Week of 23 Apr 2023
“What is heaven, without knowing bliss?”
Achievements Earned In:
This was very much another update week, with two of my games having recent increases to their achievement counts. I tried to start one of them first, but the actual content hadn’t dropped yet, so I instead purchased the new “Better Save Soul” add-on for Graveyard Keeper. As has happened the previous two times this had occurred, the hardest part of this set of achievements was remembering what the frick I was supposed to be doing. The mechanics and flow of the game, the day system, where in the world I stashed my goodies... But, each time it’s not too long until I’m able to get enough of a grip on everything to muddle through. This time, the new content is all about being able to pull souls out of the corpses Donkey delivers every day and using them to make use of remote access options for your various crafting areas. That’s…not helpful and I didn’t even bother using them. In fact, this seems to have been the most inconsequential update to the game, and the new storyline and related quests were quite short. Maybe about five hours, tops? There’re some nice nuggets of the overarching lore for the various NPCs in the village, but that doesn’t relate to achievements, so who cares! I heard someone mention this was the final of these updates, so here’s hoping I can finally leave this one dead and buried.
Achievements unlocked: 125 (+16) | Completed
Nothing smells better in the morning than burning soulless flesh.
If you’d asked me which of all the games I’ve played recently would be most likely to get additional achievements, the horror-adventure title Saint Kotar would have been darn close to the bottom of the list. I had completed this one back in January during a 1-month free subscription to Gamefly, where I tried to play some of the (easier) unplayed games from 2022 (according to TA), so I didn’t even own the game. This was quickly remedied by picking up a dirt-cheap code on eBay. But it’s still wild they felt they had the audience to warrant the update since, as of typing this up, only 83 people have unlocked a single achievement in the game! So, I was shocked when someone on Discord turned my attention to the added three achievements a week or so ago. Like, what?! Apparently I dodged a bullet, as the game actually has already been updated previously, but didn’t receive achievements. Why now with the release of “The Void” they felt they needed to, I haven’t the foggiest. But, luckily, once the actual content went live on Sunday, I was able to quickly jump on Monday after finishing up Graveyard Keeper and quickly unlocked all three achievements. They were all related to extended endings the developer had added to the game, so I simply had to load up my saves from my previous playthrough and quickly went through them. You get two for getting the “True” good ending, while repeating the bad ending unlocks the third. Nice and quick!
Achievements unlocked: 45 (+3) | Completed
Listen, sis, I’m happy to talk about the curse and generational trauma of our family…but could you maybe put on your face first?
With the one game I wanted to complete from the “leaving Game Pass” list done, I had a lull that I wanted to fill with a title from the library that might leave soon. Funny enough, Shadowless Edge had suggested a month or two ago that I do Loot River. I was…hesitant, because about a year ago he’s also the reason I completed Unsouled. That experience made me scream so much I’m not sure my throat ever recovered (eff you, Kamas and trueform Ammu). But, turns out this game was much easier than that one. Gameplay is all rougelite action, with actually a lot of parrying and dodging, like Unsouled, but it’s not quite as punishing. There’s also a bevy of accessibility options that makes everything even easier! The big gimmick is that each level of the game takes place on floating platforms that you shuffle around like a sliding puzzle to move around the area. You can use this during gameplay to cheese combat scenarios since most enemies can’t traverse unconnected platforms, or just avoid them altogether. I was, at first, worried there might be some really tough aspect to the completion, but really I easily did the hardest achievement early on and it’s all downhill from there! If you wreck it like I did, most of the completion is just grinding knowledge to unlock all of the armor, weapons, spells, and headgear. It’s not too bad, honestly. I’m really glad I got around to this one, since it’s been about a year since it joined Game Pass and that means it’ll very likely be on the chopping block soon.
Achievements unlocked: 15 (+15) | Completed
Ahh, this really takes me back to my time as a gravekeeper.
Highest ratio: 8.30
Help the villagers (Graveyard Keeper)
Return to the beginning (Graveyard Keeper)
Lowest ratio: 1.21
Incineration (Loot River)
