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Season Six represented the inevitable decline in my overall gaming time. For the previous three Seasons (a year and a half) I’d been able to play through about 145 hours worth of backlogged games in a 6 month period. That doesn’t represent my total gaming time, just the amount I was willing to set aside for Rogue’s Adventures.
As my daughter gets older and transitioned from infant to toddler to young kid, that time has naturally dwindled. On top of that I began freelance writing for several websites as well as putting a lot more time and effort into my blog and central hub at RogueWatson.com.
Despite all of that I was still able to play quite a few games this Season. I adjusted my goal from 7 hours a week to 5, giving myself more time in between games. My new goal was a little over 100 hours, and I managed to just squeak that in.
The theme this season was recent indie games. Every single game was released in the last few years, with Ori and the Blind Forest, Hand of Fate, and Tales from the Borderlands releasing earlier this year in 2015.
Season Six Schedule
| Game | Estimated Hours to Complete | Start Date | Total Hours/Completion Date | Goal |
| Ori and the Blind Forest | 9 | 7/14/2015 | 10hrs/July 22, 2015 | Jul-15 |
| Unepic | 22 | 7/28/2015 | 21hrs/Aug 19, 2015 | Aug-15 |
| Child of Light | 13 | 8/31/2015 | 11hrs/Sept 15, 2015 | Sep-15 |
| This War of Mine | 13 | 9/22/2015 | 12hrs/Oct 2, 2015 | Oct-15 |
| Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse | 12 | 10/07/15 | 12.5hrs/Oct 23, 2015 | Oct-15 |
| Gunpoint | 4 | 10/27/15 | 4hrs/Oct 29, 2015 | Oct-15 |
| Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine | 14 | 11/03/15 | 10hrs/Nov 16, 2015 | Nov-15 |
| Hand of Fate | 15 | 11/24/15 | 11.5hrs/Dec 7, 2015 | Dec-15 |
| Tales from the Borderlands | 10.5 | 12/10/15 | 11.5hrs/Dec 24, 2015 | Dec-15 |
- Ori and the Blind Forest – 10 hours in 9 days = 7.77 hrs/wk
- Unepic – 21 hours in 23 days = 6.39 hrs/wk
- Child of Light – 11 hours in 16 days = 4.81 hrs/wk
- This War of Mine – 12 hours in 11 days = 7.64 hrs/wk
- Broken Sword 5 – 12.5 hours in 17 days = 5.15 hrs/wk
- Gunpoint – 4 hours in 3 days = 9.33 hrs/wk
- Monaco – 10 hours in 14 days = 5 hrs/wk
- Hand of Fate – 11.5 hours in 14 days = 5.75 hrs/wk
- Tales from the Borderlands – 11.5 hours in 15 days = 5.37 hrs/wk
Total Hours: 103.5 (Estimated 112.5)
Total Average Hours per Week: 6.36
Six hours a week doesn’t seem like a sharp decline from last year’s 7.25 average but over a 6 month period it definitely adds up. I’m surprised I still made it well over 5 hours a week, though Gunpoint‘s very short run time probably helped inflate that number quite a bit.
Thanks to some much shorter games on average, I was still able to complete the same amount of games as last season, despite spending about 35 less hours. Yay indie games!
Season Six Stats (with last Season’s numbers)
- Tweets by @RoguesAdventure: 340 (501), Total tweets: 5, 449
- Total Number of Screenshots Taken: 1,936 (1,984)
- Average Number of Screenshots per Game: 215 (220)
- Most Screen Captured Game: Tales from the Borderlands 669 – 1/3 of my total screenshots this season and a new record! (Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag 643)
- Total Games Completed: 9 (9)
Season Six Rankings
- Ori and the Blind Forest – Beautiful, poignant, challenging, and fun, Ori is easily one of the best metroidvanias I’ve ever played.
- Tales from the Borderlands – The Telltale narrative adventure is brilliantly grafted into the zany Borderlands world, excelling with witty writing and fun action.
- This War of Mine – Effectively combines the emotional toll and physical danger of war with a strategy layer of managing survivors and resources.
- Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine – A brilliantly designed and cleverly themed top-down cooperative stealth game that’s much less fun to play by yourself.
- Hand of Fate – Despite some frustrations, Hand of Fate successfully layers in 3rd person combat into a highly randomized card-based tabletop adventure.
- Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse – A satisfying, if overly long, fifth entry that has the fun characters and varied puzzles of the venerable adventure franchise.
- Child of Light – Ubisoft effectively distills all the best elements of a traditional JRPG into a fun and beautiful 10-15 hour package.
- Gunpoint – Rewiring security in this 2D stealth-puzzler is a blast, but it’s too short to fully embrace more advanced levels.
- Unepic – An interesting 2D action-platformer-RPG with a few too many problems that keep it from indie greatness.
Indie games are in a really fantastic place right now. Many of these titles started life as dreams on Kickstarter and blossomed into really memorable, fantastic, and maybe most importantly, compact experiences. As I get older and my game time becomes more and more precious, being able to play through an entire game in the span of a dozen hours (or less) becomes more and more attractive.
Both Ori and the Blind Forest and Tales from the Borderlands made my 2015 Game of the Year list. I like the trend toward playing more recent game – mostly afforded by the fact that I’ve gone through a good chunk of my older backlogged games in previous seasons of Rogue’s Adventures.
This Season was definitely punctuated by bulk sale purchases during Steam sales, particularly during this year’s Steam Summer Sale. Six of the nine games I played this Season were bought during the Steam Summer Sale, which is an incredibly satisfying turnaround.
As my gaming time continues to dwindle each Season, I’m thankful I still have time to play games. Between family life, running an online D&D campaign with friends, and my freelance writing career, Rogue’s Adventures has kept me constantly playing fun games. With so many awesome, big games this last Fall it has been a tricky balance, but I like the interaction and writing that comes from playing through these backlog games.
I’d like to keep Rogue’s Adventures going as long as I can, and hopefully next Season I can maintain a similar schedule and pacing. See you next year, and happy gaming!
Follow @RoguesAdventure for live tweeting and screenshots, join the Rogue’s Adventures Steam group for updates, and Follow me on Twitch and Subscribe on YouTube for videos.
