Sep 22, 2026 - digitalily

A few months ago, I was reading some random post on reddit on the subject of 'games you wish you could play for the first time again,' and while I think a lot of the times this question is asked, people will respond more out of a sense of nostalgia, i.e., 'I wish I could experience X like I did as a kid again' or something like that (of which I am certainly no stranger), in this particular thread I found a lot of responses that leaned more towards the kind of game where, there is before knowing, and there is after knowing. Games that don't necessarily have replay value, as once you understand the game enough to be able to tackle it again, it's almost like you know too much, so all you can really do is move on. In particular, a reply was calling out Blue Prince, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Chants of Sennaar as being at the top of their own list, games I was familiar with and for which I easily understood the user's reasoning (although of these, Blue Prince certainly has more gameplay variation). They also had Outer Wilds on this list, and that was new information to me. ...

Sep 3, 2026 - digitalily

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Jul 1, 2026 - digitalily

I originally encountered Higurashi no Naku Koro ni via some late 00's anime recommendation image. I remember being generally aware that this thing existed, and I ultimately went into the 2006 Studio DEEN adaptation not really knowing all that much about it. As someone who is really not a big horror fan (especially back then), little did I know that I would soon be up at 3:30 AM terrified of the view outside my window onto the street because I just watched the end of the Onikakushi arc and was half expecting someone to be standing out there saying "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry...". Looking back, there's a lot to be desired in the presentation in the DEEN adaptation, but it's hard to say that it didn't succeed in conveying at least some of the VN's stellar atmosphere. I'm not here to discuss that, however. While there are a few things I'd like to write on Higurashi at some point, for now I just wanted to focus on one little part of it that I wasn't quite aware of until having finished the original VNs, something which had been put off for far too long. ...

Jun 12, 2026 - digitalily

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Jun 8, 2026 - digitalily

Blue Prince is a game that I had heard small rumblings about for quite a while, with several people online speaking very highly of it, but I never knew too much about what exactly it was. What I did know was that it was in a decently long early access, and was being made by someone who at the time was very much a non-developer, but that was about it. It wasn't until a friend had started playing & loving it, even going so far as setting his desktop background to a stylized blueprint sketch of the manor, and him having roped a couple others in that I finally sat down to give it a try. Around this time as well, a streamer who I'd known of since long ago had on several occasions spoken about how it was easily his favorite game of all time during his Silksong let's play, so hype and expectation was there. And so, while on a vacation flight around the holidays, knowing it was a good 'Steam Deck game,' I flew up to 30,000 ft. and launched it. Immediately after watching the opening cutscene and walking into the first randomly drawn room, taking in the sounds and atmosphere, I closed the game with a firm understanding that I absolutely had to play it full screen on my desktop, and so I waited....

Jun 1, 2026 - digitalily

I remember seeing the original Hades featured prominently on Steam a few months after it left early access and found the art style fairly appealing, and after diving in and getting immediately hooked, and eventually sharing many a run over voice calls with others playing at the same time, I knew it was something special....