Super Battle Golf on Mike's Musings

March 2026 Roundup

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Cover photo from Cairn.

Greetings, dear reader. We’re finally starting to emerge from the brutally-cold winters around here, and honestly I couldn’t be more glad. I’m used to long, snowy winters (I grew up with them) but even after living here for years now, I’m still not used to how harsh and ridiculously cold it can get. It affects me and my overall mood more than I’d like to admit, so I’m welcoming Spring with open arms.

As for what games you won’t see in this month’s rundown, the most notable one is Mewgenics. I still consider it in-progress and I intend to get back to it, but as I said before that game definitely strikes me more as a marathon than a sprint. I’ve also continued to dip in and out of Helldivers II whenever duty calls.

I always like to start off strong with the game I have the most to say about, and this month that game is…

Everyone has a personal summit. Some are more literal.

Cairn

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

There are only a handful of games that are based primarily around climbing. I’m not simply talking about games that feature climbing as a mechanic; something like Breath of the Wild technically has it but it’s not the primary focus of the game. I’ve done top-rope climbing out in Appalachia and have been to local bouldering gyms a handful of times; I won’t claim to be an expert but I think I know the fundamentals. The thing I most distinctly remember about learning climbing techniques while top-roping was my instructor constantly telling me “get your legs up!” to get into a stronger hold or to pry the rest of my body up onto an overhang. There’s a widespread mistaken assumption among climbing novices that having a lot of raw strength is necessary to get started. It certainly helps on harder routes, but it’s far more important to have good technique and an understanding of how best to place your hands and feet so that you don’t need to rely on sheer effort on difficult moves.

Playing Cairn activated something deep inside me and all those fond memories on the rock wall came flooding back. It’s certainly the most authentic representation of climbing that I’ve seen in a video game so far, and absolutely nails the mental game that is an essential part of the sport. Half the battle on the wall is finding a route that will work for you; you have to understand what your body is capable of, where the tough moves will be, and where you can afford to hang for a bit and give your muscles a break. In Cairn you control the protagonist Aava’s limbs one-by-one, placing them into crevices and ledges as you scramble up the face of Kami, the fictional equivalent of Mt. Everest or K2. You’ll also contend with a survival layer where you’ll need to manage her hunger, thirst, and eventually also body temperature which becomes a factor as you get higher up the mountain. Aava is an experienced mountaineer (one of the best in the world, in fact) and can forage for food and water but you’ll also be able to scavenge random foodstuffs and useful tools from the bodies of the unfortunate souls who perished on the mountain long before you arrived. It’s all a lot to think about, but the game does offer accessibility features which tone down the difficulty of the climbing and/or survival elements if you so desire.

As for Aava herself, she is an experienced and confident climber who aims to be the first to summit the unconquered Mount Kami. Aava has an intense demeanor; if you watch enough interviews with people who are at the top of their sport or vocation you tend to see this kind of personality a lot and I found it to be pretty authentic in that way. She’s a bit of a mess in her personal life; it’s heavily implied early on that her relationship with her partner Naomi is in bad shape, she refuses to return her agent’s calls, and whenever she receives a message through her mechanical assistant ClimbBot she seems more annoyed than anything that her focus is taken away from her ascent. She spends so much time on mountain faces as a way of forcing the problems of her personal life to take a backseat. She’s not always likable, but she is relatable. She struggles to understand and be understood by other people and feels isolated because of it. I found her to be a compelling character, and later in the game you’ll make several important choices which impact how her story ultimately ends.

Cairn is one of those rare games that put me into a state of hyperfocus; the climbing is challenging and incredibly engrossing. Aava’s arms and legs will start to shake and she’ll start to audibly strain when losing her grip. Learning to take your climbs slow and steady and to suppress the panic when her grip starts to falter are key to success on Kami. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that this game is drop-dead gorgeous, featuring dramatic rises and incredible vistas. I’m not a guy who uses photo modes in games a lot, but I found myself stopping to snap some breathtaking shots frequently. I have so many damn screenshots — almost 200 — and choosing a handful to put on this post was legitimately tough. All in all, this was a memorable journey that will stick with me and is easily among the best game experiences I’ve had this year. It comes highly recommended.

The Very Angry Caterpillar

Öoo

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Öoo (which I’ve been pronouncing out loud as “ooOOOoo”) is a brilliant, bite-sized puzzle game from Nama Takahashi whose previous game was ElecHead, a retro Megaman-styled puzzle platformer. I finished the entire thing in just over two hours so talking too much about the gameplay might constitute spoilers, but the concept is that you control a lil’ caterpillar dude who has been snatched up by an asshole bird, and your task is to avoid digestion by getting him out.

Our bug protagonist has the ability to drop sections of his body as bombs, and this is how you solve the majority of the game’s puzzles. You can use them as steps, to propel you in one direction or another, or one of several other techniques that the game masterfully teaches you through the quality of its level design. The controls are very simple (move with the stick, a button to place a bomb, and a button to detonate) but there are a surprising amount of moments where you realize that there are useful/necessary tricks with them that you could have performed the entire time which let you solve rooms which at a point looked impossible. In short, it’s delightful. It’s so smartly-designed, and very worth picking up for an afternoon’s worth of entertainment. Time for me to go check out ElecHead, I think…

Turns out, the thing golf was missing was PvP

Super Battle Golf

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Here I am, back again this month to give the verdict and tell you that Super Battle Golf absolutely rules. I’ve played several more sessions with friends and the game not only holds up in terms of sheer enjoyment, but also has more mechanical depth than you’d think. Turns out you can do some really wacky shit like diving in front of others’ shots Secret Service style; I’ve seen several duels between friends at the putting green that left me crying with laughter.

You can play this online with randoms, but if you’ve got a group of friends you can convince to get it, consider this a 3-star recommendation instead. More updates are coming and they’ve promised Steam Workshop integration in the future, so I can’t wait to see what kind of wild courses and new items we get. I’ll leave you with a few highlights from our most recent games.

Your Wish is My Suggestion

Many Nights a Whisper

Overall Score

★

Recommended

Another bite-sized game, Many Nights a Whisper is a story-focused indie game about a world where any wish can come true, as long as a certain ritual is completed. The player controls the Dreamer, the individual at the center of said ritual. Every night, villagers visit the Dreamer and confess their deepest desires from the other side of a wall. Each villager that professes a wish puts a braid of hair they have been growing out through an opening in the wall, and if the Dreamer chooses to grant the wish they cut the braid. The Dreamer is the sole arbiter of which wishes get granted and which do not, and ultimately to make them come true they must use a slingshot to light a flame pyre on the day of the ritual. Their mentor has been training them for 10 years for this one moment, and he will talk you through both the technique of making the shot and also about which wishes you’re choosing to grant and why.

This ultimately is the main draw of the narrative. Some of the wishes are relatively low-stakes; one villager wishes for a rival to help push them to their limits in all respects. Others are much more serious and world-altering. One person asks to make all world religions vanish overnight. They also say they realize that there’s an inherent darkness in the heart of humanity that will never go away, but that eliminating organized religion might prevent lots of pain and suffering inflicted in the name of dogma. Another person confesses that they are experiencing gender dysphoria, and wants you to eliminate the whole concept of gender altogether. For both of these, you’re forced to grapple with the concept of a world without either of these prevailing forces and consider what improvements or unintended consequences could come from changing such fundamental things about humanity.

It’s fascinating stuff, and ultimately it’s up to you to grapple with these choices and decide whether or not to grant the wish. Of course, this all hinges upon you making that one consequential shot on the final day. You’ll have the Dreamer train during the daytime, in between the sequences at night where you’re hearing the wishes of the villagers. It’s also fully up to you whether you want to commit to making the shot, or perhaps you might decide that putting this much responsibility on one person is too much, and to miss it on purpose. Either way, it’s all up to you…

Back on the road to Zanarkand

Final Fantasy X HD Remaster [2001 / 2016]

TBD

Overall Score

Recommendation TBD

Final Fantasy X is certainly not among the first JRPGs I ever played, but it is one of the ones that to this day I still clearly and fondly remember. Revisiting a game that’s such a fixture in your personal pantheon can be a risky endeavor; as the years pass we tend to remember more of what we liked about certain things while the pain points slowly fade away. What I remember about FFX is being floored by its visual presentation and the fact that this was the first proper Final Fantasy to be fully voice-acted. I remember its worldbuilding being top-notch and its characters to be endearing and memorable. Yuna is one of my favorite characters in the whole series and I consider her to be the pinnacle of the archetype of the Final Fantasy Summoner.

I’m pleased to say that the game mostly holds up so far. I’m keeping in mind that in 2001, localizations were generally quite rough and the trade of voice acting for games was still in its relative infancy. It’s still leaps and bounds beyond many of its contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and its turn-based battle system is still one of my favorites. You can see a lot of the DNA of more modern RPG battle systems (most notably the Atlus SMT and Persona games) here, and they liberally borrow elements of FFX for good reason. My partner is watching while I play this (this is her first time seeing the game) and we’ve just hit Macalania Temple. Once I’ve rolled credits I’ll report back on how well I think it holds up as an entire work and what she thought about it as well.

February 2026 Roundup

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Cover photo from Mewgenics.

Well so much for February being a shorter, quieter month and this post being less effort than January’s. Aside from finishing up a few games I started playing in the months prior, February also brought the release of the long-awaited Mewgenics from the creator of The Binding of Isaac. I also sampled the hot new friendslop game and discovered a new platforming gem. There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get to it.

Kick your shoes off, grab a cup of tea, stay a while...

Wanderstop

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

I’ve always felt a lot of tension between the part of me that wants to just go with the flow and chill, and the voice in my head that won’t stop screaming that my time on this earth is limited and I should spend as much time as possible bettering myself, having unique experiences, and generally trying to not waste a single moment. Alta, the protagonist of Wanderstop, has only heard that second voice throughout her entire life. She’s an arena fighter who is perpetually driving herself to train harder, to be the best, to never lose a match. After three years of being undefeated, she begins to suffer loss after loss after loss. Beaten-down and psychologically shattered, she sets off to find a legendary master in the forest who she thinks she can train her back to her former greatness.

Things, of course, don’t go as planned. Collapsing from exhaustion, she finds herself awakening at the tea shop Wanderstop, having been carried there by its kind and gentle owner Boro. No matter how much she tries, she collapses when trying to resume her journey and it turns out she can’t even lift her sword anymore for some reason. Boro invites her to stay a while, to rest and to heal. She does so reluctantly, learning how to make tea, tend the garden, decorate the shop, and converse with the odd smattering of visitors that meander into the clearing where the shop resides. Whether she realizes it or not, all of these visitors have a valuable lesson to teach, if she’ll only listen.

Wanderstop is a cozy game with a poignant message for any of us who have that innate drive to try to optimize our time spent down to the minute. There is no time pressure on any of the game’s tasks, the environment is comfortable and relaxing, and Boro is endlessly supportive as Alta works through her burnout and comes to terms with the fact that nothing lasts forever. It’s about becoming more assertive with that inner voice and learning to live a more examined life. It’s about the ephemerality of our identity and how it naturally changes over time; how elements of our lives that once defined us fade into the background and we perpetually reinvent ourselves.

It’s a funny thing when your opinion on a piece of media grows and changes the more you turn it over in your head, and the more time passes since experiencing its conclusion. There were times while playing Wanderstop when I found it mildly tedious or a little dull, but as the end of the game crept closer and closer I found myself feeling prematurely nostalgic for my time in the tiny clearing in the forest. I wanted to spend just a bit more time brewing tea for the quirky characters who wandered through and chatting with the kindly proprietor. Boro actually tells you toward the end that you should take a little bit of time to choose what you want to do before you leave, and to try to simply let yourself be bored. That is, in the end, the message that Wanderstop wants to leave us with : that life cannot and should not simply be reduced to an endless series of to-do lists. The truth of what it had to say rang true to me; we owe it to ourselves to just slow down and be alone with our thoughts, simply enjoying a coffee or tea and taking in the simple joys of a beautiful day. I think it’s in those moments we can reflect upon what truly matters to us.

Defensive battle, initiate!

The Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy

Overall Score

★

Recommended

Finally, after about putting about 100 hours into this game and seeing 52 endings, I have emerged from the (metaphorical) Weeb Cave and am finally ready to talk about The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy. This is a visual novel/tactics hybrid that has a positively absurd number of choices to make and storyline ramifications to observe that result from said choices. It’s like one of those choose-your-own adventure books brought to life in interactive media. Although it’s uneven in some ways, I enjoyed it quite a bit and admire the ambition and passion behind it. I had enough to say about it that I wrote a full review of it which can be read here.

It's Lacey..?

Love Eternal

Overall Score

★

Recommended

This one was a pleasant surprise. The Remap Radio podcast posted an interview with developer Toby Alden and after hearing him describe his game Love Eternal as a “psychological horror precision platformer,” I knew I had to give it a look. It actually reminds me a lot of VVVVVV (which you should also play) for its gravity-swapping mechanic, and its spike-filled rooms are bite-sized bits of extreme platforming challenge. Unfortunately the game lacks accessibility settings, so if platformers aren’t your genre it’s going to be a tough sell.

The game’s vibe is genuinely unsettling without resorting to cheap scares though, and is well-worth the price of admission if you can handle the difficulty. Its gameplay sections are also broken up by adventure game-esque segments that reveal more of the main character Maya’s story and the bizarre things that begin to happen to her, mostly centered around her interactions with her friend Lacey. It also does something kinda wild in its last act that I’ve legitimately never seen another game do before, and I refuse to spoil this. Get to it, my fellow platformer sickos.

Helldivers never die! (terms and conditions apply)

Helldivers II

Overall Score

★ ★

Highly Recommended

This third-person shooter/excessive force simulator from Arrowhead is a game I still keep up with, hopping in to check out the newest developments in the galactic war at its center and to play with all the new destructive toys. It helps a lot that it’s basically the only game that my partner plays at this point, and also that her mother wanted to learn to play it with us as she starts her retirement. It’s been an honestly fascinating process teaching her; there are so many things you take for granted about games if you grew up with them that aren’t immediately apparent that need to be explained to someone brand-new to gaming. We’re all having a great time though, and have gotten many clippable moments like this :

Teaching new Divers aside, the game masters have led us into a campaign against the Automatons and their masters the Cyborgs, all the way to their homeworld of Cyberstan. There are new units, new objectives, and the campaign on Cyberstan has been legitimately challenging. This is where I need to rant a bit though… Not about the game itself, but the community of players engaging with it.

Sure, in any live service game there’s always going to be some amount of power creep, and Helldivers II is no exception. Helldiver armaments have continually gotten stronger while enemies have mostly stayed the same. The new units attempt to shake up this dynamic somewhat and bring back some of the difficulty for the most hardcore players. People claim they want challenge but in fact so many gamers scream bloody murder when novel challenges force them outside their established comfort zone. It’s gotten to the point that when the controversy around difficulty reaches a fever pitch I just have to tune out because it gets so toxic. So many feel like it’s a personal affront to their ego to bump the difficulty down a few levels (there are 10 for crying out loud) so that they can refine their tactics and re-learn what works and what doesn’t. Arrowhead isn’t perfect but I think they’ve done a fairly good job overall when it comes to game balance lately.

Sorry, just had to get that out. I feel better now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Anyways, Helldivers II is still a great time with friends (or family!) and I still highly recommend it.

🎶 All of my nights, I'm chasin' rats~ (Chasin' the rats!!) 🎶

Mewgenics

TBD

Overall Score

Recommendation TBD

It’s hard to believe that in the year 2026 we’re finally playing Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s Mewgenics. Originally announced in 2012, canceled in the mid 2010s, and then revived in 2018, the duo’s feline magnum opus has finally seen the light of day. If you’ve played McMillen’s previous game The Binding Of Isaac you kind of know what to expect from this game’s overall tone and artwork style, which is to say that it’s a lot of crass humor, poop and fart jokes, you get the picture. Some people will undoubtedly bounce off of it for that reason, but those that stick with it will find an incredibly deep and satisfying roguelite tactics game where you outfit a group of stray cats to go out on adventures and then come home to breed and raise the next generation of fighting cats. The art is reminiscent of 2000s Newgrounds animations (true to McMillen’s origins) and the music is another high point in its favor. It’s full of jazzy, jaunty tunes with lyrics that reveal themselves when you reach the boss encounter. It’s the kind of soundtrack that burrows into your brain and refuses to leave; I have legitimately lost sleep because I can’t get this damn song out of my head.

When I say this game is deep, I really mean DEEP. I’ve seen accounts of people spending upwards of 100, 200, or even more hours exploring the depths of Mewgenics. There are over 1000 unique skills for your cats to use and 900+ items on a sliding scale of grossness to equip them with. That plus the massive enemy variety ensures that almost no two runs are the same. Between this and Silksong, it’s been fascinating to see what passionate indie devs can do when given a long runway and essentially unlimited budget. I am admittedly very early in this game, only having played 18 hours and having barely scratched the surface of Act 2. I’m very much looking forward to sinking more time into it, though I’m also trying to pace myself knowing just how long of a journey it will be to the end.

"The price is wrong, bitch!"

Super Battle Golf

TBD

Overall Score

Recommendation TBD

Babe, wake up. New friendslop just dropped.

One of the greatest disappointments of my life happened when I was a teenager, browsing a local store that carried used classic video games. In these bins of plastic cartridges I found Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf for the NES, and thought “huh, what an interesting concept,” and picked it up on a whim for like $2.50.

I regret to inform you that there is no actual fighting in Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf.

There is a character in it called Big Jumbo, but that mildly amusing fact was no consolation for the total lack of fisticuffs. I wanted to thwack my opponents with a 5-iron or throw down on the links Happy Gilmore style!

Over two decades later, along comes Super Battle Golf to heal my long-festering disappointment. I also picked it up for a pittance for 6.39 (which, as we’ve learned, is basically five bucks according to the PEAK devs) and I could not be happier with it. This game is a madcap race to the fairway between you and up to 7 of your friends, all the while people are smashing your kneecaps with their clubs, shooting at you with pistols or elephant guns, or running you down with a golf cart. It’s all very slapstick and it’s been a while since a game has made me laugh like this one has.

I can’t wait to play more. What else can I say? It’s basically five bucks. Go get it.

Mythic+ without the fuss

Fellowship [EARLY ACCESS]

TBD

Overall Score

Recommendation TBD

World of Warcraft’s Mythic+ dungeon mode is genuinely one of the best things they’ve ever added to the game. It provides a (theoretically) infinitely-scaling dungeon challenge for you and 4 other allies, which is far more accessible than putting a whole raid group together. Having run a WoW raiding guild during the days of Vanilla and early TBC, I can most definitely say that’s something I would never want to do again. Last year some friends and I decided to get into M+, and after not having played WoW for probably at least 15 years… Boy, things have changed a lot. The game is overstuffed with things to do and learning all the systems and currencies you need to interact with is enough to make your head spin, and at endgame it piles on even more to think about.

Along comes Fellowship, which distills the M+ experience into a standalone package. There’s no grinding to level cap or gearing up before you can get to the good stuff, just choose one of a roster of heroes, find a group, pick a difficulty, and go. I do miss the character customization inherent to a proper MMORPG (I grew quite attached to my Demon Hunter, Brymmleaighe), but the heroes in Fellowship serve well enough in their archetypes and most mirror existing character classes from other similar games. It feels very familiar in a positive way; if you’ve ever done M+ you’ll be able to slide right into Fellowship with no problems. It’s still early access and needs some polish, but seems to be moving in the right direction.