets. The title CrossWorlds comes from the different worlds you visit during the race. After the first lap whomever is in the lead gets to pick between two different worlds for the second lap. You go through one of those travel rings similar to the Sonic the Hedgehog movies or Knuckles’ Chaotix (if you’re a real one). After exploring the new world in the second lap the ring opens back up to the previous racetrack which now has alternate routes unlocked.

My favorite thing about this racing game is the Moral Kombat style ribbing the characters give to one another before the race. I hope whomever wrote these will continue to write for the series going forward because they obviously know these characters very well. These interactions seem to only happen with the rival racers. So most likely you wont get SpongeBob roasting Sonic before a race.

The full version of this game came out a few days ago and although I enjoyed my time with this Network test I honestly don’t think this game is worth 70$. I’ll wait for a sale, although I am bummed I’m not getting the preorder bonus Warehog because Sonic Unleashed is my favorite Sonic game. Maybe they will sell the Warehog separately later down the road.

Poco Impressions

Poco is a free to play hybrid point and click adventure about a little clown kicked out of the circus. To get back up to the circus Poco helps out the local homunculus below to help him build a rocket. It’s a short and sweet game that takes about two hours to complete.

The art and soundtrack in Poco is incredible. Hearing little Poco bounce around the environment and jingle was delightful! The soundtrack was wacky, bloopy and fit perfectly to the game’s aesthetic. I especially liked the beetle band’s full song which I had to hear multiple times because I failed it a lot. The background art is done in this painterly style that really pops. Each area of the map is unique and memorable, in fact I didn’t even know there was an in-game map until after the completed the game and jumped back in to find all the extra rat skulls.

I especially enjoyed the clown abilities. You start the game getting kicked out of the circus for failing to perform all three clown abilities, and throughout the story you end up using those abilities to help your new friends. The mini games thrown in were a nice change of pace as well. Each one different, spicing up the gameplay even though this game is incredibly short.

Poco creates an incredible worldscape. The walking circus that people below seem to have beef with and the creatures you help seem to be created somewhere? It leaves a lot to the imagination. It also leaves a lot to explore if they ever decide to make a sequel. Although a sequel most likely isn’t in the works because this was a student project.

I had Poco on my list to check out for a while but I played it this month because of ’s monthly game club that you can check out here.

Split Fiction Review

Hazelight is getting more and more impressive with each co-op game they make. This one really tests you and your co-op partner with its puzzles. It’s extremely fast paced and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The characters take some getting used to though. While I did like that the game was quick it didn’t leave us a lot of time to see these characters grow. The big emotional moments felt rushed and characters felt very one note. It’s a real grumpy X sunshine kinda story.

You are really gonna need to work together on this one. No more running ahead of your partner because they are taking too long. Both Zoe and Mio have skills that the other needs to progress. You need to communicate with each other on what you’re going to do. A lot of the puzzles involve one of you controlling the puzzle arena while the other traverses through it. Get ready to accidentally kill each other, a lot.

What’s great about this game is the friend pass system, where as long as one of you owns the game you can invite your friend to play for free. All they have to do is download the friend pass application on the platform of their choosing. This is a wonderful business practice that I wish more companies would do. Another bonus is you don’t need to install the EA launcher to play, they removed it.

Overall, Split Fiction is one of the best co-op games you can play. The story and characters are a little cheesy but it doesn’t detract from the amazing gameplay. It’s challenging and takes a lot of teamwork but it’s worth it to play with someone you love. It had me and my sister yelling and laughing at each other and honestly what more can you ask for.

Disney Dreamlight Valley: The Storybook Vale Review

My forever game is Disney Dreamlight Valley, I play this BS every single day it seems. I recently finished the games second expansion Storybook Vale. This DLCs story is long and has quite a few twists and turns. It actually requires you to get to know characters, as in their personal quest line, before you can progress the main story. The main complaint I have for this DLC, and really Dreamlight Valley as a whole, is its repetitiveness. I understand that each DLC adds new mechanics to spice up the gameplay but they really made me use those mechanics to death in this DLC. It would be nice to once in a while not have to mine, water, and rod my way through every puzzle. This game actually had puzzle dungeons you had to go into in order to get to progress the story but it felt the same every time, go into move furniture mode and match the shadows or solve the riddle. And while I did enjoy the story, certain story beats gave me pause. Like the DMV government waiting room section of the plot that was just a jab at bureaucracy felt weird in my bookish fantasy inky adventure. Vibes were off.

I love the aesthetic of this DLC and all the items you can acquire.. However, unlike A Rift in Time I personally felt like I wasn’t needing those items as much for the story. I don’t even think I collected all the fish. I barely used the new resources such as Marble, Volcanic Rock and Fairy Bubbles. There wasn’t much need for me to collect those. I did really like this expansion’s version of Night Thorns, the Inkies, much more than the previous DLCs Splinters of Fate. Not only do they match the booky vibe, they fit them into the main plot much better. Plus, a little unasked for fun facts about me, I love that inky Epic Mickey/Bendy aesthetic. It felt like this DLC was really catering toward me personally (kinda like this whole game).

Speaking of catering toward me personally, the next expansion is on the horizon, Wishblossom Ranch. This one is going to add horseback riding, Snow White, Tinkerbell and Maximus from Tangled. I find it funny that we are separating Tangled characters with expansions, the main game had Mother Gothel, A Rift in Time had Rapunzel, Storybook Vale had Flynn and now Wishblossom Ranch has Maximus. What’s next, we’re gonna get one of the ruffians from the bar in the next update?

All jokes aside, this expansion is everything I could want out of a Dreamlight Valley DLC and it fixed a lot of the issues I had with the previous expansion. I would recommend jumping back in and exploring Storybook Vale. My full thoughts are here.

High on Life Comics

Did you know High on Life has a comic series? Well you do now. The first High on Life comic came out June 2024 and takes place one year after the events in the game. These comics bridge the gap between High on life and its DLC High on Knife. It explains how you got your new gun Harper , who debuts in High on Knife as well as the back story of your other gun buddy Creature.

Humans have become a protected species after the events of High on Life but that doesn’t stop a new “human hunter” from trying to kill them all. This new enemy to the human race turns out to be another Gatlian ( the race of Alien our guns are ) mad at humans for taking the glory in the fight against the G3. The Bounty Hunter, with the help of former G3 resistance fighter Harper, must take down this new threat and learn a little about our newest member as well as our old pal Creature.

While it fits pretty well with the game’s story, I wouldn’t recommend this comic series if you haven’t already played High on Life. It does do a brief run down at the start but that’s really not enough to explain the escapades of the video game. I would however recommend this comic series if you are a fan of the game and excited for the High on Life 2.

Hard to go wrong with a comic, especially one written by the narrative director of High on Life. While it has some inconsistencies it feels very faithful to its source and is a good goopy time. For full discussion check out the VGBCs Youtube or Spotify. For what we are currently reading check out GoodReads. If you wanna join in the conversion we can talk chapter to chapter on Fable.

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This has been a pretty stinky month at SGN. Lots of 6/10s. But we got a good first impressions and a five star read so lets get into it.

This Magical Girl is a B☆tch First Impressions

Lets start off positive! This Magical Girl is a B☆tch is a comedy visual novel about a grumpy middle schooler who uses her new powers for revenge. The whole game is fully voiced and the cast is incredible. You’re either going to love and relate to our main magical girl or hate her but hey with a title like “this magical girl is a bitch” I think you know what you are getting into. Even if you don’t like Tabbie the other characters really pull their weight. Even the faceless classmates have character. The artwork, animations and character designs are all outstanding. The story is gripping, the lively motions of the cutout characters makes it feel like I was watching a cartoon.

The first two acts will take around three hours and here is hoping more acts will be released down the road. I’m ecstatic for this game’s full release and hope to see more from this studio in the future. I highly recommend you check this one out. Its free on Steam! Full impressions here.

Myst: The Book of Atrus

For the book club this month we read the first novel in the Myst book series. Its a a prequel novel to Myst and Riven. The original Book of Atrus was written by Myst creator Ryan Miller in 1994. The books publisher Hyperion wanted a published author to work on the novel so David Wingrove with the help of Richard Vander Wende and both Myst creators Rand and Robyn Miller reworked the novel and published it in 1995, two years after the Myst game came out.

We follow Atrus, from birth all the way up to Myst. It provides a lot of details on D’ni culture and “worldbuilding” (if you catch my double meaning). While this book is a direct prequel to Myst a lot of the book actually takes place in Riven which isn’t explored until Myst’s sequel.

You do not need to know anything about the video game to enjoy this book, but it helps. It’s a really interesting sci-fantasy with a flashy villain. I would recommend this novel if you had any interest in the world of Myst. This novel is hard to find, while we read the first three chapters here on SGN the audiobook of the shorter version of the novel is available currently on internet archive. There is a graphic novel fan version done by Heather Larkin but it is no longer being updated and it’s now sold out. I guess you will just have to listen to our episode on it if you wanna know what happens.

Dead Space Remake

Alright hot take incoming on the Dead Space Remake. I didn’t like it as much as the original. It did do some cool things with the ending twist and (even though I personally prefer silent protagonists in general) giving Isaac a voice was a good idea. However, I think the changes to characters such as Hammond and Mercer were worse then the original. I think the controls were worse. The soundtrack was worse. Overall I think the original Dead Space will still be my favorite in the series. This one didn’t even come close. If you want my full articulate thoughts on the matter they are here.

L.A. Noire

I don’t know if this is another hot take or not. To be honest I don’t know many people who have finished let alone played L.A. Noire, but I was disappointed. I wish L.A. Noire was better. It’s got really good detective gameplay but it’s samey, long and the plot was unsatisfying. Plus unskippable cutscenes 😱

L.A. Noire is a detective adventure game developed by Team Bondi and published by Rockstar Games. It’s 1947 and we follow L.A.P.D’s golden boy Cole Phelps as he solves a myriad of cases and finds out just how corrupt Los Angeles really is. While this game does have a wider branching narrative all the cases are mission-based. There is an open L.A. you can drive around in during each case but after solving one case you will be teleported to the next one. While on assignment you can free-roam around L.A. looking for collectables and completing side-missions. Side quests are dependent on which desk Cole is currently assigned to so once you switch you can no longer do those missions. Those missions usually consist of chasing someone on foot in a car or having a good old fashion shootout.

The main plot doesn’t really come into play until Cole is assigned to this third desk more than half way through the story. The pacing seems a little weird but this may be due to the DLC cases thrown in if you purchase the complete edition of the game.

This adds fluff cases to certain sections of the game padding out the runtime but adding very little substance. In fact the Black Dahlia, homicide desk situation seems completely pointless to the story except to try and root this game in reality ( or to give Cole an excuse).

In my review on SGN, I go off about interrogation system still being confusing even after they changed it from doubt, truth and lie to good cop, bad cop and accuse. Sometimes Cole really flies off the handle when I was just trying to ask about something. I feel like the main problem with this is whoever was directing Cole and maybe some of the wording choices that the writers used.

Driving is fun. I enjoyed the car feel but you can’t control the radio so its random if your going to get music from the 40s, time period relevant ads, or just ambient driving music (which isn’t even on the soundtrack by the way!!). The cars on the road are insane, just like L.A. drivers in real life. They come into your lane unannounced and only turn on their signal when they are already over. They freeze in the middle of intersections for no reason and wont go when the light is green. Etc… Etc…

The thing this game is known for the “MotionScan” technology is cool. Its suppose to help you tell if someone is lying with the faces they make. It was supposed to be subtle face cues but some of the actors really hammed it up. This game is quite a few years old so its faces are a little blurry and hard to read at times. I can kinda tell this is an actor from Mad Men but with a smudged face. For a detective game this is a really neat idea. Too bad it was so expensive it was never used again.

Disney Illusion Island Starring Mickey and Friends

Glad this game finally came out on PC. Illusion Island is a local 4 player co-op metroidvania part of the Illusion series of Mickey Mouse games. Gameplay consists of journeying through the different biomes in search of the Tomes. As you progress you will meet a friendly lizard man named Mazzy who will give the group items to help traverse through each environment. Despite getting different items, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy all play the same so it really doesn’t matter who you pick.

Much of the game will be finding three keys to unlock a door to either Mazzy or the boss arena. It honestly gets old fast. Luckily there are other things you can do like collecting trading cards or Mickey memorabilia. I personally enjoyed finding the hidden mickey’s and once you have unlocked the camera you can take pictures of them.

There are also little side activities you can engage in. I call them activities instead of quests because they are just little fun things you can do during or after you finish the story. These include races, a detective mini game as well as (my personal favorite) cave adventuring with Scrooge McDuck. Honestly I had more fun playing the cave game then the main game itself.

My main beef with the main game is that the middle of the game feels slow. Once you get all the Tomes the game really picks up and that’s where all the promised 30 mins of animated cutscenes are. I wish that the pacing was better. I also wish they cut the middle part in half and added some more after the Tomes were collected.

I really enjoyed the designs of the characters as well as the letter motif. The music and sound design are also very magical. It’s a fully orchestrated score and it felt like walking through a theme park.

While I did enjoy my time in Disney Illusion Island, I felt that with a little tweak to the pacing it could really have been a much more engaging game. It’s not really my style of humor but the art design and soundtrack really tickled my fancy. There is a lot to do in this game and I could see having fun with a friend on the couch. I am personally not a metroidvania fan but I am a big fan of Mickey and his friends so I was willing to take that chance. It’s a good first metroidvania if you wanna get into that kind of thing.

Hi! Thank you for reading my newsletter! I hope August treated you kindly. Even though I played a lot of game I didn’t like this month I am glad I played them anyway. And if you liked any of the games I disliked I think your the real winner here. You actually had fun! Anyway it was good talking at you, hope to see you next month

<3 Savvy

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July was a pretty busy month, full of puzzlely Myst-style games. I got a lot to get through so I’ll get right to it.

Myst (2021)

Ah Myst, Everyone knows Myst. The first person puzzle exploration game that took the world by storm in the early 90s. It was before my time but because I’m reading its prequal novel for the SGN book club I decided now is as good a time as any. I had to choose which Myst to play because there are so many. I decided to do the latest version of the game that came out in 2021, its an updated version of realMyst that has a VR version.

I remember watching the GDC Myst postmortem, where Robyn Miller (one of the creators) stated that they tried to make a game for non-gamers. You can really see this in the puzzles, they may seem convoluted but they are actually pretty straightforward it just takes a little work. Never did I feel as though a puzzle was unfair. There was definitely ages that I struggled with in fact I almost dropped it after the Stoneship age but I pressed on and I ended up not having as much trouble in the other ages.

See full review on SGN.

The Mystery/Secrets of the Nautilus

The Mystery of the Nautilus is a first person adventure game that I decided to pick up because I have this obsession with the book Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and also because this was my month of Myst and this was considered a Myst-clone.

The Mystery of the Nautilus was developed by Cryo Interactive in 2002. There isn’t that much out there about the game in fact if you wanna play it you’re gonna have to jump through some hoops. It’s currently on the GOG dream list so here’s hoping that in the future it’s easily accessible.

Full article about this game is on SGN.

Blue Prince

Don’t know If I would call this a Myst-like but it is a puzzle game I found out about because of a Myst Youtuber I was watching at the time. He was doing a run of Blue Prince in this Summer’s GDQ. After watching the run I decided to check it out and it was crazy addicting. I though I would just play it for an afternoon and it turned into a whole week. I blame it for my current rougelike phase. Either that or too many games are adding rougelike elements.

Blue Prince is a puzzle game involving drafting different rooms in Mt.Holly in order to make a path to room 46. Your uncle has left you this estate but he’s not going to make it easy for you. Every time you click on a door you get three random rooms from a deck to draft, some have items that can help others are dead ends. After a certain number of steps have been reached the day ends and the manor resets.

Check out the full article on SGN.

Dungeon Raid First Impressions

Speaking of rougelikes, Dungeon Raid is a roguelike card game where you dive deeper into a dungeon trying to reach floor 30 to defeat the final boss. You have five cards in your hand and a random amount of cards set face down in front of you. Clicking on the cards flips them over revealing an enemy, item, trap, upgrade, gold, key or door. You need to find the key in order to use the door to exit.

The demo was incredibly fun and fast paced, you can even play the demo in browser if you go to the developer 4cats itch.io page on the game. I recommend you check it out if you’re a fan of roguelike or simple yet strategic card games.

Check out the SGN article for more info.

Minami Lane

Another little indie game I played was Minami Lane. It was on my list for while and its a fun way to spend a Sunday. Minami Lane is a street management sim. A tanuki needs your help managing Minami Lane, throughout 4 missions you will build shops & beautify the streets. It’s a sorta strategic game but the stakes are pretty low, no pressure. Overall its a cute game if you wanna kill 2-3 hours, reasonably priced as well. I only wish there was more missions.

Check out my article on SGN for the full review

Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic

Five Nights at Freddy’s Secret of the Mimic is an interesting entry in the Fnaf series. You play as an overworked Fazbear Entertainment, Inc technician named Arnold who is assigned to go to Murray’s Costume Manor to retrieve company property (blueprints). Once inside you find the place abandoned with the only sign of movement being an Endoskeleton out to get you. This Endoskeleton (Mimic) is unique due to the fact that it can take over any of the mascot costumes around the facility at any time, keeping you on your toes.

I like the general concept of the Mimic being able to take over but knowing when and where it was going to attack me took the mystery and horror away. I wish the chase sequences were a little more loose with errors. It would be nice to be able to look back and see the terrifying thing chasing me. There were some genuinely scary moments (especially with that white tiger). It had some interesting secret areas you could explore if you remembered where to look. It reminds me a little bit of a Resident Evil style game but with one enemy pursuing you the whole time. I only wish that enemy was a little less predictable.

Full Review on SGN.

Savvy’s Top Ten SGDQ Runs for 2025

Summer Games Done Quick 2025 has wrapped with over $2,436,885 raised for Doctors Without Borders. There were so many amazing runs but since this is a week long 24 hour event I couldn’t catch them all so here is a list of the best runs (in my option) that I managed to catch at this years Summer Games Done Quick. This list isn’t in any particular order. If you wanna know the reason I liked that run in particular check out the article on SGN. Sadly they took down the concert :(

• Backyard Baseball ’97 by anarchy

• Blue Prince by BobbyBurm and RadRingtail

• AEW Fight Forever by Porkchop44

• Sonic Adventure 2 by Emerldd and DawnSR

• Casual Birder by ZeroCounts

• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater by ApacheSmash

• Super Mario Odyssey by ZackInTheBox and Jambo

• Spyro 3.5: Return to the Forgotten Realms by Wed

• RollerCoaster Tycoon by Dynomation

• Finding Frankie by Nerd_Squared

• Community Clash: A Speedrunning Gameshow by bryonato and Viz

L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories

Finally for this months book club episode, the short stories from the game L.A. Noire. This e-book exclusive short story collection from noted crime authors, is a prequel of sorts to the in game events of L.A. Noire. Some of the stories are about the past lives of in game characters such as June Ballard from “The Fallen Idol” and William Shelton from “Marriage Made in Heaven” and “Accident Prone”.

These novels are actually in the game itself as collectable items found exclusively in the remastered edition of L.A. Noire. There are 8 short stories to collect, the in game covers are similar to the actual books covers only the authors name are omitted. They also have brighter backgrounds perhaps to make them easier to find throughout the levels.

The actual novels we read for the Video Game Book Club podcast and its one of our very first 1 star read. Each story is as nasty and upsetting as the next. I wouldn’t recommend this book at all, it will add absolutely nothing to your L.A. Noire experience and I think you should let it rot in the e-book store.

For full discussion check out the VGBCs Youtube or Spotify. For what we are currently reading check out GoodReads. If you wanna join in the conversion we can talk chapter to chapter on Fable.

I normally don’t get to do these because my newsletters are so long but I want to thank you so much for reading and subscribing to my newsletter, I really appreciate each and every one of you <3

-Savvy

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A little less this month, we started off with Steam Next Fest and ended with me finally finishing Cyberpunk 2077. In between were still going through Dead Space. I finished Dead Space 3 and the prequal novel to Dead Space 1, Dead Space Martyr. Currently trying to get through the remake of the first game. But first we got a lot of demos to run through so I wont take up anymore space on this into.

Steam Next Fest June 2025 Demos

Here are all the Demos I played during Steam Next Fest June 2025. Great color choice this time Valve, very watermelon summer.

DAVY X JONES

DAVY X JONES is a first person shooter where you play as Davy Jones body being accompanied by Davy Jones head. Davy has been killed by Blackbeard and now he must go on this quest for revenge but in two pieces. It’s a fun concept and a fun demo.

LAN Party Adventures

Do y’all remember LAN parties? This game is like a LAN party set up simulation game and mystery combined. You started a business of setting up LAN parties for money but then your friend goes missing so now you have to set up LAN parties and find out what happened to Pedro. It plays like a job sim so you better know where all the cords go and how to install the software off floppies.

Date Everything

Date Everything doesn’t need an introduction, it’s got plenty of press because of the huge casts of prolific voice actors and some social media people. It is also what it sounds like, a dating sim where you can date everything (in your house). It’s fully voice acted and has over 100 dateable characters and you don’t even have to date them. You can just be friends with them or make them your enemy. Its out now, came out right after Next Fest.

Hobby Horse

Hobby Horse is a silly little racing game where you play as a kid racing around on a stick horse. You customize your horse head and stick then race around obstacle courses. It reminds me of the many horse racing games I played in my youth because I was indeed a horse girl/ Speaking of youth, get ready for a LOT of current slang terms. Took me out of it to be honest.

Tiny Book Shop

So as you probably know from my video game book podcast I have become a bit of a reader so the Tiny Book Shop was right up my alley. You run a small mobile book shop in a beautiful town by the sea. You chat with customers and recommend books based on what they tell you their interests are. Oh to be a little mobile book store in a small beach town, that’s the dream isn’t it?

Dracamar

Dracamar is a collection platformer/creature collector where you run around the world of Dracamar saving the Okis (which are these rabbit looking things) from a big evil dragon named King Crad who wants the turn them into Madokis. Overall this game is really cute and fun. It reminds me of all those old school platformers and according to its steam page it’s going to have local co-op.

The Hilltop Funeral

The Hilltop Funeral is one of those games where you have to control two characters at once, both holding a casket. You and your thumbs have to work together to move a dead man in a casket through a cemetery but make sure not to drop them on the floor, they are floppy. It can be played solo or local co-op and honestly I need the help.

CloverPit

CloverPit is the self proclaimed lovechild of Balatro and Buckshot Roulette. You are trapped in some sort of cell with a slot machine and you must pay off your debts each round or die. You get tickets that you can use to purchase lucky items. It is a rogue-lite and not a slot machine simulator so it can actually be defeated. Not that I would because I plummeted to my death in the demo.

Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty Review

After year of waiting for it to be done I finally finished Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty. I got a kick in the pants to do it this year because some people I know wanted to play it so we all played it around the same time, met up for some slop and dished about our thoughts. I recommend doing a games club with friends, we made themed food and drinks and some of us even dress up. Anyway with the news of a second game on the horizon it was time, heck I built my PC so I could play this game when it launched I pre-ordered the damn thing. It was honestly better then I thought but the TLDR of my article up on Savvy Gaming Network is it was a mixture of a good time and a bad time. You definitely have to be in the right headspace for the amount of betrayals, letdowns and bad endings you are going to get with the Cyberpunk genre in general but I was not so it was a constant battle of “can’t wait to go back to Night City” and then being sad because it feels like there are only bad endings in Night City. I go over all my feelings in the article but I didn’t have any major issues with gameplay (other then a few left over glitches, not game breaking for me at least) and the story is interesting (even if it feels like a reimagining of the plot of the book Neuromancer) I wish the Johnny system was better but it was fun non the less. I think its worth a try and especially Phantom Liberty that had some amazing set pieces.

What Happened with Dead Space 3?

at the start of the month I finished Dead Space 3 and I can see why its a lot of peoples least favorite Dead Space game. Dead Space 3 is a mess, a fun mess, but a mess nonetheless. This is a full action, co-op shooter with micro transactions. Dead Space 1 was eerie and more focused on the horror, Dead Space 2 was more action packed but still has that hint of unknown but Dead Space 3 laid it all out on the table. It’s hard to be spooky when explaining your big bad. For the end of the series, I was not expecting it to take the turn it took. You can really tell that this is the Dead Space EA meddled the most with. Full thoughts here.

Dead Space Martyr – A Perfect Prequel?

Why am I playing all the Dead Space games? Well its because I read the non-canon prequal novel that’s why, and it was awesome! Full thoughts on the book are here but also we have a whole podcast about it that you can check out here and if you wanna check out the book before buying Elise read Part 1 here. Luckily these books just got re-released so they are easily available to purchase. Also wonder why they were re-released? Maybe more Dead Space games on the horizon? Who knows?

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Quite the charcuterie board of games this month. We start with Star Wars because ya know May the 4th be with you and all that. We read the Novelization for Star Wars The Force Unleashed for the Book Club podcast and it was pretty good, a little too good. So good in fact that playing the game was a disappointment. Then the news came out that Kingdom Hearts Missing Link was cancelled and I was the only one that was sad about it apparently. Either that or the internet is showing me contrarian opinions on purpose (crazy I know). Then I finished playing through Astro Bot on my sisters PS5 I just had to know if it was worth the hype. Finally I playing through the Dead Space series, because the next book for our book club is Dead Space Martyr and spoilers for next newsletter it was pretty good. (Oh yeah and I saw the Until Dawn Movie in theaters and played Fields of Mistria)

Should you Watch the Until Dawn Movie?

So the Until Dawn Movie came out this month and for the A/V club we went to the theaters to see it. We have a whole podcast episode about it but the tldr is that it is mostly an Until Dawn inspired movie not a direct adaptation. If you looking for a short and simple horror movie with a few references to Until Dawn then you have come to the movie. (Honestly one of my favorite A/V club episodes we have done)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Novelization

We gotta request to read the Force Unleashed Novelizations for our book club so I figured reading by May the 4th would be the best idea. It is honestly one of the best Star Wars books we have read for the Podcast so far and if anyone has any other recommendations please tell us in the comments below.

As far as comparisons to the game its actually pretty similar I’ll be it more grounded since the game seems to exaggerate a bit (well as grounded as a Star Wars story can be). We actually follow Juno’s POV for a lot of the book which is a nice change of pace. It really fleshes out her and Starkillers romance more.

A Look Back at Dead Space 2

Keeping up with the Book Club theme I started playing Dead Space again, because were reading the prequel novel that is no longer canon but got reissued so its also no longer extremely expensive. I already played the original Dead Space a while back and I didn’t wanna play this one because I like silent protagonists but I got over myself enough to play Dead Space 2 and it was good. Action packed yet still full of horror its a nice balance of the two. Can’t really say the same for Dead Space 3 but that review isn’t out yet! Currently finishing up the DLC right after I write this. I will also be playing the remake of Dead Space 1. Unsure if I should try Extraction. If you have played Dead Space Extraction let me know if its worth it or not? Anyway full thoughts can be found here.

Is Astro Bot Worth the Hype?

Game of the year 2024 according to the Geoff awards, but does it stand up to the hype? I was jealous that the PS5 owners get to have Astro Bot mainly because I’m pretty sure that it won’t come to PC. It’s just too PlayStation, it’s a celebration of everything PlayStation in fact. It’s a little pricey and it is a Playstation exclusive but it is an extremely fun and challenging platformer. I would love for more mascot platformers to come from Astro Bots’ success. It is worth it but maybe get it on sale. More thoughts here.

Kingdom Hearts Missing Link is Cancelled and I am Upset

A little news story about how the Pokemon Go like Kingdom Hearts game got cancelled so they can focus more on KH 4. I don’t blame them but I was looking forward to it. I thought it was pretty far along considering it had playtests that I couldn’t get into. All that footage is now online so I can see its lost protentional.

They did drop more screenshots for KH4 right after the announcement so at least we get some breadcrumbs. I’m hoping for more coming summer showcase season.

Fields of Mistria First Impressions

This one is a long time coming. I’ve been playing fields of Mistria since it launched and I wasn’t sure when was the best time to talk about but I feel as though I’ve done enough to say my piece.

Fields of Mistria is the perfect game if you have a Stardew Valley hangover. The thing I think this game does better than Stardew and Harvest Moon is the amount of dialogue the townsfolk have. It’s incredible! I have played over 30 hours and I have seen almost no repeats in dialogue. The townspeople also interact with each other making Mistria feel like a real community. The sprites are so beautiful and the characters change outfits depending on the season which is a nice touch. It’s always nice when all the characters are so hot and likeable that it’s hard to decide who to romance and there are so many options to choose from. Currently you can’t get married but that will be added in another update.

This game feels really polished and it is updated regularly. I’m looking forward to when it’s out of early access. I have a feeling I’m going to be spending a lot of time in Mistria (well more than I already have).

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April 2025 was busy for SGN. Two book club episodes, multiple reviews and even a recipe snuck in there. I decided to add a small recipe I was working on to break up all The Last of Us posts, since we are going through each episode of the new season for the A/V club. Honestly its too much Last of Us and once this season is over I’ll be happy to put it behind me.

The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe

Lets start with the first game I finished this month, a classic in the walking sim genre, The Stanley Parable. I started playing a Souls-like game with my sister and since I was already playing The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC and not enjoying myself I decided to return the game to Gamefly (the video game renting service me and my sister use) we looked through the PlayStation Plus games and I picked out The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe! It was a game I had been meaning to get around too and also I thought would be short, it was not.

Comedy games are hard since what is funny to one is stupid to the other, I was fortunate enough to find the Stanley Parable funny enough to play the original and then go through Ultra Deluxe again to see if I have seen everything and I’m still not sure I have to be completely honest with you. I love first person silent protagonist games because it gives you a great opportunity to create you own comedy with dramatic head turns and such. This game really reacts to player choice and to me it was a perfect walking sim, and also what I image when my friends talk to me about Severance. My whole thoughts are here.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

As I said up top I was not enjoying my time through the Lands of Shadow. I got hacked by an invader who killed all my world bosses and made it so I can no longer acquire items. I had to go through the process of acquiring a friends save and respecing their character to be as I was before (don’t tell Bandai Namco). I found the ending to be anticlimactic the characters half baked and the world just a hodgepodge of random cut content thrown together with ducktape and glitter glue. It was beautiful to look at, I took may screenshots but overall I had a bad time. My full rant is here.

Let’s Talk About the Nintendo Switch 2

I wanted to talk about the Nintendo Switch 2 direct but what my article boils down to is I wanted to get into the Switch in general but with the raising prices of games (which I know the industry is going to follow Nintendo’s lead and up their prices as well) and charging for the hardware tutorial game I was disappointed but not surprised. Just gonna go borrow some sorry saps Nintendo Switch 2 if I feel any of the game are worth it.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered (PC)

Alright the meat and potato’s of the month, The Last of Us Part 2. The TV and the PC port of the game was coming out this month so I decided to jump on board and see what the fuss was about. Long story short I enjoyed it, but I always loved revenge stories. I loved playing as two unhinged women out to kill. I had some graphical issues with the PC port and it crashed a lot, but me and my GPU managed to get through. Besides crashing, minor graphic issues and frame rate drops, the game has a lot of great features for PC. You can link your Playstation account and get double achievements (Steam and Playstation). It has Dualsense support so you can plug in a PS5 controller and get that haptic feedback.

Overall, I expected not to like this game but I had to see for myself. It ended up being a thrilling experience getting to play out not one but two revenge fantasies. What message you get out of The Last of Us Part II will differ. I think we all have been consumed by grief or the thought of revenge against those who have wronged us. It’s not a difficult read but it’s a personal journey.

The Last of Us Season 2

The TV show on the other hand is taking what I liked about the game and twisting it to be something I hate. Idk how long I’ll be keeping this up we have currently reviewed the first three episodes on our A/V club but I am just not enjoying my time with this show and I’m ready to leave it behind.

If you want our full discussion on the episodes check out the VGBCs Youtube or Spotify below. I also wrote articles summarizing each of the episodes and my feeling on them If you prefer to read.

1. Episode 1 - Future days

2. Episode 2 - Through the Valley

3. Episode 3 - The Path

The Last of Us: American Dreams

We read The Last of Us Comic American Dreams for the book club this month in preparation for all this and I have to say, its short sweet and inconsequential.

The comics art by Faith Erin Hicks is gritty yet cartoony and honestly is perfect for The Last of Us. The comic is written by Neil Druckmann who was asked by Dark Horse to create a comic for The Last of Us. He decided to focus on Ellie relationship with Riley, which is later elaborated on in the games DLC.

For full discussion check out the VGBCs Youtube or Spotify. For what we are currently reading check out GoodReads. If you wanna join in the conversion we can talk chapter to chapter on Fable .

Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Week Before

I am a little behind on Book Club/AV episodes all this Last of Us junk has really got me turned around but we also read a choose your own adventure novel for the book club! This book was requested and were currently working on another request for The Force Unleashed novels, hopefully that will be out before May 4th. If you have a great video game novelization or tie in book you think we should read let us know!

Five Nights at Freddy’s the Week Before is an interactive novel/ choose your own adventure novel that takes place before the events of the very first Fnaf game. You play as Ralph the phone guy as he takes on his last week working at Freddy Fazbears Pizza. It plays just like an adventure game, you collect items to use throughout each of the 5 (maybe 6) nights, it even punishes you for cheating.

I Just Platinumed Dragon Age: Veilguard, Let’s Chat

We have another review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard this time by Elise, who liked the game but not as much as I did I guess. You can view her review here and my review here.

Harding’s Ham/Yam and Jam Slam Recipe

On another Dragon Age The Veilguard note I made Harding’s Ham/Yam and Jam Slam Sandwich from the game! Its pretty simple but the recipe is here on Savvy Gaming Network if you are so inclined.

March 2025 started on SGN with some Steam Next Fest Demos, then I played some Chao Garden like games, finally finish Forspoken and went to play the Sonic the Hedgehog game at Topgolf. Oh yeah and read Metro 2033 for our book club. A real hodgepodge of games this month.

Steam Next Fest Feb-Mar 2025

I cut this Steam Next Fest pretty close starting it in March since it ended March 3rd. Because of this I only played 5 demos this time. I go more into depth here about the demos I played but I’ll give a brief rundown here.

Promise Mascot Agency

From the makers of Paradise Killer comes Promise Mascot Agency. A mascot management / driving around town simulator where you play as a Yakuza member trying to rebuild a mascot agency. If there is one thing I love its mascot and Promise Mascot Agency promises to be a wacky ride that I’m sure I will enjoy when it launches. April 10th 2025.

Cyrano

Cyrano is a turn-based RPG based on the classic play Cyrano de Bergerac. Just like the play, you (as Cyano) must write letters on behalf of a man to his wife. After combat you collect cards and then use the cards to assist in your letter writing. You actually type out the letter and add the prompt cards for help. I played the demo during next fest but a few days later on the 7th it released! So full review incoming.

Squirreled Away

Squirreled Away is a survival crafting game where you play as a squirrel just going about your life in a park. You scurry around building axes, and pickaxes out of rocks and resin, you know squirrel stuff. You build amazing, almost luxurious treehouses and help out your fellow squirrels and neighbors with their problems. This is another title that released this month right after Next Fest. It fully released March 28th.

Twisted Tower

Twisted Tower is a Bioshock style first person shooter taking place in a carnival themed murder tower. I’ve been meaning to check this demo out for a while so I basically used Next Fest as an excuse. The demo is still available if you want to try it out, I think It really scratches that Bioshock itch . No word yet on a release date.

Arctic Awakening

Arctic Awakening is a first person walking sim where you play as a man and his robot trapped in the Arctic after a plane crash. I’m a sucker for robot companions so I had to check this one out. Unfortunately for me, It feels a lot like Firewatch even the main protagonist is unlikeable. You have dialogue options sometimes and at the start of the demo it states that these will have an impact. Will have to see when it fully releases sometime this year. On its steam page it states that it will be released episodically. If your a Firewatch fan you might enjoy this.

Loddlenaut

Loddlenaut is a cute little game where you clean up an alien ocean. You save these cute little aliens called Loddles from your company’s pollution. You feed them and protect them from getting more polluted. It reminded me of an underwater Chao Garden from Sonic. It short, sweet and has a addicting gameplay loop. Once I loddled I couldn’t naut. Full thoughts and review here.

Bobo Bay Demo

I played this demo a while back but this was before I started this Newsletter. I wanted to bring it back because it is literarily an attempt to recrate the Chao Gardens from Sonic Adventure and I made my first ever Youtube Short about it! Check it out here

Just wanted to try out making shorts and seeing if it was any fun. I also really wanted to make a video about Bobo Bay because I felt that it need more attention. Since Bobo Bay is in Alpha right now It doesn’t have a lot of features right now but it does have caring for the Bobos and racing them. For more info check here . Its steam page states that it should come out Q2 2025 and you can play the alpha right now.

Sonic the Hedgehog X Topgolf

I know, I know this event has been going on since November when the movie and Sonic X Shadow Generations came out but I only recently got a chance to head over to Topgolf to check out the Sonic promotion. If you don’t know Topgolf is driving range where you can smack golf balls into large colored holes below you. You get a booth and can order snacks and drinks to come to your table while you take turns hitting the ball its kind of like a driving range with the same set up for bowling.

The golf ball at Topgolf has a tracker on it so you can see on the screen where you hit it and if it got into any of the holes. Sonic and his friends act as the golf ball, it shows you where they landed. They run around and collect red rings (on the screen) which gives you points. It was fun but honestly the Sonic one was the hardest to tell where the ball landed. I also though it was strange that the other games had 5 turns when the Sonic game had 4. Only Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy but no Shadow?! Why not? This is promoting his movie and new game. Well whatever it was a fun excursion nonetheless.

Forspoken

Now for something completely different I finally finished Forspoken. I loved Final Fantasy 15 so I was really excited when this game was announced. Can’t say I wasn’t skeptical after everyone using it as a punching bag in 2023, but I still wanted to see it for myself.

I can understand the hate in terms of our main characters as I said in my review Our protagonist Frey has sort of a Dorothy problem, the only thing she wants is to go home and she’s very hostile about it. Her magical talking cuff is also extremely negative so it creates these sass offs that can get tiring. But after everything is explained to you I think Forspoken is a fun parkour, cat collecting game. See my full thoughts here.

Metro 2033 Book Vs. Game

For the book club this month we read Metro 2033 and I loved it so much that the games just couldn’t compair ( if you read my review of them from last months newsletter). Metro 2033 the game turned 15 this year on March 16th so I thought I would write a little article about the difference I noticed between the book and the novel. Check that out here

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Ah February, the month of love. This month I wanted to play more romantic titles but I also started playing all the Metro games and those games are not very sexy (well Last Light does have a sex scene so that’s not 100% accurate) but I digress.

I finally finished Dragon Age The Veilguard and you know what? I liked it a lot. I jumped back on the Dragon Age train due to us reading Tevinter Nights for our Video Game Book Club. Turns out, Tevinter Nights introduced a TON of characters that we see in Veilguard. So it was fun reading it side by side.

In the spirit of the season I think we should start with the dating sim.

Error 143 First Impressions

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. I love dating sims. I use to have a podcast about them until my co-host ghosted me. After that I didn’t play dating sims for a long time, but Valentines day is the perfect time to fall in love with them all over again. I picked Error 143 because it was short and sweet and it reminded me of one of my favorite dating sims Our Life: Beginning & Always. Its a one suitor dating sim between two hackers. Your main love interest Micah is fully voice acted and will even say your name (if its on the preapproved list) which is a nice touch.

The gameplay is mainly messaging and video chatting with each other. It has three different endings and little mini games. Its the perfect game if you just want a short and sweet romance. It is free but there is a payed DLC that adds an extra day if you couldn’t get enough of Micah.

Full thoughts can be found here

Fuddler’s Courtship ~ Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley DLC

Speaking of DLCs, Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley came out with a romance themed DLC based on the Fuddler’s story in the Moomin comics. I love the idea of adding more content to this game based on little side stories from Moomin books and comics. This is another short and sweet romance although if you haven’t played the main game it might be a little confusing since they just drop you in with no tutorial.

I have a review of the Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley if you wish to take a look

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Its time for the big one. I am a huge Dragon Age fan, I have played all the game and while the second is still my favorite I think Veilguard is my second favorite. I had the misfortune of hearing people be mean to this game, but I had no qualms. I know a game is good when I have trouble picking who to romance because I just like all my companions. I realize that writing and performance is a personal matter and everyone will have different taste or tolerance when it comes to personality tropes. I felt the writers and actors did an amazing job getting me to care about these characters. I cried, but I have cried at the end of every Dragon Age so that’s not surprising.

I think this game is good, I think people are just mean. Thank you for coming to my newsletter. My full thoughts and review are on SGN if you need me to explain myself more.

Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights – Required Reading

For the Book Club (technically last month) we read Dragon Age Tevinter Nights which is basically the prequal novel to Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I think reading this side by side with Veilguard made me appreciate the game more. It is a collection of fifteen short stories happing after inquisition ( I think only one is during ) but before Veilguard. With all short story collections some are good and more important to Veilguard while others are unnecessary and boring. If you don’t wanna read the book and just want a run down on all the stories check out our episode of the Video Game Book Club here.

Metro 2033 Redux

A little inside look into next month but the next book in the book club is Metro 2033. I also read the novel along side playing the game and they were a lot different then I thought they be. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the book was a slow psychological horror and the game is a fast paced shooter.

I did enjoy both for what they were, Metro is a good shooter series and I ended up loving the novel. In fact I may have loved the novel too much that is spoiled my enjoyment of the game. I went back and played the original Metro 2033 before they reduxed it as well and it was honestly not much different ( I did get lost much less in the OG then I did in redux). Overall it was fine maybe my expectations were too high.

Full thoughts here on SGN.

Metro Last Light Redux

Honestly I had the same problem with Last Light then I did with 2033. I think my expectations where too high. This one is even faster paced and action oriented and although I think the areas and scenarios in this game are more interesting then in 2033, I just kept thinking while playing that “maybe the book will do this better”. Dmitry Glukhovsky the author of the Metro series helped write this game and Metro 2035 is a (sorta) novelization of this game, or so I’m told. Eventually we will have to read Metro 2035 for the book club maybe even Metro 2034 aka what Hunter was doing during 2033.

Metro Last Light is an exciting shooter and if you like shooters I think its worth it. Honestly I think I was nitpicking this one in my review. I didn’t like the direction the story went but gameplay wises its really fun.

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This January month was a busy one. It started off with AGDQ, which was very good this year, so good in fact it convinced me to play one of the games being run. Bite Night was played during the awful block at AGDQ and it made me laugh so hard I had to stop watching and start playing. This led to me playing both games released by this developer and a third is coming out this February!

While reading Dragon Age Tevinter Nights for the book club I decided to replay Dragon Age Inquisition before starting The Veilguard. Currently playing Veilguard, I wanted to finish it before the next book club but its a long ass game. It was also a long ass episode of The Video Game Book Club to edit but I’m working on it.

I also finally finished The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. I shared my honey cake recipe for that game last month but they are so yummy I’m going to repost in this newsletter. Lets get on to the meat and potatoes, shall we?

A Look Back at Dragon Age: Inquisition

A little retrospective I wrote about my replay of Dragon Age Inquisition. I really enjoyed Inquisition I don’t think its the best Dragon Age ( Dragon Age 2 has my heart and will not let go) but I was impressed by how much your previous game choices are brought up. It is a bummer that it uses a website ( Dragon Age Keep ) to import your choices from the pervious two games because that website wont be around forever. While I think this game has the worst set of companions ( they feel like reluctant co-workers) there are still moments between them that made me cry a little. It may not be the best Dragon Age but its still a good Dragon Age, in fact I haven’t played a Dragon Age I didn’t like.

Top 10 AGDQ Speedruns to Check out According to Savvy

I love GDQ, long time watcher sometimes donator. This year had a sorta music theme; we had Wes playing Super Mario Bro’s on a Piano, a live band during the Crazy Taxi run, a Opera performance, Eden Ring on the Saxophone by Dr. Doot and so much more. Its a 24 hour event throughout an entire week so as you can image there are a lot of runs to watch. I watch as much as I can throughout the week but I am only human. My top 10 GDQ lists are in no particular order and if a run doesn’t make the list it doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, it just didn’t make the list. Check out my full list here .

Let me know if there are any cool runs I should check out that I may have missed!

Bite Night

Bite Night was played during AGDQ this year I caught like 2 seconds of the run then decided to play it myself. Its a comedy horror game about working the night shift at a gas station. Its fairly short taking about 30 mins to complete. Not much to say without spoilers but if you are not convinced maybe watch a little bit of my playthrough.

Invasion of The Halloween Fiends

The second game the Bite Night developer made, a Halloween themed comedy horror game called Invasion of the Halloween Fiend (or Fiends). This time you play as a kid alone at home during Halloween passing out candy and dealing with strangers. I personally didn’t like this one as much as Bite Night but it does add more gameplay mechanics and it even has dialogue options. Its also about 30mins in length and if you wanna view before you try I also played through this one.

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria Review

Alright the big boy, that took me forever to complete. The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is a survival crafting game that takes place after the events of The Lord of the Rings where you play of as a dwarf of your own creation who falls into Moria and much escape. Sounds cool right? It is at the start but it so repetitive and long I was losing my mind.

I hate to critique a game for length, its actually a good thing because it means you get more bang for your buck but is it really worth it if it feels bloated and boring. That’s a personal thing, one man’s annoyance is another man’s joy. I could have stopped but I forced myself to keep going because it felt like If I stopped, everything I did up to this point would be useless so I pushed through. Full thoughts on the game are here.

Do you find it hard to drop games you already invested a lot of time in?

Beorn’s Honey-Cake from Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

One of the best things to come out of me playing The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria are these Honey Cakes. I made them during my playthrough and they are delicious! These honey cakes are a dwarfen twist on the Hobbit twice baked honey cake recipe. Recipe here. Enjoy!

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Happy New Year! Its been a long hard year for us here at Savvy Gaming Network but a lot of good has come out of 2024 as well. For one I launched this very newsletter! 🎉 I really enjoy coming on here every month and recapping what I wrote on SGN. The Substack gaming community are amazing writers better then anything I’ve seen among gaming’s popular media outlets. In fact for news and recommendations I now come here before anywhere else. To everyone who has restacked, liked my posts, left a comment or subscribed thank you from the bottom of my heart 💕

As we say Sayonara to 2024 the year of our lord and savor of earth Shadow the Hedgehog I would like to reflect on all the games I played this month starting with the hog, the myth the legend himself.

Sonic X Shadow Generations

Now when this was showcased I was pretty mad that I had to buy the same game I bought in 2011 with a tacked on DLC. After playing it though I found Shadow Generations to be pretty amazing in fact I think it overshadowed (pun intended) the main game. For me that was easy because I honestly wasn’t a big fan of Sonic Generations back in 2011. This was the first time I gave a game 3 ratings one for Sonic one for Shadow and one for Sonic X Shadow which you can see on SGN.

Sonic 3 The Hedgehog

Because of life events the book we are reading for the Book Club had to be postponed until next month (stay tuned for Dragon Age Tevinter Nights) but we did managed to release an episode of the A/V club. Obviously I went to the theaters ASAP to watch the next Sonic movie. I was a little hesitant because the second one was not very good but I liked the Knuckles TV show (we did an episode on that one too). Overall I think Sonic 3 was pretty good but I thought Jim Carrey’s Eggmen was too much and ruined a lot of scenes.

There sure were a lot of announcements this month. The Game Awards already felt like a second E3 but now all these indie showcases are jumping in the mix, I love it!

The Game Awards 2024: The Geoff, The Bad and The Announcements

I had a little crisis about The Game Awards this year, I wasn’t going to watch it because I don’t really like the jury Geoff picked to be honest. But I came to the realization that I loved The Game Awards anyway. The Muppets, the orchestra, the announcement I love it all. I physically went to The Game Awards back in 2022 (it was one of my first articles). It was an amazing experience but I don’t think I’ll do it again. Going there personally made me realize that this show was really made to be viewed at home. I tried to throw Game Award parties but my guests never really cared. So I came to the conclusion that I will watch The Game Awards alone from now on, that’s really what the first part of my article was about before I talk about everything announced.

I thought The Game Awards this year was pretty good. Lots of titles i’m excited for in the upcoming years. I am actually ashamed that I didn’t catch all the showcases this year, but I did check out the Wholesome Snack 2024 Game Awards Edition.

Everything Shown at Wholesome Snack 2024: The Game Award Edition

Yes I love little cute wholesome games. I was a farming sim freak since the first Harvest Moon and honestly I love seeing the uptick in these types of games. This showcase had a lot of games coming out very soon and a lot of games I wish listed on steam. Because of this showcase I got off my butt and bought the first Duck Detective since the sequel is coming out soon.

For my New Years resolution I plan on trying to stream at least once a week. I had the same resolution in 2021 and I only made it three months. Hopefully I can break that record and put a dent in my backlog. All these up and coming wholesome are looking pretty juicy though my backlog will probably end up growing instead of shrinking in 2025.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me

I finished another one of these right after The Quarry. Felt like I needed to finish off the first season of The Dark Picture games. This one was just alright. Its not my favorite of the group but its also not my least favorite. I honestly didn’t know anything about H.H. Holmes before playing this so I got a little history lesson out of it. I write about my whole feelings on this game on SGN but I will share my Dark Picture Anthology Season 1 tier list that nobody asked for here.

Let me know which one is your favorite.

Beorn’s Honey-Cake from Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

I’ve been playing a lot of Lord of Rings: Return to Moria. I haven’t finished it yet but I did end up making the Honey Cakes from the game to snack on while I play. I always loved making themed snacks and drinks for the games I’m playing that’s why I added a recipes category on my website. Its a little barren right now but I’m hoping to add more recipes to the website next year.

These honey cakes are a dwarfen twist on the Hobbit twice baked honey cake recipe. Recipe here.

I Went to the Fallout New Vegas Event in Goodsprings

Last month I went to the Fallout New Vegas event in Goodsprings Nevada. It was a fun Birthday trip before all the happened that month. My complete run down of the trip is on SGN, but in short it was fun to go to a place were everyone liked what you liked. I’ve been to a lot of conventions and they were starting to seem divided but here it felt like a community. No matter what Fallout game you liked or hated we all still trekked to the middle of nowhere Nevada to celebrate it and that’s beautiful.

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Its been a long month here at Savvy Gaming Network. We finished up a couple of horror games on the list from last month. Reading the Alien Isolation novelization for the book club, and sadly going through the loss of my dog. My dog was one of the inspirations behind the website fox mascot since she was a very foxy looking shepherd. This month she died suddenly at the young age of three of a blood clot. To try and cope with this I played some games about grief.

Lets start with the left overs from October -

The Quarry

I’m always a sucker for these games. There short and sweet and fun to play with friends. The Quarry is one of Supermassive best interactive movies, really giving the B movie slasher vibe that Until Down did. Although I royally messed up my first playthrough I still think this one is worth a try especially if the Dark Pictures wasn’t doing it for you. You can see my full thoughts over on SGN.

Don’t Fret: The Audition

One of the demos I played this month was Don’t Fret, a mascot horror title taking place in a surreal music school. It peaked my interest when I heard that Rockit music was involved. Since two of my guilty pleasures are mascot horror games and nerd core I felt that this was a perfect fit for me. I was left very confused but the game mechanics and the vibe itself was enough to peak my interest. I’ll have to check it out when it launches next year. My full thoughts are, as you know, on SGN.

Grief struck me mid November with the loss of my dog. I had a whole article about my trip to Goodsprings for the Fallout New Vegas event but right after that trip my dog was hospitalized for a blood clot. It felt wrong to write about the fun time I had in Vegas after all that so I played a couple games I had saved on my computer about grief. I had hoped it will help, but it feels strange to seek out games about grief when your grieving. Its like listening to sad songs when your already sad to what? Make you more sad? Should I be playing happier games like farming sims? For some reasons I sought these games out, here are my thoughts on them.

GRIS

I’ve been waiting to play GRIS until I was in grief. I heard this game uses the Kübler-Ross model of grief so I thought It would help me deal with mine when the time came. I realize now that is silly. GRIS is so ambiguous that it can be used for any woe. Its a beautiful game and should not be slept on for as long as I did. My full musings are on SGN, but just know that this game felt like a warm hug telling me its going to be okay.

Tail & Trails

I peruse my Itch.io launcher quite often, saving games to my collection. I finally played one of these, a prototype named Tail & Trails. Its a cute little game about taking care of your grandma’s three headed-lizard after she passed away. On your way to watch the sunset you give the lizard items and see the preferences each head has. Depending how how many hearts each head has depends on the ending you get at Sunset peak. A short and sweet game about opening your heart and moving on is honestly just what I needed. You can play the prototype yourself on Itch.io and read my whole thoughts on SGN.

Finally the Book Club, you may have read in our first newsletter that we have two reviews of Alien Isolation. One by my sister who didn’t like it very much and one by me who liked it a lot. For the SGN Video Game Book Club my sister picked the novelization of Alien Isolation for us to read and it was, in our opinion, not very good. Although what’s funny is she seems to like it much more then I did, I guess that’s what liking the source material more will do.

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Its been a busy month. I started out this month trying to finish a bunch of horror games, new and old, that I’ve been meaning to play. Its Halloween season and I wanted to use that to help me get through my never-ending backlog of horror titles.

Crow Country

I finally got around to playing Crow County! I love Resident Evil sure but I love any game that takes place in a theme park more. I loved this game so much I played it thrice. I’m glad I came a little late to the party with this one because it allowed me to play all three versions. I started out with the easiest mode where nothing can hurt you then feeling like I was missing out I decided to crack it up to a billion and play hardcore which I was not ready for. Finally I streamed my final playthrough on the normal Survival Horror mode trying out the zap girl outfit. Is it cheating because I have infinite laser gun ammo? Does it really matter? You can check out the full review I wrote on SGN .

Grunn

When I saw this game on steam I knew I wanted to play it, and so I did. Instead of putting it on my backlog I spent a weekend just Grunning it up when the game launched. I knew this game was going to be eerie but I didn’t think it would be so addicting. The gameplay loop of gardening, uncovering secrets, dying using those secrets on the next run was so much fun. Usually I don’t like time loop games because of the time it takes after you die to getting back to where you need to be is far too long for my inpatient ass. Grunn really hit that sweet spot. From all the comments I saw about the game they said its like Outer Wilds, maybe it take to give that one another shot. You can check out my full thoughts on Grun on SGN (spoilers its positive).

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare

It wasn’t all good this month. I finally finished Alan Wake’s Big Hot Wet American Summer. I’ve been playing this game on and off since my big Alan Wake phase earlier this year. I even streamed it a little. I can’t blame no one for showing up to those streams because this game is a real stinker. American Nightmare is only fun if all you care about is the combat of Alan Wake, because the story is ( and forgive my weeb speak) an isekai harem. Alan gets thrown into an unknown world (the dark place) and is surrounded by hot babes that are very into him. Oh yeah this is another time loop story, and a perfect example of what I don’t like in regards to time loop stories. The game teased that this could have been a dream of Alan’s friend Barry which may explain why its so horney. Its a real change of pace from the other two Alan Wake titles and my full thoughts and ramblings are on SGN if you wanna see the score I gave it.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a beautiful bummer. You play as a couple banishing ghosts who are haunting the living in New Eden town so I don’t know what I expected. If someone is a ghost they have unfinished business with the living, they may be angry at them, trying to manipulate them or just not willing to leave the one they love. I tried to playthrough all the side hauntings because at the start of the game I thought they were interesting. I stopped halfway through. This game is all about choice, as a banisher you can let the ghost pass nicely or just rip it out of existence aggressively. Alternatively you can just kill the living person the ghost is haunting because there a douche bag and you want to bring your partner back to life. Either way every villager of new Eden Town sucks in there own way and halfway through the game I didn’t want to help them anymore. Looks great though. You know where my full thoughts are

Steam Next Fest snuck up on me this month, I always forget then all of a sudden I got a bunch of demos to play and only a week to do them! This year I finally made a video about all the demos I have played.

Everyone playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard? I have been hyped for it all month so for our Book Club and A/V club podcast I had to pick Dragon Age!

For the book club I chose the comic The Missing that was suppose the bridge the gap between inquisition and Veilguard but all I learned from it was that I’m actually suppose to read Dragon Age Tevinter Nights instead. Oh well I’ll just have to pick that for another month.

For the A/V club I wanted to watch the Felicia Day Dragon Age web-series that tied into Dragon Age 2’s DLC The Mark of the Assassin. For a low budget web series it was pretty impressive and I really enjoyed it.

Welcome the to the first newsletter for Savvy Gaming Network! This has been a month of firsts for good ol’ SGN. This month marks not only the very first newsletter but also the first time we’ve had multiple reviews of the same game. This is something I wanted to happen since I launched Savvy Gaming Network a few years ago. I believe having multiple perspectives on a game is a good thing. One person’s trash maybe another persons treasure.

The game I’m talking about is Alien Isolation. Elise posted a review of it back at the end of August. Then she decided to make it our book club pick for the Month of October. I knew I wanted to play and review it since its considered a cult classic, but it was already reviewed on the website. Then I remembered the whole reason I created Savvy Gaming Network, I thought having a website where multiple people reviewing the same game would give a more well rounded review of that title. Since we only have a couple writers this will have to do for now, but I am glad it happened. Both me and Elise have wildly different options on Alien Isolation.

Elise's Review

Savvy's Review

Speaking of the Book Club we read the very first Watch Dogs novel ever made, Watch Dogs //N/ Dark Clouds. There were two versions of the novel one is considered lost media now and you can read all about it in our article or listen to our podcast on it.

This was really the month of PlayStation, they not only announced a new PS5 Pro they also had a State of Play.

I also just got back from a trip to Japan and on that trip I went to many locations from the Yakuza/ Like a Dragon series of game and decided to share my experience . I also documented my journey to see that mysterious Sonic the Hedgehog statue in the woods.

Finally I finished the first DLC for Disney Dreamlight Valley: A Rift in Time, while listening to the Watch Dogs Novel I had to read for the book club. The DLC was very cute but I’m excited to see what they do in the future. You can read my whole thoughts here.

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