Well, September was a bit of a shitshow. Albeit, that wasn’t a total surprise. I had a family vacation and a wedding to attend, which ended up eating up quite a bit of time throughout the month. Ergo, I didn’t have as much time to dedicate to…any of this at anywhere near the same capacity as I did in August.
Either way, October looks to be quite busy. There’s a Next Fest happening at the end of the month, and I’ve already received 2 dozen emails about games that’ll be participating in the event. So look forward to that coverage later in the month.
Otherwise, I’ll be attempting to continue playing through all of the 2026 releases that I thought looked neat before we hit year-end. I didn’t think it’d be that big of a deal to fall a little behind back in February, but a handful of titles have absolutely demolished the majority of my gaming time throughout the year.
Anyway, that’s enough about me: let’s get into what I was playing throughout September.
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Fields of Mistria
As a bit of a surprise, I continued playing Mistria throughout the majority of September. It’s not exactly the kind of game that I’m known for playing, but I was fairly taken with it after my initial impressions last month. Mistria’s systems all feed into one another in a way that makes the complete package compulsively playable in the same way Stardew Valley was. As such, I found the majority of what was on offer quite compelling to putter around with as I built my farming empire.
Though, it wasn’t just the mechanics of Mistria that hooked me: it was also the writing. I don’t think it holds a candle to the likes of Disco Elysium, Baldur’s Gate, or VA-11 Hall-A, but it was a cut above what other farming games have on offer. Heck, I managed to play through the entire first year of in-game time having only seen 1 repeat line of dialogue. That’s fairly impressive given how often these games fall into a routine of repeating the same lines of dialogue ad nauseum at the player to fill dead air.
That said, my opinion on the game overall soured quite a bit as I made my way through years 2 and 3. Most specifically, I really didn’t enjoy how much of the game’s progression loop was inextricably tied to mining. In fact, it was so bad that I repeatedly made jokes to Mir about how my farming game with a bit of mining became a mining game with a bit of farming mixed in.
So how did we get here?
In my eyes, the problem is twofold:
- Mining takes too long
- Quests ask for too many resources
However, both issues stem from the same source of pain, which is that mining is super fucking boring. As such, I didn’t appreciate being asked to waste more, and more of my time on it.
As for why I think mining is boring: the short answer is that it is incredibly tedious. Even when you have the appropriate tool for the area that you’re in, rocks take multiple hits to break. This means mining is a very time consuming activity. As a direct result of this, you’ll need to dedicate large swaths of every single day to mining if you actually want to make any progress on most of the story quests, which sucks because slowly breaking rocks for 12 minutes isn’t my idea of a good time.
It also doesn’t help that the only other thing to do while you’re down there is combat, which is just as poorly conceived as Stardew’s combat. Enemies deal barely any damage to the player, take several hits to kill, and you’re stuck using the same 3 hit combo for the entire game. This means that defeating enemies is just as mindless, and boring as digging to deeper parts of the mine.
Yay.
And that’s all without having mentioned how the quests to repair, or improve various aspects of the town balloon into asking for hundreds of items. Seriously. Some of the earlier quests ask for 20 pieces of stone, but the later ones are asking for 100 pieces of glass, 30 obsidian crystals, 100 pieces of refined stone (aka 1000 stone). Most of this borders on excessive, and necessitates that the player devotes an ever increasing amount of their time to the mines to collect all of the appropriate resources.
Obviously 1 bad apple doesn’t ruin the bunch, but having to spend upwards of 50% of my game time on mining during years 2 and 3 until I finally finished all of the quests really soured my experience with Mistria. I don’t feel like I’d have minded as much if I was able to continue engaging with a balance of activities, but mining is so time consuming that it often felt like I had to choose between making progress on Mistria’s story, or playing the parts of the game that I actually thought were fun. Hence, my opinion on the whole experience soured as I chose to spend more, and more time with the least interesting part of Mistria.
Oh – also the story’s conclusion feels super rushed. Spoilers, I guess, for the conclusion to Mistria’s story: you end up freeing an evil witch from her magical prison, she makes a big deal about how she’s going to get her revenge, and then she helps you to seal a magic portal that’s threatening to blow up the town. This all happens in back-to-back cutscenes, and felt a bit like having the last third of a book shoved down my gullet in the span of 10 minutes.
Either way, I still think Fields of Mistria is good for what it is, but I would recommend that you stop playing once you’ve had your fill. Don’t be a fool like I was, and continue playing because you think that your effort will actually be paid off in a meaningful way. It won’t.
Valheim
The other big time sink in September was Valheim, which I know several of my fellow bloggers have also been playing after its 1.0 release earlier in the month.
For my part, I’ve been playing alongside my wife who really enjoys the game. As such, she’s usually the one telling me what we need, and where to go since her game knowledge well outstrips my own at this point. Though, that’s not totally surprising given that she’s beaten everything up to the Ashlands solo.
We also decided to start a fresh save file, which has been a bit of a double edge sword. On one hand, it’s neat to see all of the aspects of the game that have changed since the last time that I played it. For example, the new mob types have been a pleasant surprise, as are the story cutscenes. They do a lot to make the game feel more…epic (I think is the word) than it used to in Early Access.
However, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bored returning back to the start of the game. I actually enjoyed the additional wrinkles of challenge offered by the later biomes, so being forced to slowly work through the Black Forest, and Swamps again was…well it was certainly something.
Though, we are playing on hard combat difficulty with additional elite spawns, so I can’t just go around parrying everything like I did in our first playthrough. Most of the enemies deal way too much damage for that, so I’ve had to balance my approach in combat instead of relying solely on the damage boost from attacking a staggered enemy.
Also, if you’re at all curious: parrying in Valheim isn’t just a matter of parrying with the correct timing. It’s also dependent on your gear. Basically, your max HP and armor are added together, and if that value exceeds the damage of an attack that you try to parry then you’ll successfully parry the attack. If the damage exceeds that value then you’ll eat shit even if you parried correctly.
It’s kind of a silly system, but it ensures that all players will be forced to upgrade their equipment if they want to continue being able to parry attacks. Lord knows I wouldn’t bother upgrading my armor otherwise since I almost exclusively play Valheim by parrying everything.
Regardless, the new additions to the early-game are fun, but I’m definitely looking forward to the new content that I’ve never played through before. Miranda has warned that it’s a complete ball ache, but I guess we’ll see what the Ashlands are all about when we finally work our way back through the Mistlands.
Rhell: Warped Worlds and Trouble Times
The final game that I want to cover from September is Rhell. It’s one that frequent readers will remember from my February Next Fest coverage. At the time, I likened it to the recent Zelda title – Echoes of Wisdom – but expressed how much more flexible Rhell’s tools were for solving puzzles. That’s because you’re asked to construct all of your spells by combining different systemic parameters together, and almost every element in the game’s world can be interacted with. The result is an absolute smorgasbord of potential answers to every puzzle that you’re presented with.
As an example of exactly how flexible Rhell can be I have to spoil one of the puzzles. Skip the following 2 paragraphs if you’re already interested, and want to experience Rhell completely unmolested.
Okay – so there was this Lake that I found with an entrance to a laboratory hidden beneath the water. The “intended” solution for entering the laboratory is to complete a quest on the other side of the map, which gives you a hint about the passcode for entering the lab. When you properly input the passcode the lake will drain, and you’ll be able to enter the lab. Easy peasy.
However, I didn’t know that when I first discovered the lab at the bottom of the lake. So instead of using the “intended” solution, I turned myself into metal, sank to the bottom of the lake, and walked through the entrance to the lab.
Yes – Rhell is that flexible. I don’t know for certain, but I’d hazard a guess that every puzzle in the game has multiple valid solutions. That means there is a lot of room for player expression in as far as how you go about solving puzzles, and that perfectly encapsulates why Rhell is such a joy to play. It’s a game that actively encourages, and rewards players for thinking outside the box, and provides a wide suite of tools to help facilitate that kind of play.
That said, Rhell is a little too open for its own good. I say this because I ended up wandering aimlessly for almost 7 hours before I actually made any headway on the main quest. I had hints disabled, which was part of the problem, but I also missed a very important early game spell because it was obscured by the minimap. As such, I had a lot of trouble making progress until I’d collected several other spells, which gave me an alternative avenue to solve the puzzles that I was getting stumped by.
I have to imagine that a more…well adjusted person (for lack of a better term) probably would’ve written the game off well before that point. Thankfully, I’m not 1 of those people, and I had a mostly positive time with Rhell as a result. There were a few times where I was pulling my hair out in frustration, but I think that’s mostly my own fault for over-engineering a solution to an otherwise straightforward problem. Such is the way of things when the player is given this much flexibility to solve a game’s puzzles.
All said, I’m standing by my earlier recommendation of Rhell that I made after playing its demo during Next Fest. The flexibility of its puzzles make them intensely fun to crack open, especially when you engineer a solution that feels like it wasn’t intended.
Review Round-Up
20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes
Just the one for September: 20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes.
I mean, there isn’t much else to say there, right? The name already perfectly describes exactly what you’re getting in much the same way as the original 20 Small Mazes did.
And, just like its predecessor, 20 More, Somehow Even Smaller, Mazes is a great little puzzle game. Bonus points for being free, so it’s even easier to recommend to everyone since the barrier to entry is buried somewhere underground.
Indie Spotlight
As we roll into the end of the year, it feels like we’ve hit peak AAA season.
That said, there are still a handful of additional releases to keep an eye on through the final few months of 2026 including, but not limited to…
Planet Zoo 2
I don’t know that I’ve ever written about Planet Zoo at length here because it’s the kind of game that’s not especially interesting to write about. That is to say, Planet Zoo is exactly what it needs to be, and delivers the kind of experience that players would want from a Zoo Tycoon style game. In fact, Frontier’s proprietary Cobra engine is so well suited for creativity that players can spend endless hours slowly crafting (just about) anything that their imagination can conjure.
That in mind, Planet Zoo 2 is probably going to be another slam dunk for them. It boasts a lot of the same capabilities as the original, but the big selling point for the sequel is the addition of avian, and aquatic enclosures. This’ll give players even more ways to build their perfect zoo experience, and share it via the Steam Workshop.
Prophet Margin
The second pick for October is Prophet Margin, which I featured in a full-length Demo Dive earlier this year. I hadn’t planned to write a full article about it, but I was so impressed by the demo that I needed to let everyone know about how cool it was.
The gist of Prophet Margin is that you’re creating supply lines between settlements with the ultimate goal of sending a particular type of good as a sacrifice to a deity’s temple. Every single time a good moves through a settlement its value increases, so your goal is to convert a particular good as many times as possible across the supply chain before you ultimately sacrifice it. This’ll earn you more points, which will help you to eventually win the game.
The whole thing is brilliantly designed, and very satisfying to puzzle through. I lost several hours playing through the demo during the June Next Fest, and have been eagerly awaiting the full release.
If I’ve piqued your interest at all then you can read my Demo Dive for additional details about the game, or play the demo for yourself on Steam. Prophet Margin is definitely a game worth keeping your eyes on, especially if you’re a fiend for a good Puzzle game.
Deep Dish Dungeon
Finally, we’ve got Deep Dish Dungeon which is a Co-op Survival game with Metroidvania elements.
From what I can gather, you and a few friends will explore a handcrafted dungeon solving puzzles, and collecting new equipment (or abilities) as you delve further, and further into the bowels of the dungeon.
I know I’ve been getting my survival fix via Valheim, but I thought Deep Dish Dungeon looked like it’d be another game that Mir and I could play through together. We haven’t yet tried the demo, but this might be another one that y’all end up hearing about in future because the different mix of mechanics looks like the perfect blend of features for the 2 of us.
And with that, I’m going to call it. Thank you, as always, if you read to the end. I know I said it at the top, but there will likely be quite a few articles this month as I try to cover games for Next Fest. I’ve gotten even more emails about games that’ll be participating over the past few days while I was writing this so…I’ve got my work cut out for me.
Either way, I hope to see you in the next one, and stay safe out there.
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