Social media fucking blows, but I still allow myself some corners of curated nonsense. Besides the low-brow humor and Counter Strike 2 tournament updates, I’ll get interesting videos of upcoming games geared towards a co-op with you and a bud. Hey, I got a bud around here somewhere…my wife (who will be also be around for another piece of ours this month!) has graciously taken time to try out three games with me. Or is it I tried three games with her? Some of these games were just as much her idea as mine. What has the algo found for us this time?

Squirreled Away plays like a stripped-down combination of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and an Early Access Crafting game. You’ll spend most of your time jumping all nimbly bimbly from tree to tree, rummaging for sticks and stones, crafting rudimentary tools to build everything from houses and household decorations to stink bombs to hang gliders. There are simple fetch quests to help increase your inventory size, collectibles to maximize your stamina, consumables to recover stamina or your hearts from the 2 to 3 things that actually hurt your character, and several squirrels who need various tasks done to help you reach Squirrelhala…no, really.

The park is bright and varied enough to enjoy visually, and while not too big, the ability to build fast-traveling TV’s to warp through is a quality post-1.0 QOL touch that I’m happy we waited long enough before playing this. Controls are snappy and easy to pick up, and jumping to trees and zipping to surfaces has some hilarious consequences that would super-speed our squirrels in a way that absolute sickos looking to speedrun this game would salivate at mastering.

Playing around 8 hours was more than enough to see the paint-rolled-over cracks in the game’s foundation. Background music would constantly stop working then kick back in at random times. Quest flags would break if non-hosting players started them (I was relegated from talking to other squirrels 30 minutes in after a tutorial mission was rendered impossible to complete without a hard restart of the game lobby), achievements are broken, stamina bars when swimming would increase over time with no visual indicator so late game swims were always uncertain, you couldn’t sleep in some of the purchasable home areas because they “didn’t have a roof” even though you were in the innards of an oak tree, et cetera.

My wife and I spent a lot of time laughing at the game’s shortcomings rather than with the witty dialogue or simplistic gameplay, but I don’t wanna say I hated the game. I had a good time! Being on stick duty for my wife while she created the squirrel home of our dreams was a nice, casual romp that gave us time to catch fish and take a dip in a hot tub made of a tea cup. But a good time does not equal a well made game. If it’s on sale and you’ve got a buddy or two to join you, it’s worth throwing on as background gaming to casual conversations and throwing stink bombs at dogs or birds from long range. That never really did get old.

5/10

Sheepherds tasks 1-3 players with navigating various amounts of sheep to the sheerer to get their wool for your grandma who’s busy vacationing, and planning a cool event for when she gets back. Different areas of flowers are strewn about each stage that will change the wool color of each sheep that walks through it, thus giving you various objectives to complete while doing your navigating and guiding. Objectives range from getting a specific type of wool color sheered first, to not interacting with hazards, to not getting that wet dog smell by running through water (though sheep will need to get wet to remove the flower’s dye off of their wool).

Walking near sheep will slowly position and insist movement a certain direction, with your controller rumbling based on the amount of space given. Barking will get the sheep to go faster but you lose the finesse of a slow, steady approach; this will absolutely show off the CPU’s tendency to just hate the player in terms of idle sheep navigation. Honestly the sheep do whatever the fuck they want and that usually involves trying to do the one thing you don’t want or to try to break one of your secondary objectives to lose your gold medal. If you’re trying to be quick it’s a frustrating ordeal, but remember! Cozy games, you impatient bitch. Taking most stages slow and recognizing there isn’t a time limit for 95% of the objectives in the game will infinitely increase your enjoyment.

The main hub has little mini-games like whack-a-mole and baby chick herding in a big dog-chicken-costume. You can also mix and match through Sheepherd‘s several breeds of dog and just as many costumes and hit up several photo-spots for Steam to take screenshots for you, which is kinda convenient actually. We 100%’d the game in a little under 6 hours and frankly, that’s the perfect amount of Sheepherds before it even gets the opportunity to become stale and overstay its welcome.

8/10

I kind of already knew I was gonna have a good ass time with Super Battle Golf. I love me a golf game with simplistic mechanics and the ability to bring your friends in, and at a crisp $6 on its opening sale, this was a easy sell to the friend group to hit the links. Before you call this game “friendslop,” kindly shut the fuck up because that term doesn’t mean anything.

Take the concept of Mario Golf Super Rush‘s Speed Golf mode and combine it with a bevy of items ranging from cups of coffee to spring boots to elephant guns to a Hammer of Dawn. Golf games! SBG‘s standard mode is a 9-hole race to the finish, where the amount of strokes is second banana to just getting in the hole as soon as possible. Your swing’s power is handled by a hold-and-release method: hold your swing button and release at when your power is where you want it. No fancy spin on your shots is available but you can tweak the angle of the one club you’re allowed to use: try 0° for putting, 10° for low and fast stingers, 45° for your normal drives, and 60° to loft high and remove excess rolling after landing.

Your success is based on point values given after each hole: points for finishing quickest, for “speedrunning” a hole by finishing in less than 60 seconds, and for getting in it with the least amount of swings (get a birdie like a real golfer!). But everyone is also trying to do all three of those things, so your job on top of playing well is making sure your opponents/friends eat shit at their objectives.

Enter the “battle” in Super Battle Golf: almost everything you get your hands on is a weapon. Hitting a ball over 100% power in the range of a player will send a homing shot sailing to knock someone off their feet. Take a swing of any power at someone’s knees to crumple them in place or backflip them into the air on a full power swing. Item boxes sprinkled around each course will get you several items that offer hilarious inclusions as you sprint to your ball. Guns can be deceptively accurate from long ranges but on controller it can be a hassle to aim properly, where keyboard & mouse provide find an immediate upgrade to aiming.

There are currently 27 holes (3 courses of 9 holes) to play, and the replay value of the each-hole shakedown gives the 1.0 of SBG longer life than if it was masquerading as a “real” golf product. Add in the large depth of customization to how you play your games: randomizing which holes to play, percentage sliders for which items are dropped for whom based on where players are positioned relative to the hole and within the standings, or toggling on the ability to hit other player’s golf balls in a true anarchist sense of friend-testing gameplay, and you’ve got yourself a good double-digits amount of hours of nonsense and hilarity to run through, even more so if you can fill an 8 player lobby with friends as the devs intended.

When you can get enough hilarity and spontaneity in a sports game to get people who give negative shits about said sport to play it, you’ve got yourself a winner. Combine that with customization that asks for no micro-transactional purchases and you’ve laid out a blueprint for future developers to follow on how to create a simple, effective, and reasonably-priced title that’ll let your players’ wallets do the talking.

9/10