Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (season 1) was great for the first few episodes. I tried my best to make my choices really matter and not to save scum to go back and change my decisions. But at one point a character I really liked died, seemingly from a choice I made in error, and I went back to change it up.

That’s when I discovered that the story itself is really on rails behind the scenes. If a character has the potential to die in one episode and you let them live, they are almost guaranteed to die in a future episode, so the writers didn’t need to keep extrapolating branching narratives. Yes, the reactions and dialogue change based on your choices, but once I knew that none of my decisions actually decided the final outcome, it made me much less invested in the game.

This is pretty similar in season 2, AFAIK, though there were multiple endings depending on some choices, so at least some decisions mattered a little more. Never played the other seasons, but, yeah, it put a sour taste in my mouth.

LISA The Painful has a large cast of characters, some of which are much stronger than others, and like most RPGs, you gain experience and level up by fighting.

However, several times in the game you are forced to make extremely hard choices, up to and including sacrificing the characters in your party (they permanently die). At another point you play Russian roulette by picking a party member to put the gun to their head and pull the trigger. Bad RNG? They’re dead and gone forever.

If you don’t know these events are coming up, you can very easily lose your favorite party/characters forever, and it’s almost assured the ones you use are your strongest, since they’re the ones you’re using in your party.

They don’t call it “The Painful” for no reason.

Time gated content and 100%ing stuff. Also accidentally deleted my first save file around chapter 5, so about 10-15 hours lost there.

I’d say there’s a good 30-40 hours of content if you’re slow like me, with an extra 20 or so if you’re a completionist.

It’s only 20% on sale and is fairly popular (though not mainstream), but I’ve put 80 hours into Dave the Diver over the past month, and find the $15.99 sale price tag well worth it for fans of games like Stardew Valley. Bought it for a friend of mine.

It mixes up two portions - a rogue-lite day/afternoon cycle where you explore a random undersea area to catch fish and gather materials, and an evening cycle where you work at a sushi restaurant turning those fish and materials into tasty food to get money and upgrade your gear (and restaurant). Great “just one more day” energy. Like many of these kinds of games, you can try to loot goblin/min-max each day, but honestly it’ll lead to burnout. Set some goals each day, focus on those while chipping at secondary objectives, and enjoy the ride. Lots of whacky cut scenes in fun pixel art, and lots of references (Pokemon, Tamogachi, Michael Bay, Simpsons, Friday the 13th, One Punch Man, anime/weeb culture, etc.). It’s cute and fun and addicting.