Hello, party people.

I generally struggle with writing intros for these, and the post is already long enough without the inflated word count, so let’s hop right in.

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Kirby and the Forgotten Land

This game feels like something I would have completely lost my mind over if I was 2 decades younger. All I wanted when I was younger was a Kirby game that played like Super Mario 64.

However, Nintendo seemed hellbent on never actually creating a proper 3D Kirby game. I say this because they’ve been making 3D Kirby games for 20 years now, and have continued to make them all traditional 2D platforming adventures. All except Kirby’s Air Ride, which is a racing game that Nintendo decided to release in the same year as Mario Kart Double Dash. I’ve never been able to make sense of that one either.

As such, by the time I was 14, I’d completely given up on ever seeing Nintendo make a 3D platformer starring Kirby. So imagine my surprise when, at the age of 30, I saw Nintendo do just that. However, it’d be an understatement to say Kirby and the Forgotten Land came out a little too late because I wasn’t exactly rushing out to play it when it launched last year. My desire for this kind of thing sort of dried up after 16 years of waiting.

Regardless, Mir picked the game up for me while it was on sale as a surprise. That was really sweet of her, so Kirby and the Forgotten Land was the first thing I tackled in November.

And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a lot of fun playing through Forgotten Land. The first 3 worlds in particular are stand-outs as the game introduces a boatload of different mechanics that help to make each level feel unique, and memorable. This is also aided by how each level sees Kirby exploring the ruins of some new location. That gave me a really good sense that Kirby was actually exploring a space that could exist, instead of playing through a series of linear platforming challenges.

However, it’d be disingenuous to say I enjoyed all of my time with Forgotten Land. The midpoint of the game is where it runs out of truly new ideas, which makes playing through the remaining 3 worlds a bit of a slog. There are a few highlights, mostly in world 6, but it just isn’t exciting to see many of the game’s better ideas repeated several times over with very little variation.

I also wasn’t a fan of the somewhat curtailed list of powers available in Forgotten Land. There’s only 12, with 2 of them ostensibly being joke powers. This saw a couple of staple powers like Rock, Beam, and Electric being cut from the roster entirely, which was a little disappointing. Mostly because having those additional powers would help to keep the gameplay feeling a little more varied.

Even though I was a little more focused on the negatives here, I’d still give Kirby and the Forgotten Land a thumbs up. Just keep in mind that’s like a 6/10 thumbs up, as opposed to a 9/10 thumbs up. It also has 2 player co-op, so it might be one to play with the young-ins if you’ve got ’em.

Mind Over Magnet

Next up was Mind Over Magnet, which is the game that Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit fame spent the past 3 years making. I covered this one in a Steam Next Fest preview post earlier in the year, and was fairly optimistic based on what I’d experienced in the demo.

So, how did the full game stack up to those expectations?

I hope this doesn’t come across as mean spirited, but I felt like the full game was kind of missing a certain je nai se quoi. It’s competently put together, introduces a flurry of different ideas, and has excellent pacing so you’re never likely to get stuck on 1 level for longer than you’d like. However there also isn’t really anything about it that makes me want to tell other people to rush out and play it. To paraphrase another Youtuber, Yahtzee Croshaw, Mind Over Magnet is missing that X-Factor that’d really make someone jump over the moon for it.

Sorry, Mark.

If it’s any consolation, I thought the inclusion of developer commentary that can be accessed after you finish Mind Over Magnet was really cool. That was kind of like playing through a whole hour-long episode of GMTK as Mark explained his thought process on designing certain levels, or why he decided to do something a specific way.

Guilty Gear Strive

While I’ve been a lot more focused on Street Fighter 6 over the past year and a half, I haven’t completely given up on Guilty Gear. I was still occasionally playing Strive during weeklies, and if someone wanted to run a bracket I’d join in. However, it’d been a very long time since I properly played Strive in any capacity beyond this much more casual fair.

That all changed with the release of the most recent balance patch at the very end of October. This introduced a whole host of changes for just about the entire cast, while also introducing the return of Dizzy (now known as Queen Dizzy). I already wrote a lot about my first impressions of Dizzy, which you can read here. The short version is that I think she’s fun to play, but she feels a little weak. As it stands, I’ll probably still rely on May any time I actually want to win because May is strictly easier to win matches with.

Speaking of May, she got a handful of really nice buffs this patch. I haven’t played her a whole bunch, but the changes feel fairly impactful, and make certain aspects of her a lot more dangerous this patch. Specifically, her 6H is now just as monstrous as it was in Seasons 1 and 2, albeit for a completely different set of reasons. Either way, May stonks are up, though I’m sure she’ll continue to be the least played character in the game due to how poor her reputation is.

Tactical Breach Wizards

I just got through writing 2 different articles about Tactical Breach Wizards (a guide, and a review), which you can read if you want my extended thoughts on the title. The short version: I like it a lot.

The primary reason for that enjoyment is the moment to moment gameplay. I really like how each turn in Tactical Breach Wizards is about trying to parse how to use your limited tools in the most effective way possible. It makes successfully completing a level in 1 or 2 turns feel really rewarding. You only get there by your own understanding of the game’s mechanics instead of through lucky critical hits, or overpowered character builds. There is a place for games like that, but I’m glad Tactical Breach Wizards feels more like Chess than it does Fire Emblem.

Definitely give this one a look if you’re at all into tactics games. I have a feeling Tactical Breach Wizards will really resonate with people who’re up for what it’s putting down.

The Rise of the Golden Idol

Finally, we’ve got the sequel to one of the better detective games of recent memory.

Similar to Tactical Breach Wizards, I just covered The Rise of the Golden Idol in a review, so you can read that for my extended thoughts.

The short version though? I liked the game. I think if you enjoyed the original Golden Idol game then you’ll really gel with the sequel. It makes a couple changes to improve on the formula of the original, but it’s still got all of the elements that made the original game so damn fun to play.

If you get off from having “ah ha” realizations while investigating a puzzle then I think you owe it to yourself to check out The Rise of the Golden Idol. It won’t disappoint, and the overarching mystery ends up being fairly compelling to finally unravel too.

Okay – that’ll do it for November. I’m not sure what December will end up looking like, but I will be writing another Games of the Year post at the tail end of the month. I’m not sure if I’ll release it before we flop over to 2025, or if I’ll drop it in the first week of the new year. Either way, that’ll be something to look forward to.

Until then, thanks for reading, and stay safe out there.

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