Gaming Updates (Summer 2026)

Decided to write an update regarding everything gaming related in my life, as of now in Summer of 2026! What games have I played? What games have I purchased? What games have I beaten? Everything you may want to know about my gaming habits as of now!

Remember back in May when I chose to participate in the Summer Game Challenge? the point of that was to select ten games and commit to completing at least four of them before September 7 (Labour Day for the US) or in my case, September 16 (Independence Day for México). It’s not an official challenge and there’s no website for it or whatever, just a personal commitment with the goal to play more videogames in a certain amount of time.

So, my original list contained the following games (you can just check the linked post for more details about each of them):

• Grapple Dog
• Terranigma
• Hades
• Outer Wilds
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
• Metroid Prime Remastered
• Chants of Sennaar
• Emio and the Smiling Man
• Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo

From there, I’ve completed Hades and Metroid Prime Remastered, and the original goal was to complete at least four of the games in the list!

However, as you may have noticed, I ended up playing other titles instead, completing the following so far:

• Transistor
• Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores (DLC)
• Monument Valley 2 (+ The Lost Forest DLC)
• Monument Valley 3 (+ The Garden of Life (DLC)

That is an amount beyond what the challenge asked for, even if they were not part of my original selection.

So, while a side of me feels guilty the titles I’ve beaten are shorter games (Transistor is about 6 hours, and the Monument Valley games bundled up take about the same time), there’s other games in progress that have been quite longer. They are story-based titles, so it is to be expected. The list of these is as follows:

• Fire Emblem Awakening (35+ hours)
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (5 hours)
• Black Rock Shooter (2 hours)
• Ys I & II Chronicles (1 hour)

Even better, that’s on top of the already pretty great list of completed titles so far, which would be:

• Monument Valley
• Resident Evil 2
• Resident Evil 1
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

If you follow my weeknotes or monthly summaries, this is not news to you, but I I wanted to write on my overall gaming schedule at the moment.

The point of it all is to actually play and get rid of games from my backlog. That’s technically something that’s still happening, although the fact I didn’t have a 3DS back in May, does mean the backlog is simply growing as much as it is being trimmed down…

Speaking of backlog, my Low/No Buy Challenge is technically ongoing so, for the sake of transparency, here’s a list of every videogame I’ve bought this year so far…

• Animal Well (Switch)
• Crow Country (Switch)
• Gris (Switch)
• He Is Coming (Steam)
• Into The Breach (Steam)
• Metroid Prime 4 Beyond (Switch)
• PEAK (Steam)
• Pokémon Legends Z-A (Switch)
• Strange Jigsaws (Steam)
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (3DS)
• Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream (Switch)
• Vampire Crawlers (Switch)

Umm, that’s less than two games per month! So… win?

Moving on…

My New Nintendo 3DS XL has proven to be an excellent device for my needs. I use it during my commutes to and from work, when I’m early to the office, and even at home! My Anbernic handheld remains charged, and I have dabbled on setting up game art on it again—they got lost during an update—and getting offline RetroAchievements setup on it, I’ll write about that at some point.

Here and there, the PSP has seen some use too, with my Nintendo Switch being the most abandoned of the bunch lately. I’ll probably have to start one of the titles in my original list if I want to return to that console soon. I know for sure that my parents will go on vacation, which will leave my house free for me to enjoy some solo gaming time at the TV at last!

I should go back to reading too, one of these days…

Can you tell how messy this post is? I should have done sections for every little thing I talked about, but I’m lazy and this is good enough… Maybe I’ll format it a bit more later on.

This is day 2 of #100DaysToOffload.