Football Manager 26 was free on Steam this past weekend so my current playthroughs of other games got derailed as I lost a good couple of days to it, fully feeling the addiction seeping in again. I would still recommend FM 2024 over it all things told, but I have to admit the new tactics engine in 26 allowing for different formations in and out of possession is both realistic and a lot of fun to play with.

Otherwise before and after the weekend it’s been more of Death Howl. I’m having a good time with it so far. The art is absolutely beautiful, a gorgeous minimalistic but expressive pixel art in a very distinctive muted color palette. I have some complaints here and there with the gameplay but mechanically the turn based Soulslike grid-based strategy deckbuilder genre soup is a nice mix and the combat is very challenging but doable. I’m constantly just about scraping by between bonfires. On the deckbuilding side it’s not a game that puts a premium on creativity so far, and instead it seems more constructed like a series of small puzzles. Each zone has its own set of cards and its own set of encounters and it’s up to you to find the “correct” deck and approach for each encounter.

The story has been pretty mediocre so far, which is unfortunate. It’s ostensibly framed as this Orpheus tale of a mother going into the spirit world to rescue her child from death, but it’s very obviously actually a tale of a mother’s journey towards accepting the death of her child, with each zone representing one stage of grief. Maybe it hits different if you don’t pick this up right away, but me personally I’m mostly drumming my fingers as the story unfolds, waiting for the penny to drop for the protagonist.

It’s not really been story heavy though in fairness, so the majority of playtime is spent in battles, and those are still fun.