Welcome to crunch time for gaming in 2025.
We only have a few months left in the year, and I feel like I’m nowhere close to playing all the games I want to play before my end of year coverage comes late December.
But damn it, I’m sure going to try.
I’ll have more coverage of other games I’m playing in the coming weeks, but I’m using today’s blog to shoot off some quick thoughts on several indie games I’ve started in the past few months but haven’t finished yet. I think at least two of these four have at least an outside shot at being in my top 10 at years end. I think there’s an audience out there for all four of these, even if one in particular is becoming a struggle to get through.
With those spicy teases out of the way, let’s talk about some video games! Here are my thoughts on The Séance of Blake Manor, Quartet, Ball x Pit, and Deep Rock Galactic Survivor.
Quartet
Quartet is a JRPG with inspirations from Octopath Traveler and many classic SNES JRPGs as well. The game opens up with four different introductions for each of its characters that you can play in any order. From there, all of the characters in the game eventually come together to form one party.
I have been poking away at this game for over a month now, but I’m only 12 hours in. There’s a reason for that. I see the vision for Quartet to get great, but in my view, it is taking way too long to get there.
I didn’t expect to be mildly down on Quartet after my first few hours with the game. I was all in as I played my first chapter. In that chapter, I played as Ben, who is a cook, but has hidden magic powers as well. This chapter was absolutely hilarious, but it also had more serious story hooks that had me seriously intrigued with what direction things would go. The game also had some nice worldbuilding that felt somewhat unique for the genre.
From there, I played the other three chapters, and while I mostly enjoyed those chapters, I felt my momentum falling off a little bit. As I’ve continued to play after that, my progress has grinded to a halt.
There’s a few reasons for that. First off, I think the opening chapter set me up to think that this entire story and world would be way more unique than it is. Quartet settles into much more common JRPG themes as you continue to play. It’s not bad, but not at all where I thought it would be.
I have also been a little annoyed with the lack of quality of life features with the storytelling in the game. Quartet has no codex/story recap feature despite the fact that it has a whole lot going on. Not only do you have four different starting characters, but they all come from different parts of the world that view magic in entirely different ways. There are also a lot of characters that disappear for long stretches that are easy to forget about. Admittedly, the fact that I am a game hopper definitely hurts me more than it would here, but games with a lot of characters and lore need to be better. Even if I was playing this game without touching anything else, there would still be some annoying adjustment periods of trying to remember exactly how each society in the game functions since you spend a fair bit of time away from each character. The game has zero way to catch yourself up if you forget something or spend some time away from the game.
I’ve also quickly gotten tired of the battle system in the game. In these opening 12 hours, there has been almost nothing interesting going on with the combat at all. There are a few mildly decent elements when it comes to managing your “AP,” which is how you use your magic and skills. The guard command in the game restores actual AP, so this is the rare JRPG where I actually guard somewhat regularly. You also gain AP back with basic attacks. Since Quartet gives you some options to restore AP without items, this allows me to let loose a little more in battle than I would in some other JRPGs. But that’s about it. Otherwise, I still wouldn’t say I have enough skills to put together any particularly saucy strategies in battle. Especially since it is still a somewhat slow process to restore AP in comparison to how fast you can use it up. So, I still conserve my actions a lot.
Now, from everything I’ve heard, I’m not truly experiencing the Quartet battle system in full yet. Once I have all eight characters together, apparently, I’ll be able to swap at will, and characters regain AP while in reserve. So once I have everyone, I think I’ll be able to get really creative and put together some cool combos in battle, and AP management will get much more interesting.
This sounds legitimately great, but it also makes me a bit annoyed. Quartet is a game that can be completed in 20 hours and takes around 30 hours for a “completionist” run according to How Long To Beat. As I said earlier, I’m 12 hours into the game right now.
Considering the length of the game, I should be well into the “good stuff:” by now. But it seems like I won’t be there until at least over halfway through the game, even with a more meaty run of it. That’s absolute insanity to me.
I also don’t love how linear the game is so far. I have heard that the final chapter opens up big time, but once again, why the hell do I have to wait that long for the good stuff? This might be more of a personal taste thing, but I don’t love super linear JRPGs unless the game is really delivering. I really like Final Fantasy X. The Midgar section of Final Fantasy VII is one of my favorite stretches in any JRPG ever. Quartet isn’t even close to delivering on a level for me where I’m totally cool with being on rails.
I’m doing my best to try and get through this game 20-30 minutes at a time until I get to the “good stuff.” I really hope I make it. I’d put Quartet at a 6.5 right now, but I can definitely see myself going up to a 7.5 or 8 once I get to the end. It just unfortunate that it’s such a slog to get there.
Deep Rock Galactic Survivor
I’m not going to lie. Absolutely nothing about this game looked appealing to me at all when I first saw it. I never played Deep Rock Galactic, so the name value meant nothing to me, and the actual world didn’t look like something that would appeal all that much to me.
Also, I loved Vampire Survivors like anyone else, but it was also one of those games where I felt like I was done with the formula after I finished with it. Vampire Survivors is really addictive, but I never felt like it was deep enough for it to be more than a great distraction.
When the very strong reviews hit for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, I had to see for myself, and I’ve been very glad that I did so far.
Deep Rock is basically Vampire Survivors with mining. You are a miner and being chased by all sorts of different enemies that you have to fight off in order to survive and escape. You don’t actually shoot your guns in this game, You acquire weapons, and they all fire automatically. The key to the game is smart movement. Giant hordes of enemies will come at you, and if you let yourself get trapped, you will get into danger fast. Movement is also vital because you need to level up to survive, and the only way to level up is to collect experience orbs that dead enemies drop. This leads to a lot of on the fly decision making to both avoid death and find your way around some of those dangerous hordes to collect the exp that they dropped.
The big way that Deep Rock makes its movement a bit more interesting than Vampire Survivors is with the aforementioned mining element. There are rock walls everywhere that can keep enemies away from you, but that also slows you down. Planning out how to use the mining element of the game is really important. When I first started playing the game, selecting upgrades that increased my mining speed felt silly, but now it’s one of my favorite upgrades to have. There’s nothing like escaping an enemy horde by mining through a big rock wall before they can do it.
There are also some other small twists to the formula that I enjoy. My favorite is one that basically makes the game resemble Helldivers II. After each boss in the game, you are given 30 seconds to make it to an escape pod in order to move on to the next part of the level. Sometimes, you have to fight your way through a lot of enemies or get through numerous rock walls to make it. There’s also a fun risk/reward element of either trying to get as much EXP as possible in those last 30 seconds or playing it safe and getting into the escape pod a few seconds earlier.
There’s also an excellent upgrade system that makes every run feel worth something. You can equip new gear in between each run and upgrade your stats.
The level ups in the middle of runs are also pretty well done. I don’t feel like I’ve seen tons of room for super interesting builds yet, but there are still a lot of fun decisions on what upgrades to pick with each level up as you go. I’m still pretty early in the game, so I might unlock way more options for cool builds as I keep playing.
I think my only fear at this point is that the game won’t have the juice to stay this good for the entire way. Since all the levels are underground, I wonder if the level design will get stale fast. I’m hopeful that the devs have some tricks up their sleeve as the game goes on. Either way, they really nailed the formula here, and I’m impressed at how many of their own touches they were able to add in as well. This is on Xbox Game Pass, and is the kind of game that service was made for, in my opinion. It’s fun to play a few runs in between other games, but I haven’t been sucked in all the way yet. I’d currently give the game an 8, but an 8.5 is very in play.
Ball x Pit
Somehow, despite feeling like I was done with the Vampire Survivors formula, I’ve actually played two games with clear inspirations from it this past month. Outside of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, I’ve also been playing the sensation that is Ball x Pit.
Ball x Pit has clear Vampire Survivors inspirations, but the actual gameplay is way more inspired by brick breaking games like Breakout.
Essentially, various enemies slowly come down the screen at you. Any that make it to the bottom of the screen will hit you for damage. Take too much damage, and the run is over. You fire various special balls to hurt enemies that have different effects. Choosing which balls to use and which you will level up and later combine with each other is the big roguelike hook here.
The gameplay itself is pretty basic, but Ball x Pit does enough to keep it interesting. Your attacks bounce around off walls and enemies like a pinball, so finding shots that can get in the cracks of where enemies are and then bounce between them is key. The upgrades and balls you pick can really change how you play in other ways as well. For example, one upgrade makes balls shoot at 70% speed, but it increases their speed every time they bounce off an enemy or a wall. So, I tend to keep my character on the edge of the screen and immediately shoot my shots off the wall when I have this, as an example.
I think what impresses me the most about the game is the variety in the characters that you can choose from. Each character in the game has their own little gimmick, and quite a few of them drastically change how you play the game. One character is actually a married couple. Their shots are weaker, but you have double the shots (each character shoots in the opposite direction of each other). When I use this character, I love to find upgrades that really up the number of balls I can shoot, as those upgrades get even more effective with double the balls. I just unlocked a character that has shots that enter the field from behind the enemy, which is a complete mindfuck and totally changes how I play. I did not expect every run to feel different in a game with a formula that feels like Breakout, but Ball x Pit is pulling it off.
After each run, the game has an entire mini city builder element that is pretty interesting as well. You can place various resources in your city, and in-between runs, you have one attempt to literally send your various recruits to bounce off of these resources in order to harvest or mine them. It’s one of those things that is so odd, you kind of have to see it to understand it. You can also make buildings that increase your stats or unlock new characters with these resources. Each time you start a building or upgrade one, you also have to bounce characters off of it to complete construction. It’s pretty hilarious and rewarding.
But I don’t always love this city-building element either. Early on in the game, when you only have a few characters, it’s pure blue balls (pun… intended). Your “harvest clock” lasts mere seconds, and everything is over before it begins. This problem rectifies itself a little bit as you recruit more characters and get more upgrades and time from each of them. But even with that fixed, I still have some issues. The biggest is that you can only launch your allies from one spot in your city. This means that every time you want to upgrade a building, you are probably going to want to move it closer to the launch spot. Once it’s upgraded, you’ll then likely want to move it back to wherever you had it. It’s a slightly annoying process.
Even though I have my issues with it, I still respect the hell out of it. It just shows how hard the developers tried with literally everything they did. The boss fights are another example of this. They are all way more creative than any brick breaking game that I have ever seen. They didn’t mail it in anywhere, and that rules. Luckily, their efforts were not in vain, as I’m having a very good time with Ball x Pit. I’d give it an 8.5 at this current moment.
The Séance of Blake Manor
I’ve talked about this before, but I’m constantly in search of video games that can make me feel like a detective.
When I play a first-person shooter, I don’t come away from the game thinking that I could actually be a supersoldier if I put my mind to it. But a good detective game can actually make me feel like I could be one if I wanted to.
Unfortunately, most games with detective elements out there merely have you cosplaying being a detective more than actually being one. You “solve” cases, but mostly on the rails.
This is why The Seance of Blake Manor caught my eye immediately when I saw a trailer for it. This is a detective game where you go to a manor to find a missing person. This manor is relatively crowded due to a much hyped seance that will be taking place there on October 31st (I’m happy for the devs that they got it released before Halloween). One of the people there for the seance is obviously the culprit, and it’s up to you to figure it out.
Blake Manor is an actual detective game. After some quick introductory cases, you are given a good amount of free range to explore the mansion and investigate everyone there for clues and to figure out who abducted or killed the missing person. You can talk to people about literally dozens of topics or pieces of evidence. You can explore the mansion and find your way into seemingly everyone’s room if you are meticulous enough. Each character in the manor has their own sort of mystery to untangle about why they are there and what their true motives are. As you complete what I’d call the main storyline in the game, you discover facts about the criminal that allow you to eliminate suspects. It’s truly exciting stuff, and a bit of a dream come true for me.
As much as I’m enjoying the game, there is one element of the game that feels like it’s going to make or break everything for me, and that is the time mechanic. You only have three days to solve the mystery. Based on a post from the developers, it looks like the story will be altered depending on what you end up doing with your time.
Luckily, there isn’t a ticking clock as you walk around the manor. Time only passes every time you decide to look at something or talk to someone about a topic. So, if there are four different letters on a desk in a room, one minute will pass each time you read one of them. A minute also passes each time you choose to talk to someone about a specific topic.
At certain points of the day, different events start. For example, at 9AM, you can have breakfast. I ended up eating with someone, which took up 21 minutes, but I was able to gain some really valuable information when I did so.
Usually, with a detective game, it’s all about taking your time and looking at literally everything you can in order to find any bit of info that there is. With Blake Manor, you have to be selective about what you do. If you decide to look at a relatively non-descript painting on the wall, it eats up what could be a valuable minute.
On one hand, I like that this mechanic is keeping me more focused. I can’t emphasize enough that there is kind of an insane amount of investigating you can do in this game. The number of conversation topics alone means I could eat up hours just talking to every character in the game about everything. I feel like with all these options, it’d be really easy to get lost in the sauce and end up meandering around only to discover a lot of extremely useless bits of information. The time mechanic keeps the pacing of the game tight, and doesn’t let you fall into any of the classic “go to every icon” traps that you might fall for in a AAA open world game.
But it can also be undeniably frustrating at times. The letter example I said earlier is a great example. If I’m in a room and looking for a specific letter that a character wrote, it sucks that I might have to waste a minute on every letter in the room in order to find the right one. As I play the game, I’m slowly figuring out some tricks in order to save time. For example, I rarely investigate books when I see them in rooms now unless the book’s cover looks interesting in some way. The books with more nondescript covers don’t tend to ever have anything. But there’s also a part of me that wonders if I’m wrong sometimes.
I think I’m coming down slightly on the positive side of the time mechanic so far. As frustrating as it can feel at times, I think it’s important that it keeps the pacing of the game strong. The story and many little sidestories are also pretty well done so far. There’s also tons of details and charts in the menus that are really helpful for keeping all of the information straight, and it is greatly appreciated. I’m only a few hours in, but I am already starting to feel pretty hooked on this one. It’s hard for me to give a score right now, but this one feels like the one out of these four with the most potential to make my top 10 at the end of the year.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider following me on social media, or checking out The Big Nerd Gaming Podcast!
The Big Nerd Gaming Podcast on Youtube
Big Nerd Gaming 
Leave a comment