2026's Game Journal

UH OH SCARY OPINION ALERT I DON'T REALLY LIKE SLAY THE SPIRE 2 THAT MUCH!!

Though I guess that isn't entirely true, I actually enjoy a LOT about Slay The Spire 2 over the first game, particularly in it's polish. Lots of new shiny bells and whistles that honestly really do add a whole lot more... but the balancing, ohhh the balancing...

I honest to God think that the balancing of Slay The Spire 2 is so bad that until it expects anything less than perfect of me I just can't feel the want to play it. There's no reason basic encounters should be dealing 32 damage on your second turn as early as act 2. It's felt like it's entirely up to luck whether or not I'm ever going to get a defensive card to the point where I'm passing on incredible attack cards just for a common that does nothing but give me 9 block halfway through a run just due to the crazy incoming damage every other turn. And even when you do have defense so many enemies in act 1 are centered around gaining strength, so every turn spent blocking damage instead of dealing damage is way too punishing when before you could "take your time" with most encounters as long as you had the block to take no damage. It's brutal. As early as Act 1 I cannot find myself wanting to do anything but heal at every single campfire because of the amount of unavoidable incoming damage, meaning no upgraded cards going into Act 2, which is a total momentum loss. I'm much more casual when it comes to deckbuilders, I really really do not want to have to hyperoptimize every single run I play, that's what ascensions are for in a game like this.

As far as gameplay changes I DO like though, the new characters are pretty cool. Regent has a lot of potential but even after a couple runs I cannot wrap my brain around an additional resource to manage, I never manage to get any cards to generate stars so most of my runs with him have stalled out and died pretty early. Necrobinder is on the other side though, really fun and quite easy to get ahold of. Even despite struggling to form a proper "build" with her, it remains my most played character in the sequel easily.

Multiplayer is also GREAT. Genuinely a fantastic edition to the game. It made a whole lot more sense after I learned that the Slay The Spire board game was quite literally, more or less just a coop version of the video game (awesome)

At this point I have 26 hours in the game, and I keep feeling the PULL to play more and more but almost every single run leaves me feeling hollow, like it ended WAY sooner than it should just due to factors out of my control. I probably have a combined total of 250 hours in Slay The Spire 1 between when I originally pirated the game, my hours on steam, and the hours on my phone. I found ascension difficulty progression to be unfun so I never played much past A10 but I can confidently say Slay The Spire 2 is way more difficult than it should be, at least on A0.

My one and only singleplayer win. Relic starved, elites way too scary.

Alright so I've seen way too many people call this a "gooner game" to the point where it's a little concerning. At most you could maybe suggest the creator has something of a guro fetish, but beyond that no the game is not for "gooners" just because it features sexuality as a theme along with it's many other themes and overall tone. It just feels very...dismissive.

Anyways, with that absolutely insane opener for a game most people have probably never heard of out of the way, what even IS Beyond Citadel? It's a boomer shooter, specifically what I would currently consider to be my favorite boomer shooter at the moment. I am very fascinated with the game's gunplay... Reloading is all manual, cocking your weapon is manual, and guns can degrade with use which can cause your gun to JAM. It sounds annoying, and the gameplay feels a bit "jank" at first but man oh man did it click with me quick after the first act. Level design past the third act hasn't been the greatest, though I didn't even realize there was a fullscreen map until the end of act 4 so that solved most of my issues anyways.

The story and lore of this game has also been pretty interesting and I'm still kicking myself over skipping all of the dialog and ignoring the story until about the third act, atoning for it by going back and replaying previous levels just to read all of the npc dialog. I might even find myself playing the game that came before this one just for some better context. Generally speaking I'm not one to care much for narratives in games so I thought I wouldn't miss out on anything... OOPS!

This is a game I played entirely on a whim, I remember seeing it a few months ago posted by the developer on twitter and today I thought I'd give it a try.

Very disappointing though tbh, the actual "rhythm" aspect of the game feels pretty awful. Even going back to try and fully understand how the game is meant to be played I couldn't find myself able to complete a single stage without taking damage and the only way I could earn the "medal" for completing a stage quickly was by completely ignoring the rhythm and brute force mashing the attack button.

I get that it's a Touhou fan game but the bullet hell is far too chaotic for a game like this man... And I don't have much else to say.

brute force = speed

HOLY. SHIT.

First thing I will say for starters... I was not excited for Mewgenics. At least not until less than a week before it's release when I found out it wasn't pure roguelite, and acted more like a Darkest Dungeon 1 campaign. I was at most anticipating it's release because it was the big new Edmund Mcmillen game, I GOTTA play the newest Edmund Mcmillen game... I mean c'mon, I did a presenation on this guy in 6th grade. That being said, I really was *not* going too crazy over his last few releases. The End is Nigh was a good game, a great game even... but it didn't scratch the Super Meat Boy itch I was hoping for when it launched, leaving me ultimately disappointed. Then there was The Legend of Bumbo... which wasn't really good at all. But enough about those games I'd rather talk about peak

And peak it is! Mewgenics might actually be my game of 2026 unless something REALLY blows me away later this year. Sorry Slay The Spire 2, you've been outclassed by cats.

For starters, I think Mewgenics may actually be the first roguelite I've played that does turn-based tactics really well, and not only does it do it well it does it FLAWLESSLY. I'm very fatigued by "roguelike elements" at the moment but I was so relieved to find the game feels so much less like the usual "roguelite" and more like Darkest Dungeon as previously mentioned. It's actually kind of FUNNY because I am excited over the progression in this game for the same reasons I was hooked on Umamasume for that brief period a several months ago, each run you do will contribute to literal future "generations" of runs that come after, depending on how you choose to breed your cats. I vastly prefer this style of roguelite progression to the Hades' "Collect 2,000 currency and dump them into permanent upgrades" I feel like I'm actively taking part in the work towards an objective this way, rather than paying someone else to do it. Very fun!

But that isn't even the actual gameplay... Gameplaywise, Mewgenics may actually be one of the best turn-based tactics games ever made, fullstop. If you're unfamiliar with the turn-based tactics genre, that's too bad because all I can think of as a comparison point is something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Xcom. So imagine those two games you don't know but with a whooole lot more emergent gameplay. It's actually one of the things Mewgenics does best. It feels like almost every encounter is a sort of "puzzle" and the environment and my abilities are the tools to solve it! Much like Tears of the Kingdom if every solution wasn't a hoverbike or extensive use of the "ascend" ability.

However, there is one major complaint I have that has really been bringing me down the last few times I've played the game: consistency. Every class in Mewgenics has (practically speaking) limitless potential, however what they don't all have is consistency. In particular, mage, thief, and tinkerer are the big three that *always* feel like a gamble every time I take them on an adventure, even cleric to a degree. Every time I take one of these classes it feels like I'm running 70% odds that they're going to be practically useless beyond their basic attack because so many of their class abilities are useless without the right synergies to make them good. Of the last 4 clerics I've brought, the best class ability I've picked up was the one to clear debuffs in an area and all of the other clerics were only useful because I thought to bring along the teleporter item which lets you move to any space once per battle. Now this COULD be a simple "skill issue" but it's worth mentioning I'm near the end of act 2 and haven't lost a single run yet. It's just annoying never wanting to bring classes I like the idea behind because there's a good chance I might as well have only brought 3 cats instead of 4.

There's also a smaller issue where the game hates my computer and occasionally never launches past the initial loading screen PLEASE FIX THE GAME I WANT TO PLAY IT!!

As of writing this I only JUST unlocked a third room.