Games I Played in November 2025

SMT: Synchronicity Prologue

Internet Archive (This game was a free, limited-time product exclusively released in Japan.)

Wow, I abbreviated Shin Megami Tensei and that title still stands out. The "Prologue" at the end simply means this takes place before SMT: Strange Journey, a fact that will not be relevant for the rest of this post. Seriously, you don't need to know anything about Strange Journey to enjoy this, but if you have played that then there are a couple things to kick your feet in joy at.

When I first saw gameplay of this, it took a moment for it to even register as being a SMT item-exploration game, because I just really liked how well the demon designs translated into this art style. The game was created by by Team Ladybug, who later made the gorgeous BLADECHIMERA, so this should be no surprise. And then once I dug past the aesthetics and realized what kind of game this was and that you played as the Jack Bros. duo, I knew I would have to play it for myself.

And then didn't for a few years. Yeah that... that happens sometimes.

Actually playing it for myself, it's real fun. The basic attacks and movement of both Jacks sits in the sweet-spot of restrictive and freeform. It's hard to describe without playing it yourself, especially if you're just going off the visuals of Pyro Jack's flight. But during gameplay, it genuinely feels as deliberate as a simple Super Metroid (and that game have very deliberate controls). Finding the Ma- spells is a nice way to spice up your moveset, although I do wish they had a bit more emphasis. I missed most of them until my late-game cleanup tour, so while I used Mazio a ton, it would have been nice for Mazan to have a great time to shine.

The exploration is nice, a good variety of area gimmicks and a good number of secrets, but the boss fights are where it shines. Again, this is a simpler game, but the bosses give both your characters (and the occasional use of your bonus spell) plenty of time to shine. In the better parts of these fights, you're using Frost's horizontal mastery and Pyro's flight and angled charge shots all to their fullest. Where it's less interesting is when the enemy fires blue orbs (which Frost immune to), followed by red (this time Pyro takes no damage), repeat 4 times. I really like how the game adapts even the Null damage affinity SMT games feature, but that specific approach does feel repetitive by the end.

The game has a story, and it's fine. The dialogue is fun if you chuckle at the Frost mannerism of ending sentences in "hee," "ho," or "hee-ho," which I do, but I fully understand that will just not land for a lot of people. It only plays a small role, luckily. And somehow I haven't mentioned the soundtrack yet. It's much higher energy than I expected and I dig the hell out of it. I don't think there's a single track I dislike and the main area themes are all fantastic.

The game's free. If you wanna play it, give it a shot. Or wait a few years like I did, it'll probably still be good whenever you get around to it.

These next two are entangled in another mess. Starting around the middle of this month, life was getting stressful. I knew I was stressed but I let it bleed into my actions rather than actually feel it for a while. There was one point where the way I engage with... well, all my hobbies shifted overnight and I've been crawling my way back into more control since. That's a bit of a process, but I've definitely made progress. The games I played were unexpected, but hey, that's life.

Game Dev Tycoon

Steam

I once heard this game described as little more than watching bubbles go to the top of screen and making popping noises. That... is a part of it and sort of why it appealed to me during this month. I wanted to do some very light thinking, watch progress bars go up, and listen to some bubbles pop.

But Game Dev Tycoon is a competent game despite the "number go up" presentation it can give off. A lot of the gameplay is moving sliders up and down and making sure your team members with the best stats work on the parts of your games that you've determined through trial and error to be most important. And that endless balancing act where the factors stay the same but their weights shift from project-to-project is exactly the level of engagement I was craving. In fact, I was falling off in the late game because the complexity floor was rising and I was focused on relaxing more than meeting the game where it wanted me to be. My point being, this game stretches a simple structure out quite well!

And while it seems simple on the surface, there are certain design choices that create friction between the game and the player than I think make this structure excel. The key one being that if you release near-identical games consecutively (Two Space Adventures, for example), your sales will be heavily penalized. In the real world, we expect studios to make similar games one after another (to everyone's detriment one could argue), but since that directly conflicts with the core of the game, letting mechanics shine in the face of realism seems like the best path that could have been taken.

I don't know if I'll go back to finish a save file, but I did get far enough to see that the game has made an effort to stay modern since its first release. There are a lot of aesthetically-similar games that are meant to be little more than cash-grabs. I'm pleased to say that I don't think that sentiment applies to this one at all.

Sid Meier's Civilization V

Steam

Yeah nothing says mindless relaxation like a competitive strategy game, huh? The Paradox fans are nodding and that's all the positive feedback I need. This was definitely on a night where I just wanted to completely flush my brain of worries and just build an empire that focuses on anything other than war. And luckily, I played on a difficulty where I didn't accidentally declare war on literally every other nation by prioritizing research, so that helped.

"Hang on, you said 'a night.' You didn't play a whole game of-" Hey, don't worry about it. One more turn.

The Civ series is known for how it balances progress on individual turns versus the game as a whole. Even when you hit low points where you're just waiting on research or a couple buildings to be completed, you're rarely waiting past ten turns. The game has its slow moments of course, but it does what it can to keep you planning and your progress consistent.

I don't have a lot insight past that. My experience with the series is limited, as the many achievements during this session showed. But this night of single-player delving did remind me of a time early in the lockdowns where I had a 4-player multiplayer game. Most of it was enjoyable, but when we talk about that match now, it's soured by me being off-synced from the rest of the group once a war between me and another player started. Looking back on it, it's really silly that I let having to wait my turn in a Civ game become a sticking point. Despite it's appearance, the game is great for a few chill nights with a small group. Or you can make it hyper-competitive as people race for a domination victory, you do you.

KILLOVER

itch

I was watching the GMTK Game Jam 2025 Recap video and to say this one jumped out at me would be an understatement. The initial vibes were a mix of SUPERHOT and what I credit to Goldeneye 007's multiplayer. The actual game is of course not a mix of those two by any means, but it still absolutely slaps. Seeing a bunch of copies of yourself all trying to take out a greater number of each other is really charming. (I'm not going to think about those implications, and neither should you.) My initial approach was to try to fire as few shots as possible to reduce the chances for crossfire. Now some guns fire more than one bullet, but this is far less important than the sudden remembrance that bullets move. What seems like it could be finely controlled quickly develops into a chaos that is just such a great time.

And of course, there is now more to the game than what is shown in that video above. My favorite additional stages have been the sniping range - a very clean challenge to my initial approach of just firing one shot and assuming it'll make safe paths - and the sword pit. Sure, avoiding the blender of ghost slices by chucking your sword into the center works one time, and then future you is also dodging flying sabers. Fantastic.