Hello once again, and welcome to another year of 12-in-12, the initiative to beat twelve games in twelve months and take out one's backlog! If you want a history lesson, check out my maiden post on the subject; then you'll get what's up here.

Just as before, here's the successful hit list for 2022:

• Dadish [Switch]
• A Short Hike [Switch]
• ToeJam & Earl [Genesis]
• Box Pusher [DSi]

That's it, unfortunately. Here's hoping for a better 2023! Read on for the details, as usual.

January

I was bored one day and decided to fire up Dadish [Switch], a cute platformer about a radish, who's a dad (get it...?) gathering up his children who've run off to play and gotten into trouble. The dialogue is silly and light-hearted, and the art style is fairly clean, if a bit simple. The platforming mechanics and bosses were somewhat disappointing for me, but I wasn't expecting a masterpiece in the first place. I just learned it has a sequel, too, but I think I've had my fill of it. It was still a fun little diversion, and I appreciate that it wasn't 20-30 hours of collecting crap.

February

I played way too much Minecraft. Nothing of importance accomplished.

March

I couldn't resist picking up A Short Hike [Switch] when it went on sale. I love the art style, the humorous writing, and the general chill tone that the game conveys. It lives up to its name, with roughly 4-5 hours of content to cover. You can even speedrun it! Goodness. I beat it in like two days, but those two days were quite lovely.

July

This month, my girlfriend and I finished our co-op playthrough of ToeJam & Earl [Genesis] on the Genesis Classics Collection on Switch. We ended up using the savestates between levels, and sometimes rewound to better handle obstacles.

I really dislike how many of the enemies just plain move faster than you. Dodging is not really a thing. Splitting up creates an animation, while re-uniting doesn't. Item mechanics while both characters are on-screen versus off-screen are somewhat interesting. It allows for better teamwork I guess. Overall, I feel like it's a game with better art than gameplay. Definitely a relic of the 1990s.

September

I finished a months-long project in tackling Box Pusher [DSi]. It was a big enough deal to write about it separately. Suffice to say, I will not miss Sokoban, but I enjoyed the adventure in automated solvers.

Conclusion

Sadly, progress in my backlog basically stopped after September. Box Pusher took so much out of me, I ended up playing classics the rest of the year. Here's hoping I can get more done in 2023!