The Quest Log

Night 5 of the Back-logoon takes me to Crow Country, a survival horror game from SFB Games set in an abandoned theme park back in 1990. It’s built to look and feel like something you’d have rented for the PS1, chunky low poly models and all, and it’s been sat in my Steam library waiting for the right week to come along.

Playing it is less about running for your life and more about poking around. You explore the park, pick up keys and odd bits, solve puzzles and slowly piece together what went wrong, with the odd monster getting in the way. It never really tries to make you jump, it’s much more interested in making you uneasy.

The atmosphere is easily the best thing about it. The park is quiet in a way that gets under your skin, with empty rides, flickering lights and little details everywhere that make you want to stop and look. The low poly style does a lot of the work too, there’s something about those blocky, slightly blurry shapes that makes everything feel a bit off.

I really liked my time with Crow Country. It’s creepy rather than scary, so if jumpscares put you off horror games, this is a good one to try. Just don’t expect the theme park to be much fun.

Night 4 of the Back-logoon is Decap Attack, and I’ll be upfront, I didn’t like this one as a kid either. It’s a Mega Drive platformer starring Chuck D. Head, a mummy with his face stuck in his chest who attacks by punching people with it, so on paper it’s a perfect fit for a spooky week. Years later I thought it deserved another chance, and this event felt like the right time to give it one.

The biggest problem for me is how it controls. Chuck is really floaty, and it feels like you’re on ice physics the entire time, sliding a little further than you meant to every time you stop. That wouldn’t be so bad in a slower game, but Decap Attack clearly wants to be a fast paced platformer, and Chuck’s big hitbox makes that hard to pull off. Between the sliding and the size of him, I spent most of the game walking on eggshells instead of actually going fast.

Visually it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. For a game with a headless mummy as the hero, the enemy designs are pretty bland, and very few of them feel like they belong in a Halloween game at all. Chuck himself is a great idea, but the world around him doesn’t really match how weird he is.

The search for a missing item in the last level of each zone is the bit that wore me down most. Having to stop and hunt around just breaks the flow, and with the slippery controls every bit of backtracking felt like more of a chore than it needed to be.

I wanted to come back to Decap Attack and finally see what I’d missed as a kid, but it turns out kid me had a point. I’ll still give it credit for trying something different though. The early 90s were absolutely packed with mascot platformers, and a mummy who fights with the face in his chest is a lot braver than yet another animal with attitude, even if the game around him doesn’t quite hold up. The one place I always did enjoy Chuck was in his strips in Sonic the Comic, which were a lot funnier than the game ever managed to be. I’ve even got a very loose connection to the people behind those comics, but that’s a Venn diagram for another day.

Night 3 of the Back-logoon is Buckshot Roulette, and it’s a bit of a change of pace after two nights of running around shooting things. It started life as a small free game on itch.io, made by Estonian developer Mike Klubnika, before blowing up and getting a full Steam release in 2024, where it reportedly sold a million copies in its first two weeks. Not bad for a game set entirely around one table. This time there’s only one gun on it, and you’re taking turns pointing it at a very creepy dealer, or yourself.

The whole game is basically a twisted card game with a shotgun. Each round you’re shown how many live and blank shells are going in, then they’re shuffled and it’s your call who gets shot next. Little items like a magnifying glass or a pair of handcuffs let you bend the odds a bit, and working out the best time to use them is where the tension really comes from. It’s also short, and if luck’s on your side you can see the whole thing through in about 30 minutes.

Visually it leans right into that grimy indie horror look, all low poly models and grainy, flickering lighting that makes everything feel cheap and nasty in the best way. The dealer especially looks like he’s been pulled out of a forgotten PS1 game, and the dingy little room you’re sat in does a lot with not very much.

It won’t eat your evening, but that’s sort of the point. Buckshot Roulette is a quick, nasty little game you can finish before your tea’s gone cold, and it’s perfect for a Halloween night when you only fancy a short scare.

Night 2 of the Back-logoon is DOOM 64. It’s always been the odd one out of the classic Doom games, made for the Nintendo 64 back in 1997, and Nightdive’s remaster means it now plays beautifully on PC. It wasn’t actually made by id Software either. Midway built it as a brand new game rather than a port, with new levels and redrawn monsters, and it was originally going to be called The Absolution before it ended up with the DOOM name, which I imagine didn’t hurt sales. It’s also the darkest and moodiest of the bunch, literally and figuratively, which made it an easy pick for a spooky week.

The levels are a lot more mazey than I’m used to from Doom, and yes, I know the original and Doom II were already mazes of their own. 64 takes it a step further though. Instead of hunting down keys in a straight-ish line, I spent a fair bit of time wandering around trying to work out which switch did what, and which door it had just opened somewhere on the other side of the map. It slows things down compared to the first two games, but it also makes every level feel like a place you’re slowly getting lost in rather than a shooting gallery.

DOOM 64 looks and sounds a lot more atmospheric than the first two games. The monsters have been completely redrawn, and where the originals have that quaint, memorable look, these ones are downright grotesque. Everything is fleshier and slimier, and some of them look like they’ve been left out in the rain for a week. The coloured lighting gives every level a murky, sickly kind of feel, and the music is the biggest change of all. Where the older games had chugging rock riffs, this one goes for creepy ambient noise, low drones and distant sounds that make you second guess every corner. It feels less like a heavy metal album cover and more like a haunted house, which is about as Halloween as Doom gets.

I’ll hold my hands up and admit I’m biased here, as a big Doom and Quake fan this was always going to be up my alley. Even so, DOOM 64 works really well as a sort of thought experiment, a look at what the original games might have been if they’d leaned into being creepy rather than loud. If you’ve only ever played the first two, it’s worth a go just to see how different the same idea feels with the lights turned down. No Rumble Pak needed, this one gives you the jitters all on its own.

Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins gets the Back-logoon started, and it felt like the right game to open with. Whenever I try to name “Halloween” games, this series is usually somewhere in my top three. I’d never properly sat down with the PSP take on it though, so I finally dug it out and played the arcade Ghouls ’n Ghosts alongside it to see how much Arthur’s changed over the years. Ultimate was directed by Tokuro Fujiwara, the man who came up with the series, so it’s less of a quick cash-in and more him having another crack at his own idea.

Playing Ultimate feels a lot more modern than I was expecting, especially for a game released 20 years ago. You can save your progress and carry on from checkpoints, and because of that the game isn’t shy about throwing a lot more at you. Going back to Ghouls ’n Ghosts straight after shows the difference. A death in the arcade game sends you a long way back, so every screen is about learning exactly where things are going to pop out of the ground. Ultimate doesn’t punish a mistake nearly as hard, and it uses that to fill the screen instead. At points the enemy spawns turn into a bit of a pseudo bullet hell, with stuff flying in from both sides while you’re still busy with whatever’s in front of you. It’s as chaotic as the series has always been, it just plays more like an action platformer you chip away at over a few evenings than an arcade run you have to learn in one go.

Visually the 2.5D look sits nicely on the PSP’s little screen, all rainy graveyards and creepy castles that still feel like Ghosts ’n Goblins under the new coat of paint. The colours are where it really sets itself apart from the arcade game. Ghouls ’n Ghosts is bright and loud, with green grass and a bright blue Grim Reaper that looks like he’s ready for a cartoon. Ultimate goes for something much moodier, all dark purples and murky blues, so the odd flash of green magic or a fiery enemy really jumps out against it. It feels like the same world with the lights turned down, which suits a Halloween night pretty well.

The difficulty is what you’d hope for from this series, so yes, it’s brutal. Dying costs a lot less than it used to thanks to the save points, but the screen gets so busy that I was dying a lot more often to make up for it. This is what the series was and still is known for, and the jumping is a good example of it. Like a lot of the old arcade games the series came from, once Arthur leaves the ground he’s committed, with no changing direction halfway. More than a few of my deaths came from a jump I knew was wrong the second I’d pressed it.

If the old arcade games have always been a bit too much for you, Ultimate is a great place to start, because the saving takes the edge off without ever making it easy. The catch is that it’s never left the PSP, so you’ll need to dig one out of a drawer (or a Vita) to play it. It’s worth the effort if you fancy something spooky that’ll fight back this Halloween. My PSP battery has had a rough week.

Dragonwilds is Jagex taking RuneScape and turning it into a survival game, and I’ve only just picked it up. I gave it a go because I always enjoyed my time with Old School RuneScape back when I used to play it, and having friends to play it with made it an easy sell.

The gameplay will feel very familiar if you’ve played Valheim, because it’s really close to it. Jagex definitely copied Valheim’s homework and changed a few words so the teacher wouldn’t notice. You chop trees, build a base, head out exploring and come back to upgrade your gear, but building and decorating a cottage has easily been the most fun part for me. The magic skills help a lot too, cutting back on the tedium that survival games usually drag you through.

Visually, the art style is really charming and it’s where Dragonwilds stands out most from Valheim. Everything is bright and colourful with a chunky, almost hand-painted look that still feels like RuneScape, just a lot prettier than I remember it. It’s the kind of game where I’ll stop what I’m doing just to look around for a bit, which doesn’t happen often in survival games.

Right now I’ve only just hit iron, so there’s plenty left to see, but I’m having a great time with it so far. It might not do much that’s new, but it does it well enough that me and my friends keep coming back. Still no sign of a Grand Exchange, which is probably for the best for my bank account.

You know, for someone born and raised in Britain, I've somehow dodged most of the big British stuff we tea-drinkers get hooked on. I've never watched a full episode of Doctor Who, crumpets aren't to my taste, and Sherlock Holmes has always been one of those things I just know about without ever sitting down with it. Deerstalker, pipe, "elementary, my dear Watson", that's about the extent of it. So a game about a young Sherlock, before Baker Street, felt like the perfect excuse to finally catch up on one of our national treasures.

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is a detective game made by Frogwares, who've been making Sherlock games for years, and this one goes right back to the start. Sherlock (or Sherry, as he's more commonly called in this one) is 21 and he's come back to Cordona, the Mediterranean island he grew up on, after his mum died there ten years earlier. He's brought his mate Jon along with him, and the two of them settle into his childhood home to put the old family trauma to rest. The main story is Sherlock trying to work out what really happened to his mum, but around that you're solving all sorts of cases for the locals and the police. So let's dust off the old magnifying glass and ask ourselves, is Chapter One a game worth investigating, or has the case gone cold?

When Gearbox revealed a spooky, haunted expansion for Risk of Rain 2 with no release date attached, I'd have put money on it landing in October. Sure enough, Hallowed Concepts dropped out of nowhere on the 8th, and I was on Petrichor V quicker than you can say Bustling Fungus. It's only just come out, so consider this a first-impressions log rather than the full verdict. I've barely scratched the surface. This time the game drags you into the haunted side of the planet, with hexes, eerie architecture and a big creepy boss at the end, and it couldn't have picked a better month to do it.

The Enforcer is the new survivor I've spent most of my time with so far, and he's a welcome blast from the past for anyone who played the original Risk of Rain (or that incredible Enforcer mod). Where most survivors are all about speed, he's a walking wall. Hold up the riot shield and you can block any and all attacks, and with good timing you can parry projectiles straight back at whatever fired them. He can also charge in with a Shield Tackle or slam down a Rally Point that knocks everything back and leaves a barrier that tops itself up with every kill. Pair this with some good health items and you're virtually indestructible. Then there are the new Trials of N'Kuhana, little pocket realms you can slip into mid-run, each with its own challenge and rewards. The catch is that every trial shares one timer, so each time you finish one you face the same question. Do I risk another, or get back to my run while I still can? It's the most Risk of Rain decision imaginable, and I'll let you guess which one I end up picking in 90% of my runs.

For something I'm only a few runs into, Hallowed Concepts has made a great first impression. It feels like Risk of Rain 2 with the lights turned off and the Halloween decorations out, and that's right up my alley. I've still got the Acolyte, the curses and the rest of this DLC to get through, so a proper log will follow once I've seen it all. I called the release month, so here's another prediction for you: this one will be eating my evenings well past Halloween.

It seems like Nintendo decided to put the Switch 2 back into the Dock of Time and return to November 1998 for their next Zelda release, as it is a remake of Link's first step into the third dimension, Ocarina of Time. The original game holds a special place in my heart when it comes to the Zelda series, as not only was it the first Zelda game I played to completion, it was one of the first games I ever owned. With this in mind, I deemed it fitting to go back and revisit Hyrule Field and test out the PC de-compilation of the N64 classic. If you aren't aware, de-compilation in layman's terms (take this with a grain of salt, it's still witchcraft in my eyes!) is pulling the original game apart to its source code and re-compiling it to run natively on PC. This allows for higher frame rates, resolution and fancy QoL changes such as having more item slots on the d-pad or full camera control. Does this bring this timeless game into the future? Let's see!

I've put more hours into The Binding of Isaac than I'm comfortable admitting in public, and yet here I am, admitting it in public. The goal this time around is filling out those pesky completion marks, y'know, those little icons that show which bosses you've beaten with which character. It sounds simple enough until you remember there are over thirty characters, each with their own list of marks, and roughly half of them are "Tainted", harder versions...and one of them is Jacob and Esau. I'll get Dead God eventually, I keep telling myself, usually at 1AM after I chose to pick up ipecac again.

The difficulty is honestly the whole point, though. Isaac never feels unfair (The Bloat excluded) as every run comes down to your choices and your mistakes. Every death is a lesson, even if that lesson is "don't pick up the pill you don't recognise" for the hundredth time. What keeps me coming back is that no two runs are ever the same. One run you're a laser-firing, flying demigod who deletes bosses before they've finished their intro, and the next you're crawling through the Depths with half a heart and an item that makes your tears go backwards. The highs are some of the best in any game I've played, and the lows are... memorable to say the least.

Am I any closer to Infinity Percent? Technically, yes. Have I gotten any better? That's up for debate. There's a special kind of dread in finally reaching Mother or The Beast with a character you've been struggling with, knowing one mistake sends you straight to... well not hell but I guess the Basement. But when that unlock finally pops up, it's pure serotonin. Now if the game could please stop giving me Curse of the Tower, that would be grand.

My partner and I decided that it was finally time to dig out the PS2 and get it running again, which, as anyone who's tried getting this 20+ year-old piece of hardware working after sitting in a garage, is never just as simple as plugging it in. After getting the right adapters, memory cards and replacing a controller that had completely swapped its face button inputs (weird I know), we finally heard that glorious PS2 startup sound and it felt like heaven.

The reward for this was Super Bust-A-Move 2, also known as Puzzle Bobble. It's such a simple yet enticing loop, aim, bounce off the wall, match, and watch half the board dissolve. Alongside the previous log of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (Read it if you haven't!) Battle mode turns this into the most competitive thing in our house at the moment. It's simple, bright, and the perfect "rematch!" game before someone (me) becomes too tilted to continue with the losses. The PS2 is staying plugged in, and I'm not sure our TV will survive it.

I'll just come out and say it: I'm a Tetris addict. Always have been. If there's a version of Tetris on a device I own, I've played it far longer than any sane person should. So a game that mashes Tetris together with Puyo Puyo, SEGA's colourful blob-matching puzzler, was always going to get its hooks in me. The story mode is fine and very charming, but let's be honest, that's not why any of us are here.

Battle mode is where Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 really shines. Stacking a perfect tower, waiting for that line piece (yes I know the correct term is I-piece, shush), then launching four lines of garbage at your opponent never stops being satisfying. And then there's Swap mode, where the game flips between Tetris and Puyo mid-match, and my brain has to switch gears fast enough to keep my board alive. It's frantic, it's loud, and it's easily the most fun I've had shouting at a puzzle game in years. My only complaint is that I still can't chain Puyos to save my life, but don't worry SEGA, it's not you, it's me.

Vintage Story wants you to work for it, quite literally. It's not as simple as punching a tree to then turn into a wooden pickaxe that you'll use for 2 seconds until the next upgrade, like other block-adjacent games. You get a rock, and you chip away at that rock with another rock until it becomes a slightly more useful rock. Then spend an evening forming clay pots pixel by pixel in your fashionable pressed-dirt hut because you'd like somewhere to store your flax before winter comes and kills you. On paper, this is pure tedium for tedium's sake. In practice, it's a beautiful time-sink where you look away from your desktop and it's suddenly 10pm and you're hammering copper into a chisel with a genuine sense of pride, before promptly scalding yourself as you forgot to put tongs in your off-hand.

The trick is the tedium always points at something tangible. Your world will become something you are attached to as you've put in genuine time and effort to create your little village, and every step is progress to something greater to show off to your friends. I highly recommend getting a group together, giving yourselves distinct roles in the community and working towards making a living, breathing town full of workshops, farms, fauna and dead Bowtorns. This game will bounce anyone looking for something easy, but I see that as a feature that plays into this game's greatest strength, progression.

Those drifters better leave me alone while I'm trying to get gravel, mind.

An idle game has taken up enough of my time to deserve a log, I thought this would never happen. To clarify, I am a college lecturer (that's UK College, not US College), and Melvor Idle lives on my phone. This in turn has resulted in the death of my free time. 15 minutes between lessons? Time to fish. Sat in the staff room having lunch? I can chop some trees. It's one of those rare mobile games that never demands attention via pop-ups or premium currency, it just quietly asks to be checked on, and the checking is the killer.

It's the old-school RuneScape with the running-around chopped off, leaving nothing but the satisfaction of watching your skills go up. There's something enormously thrilling about knowing that while I'm delivering content on game design, a tiny version of me is out there mining mithril on my behalf (hell, he's doing it while I write this very log!)

The Master Collection Vol. 2 arriving to shelves finally gave me the perfect excuse to start the whole snake saga again, which is a bit like buying some brand new boots and immediately going to the shops in your slippers. This series totally earns it though. Kojima set off to make a game that feels like a classic spy thriller, alongside a sandbox stealth experience all on hardware that struggles to draw corridors without warping the walls. This should have been a project that doesn't stand the test of time, but honestly? It absolutely does. Is some of it clunky? Yes. Am I defending the clunk? Also yes.

The bosses are what really survive the years. Every single one is a puzzle dunked in unforgettable personality and extremely cheesy quotes, and half of them would rather cheat than fight you properly. Psycho Mantis (Psycho Mantis?) is still the bar when it comes to bosses in this series. I've known about the controller port my entire life, and I still grinned like an idiot when it happened.

I've been waiting for Big Walk to release ever since the reveal trailer dropped around two years ago now. Seriously, this game had me hooked, lined and sinkered ever since I laid eyes upon those... ducks?... emus?... weird avian thingys. Let me tell you, it lives up to the hype and then some. We got Big Walk on release day and spent around 20 hours hiking around the hillsides, making sure every challenge was completed before we put it down. Honestly, I think there was only one puzzle I didn't completely like, and it was mainly due to tackling it in an obtuse manner.

The atmosphere of this game is perfect. The environments and lighting are stunning, to the point where you can easily enjoy getting lost in the forests for hours. There's actually a minimal amount of non-diegetic music, which surprised me. All the tunes come out of a little radio, but it makes vibing out a choice, and a fun one at that. I do wish the day-night cycle was a tiny bit longer on either end, but that's just me nitpicking.

I implore you to go and buy this game if you have the people to play it with. It is contending for my GOTY, and I've only had it in my hands for about a week. Big Walk is going to be one of those games that becomes more of a tool for people to relax and hang out with the people they care about, and it handles that in spades.

Oh yeah, and the ending made me cry too... so it's got that going for it.

Spelunky is my personal "granddaddy of roguelikes". Granted, my friends and I are absolutely terrible at it, but these games are so endlessly addictive that even if it's the 15th time you've landed on spikes and ended a 40 minute run, you'll still come climbing back up that rope for more torturous fun. I actually used to use Spelunky as a case study for some of my old Game Dev classes I taught, and I highly recommend the "Boss Fight Book" on the development of this wonderful game.

Anyhow... Spelunky 2 takes everything that I adore about the original and gives it a new coat of paint. It's one of those perfect sequels that highlight and enhance everything the original brought to the table. That pesky shopkeeper may always hate me, but it's a love hate relationship. Promise...

I tend to keep my distance from first-person shooters. Something about the motor control needed to actually hit your targets is something I've never been particularly good at. Ask anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a team with me in any modern shooter. Trust me.

This makes it all the more bizarre that Echo Point Nova hooked (sorry for the pun) me the way it did. There must be something about skating around, using RPGs and wind blasts to launch myself into the stratosphere, then pulling off a 920 in slow motion while quick-scoping a robot knight that really speaks to me on a personal level.

I'm still a fair way from 100%, but this will be one of the few games that earns the title of "podcast game", something I can happily throw on while listening to an episode in the background. A prestige all of its own, I'm sure.

I am convinced that the designers of this game actively hated children. Donkey Kong Country has the perfect cheerful presentation, letting you imagine all these cute animals heading off on a fun little quest to save their bananas, before immediately pulling back the curtain and showing you Donkey Kong's favourite finger disguised as game balance. Despite this, I can't get enough of the DKC series. The controls are some of the tightest in the platforming genre, the collectables are enticing enough to make you fully learn and master each stage, and there's a reason this soundtrack has got millions of views on YouTube. Want to know why I think so many people love this game? Simple: I'm 80% certain this game started its life as some kind of psychological warfare conducted by Rare.

The Katamari series holds a record for me, and it's an odd one. Over the years, I've been gifted a bunch of plushies, posters, clothing, and knick-knacks, but Katamari was the first video game series that I actively sought out merchandise for and purchased with my own money. Of course, Katamari is one of those games that's just niche enough that having someone point out my cousin-covered T-shirt will actively make my day a little brighter, knowing that this cute, charming little game has found its way into so many people's hearts.

I'll admit, simulation games aren't a genre I have a lot of expertise in. I've done my fair share of Euro Trucking, don't get me wrong, but it's a vibe I've always struggled to fully connect with. That being said, I've always had a soft spot for SimCity. Watching your dinky little town grow into a hustlin' and bustlin' megalopolis, all while that sweet jazz blesses your eardrums, is one of the most relaxing feelings you can have in a game. It's incredibly easy to let the minutes turn into hours as you manage housing needs, build public services, and make sure all your advisers are reminding you what an ultra-cool mayor "Sir Stinksalot" truly is.

My neighbours really do need to stop asking to store their trash here, though. Coolville deserves better than that.

OutRun 2 is my go-to arcade game. Whenever I find myself in the rare occurrence of being at an actual arcade, I always locate the OutRun machine and spend most of my money on it. There's something about this classic that no other racing game before or since has managed to match. Coast 2 Coast includes all of that arcadey goodness from the original release, while adding a bunch of new stages and bringing a career mode as well. This game is in desperate need of a modern release, as I doubt many people want to go through the hassle of getting it set up on modern machines using bizarre GitHub pages and YouTube tutorials (I mean, it didn't stop me though, as having this beauty of a game easily available is almost too much power.)

Right, let me paint a picture for you...

It's my first time teaching. I've got a class full of anti-social teenagers that don't want to talk to each other. Some are staring out the window, some are whispering about pubs after class, and a few are totally being "discreet" playing CoolMathGames. I need to get them all engaged with a single activity. Ideally, talking together. As a group.

That is exactly what WarioWare Inc. was built for, and if you give me a few paragraphs, I'll tell you why.