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.
Harvestella
bingo game #6, completed 2026/5/4
Epilogue completed
As a relentless proponent of spreadsheet-and-graph-paper DRPG masterpiece Dungeon Encounters, I've had its Square Enix brethren-in-budget (particularly advertising) Harvestella in my sights for quite some while.
Harvestella is a 40-hour action RPG with as many hours of farming as you see fit; although the farming-and-gathering loop is not particularly inspiring (and mostly serves as a long-winded way to accumulate healing potions for the tanky, MMO-style combat), it lends a healthy cadence to the in-game day, working alongside the well-templated dungeon structure to keep you slowly progressing and unfolding the world around you.
And unfold the world does - the main story in Harvestella makes the most of its sharp writing, beginning from the starting point of 'what is it like to live in a middle-ages magical world where there's a killscreen between seasons', and unfolding plenty of arcs dealing with remorse, duty, and much, much more than I could have ever expected.
It's the kind of game where Chapter 4 is titled 'Battle to Save the World' and it just makes you think 'OK, but where are we going to go from here?'. I definitely also checked the release date of the game multiple times, given how much it talked about humans outsourcing their thinking to The Machines!
The side stories also excel in endearing characters - both party members and generic-model NPCs - very strongly, presenting arcs that are compelling without being rubber-stamp 'and then all their problems were solved magically' stories.
'Helping kids understand that people move away sometimes' is a common favorite side story (and I agree!), but I also loved helping Cres go through her mini-Ritsuko arc where she tries to sacrifice her health for the sake of her craft, and assisting a woman who began ghostwriting for her grandfather because she couldn't bear to tell his pen pal he was deceased.
Overall, Harvestella is a game with a great heart-to-budget ratio. A company the size of Square Enix doesn't need to tell you, but asset reuse, scarce voice acting, and limited modeling have never stopped a good story from being told, and what budget Harvestella had definitely shows in the gorgeous art, music and scenery (particularly chapter 7!).
I think it's a game that will land the best with people who are looking for an RPG story that really hits classic and powerful beats, especially if you enjoy building a steady routine and don't mind simple, bludgeony combat. If that's you - cook me up some nikujaga while you're there!
Chrono Trigger (SNES)
bingo game #7, completed 2026/6/20
One playthrough completed (with all side quests!)
'You can just play Chrono Trigger!' is the one-line review that built up in my head over my 30 hours of playtime. You can just play it!
I'm famously a person who has never heard of anything ever, so my sum knowledge of Chrono Trigger until this month could be described as 'it's that game that I think a lot of people like'. I get it now! You can just play it!
Fighting over superlatives - chasing a game's shadow of a thousand backloggd reviews and Youtube videos chanting 'The Greatest Of All Time' - is an uphill battle. Chrono Trigger, to me, deserves more down-to-earth praise, one that will not lose to one's personal experiences of, say, going to their grandparents' house every Sunday for lunch and endless games of Tiny Toons Wacky Sports Challenge. You can just play Chrono Trigger!
Regardless of who you are, you can play Chrono Trigger. Its smoothness in story and mechanics could be negatively compared against shinier, more engagement-capturing gems, but why make complicated game when simple one will do? It's everyone's JRPG.
Personally, I found Chrono Trigger gorgeous in its audio and graphics, and, as a person who has played basically 2 Prestige Legacy JRPGs (DQ3 and Live a Live, which I would argue is the Sickos Evolution of Chrono Trigger), its beauty in compactness reminded me of everything I liked about DQ3.
To me, DQ3 and Chrono Trigger share a magic that dispels, bit-by-bit, my ingrained 90s American programming that old games are all obtuse and difficult. There's only 10 people in every town, but every single one tells you something that will help you advance the game, now or later, and you never stop feeling rewarded when a multi-town fetch quest presents itself and the steps unfold fluidly in your head, one hours-old NPC line at a time.
Chrono Trigger is funny, it's heartfelt, it's actually really haunting at times, it's just a good experience the whole way through. And everyone can have this experience!
Chrono Trigger loves to serve you little delight after little delight - the little enemy skits that give life to the world, the bits of hope and encouragement it serves to everyone across time, the unexpected graphical flexes, the visual gags that come just when you've gotten used to a section (hello, save point in the sewers).
Sure, some of its dishes may feel like something you've eaten before. But I'd believe that you've seen a lot of Chrono Trigger *because* so many people over the years have experienced Chrono Trigger and, consciously or not, absorbed at least a part of it into their essence.
You can too! You can just play it!
Also, Flea is cute. Obviously.
Fuuraiki (PS2)
bingo game #8, completed 2026/6/29
One route completed, one route stalled
Fuuraiki is a visual novel series that offers, earnestly, the delightful experience of flipping through the developer's photo log of their motorcycle trip throughout a region, with anime girls occasionally sprinkled on top.
I had the incorrect impression that they were all about Hokkaido, but there's a diverse range of regions on display, with Fuuraiki 5 (which came out last year!) showing you around Mie - including Suzuka Circuit!
As a veteran of Hokkaido 4500km - a delightful indie game / visual spreadsheet by someone who's been doing train nerd gamedev for decades about travelling every inch of Hokkaido railway circa 1967 - I was expecting to form a meticulous plan for the 30 days your protagonist spends doing digital travel journalism around eastern-ish Hokkaido (featuring an adorable 2000s website-creation UX).
In reality, the game is fairly loose, with a generous time/action budget and the freedom of movement to haul all the way from Nemuro to Wakkanai in a day, with plenty to see along the way - each cape, beach, forest, etc offering dozens of photos with detailed commentary from our protagonist (even changing on repeated visits!).
I personally hoped for the game to be a bit stricter, to force me to consider where I was on every day and where I could travel. Aside from the appeal of planning a multi-day trip (and leaving parts of Hokkaido for a replay of the game), I think it would have stopped me from succumbing to a weird push/pull of being unsure if I wanted to Maximize Stamina Usage and burn real-life time checking every place for new info, or progress with heroines' stories faster by ending days early.
(It doesn't help that article 'ideas' spawned from visiting places only last one day! So if you load up on cool places one day but take it easy the next, you'll be dry for articles.)
The heroines of Fuuraiki have fantastic designs (in particular, I have a soft spot for inventing The Purple-Hair Twins a few years before Key, and for Tamae's happy-go-lucky oneesan demeanor) and what I really didn't expect was the amount of drama that both the core story and each heroine's route laid on.
The twins Fuyu and Natsu (the former sickly, the latter spunky) have heavy routes that almost reads like a nakige of the era; its twists that I could read but also dread left me like a deer in headlights, and while I disagree with the words put in my character's mouth, I felt it hit much harder that I expected for a travel game.
Tamae, in comparison to Fuyu's demure personality, models for the camera openly and often wraps you around her thumb in a certain kind of idiot-big-sister way. She's harder to grasp in an intriguing way - she's a really fun character but in a way where you can sense some darkness she's stashing away where neither of you can look.
She also strike-zones me impossibly hard (but you knew that).
I actually ended up stalling out of Tamae's route due to various life responsibilities (the route was plenty intriguing but playing it specifically in Japanese is just a bit too draining right now), so I decided to write the review post here.
I have, undoubtedly, a lot of Fuuraiki story left - and a lot of great images of Hokkaido, although it is just very time-consuming to hear our Surprisingly Opinionated protagonist be wistful about the easternmost point in Japan or angry about the tourist-spot-ification of a quiet forest.
Play this game so you know like 50 more spots to go in Hokkaido, like the Kamuiwakka Falls (the readers loved this) or the Aidomari Onsen in Rausu (the readers hated this)!
sunny-place (PC)
bingo game #9, completed 2026/8/4
13/15 courses completed (5 of 45 stars)
sunny-place is a racing-time-trial game (like Trackmania) that features an overworld with extremely floppy (like Human Fall Flat) anime girls (untranslatable), and it's such a specific kind of $2 (on sale) Experience that drops you into the dev's head with the barest of compasses.
The game has some quick, Flash-game-absurdist-esque story you can experience in the overworld (which WILL jumpscare you with platformer sections), as well as some Physics-Based Decorating, but the main draw is being able to blast eurobeat and slip-slide your way around the 15 of tracks floating in space, pushing for a 3-star rating against quite punishing times. (Just 16% of players have 3-starred the FIRST track!)
As a Trackmania lover, the handling is an acquired taste for me, made more painful by the early game track design, which often lacks walls to a Rainbow-Road level and relies heavily on lining up blind jumps without visual markers. With no checkpoint-restarts, I found myself spending up to an hour just to get to the end of certain levels. (Worlds 3 and 4 however have nicely varied, technical designs and I found them to be both more fun and more more manageable. Try those if you feel stuck!)
I went all the way up and down the steering sensitivity scale trying to figure out how to stop my car from snapping back and forth right off the road every 5 seconds, and in the end I wouldn't say I succeeded so much as I increased my success rate from, say, 1% to 30%, but what sunny-place does well is making pulling off a really smooth, long drift really viscerally satisfying (before you misalign a jump and explode again).
I think the biggest breakthrough for me was learning to rely on throttle control to reel in a drift, and to suppress my urge to countersteer. 'Learn to sit back and observe', as they say. This helped me finish (with 5 out of 45 stars!) 13 of the 15 levels in my 5 hours with the game.
Santa outfit is the best character outfit. Very poofy. I genuinely think you could get $2 of value from sunny-place just designing a character and sending them down the human Plinko chute at the start of the game.
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