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Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, King Of Fighters 2002 UM, Recettear, Amnesia: Memories, AI: Somnium Files

Donut County, Avowed, A Little To The Left, Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island, Balatro, Double Dragon Neon, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping, Unpacking, BathHouse Creatures, Spiritfarer, Minami Lane, Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Recently I downloaded GOG to claim some free games and noticed the amount of discounts there are. I also have Steam, which is my oldest gaming account and Xbox Game Pass which offers a Netflix-esque deal of playing a good amount of games with just paying a monthly fee and no additional cost, and this is without counting Itchio which I use mostly for TTRPGs but there are some videogames there. And these are the accounts I have, there are others like Epic and Humble that also offers games and some videogame companies decided create their own stores like Bethesda and EA. Healthy competition is important and the offering of different benefits is important, as a consumer is your job to compare and decide what benefits you the most, like being loyal to one store or diversifying your library. But the problem is that the more you divide the ways you can buy a game, the more difficult is to obtain that game, and the more annoyed the consumer can get. There is a fine line between healthy competition and make people make a absurd amount of accounts just to get the best offer, specially if then they become "death accounts" once the game they were looking for is finished. This is worse in the TV and Film industry, not get me wrong, where there's suscription money involved, but I think it is a similar issue. Again, I think Healthy Competition is overall good, specially if you offer a better service than your competition, but creating a store for the sake of creating it doesn't benefits anyone, on the contrary, makes finding the game worse, specially with store exclusives. I don't know the solution to this, again, it is a fine line, but i think videogames should be easily available for everyone, regardless of store.

I played Gacha Games for a long time, usually free but I had put money in some, and usually for games I really really like. But that doesn't mean that I ignore its reputation, nor the critics of the genre, I even agree to some degree to those. So I was surprised to the recent rise in popularity of Umamusume upon its Global Release. What is it doing differently than this other gacha games? I watched a couple of videos of the game and I think I get it or at least, I have a theory about it. I think it is making mechanically what many gacha gamers do emotionally and instinctively: getting invested into a character. Games like those in Hoyoverse and others do it with story, while others rely purely in their design of their characters. Umamusume relies on the time invested on the character, on making them great, that you naturally grow an attachment to them, making you invested in them, even in a pure gameplay perspective. I don't think this is the only game that does it, but the combination of their unique concept of horse girls that makes a shocking first impression plus the fact that the game is actually interesting gameplay-wise, made it the success it is showing. All of this to say, maybe I'll give this game a shot, or at least, keep watching how streamers are losing their minds over Umamusume and their discovery of the gacha games genre.

It is a very hard definition, because everyone finds different things "cozy". But there is a vibe to them, something everyone agrees is cozy. Pastel colors, farming, cute animals, sometimes even romance, and non violent. If it contains some of this caracterists, it is cozy. I like some cozy games, but it is difficult to say that I love the genre at its totality. Because sometimes, they all feel the same. It has to make something novel to like it, like an interesting story, a interesting mechanic or a combination of both. Maybe I have to try more to make a definitive decision of whenever I like them or not.

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Slay The Princess - The Pristine Cut