This post is here as a quick index for games I played in 2026 that don't have full posts.
I plan to include short bits of writing here, often linking out to 'liveblog' style micro-post threads for each game.
I'm using my 2026 bingo board of games as a guiding star for this year, and I'm looking forward to eating quite well - though I will be no stranger to adding further meals to the table. (This means Labyrinth of Touhou Tri, which as of January 10th will be coming out in just a few weeks.)
UFO 50
bingo game #1, completed 2026/1/10
all 50 games tried, 12 completed, 2 cherried
Discovering new experiences and figuring out how things work together are two of my favorite things about playing games, so I'm very suited to a gem like UFO 50 where the instruction manual doesn't exist and the genre switches every 30 minutes or so (at my whim).
I ended up being delighted not just by searching for the next Canon Game (Mortol, Party House, and Campanella 1), but also by the unexpected and deliciously frictionful growing on me (Overbold, Mooncat, Barbuta). There are misses (Fist Hell, Diskonia) as well, but knowing what you don't enjoy is, in itself, a growing experience.
This game is a wonderful box of ideas that sticks itself in your head, growing ideas of your own and giving you a fertile garden to come back and enjoy a little time in to for weeks and weeks to come. I'll be back, Golfaria.
Click here to continue reading a collection of my micro-posts about UFO 50, synced over from Bluesky.
Robot Girl's Dream
bingo game #2, completed 2026/1/18
100% completion (all endings and achievements)
Are you tired of being Neutral Good in story-based games? Try being Gremlin Robot With One Braincell!
It's funny! It's earnest! The combat is surprisingly puzzle-solvey! You can do one playthrough in 2-5 hours! I love it!
In the typical nature of character-raisers, the game is quite short (3 months of in-game time, a.k.a. About 90 Actions) and much wider than it is long, with more mini-arcs than you can dig through in a single run, each compact yet still resonant and mechanically rewarding.
The stories in this mixed humans-and-robots world tend to hit a sort of 'morning TV' vibe that you'd expect from a game with this artstyle and level of silliness - you'll see robots be jealous of humans' capacity for growth, kids causing fights they don't mean to and learning how to make up after them, romantic comedies, an alien whose entire personality is 'pink is the best', robots struggling with a loss of purpose, humans whose ambitions clash with their profession, one-sided jealousy, an idol subplot is there - it's a lot of things which I'd describe as 'the hits, but the hits are hits for a reason, especially when they're written with heart'.
Click here to continue reading the full review.
Ace Combat Zero
bingo game #3, completed 2026/1/25
One run completed (Knight Route) plus a little
I think most people around my age have at least one Ace Combat Zero MAD bouncing around their head at all times, and I'm happy to state definitively that, even when you're no good at action games, the game is exactly as cool as you've imagined this whole time.
The story in Zero is concise and compelling, giving you a window (as someone who doesn't know the rest of the history) into the flamenco-tinted and Arthurian-slathered art and code of dogfighting, and how it crashes into the cold, metallic realities of war, framed through a lot of voiced lines, a few FMVs, and just enough 'ohhh WAIT that's where they're going oh shit' revelations.
Despite the missions that I completed 15 seconds away from a ages-long 30 minute time limit, I greatly enjoyed the spectacle and 'no mistakes' tension of dogfighting - the moments where a bogey buzzes meters over your head (even though I shouldn't have done that), where you barely pull out of a loop before eating mountain (even though I shouldn't have done that), and when fireworks erupt after landing a clean hit at the end of a long chase never grew old.
Mischief Makers
bingo game #4, completed 2026/2/5
Game clear (15/53 yellow gems)
This 2D Nintendo 64 platformer-slash-Saturday-morning-cartoon seems to be infamous for its lengthy, painful tutorial section. I found this to be accurate, if only because all the on-rails 'force the player to do a dash jump' in the world couldn't wrap my brain around The Shake-Shakeism required to grapple with this game's mechanics in less than half an hour.
Once it clicks (mostly by accident) and you start to understand the mechanical joy of grabbing everything, the game starts feeding you dozens and dozens of wild, thrilling ideas, and never really stops for either your sake or its own. I like to imagine that everyone at Treasure got to participate in a level jam and that's why this game has the coolest boss fights I've ever seen, followed by a single-fight level where you parry a frog's tongue a dozen times.
As a Nintendo kid, I lovingly compare my favorite boss fights here with Punch-Out (the dragon & dad boss fight with razor-sharp dodge-and-counter timing) and Yoshi's Island (my previous benchmark for 'boss in the background' 2D platformer bosses).
The comedy in this game is also quite fun (pervert professor do not read this message), with idiot after idiot bouncing you through idiot after idiot level. Why shouldn't you do math at a sports festival, play a Mario Maker automatic level on a tricycle, or graph out a teleporter maze on a piece of paper? Mischief Maker's got the whole gamejam right here. Spend 6 hours and take it in. (And refill on health in level 1-2 if you're like me and need it.)
Labyrinth of Touhou Tri
intentionally pre-excluded from bingo, completed 2026/3/8
Game completed, 100% achievements, see you in Plus Disk later!
I'm careening towards 'being out of college for half my life', but on the plus side, that means I'm also approaching 'being into Labyrinth of Touhou for half my life'.
Despite my half-assed (100% ass 50% of the time) attention to detail, a quarter of my blood is DRPGs, and another quarter is Touhou (as someone who was doing Spell Practice in computer class) - as such, really any Touhou DRPG would certainly rule, but fortunately for me, Labyrinth of Touhou Tri leans exceptionally well into targeting me specifically.
I've already known this since 3peso's last Steam release, but Tri takes their expertise in snappy, risk-and-reward-filled grinding loops and puzzle-like boss fights, and drizzles an incredible amount of Yearning Story on it, leaving me utterly fulfilled.
To tip its hand a little, a lot of dungeons involve exploring the unsaid anxieties of many Touhous (in the sense of a P5 Palace), and really, you haven't lived until you've seen Reimu and Marisa pine for, in the game's words, 'the infinitely distant false images they've conjured'.
RPG-wise, Tri delights in its skill trees and intricate stat/debuff/ATB interactions, letting you explore with an in-game encylopedia and mechanical encouragment to respec and retry. I did find that the sense of attrition and dungeon complexity is a little less than I remember from the last game (and certainly less than, say, an Etrian) - I could have done with more spice, personally, but I wouldn't call this meal anything less than 50 hours of satisfaction.
Tri also satisfies my personal 'is Akyuu here, and moreover, is Akyuu great' condition.
Click here to continue reading a collection of (over 250+) liveblogging micro-posts about LoT Tri, synced over from Bluesky.
Power Pro-kun Pocket 6
bingo game #5, completed 2026/3/28
Game clear (15/53 yellow gems)
It's kind of an obvious thing to consider, but if you have an event that occurs 50% of the time in a playthrough, players that complete a game once will have an experience that might not be what the developers imagined when setting that encounter rate.
I'm glad that I found some memorable moments despite getting extremely lost from whatever the golden path was supposed to be here, though I found myself wishing that instead of Power Pro-kun Pocket 6, I had a copy of Tokimeki Memorial and Baseball Stars (NES, where I can actually hit a homer with A-rank power instead of being a pop-out machine).
Save file deletion (in haunting fashion!) upon failing your first baseball match is a strong first impression, and Aya's dates are exceptionally detailed and varied (and full of great bands like Inkin Park), really letting your imagination run with her character.
Click here to continue reading the full post.
Writing by invelica | Built with zola 0.20.0 | Theme by ネe3 based on futu@main