Sheena 🥞🏳️‍⚧️

@pancaketime.bsky.social

120 Followers 722 Following

30-something trans woman hopelessly addicted to JRPGs. I try to write sometimes Blog: https://pancaketime.home.blog/

Image of a white haired anime boy in a green jacket leaning over the player perspective character on the ground while the sun shines behind him
Free Play These three are all about the love of play. Don Doko Don: Taking a silly game seriously | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster Kimimi locks in on a light and airy PC Engine arcade platformer and in doing so upturns its hidden depths. Free Game Fridays: Shy Guy Surfing | PancakeTime Pancake tucks into a nifty little fangame that marries an endless runner format to hover mechanics (Further Reading: Adam W on Sonic Robo Blast 2). Angeline Era Trusts You | Gamers with Glasses Spencer Johnson contemplates Angeline Era as a holistically sincere work (Further Reading: Emily Price on Angeline Era).
Screenshot of the Steam bundle information for Trails Beyond The Horizon featuring hilariously overpriced DLC such as a mini art book for the same price as the full game
Screenshot from the Ace Attorney Trilogy where Phoenix Wright, a lawyer in a courtroom, wearing a blue suit with a photoshopped santa hat, slams his hands on the table. The text box reads “Almost Christmas means it wasn’t Christmas!” but with “almost” and the last few letters of “wasn’t” crossed out so it reads “Christmas means it was Christmas!”
A heat map infographic of New South Wales, Australia, stating that Sydney has had its equal hottest December day on record at 42.2 degrees Celsius this afternoon
Screenshot of the sleeper hits section from the website Backloggd, featuring - Pipistrello & the Cursed Yo-Yo at 4.1 average rating - Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma at 3.9 average rating - Look Outside at 4.2 average rating - Despelote at 3.7 average rating - Boku no Natsuyasumi 2: Umi no Bouken-hen at 4.5 average rating
Screenshots from The Simpsons of Homer Simpson arguing with a parrot in a pet store, saying “that’s where you’re wrong, pal. It’s not enough to want a cracker! You have to earn it!”
Photo of the Australian Box art for the PS2 game Hansel and Gretel with some bad looking 3D models of the titular characters featuring strange proportions and awkward facial expressions. There is a price tag of $15 AUD from the second hand store CEX in the top left corner
Loading screen tip from the video game ZeroRanger which reads "orange is called orange because oranges are orange"
Screenshot of my Backloggd currently playing games list, with Hollow Knight, Professor Layton & The Unwound Future, Shenmue, and The Hundred Line: Last Defence Academy on it
Screenshot of the title and first lines of the Wikipedia page for Betteridge's law of headline which reads: "Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge"
Text snippet of a Backloggd video game review that reads: “This has been my recurring series of reviews where readers like you gift me games off of my steam wishlist in exchange for pictures of my feet and I review them here. If you have interest in being my next Patron, check out the wishlist here. Be sure to leave me some method to contact you back!“
Promo art for the game Cabernet, featuring a vampire woman tenderly holding a dying rabbit in the woods while blood drips from her fangs
A picture of a mobile heart rate/blood pressure checking device with a laminated picture of a boomerang Koopa trooper from Mario on it, and the text "please return to treatment/store room"
Marvel Snap deck featuring Ant Man, Ebony Maw, Madame Web, Armor, Sam Wilson, Captain America, Cosmo, Electro, War Machine, Spectrum, and Destroyer. Deck code: # (1) Ant Man # (1) Ebony Maw # (2) Madame Web # (2) Armor # (2) Sam Wilson Captain America # (3) Captain America # (3) Cosmo # (3) Electro # (4) War Machine # (5) Klaw # (6) Spectrum # (6) Destroyer # QW50TW42LEVibk13OCxBcm1yNSxFbGN0cjcsQ3NtNSxEc3RycjksU3BjdHJtOCxLbHc0LENwdG5BbXJjRSxXck1jaG5BLE1kbVdiOSxTbVdsc245 # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in MARVEL SNAP.
A 2024 GOTY list made on Topsters3 featuring 1000xRESIST Animal Well Arco Arctic Eggs Balatro Minishoot’ Adventures Mouthwashing Starstruck: Hands of Time Trails Through Daybreak UFO 50
A 4/5 star review of Arctic Eggs that reads: Despite being built around a silly physics mechanic, with a wacky Twitter shitpost-y writing style, Arctic Eggs is more than just a meme. Beneath the absurdity, it’s a surprisingly earnest game about people surviving the grim reality of a vaguely dystopian future Antarctica. Your job is to cook eggs, and whatever other bizarre objects people want fried up, flipping them in your frying pan with finicky controls that mirror the physicality of using a real pan via the right stick or mouse. There’s a steep learning curve, and every new item adds an additional wrinkle that changes how you need to tilt the pan. The core mechanic itself being so simple means that by the end you’ve gained a good level of control, and the challenge comes from how many of which objects you need to cook. Each NPC spouts bizarre dialogue that rides a fine line between hilarious and depressing, giving you a rough sense of the world while leaving the details vague enough that it doesn’t get bogged down in lore dumps. Arctic Eggs world building is more suggestion than exposition, keeping the setting mysterious and unknowable right to the end. I’ve really never played anything like Arctic Eggs. Its oddly chill vibes as you fight the controls to fry up ridiculous requests grounds you in the experience of working a shitty, menial job in a hopeless world, while you wish for something better. It’s not gonna be for everyone, but it’s a real gem
3.5/5 review of Proximate: Very unique horror game about navigating a space you can’t see. The concept of an “AI visor” using a spatial learning model gives it plenty of opportunities to satirise big tech and the recent AI craze, which it does extremely well in some clever and hilarious ways I won’t spoil that interface with the gameplay and how you navigate the space. It’s an intentionally awkward and frustrating game to control, with you only relying on a text description of what the visor AI thinks is directly in front of you, and an indicator of how far away it is. It’s easy to get turned around, or come at a door from an angle and have to constantly readjust yourself to ensure you’re moving in the right direction. Eventually you get your bearings on the space, as your visor can only store so much data, requiring you to return to your terminal to upload the collected data and clear some space Since you’re downloading documents to your visor, the story is mostly pieced together through text found in chat logs and files left by the crew. It’s a solid narrative about the moral compromises of working at an unethical tech company, but eventually it takes a turn that I’m not sure works. Where it ends up is powerful, but the road to get there comes a little out of left field. It’s also an unabashedly queer game, although I’m not sure how I feel about framing its sole trans character as an apologist for the shitty, unethical company they work for. I’m all for depictions of flawed queer characters, and I felt her other personal flaws tracked with her character quite well, but something doesn’t sit right with me about writing a trans person as a corporate stooge without a moral compass for most of the game, especially with the specific moral issue of this game revolving around bodily autonomy. It’s nowhere near as tight as Iron Lung, but a great exploration of this sort of sightless navigation concept they both share that I’d love to see more of
A 3/5 star review of Electric Fairyland on Backloggd that reads: Got this from subscribing to Sokpop’s Patreon because I wanted the key for Grunn, but this was a nice bonus. Simple 3D platformer with immaculate vibes and a chill, ethereal soundtrack. If you told me this was an obscure PS1 game based on some cult classic cartoon or anime I’d never heard of, I’d probably believe you. The camera is a bit funky, but in a way where moving it to a different angle feels like it drastically changes your awareness of the space. Not really sure how to describe it, but it takes a bit of getting used to. The default view is almost isometric, but you can freely rotate the camera into third person perspective. The platforming is never too intense, and there’s nothing in the way of action/combat save for some bugs and snails that knock you back if you run into them. There’s optional marbles to collect, and a couple of them require some light puzzling to figure out interactions the game never spells out to you, but otherwise you just gotta collect little pieces of glitter that are all pretty easy/obvious to find in order to unlock new areas A lovely short experience to vibe with for an hour or two
Review of the video game Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, that reads: I wanted this game to be an entry point into the SaGa series for me, and it was an enjoyable enough game that did give me a taste of what makes SaGa unique, but after a while I couldn’t shake the sense that somehow this game wasn’t living up to the original release. I started on classic difficulty, hearing that the original RS2 was a punishing game, and it was difficult at first, but after a while the games difficulty plateaued. Over half of the seven heroes fell on my first attempt fighting them, and the frequent save points meant outside of a self imposed challenge run, there was never a reason to play through a party wipe and select a new emperor over just reloading a recent save. The LP system is supposed to create a threat of permadeath, but the generation timeskips happened frequently enough that as long as I was slightly careful, almost none of my party members got close enough to death past the first couple of generations for it to matter. “There’s a really special game in here. Its inheritance system, levelling based on individual weapon proficiency as opposed to stat gains, and non linear progression make for a JRPG unlike anything I’ve ever played before. I’m not sure if I would have vibed with the obtuse nature of the original game, (although I am curious to check it out now that I’m done with the remake,) but I don’t think this release presented the best version of itself either.“
Review of the video game Retro Mystery Club Vol.2 that reads: “Enjoyed this one more than I expected after thinking the first one was just okay. Probably a more accessible modern entry point to command based Japanese adventure games than the new Famicom Detective Club, since it has smoother to follow logic and fewer pain points where progression isn’t obvious. Still isn’t a genre for everyone, but I don’t see newcomers bouncing off it as hard as some people seemed to with Emio. Adding in a smartphone with a google search command is a surprisingly modern touch for a series with “Retro” in the title, but it was a neat idea. I guess it fits well with the overall theme of tradition meeting modernity that the story goes for. I liked the cast far more in this one too, and the twists and turns definitely kept me guessing right up to the end. The tourism angle shared by both games gives their settings a real tangibility that makes me wonder if the team took a research trip to Beppu to make sure they captured it well. Little things like the theme park that you end up arriving at the back entrance of because a google maps error guides tourists there by mistake feel too authentic to be made up. As a sicko for this genre, I’d love to see a Vol.3 someday”
Text review of the video game Mouthwashing, that reads: “Extremely unnerving horror game about a stranded spaceship crew that keeps its horror psychological and interpersonal, with a healthy dose of “fuck capitalism” behind it. To go into any more detail would be to give too much away. It’s a short game that manages to fit a lot of character depth and room for interpretation into the limited time spent with its cast, and it’s well worth a look if you’re a horror fan, or just love narrative heavy games. I’m glad I played it instead of watching a stream, since it uses interactivity in some interesting ways that heighten the experience, but towards the end, some more gameplay heavy segments that don’t explain themselves well really bog down the pacing of an otherwise brisk narrative game. Odd decision to set the game up as a low friction, story first experience, and then backload it with higher friction gameplay, even if I get what they were going for with it narratively.”
Tatara Hisoka, the Vtuber from Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth who gets Ichiban fired from his job by spreading lies about him
Cyndaquil, a little rodent like Pokemon with a long snout and flames coming off their back like spines