There are times when I wonder why I even formulate plans. Nothing ever goes to plan. 

Well – okay, that’s not true. Things go mostly to plan. But that’s a lot more frustrating for me than things going completely off the rails. At least when something is an unmitigated disaster you can convince yourself that it was totally out of your control. It was doomed to fail from the get go.

When it’s just a single tiny detail that goes wrong though? Hoo boy. That stings. Even if things were equally as out of your control as they were in the apocalyptic alternative scenario.

I say all of this because I had every intention of writing, and finishing a full guide for Slip ‘n Slime last month. Obviously that didn’t happen. As it would turn out, writing meticulous instructions for how to solve 113 different puzzles with hints, and video footage is a lot more work than I originally anticipated.

It’s not even fun work. It’s a lot of tedious work. Kind of like data entry, honestly. Do this, then this, then that, then this other thing. Wow. Such stimulating creative writing. My favourite.

For what it’s worth, I don’t just mention this to bitch about it. Don’t get it twisted – that’s definitely part of it. This guide has…not been as fun to write as when I simply vomit up all of the relevant information that I have about a game into a single, organized document.

No – the whole reason I bring this up is because of my incredibly flawed way of doing things. Which is to say, I have a hard time moving onto the next written project until I’ve wrapped up the current one. In other words, I’m terrible at managing myself, and that’s why I got almost nothing done in November.

I need a robot brain, or something to help keep me organized. That or a clone of myself that can act as my manager when it comes to actually keeping on top of articles.

These are all excuses – I know – but it’s also the reason why I haven’t been getting as much done lately.

Anyway, I did still manage to play a few things in November, so let’s get into those:

Hades 2

Unsurprisingly, Hades 2 was the big ticket item for November. I ended up playing through the entire main story, the epilogue, and earned all of the game’s achievements throughout the month. I also earned the in-game vanity achievement for completing a 32 Fear run which didn’t have a Steam achievement for some reason. It was honestly more of an achievement than some of the other things on the list if I’m being honest.

All flexing aside, Hades 2 is definitely my game of the year. No surprises there. It delivers a very well crafted experience on almost all fronts, and some of the changes that SuperGiant made with the sequel work a lot better for me personally. For example, I liked how mana was added as a way to give players additional verbs in combat. That helped each weapon feel a lot more distinct, and provided far more options for players to cycle through instead of simply spamming a few really powerful options.

The changes to dashing were also a huge plus. You dash into a sprint, instead of having multiple dashes, which completely changes how enemy attacks were designed. There’s far fewer homing attacks, and you’re rewarded with much larger counterattack windows for knowing where to stand. That’s a stark contrast from the first game where timed dodges, and animation cancels were king.

Having said that, the one area where Hades 2 is indisputably weaker than its predecessor is its writing. Even with the additional scenes that were patched in after launch, I don’t think the story of Hades 2 works particularly well. For spoiler reasons, and because I don’t find the shortcomings of the story all that interesting to write about, I’ll simply say that Mel feels like a passenger instead of the protagonist, especially during the story’s climax.

Don’t take my misgivings about the story too heavily though: the rest of the game is fire. I wouldn’t have earned all of the achievements if I thought it was dog water. The art direction, music, game feel, and gameplay are still top notch even if the story sags a little.

Anyway, that’s where I’ll park it for Hades 2 since I need to cover half a dozen other games.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

The original Citizen Sleeper was quite a surprise for me. It’s one of few Role-Playing games that embraces the Tabletop roots of the genre to create a story with multiple branching paths even in the face of failure. I’ve always found this to be far more interesting than simply forcing the player to be successful at every turn, and it’s a big part of why games like it, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Disco Elysium have resonated so strongly with me.

As such, I was really excited to play Citizen Sleeper 2. This was doubly true after I’d played through the game’s opening chapters in a demo during the October 2024 Next Fest. That demo showcased that the sequel would have the same fail-forward attitude as its predecessor, while introducing self-contained adventures with their own stakes. Best of all, it’d be launching in January so I could immediately dig into the sequel in only a few short weeks.

So why am I writing about it in December? I wish I had a good answer for you. I bought Citizen Sleeper 2 at launch in January with every intention of starting it, but didn’t. I really don’t know why it took me this long to finally get around to playing it.

For what it’s worth, Citizen Sleeper 2 was good. Really good. It was the kind of good where I’d sit down to play for an hour, and then realize that I’d been playing for 6 and needed to make dinner. Citizen Sleeper 2 just had a way of drawing me in with its many interwoven plot threads. It was akin to when I’m reading a good book, and get completely sucked into seeing what’ll happen on the next page. The main difference here being that Citizen Sleeper 2 can adapt in response to your (limited) range of actions, meaning the player has some agency in how the story actually plays out.

The other thing that I really liked about Citizen Sleeper 2 was the inclusion of more sources of friction. It always bugged me how you can completely remove your dependence on Stabilizer in the first game, which effectively gave the player an unlimited amount of time to re-roll their dice while fishing for positive outcomes to every problem.

The same is not true in the sequel, and I think it is all the better for it.

For almost the entire duration of the story, you’re on the run from the game’s villain Laine. This forces the player to change their base of operation every few in-game days, which limits how many times they can re-roll their dice. In essence, you’re forced to roll with the punches, and make use of suboptimal rolls which I think leads to more exciting moments of success when an improbable roll actually works in your favour.

It also means that your experience playing the game will actually be congruent with the stress that the player character is experiencing. That’s a nice bit of ludonarrative (play-story) harmony that I can get behind.

Obviously, that won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I really appreciated how Citizen Sleeper 2 leaned into its predecessors strengths, and made meaningful changes to address its shortcomings.

All said, Citizen Sleeper 2 is phenomenal. It’s an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys actual role-playing in their RPGs. Doubly so if you enjoy excellent writing, and aren’t totally put off by the idea of having a bit of a fire lit under you for the entire experience.

No, I’m Not a Human

For the next game in November, I need to give a shout-out to Kayla from Kay Talks Games. I’d never heard of No, I’m Not a Human until I read her article about it, and I decided that I needed to play it for myself.

But what is No, I’m Not a Human? In as few words as possible: it’s a game about determining if someone is a human, or a monster. You try to keep the humans alive, and you unalive the monsters. The only problem is that all of the monsters look human, which makes the process of telling them apart from one another a lot more challenging than it ought to be.

To say that No, I’m Not a Human trades on paranoia would be an understatement. The game seems to delight in making sure that the player is constantly questioning themselves. And just when you think you’ve finally figured it all out, BAM – you’re hit with a curveball that’ll send all of your assumed truths into question. No, I’m Not a Human is a very unsettling game, and I don’t want to say anything more about it because it (unfortunately) works best the less you know about it.

One thing I will say, if you decide to give it a look then I’d recommend doing a single playthrough. There are multiple endings to the game, but I think it works best when the player is completely paranoid. That paranoia won’t subsist across several playthroughs, which, I think, makes the game a lot less interesting to play on repeat attempts.

Still – No, I’m Not a Human is interesting, and that’s often enough for me to recommend a game to other people.

MotionRec

Shifting gears now, we’ve got MotionRec.

As is true for an increasingly large number of games I cover here, MotionRec was 1 of my favourite titles from a Next Fest (June 2025). It released a few short months later, and it’s great.

The elevator pitch for MotionRec is that it’s a Puzzle-Platformer where you can record your movement, and then replay it somewhere else in the level. For example, if there is a wide gap that you need to cross then you can record yourself walking along the ground for the distance of said gap, approach the gap, and play your recording. You’ll shoot clear across the gap, and can continue onto the next puzzle.

MotionRec is dead simple to understand, but it does so much with its core mechanic. I think all told there are around 200 different puzzles, and very few of them feel like repeats. Every time I thought I had a firm handle on things, MotionRec would introduce some new mechanic alongside a dozen new puzzles, and I’d be staring at my screen trying to work out how to solve things all over again.

The game also features a flexible difficulty system. If you’ve played Celeste then this will sound familiar to you: there are optional collectibles in several of the game’s levels. These collectibles make the puzzle in question more challenging to solve, but can be skipped. As such, you get a lot of control over exactly how challenging you want MotionRec to be. You can simply go for minimum viable completion, or you can get all 115 collectibles if you really want to push yourself.

I don’t typically enjoy Puzzle-Platformers because they tend to be too simple as Puzzle games, and too rigid as Platformers. MotionRec is neither – it’s a fantastic, thoughtful Puzzle game, and some of its movement based puzzles feel great to solve. I highly recommend it.

Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road

This game is sheep food. Delicious sheep food.

Monsters are Coming is a lot like mindlessly eating a bag of potato chips. And sometimes that’s exactly what you need. You just want to turn your brain off, and watch pretty colours happen while you’re listening to a podcast after a long day.

That said, I do find Monsters are Coming a lot more fun than Vampire Survivors, or its various derivatives. The inclusion of a Tower Defence style city that you need to defend adds an almost Deck-Builder element to the game. Trying to choose complimentary towers, and place them such that they can plow through the oncoming horde of enemies scratches that same part of my brain that games like StarVaders, or Monster Train 2 tend to service.

Though there’s no getting away from it: this is still just a Bullet Heaven. While the particulars of Monsters are Coming worked for me, I don’t think it does anything to revolutionize the subgenre, nor do I think it’ll change anyone’s opinion on it.

That said, Monsters are Coming does have a fairly compelling price tag, and is fun in the same lizard-brained way that Vampire Survivors is. Consider this a very soft recommendation provided you’re already into this sort of thing.

And with that, we’re through what I played in November. Well, mostly. There’s another game called Baseless, which releases in a few days that I didn’t cover here. Fingers crossed I can manifest a written review prior to its planned release date. It’s neat. Stay tuned for the full review.

Otherwise, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one.

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