Full Steam Week 20: What if That, But Like This?
Some interesting spins and one psychedelic Sasquatch Sex Amulet.
Twenty weeks! That’s almost five full months of Full Steam, my project to play every game in my Steam Library. Or, 139 games. Or - my best guess - about 70 hours, or almost 3 days, of actual play footage on YouTube. So with a long weekend coming up, I guess you could start playing all my videos on Saturday, and by the time you had to go back to work on Monday, you’d be sick of me! Or some more interesting statistic.
You can follow along with my progress here on Headcanon and on this YouTube channel.
Previous Full Steam recaps:
Vectronom
In which I try to stay on the beat.
When I was a junior in college, I wrote the fine folks at Harmonix Music Systems a letter asking if they could please find it in their hearts to send my roommate and I a copy of their new game Guitar Hero. I was an aspiring comedy writer at the time, and my letter describing how we would rock harder than anyone ever rocked before - and how we were big fans of their earlier games Frequency and Amplitude - tickled them so much they sent us copies of the game and the plastic guitar peripherals. This is all to say, my love of rhythm games goes way back. Vectronom is an interesting take on the genre; instead of matching beats in a sort of play-along, Simon Says way like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, it adds a platforming element to the mix. It become less about playing along and more about recognizing rhythms, timing and patterns. It’s great to see a new approach to the music game, and I really enjoyed this one.
Light Fairytale
In which I can't find the Mako reactor.
I can’t say that the PS1-style JRPG Light Fairytale really clicked with me. It’s checking a lot of boxes - big evil empire, mana points for magic, turn based battles, save points - but nothing surprising. The only modern innovation I picked up on was a key for “A.R. Goggles,” which puts an overlay on the screen that points out NPCs, exits and current objectives. It’s a nice quality-of-life thing (as opposed to flipping back and forth to a map or a player guide) and I can see how it would allow for some unique puzzles.
Fuzz Dungeon
In which I touch the Sasquatch Sex Amulet, and nothing is ever the same again.
I frame a lot of these mini-reviews as “this game reminds me of this other game” or “this game is a new take on this existing genre,” but sometimes I run into a game that defies those comparisons by being nothing like anything I’ve ever played before. Fuzz Dungeon is one of those games. It’s a 3D platformer, I guess? And these are some parts of it that remind me of Second Life? But it’s also charmingly meta, and strikingly ugly/beautiful, and filled with interesting writing and non-sequiturs. There are games that are compared to the experience of taking psychedelics because they have bright colors and weird images and spacey music, but I think Fuzz Dungeon more accurately puts you in that surreal (or hyperreal) psychedelic headspace.
Dead in Bermuda
In which I wish Hurley was here.
When I think of survival games, they’re often tied up with movement: exploring a map, running around to different resources, dodging monsters or wildlife. Dead in Bermuda takes the genre back to more of an adventure game style, in a way that reminds me of web-based games I played in the early 2000s. I’m surprised there’s not a mobile version of this game, because it seems like a good fit for taking out of your pocket in a long line, giving your survivors a few tasks, and then coming back to later. But as a desktop game, where you sit down, load it up and spend some time with it, it didn’t really work for me.
SkateBIRD
In which I fakie ollie kickflip pop shove it, or whatever the kids are saying these days.
I played SkateBIRD for a few minutes when it came out on Xbox Game Pass, and when I got it in a charity bundle, but didn’t really spend any time with it. For Full Steam I decided to dive in for half an hour to really give it a shot. In those few minutes, it struck me as a quirky bird-based clone of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater; after spending more time with it, it turns out to be both more and less than that. More because the bird skaters, music and writing really are charming, and cute collectibles and things like a “pet your bird” option feed into a fun, playful vibe. Less because the controls are clunky and not very inspired. The controls feel like an afterthought compared to the sheer amount of original music and bird species to choose from. For a game that I got essentially for free, this is perfect! But I gotta say, I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for it.
Endless Space 2
In which I explore a thousand datapoints of light.
Does more information make you a better ruler? In the real world, where you have a cabinet and advisors and subject matter experts to guide your decisions, probably; they can be the steady hand on the tiller while you get on with ceremonial head-of-state and bully pulpit stuff. Speech at New Factory Ribbon Cutting Simulator wouldn’t make a very fun game, though. Being awash with data in 4X and simulation games is somebody’s jam, but I don’t think it’s mine. I love the first hour or so, where you’re founding new cities and exploring a map, but after that, I just feel bogged down. Endless Space 2 (and Endless Legend, which I played last month) have an interesting mix of this macro empire-wide stuff and micro in-the-trenches stuff, like designing units, manipulating elections and tactically managing specific battles. It’s a novel approach that means there’s always something interesting to look at over here, and I’m wondering how it will work 10 hours into a playthrough, when you have a galaxy-spanning empire to manage. If you can hand wave the stuff that’s boring to you and focus on those interesting tidbits, I think I would dig it; but if you get slogged down making every decision from your capitol out to the outer rim, I would bounce off pretty quickly.
EXAPUNKS
In which I feel like a dumdum.
I got EXAPUNKS in a Humble Bundle of programming games, which teach you increasingly challenging programming concepts as you play through the game’s narrative - whether that’s building a factory, running a company, or being a hacker. I enjoyed Human Resource Machine when I played it way back in January, so I was looking forward to EXAPUNKS – but the learning curve ended up being just a little too steep for me. I really love the aesthetic, including the zine-style manual that the game encourages you to actually print out and have in hand for reference, but the step from hand-holding “type in these commands” to no-more-training-wheels “figure it out yourself” was a little too large and came a little too quickly for me.
*****
Listening: The New Breed (IA11 Edition) | Jeff Parker
I’m a huge, huge fan of International Anthem, the Chicago-based label that introduced me to a ton of great artists like Makaya McCraven, Jeff Parker, Alabaster DePlume, Anna Butterss and jaimie branch. 2025 is their 11th anniversary, and they’re rereleasing some of their “essential, foundational” albums under the IA11 banner. It’s a great excuse to go back and listen to these albums again (I had “The New Breed” on repeat the year it came out and it was one of the albums that gut me into more contemporary jazz/improvised music) or listen to them for the first time.
Reading: 14 Million Books Later, Jim Butcher Thinks His Wizard Detective Needs a Hug | Benjamin Mullin | The New York Times
Also Reading: Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars | Nate Rogers | The Ringer