What I Played in August 2025

Posted on 2025.09.30

It’s time for another month-in-review! Quick note, activity may or may not decrease from here because good news: I got employed! Also oh yeah, a Nintendo Direct happened, though I didn’t have much to say on it so I didn’t write a post about it, in case you were wondering. Anyway enough about September, this is about August! Without much further ado, here are the games I played in August 2025, in no particular order.

Splatoon 3

This game kinda sucks sometimes but I still enjoy playing it with friends. Nothing special happened, just more funny squids.

Drag x Drive

This is… quite an interesting game. I wasn’t gonna buy this originally but the testfire demo got me curious enough. But, just as I expected, there really isn’t much going on here. I’ll say the basketball itself is fine, it’s a pretty cool novelty. The controls are more responsive than you’d expect, so the game’s main selling point succeeds in that aspect. I only really had trouble with bunny hopping, that’s the only move that feels finicky and inconsistent to perform. But like, this game just has no sauce. There’s only 2 minigames, no easy way to play with friends, no custom rules, and more importantly: no stylistic identity. All the characters are these faceless robots and the whole court is just concrete with a slight street theming. I’m glad this game is $20 but I still feel like there’s a lot more that could’ve been done here.

Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics

Messed around more with this game. Two things: after being inspired by a Bluesky mutual (you know who you are) I tried learning a bit of Mahjong and I actually kinda understand it now (at least a little bit). Game’s still hard as rocks but hey, never thought I’d actually give this game a chance. Even won a match against easy CPUs! The second thing is that I played a lot of 1v1s against a friend (you know who you are) and absolutely clobbered them in most games. Sorry :)

Mario Paint

WOOHOO!! MARIO PAINT!! As I said last time, I started a drawing that I didn’t finish until this month. That drawing was an extra silly Marie (Splatoon) drawing! I used the normal brushes, multicolored brushes, letter stamps and I even made some tiny Marie stamps. In addition to that, I decided to draw one of my favorite foods: french toast! I think it came out quite delicious.

Mario’s Super Picross

So the same update that added Mario Paint added mouse controls to other SNES games that supported it, including this game. Unfortunately, MOUSE CONTROLS SUUUUUUUCK!!! The cursor is so damn slow and it’s not even a cursor at all, it’s attached to the grid. Not sure how to explain it well but, for example, if you move your mouse to the left enough then the selected cell will change to the one on the left. It keeps no absolute pixel-perfect reference of where a mouse cursor would be, the selection just moves from cell to cell with enough movement in one direction. It sucks, you just kinda have to try it to know what I mean. I’ll be sticking to the controller for this one, which is saying something when the game in question is Picross which works as smooth as butter in literally any computer picross game.

Kirby Air Ride

The Kirby Air Riders Direct got me hooked into the idea of this game. I’m now REALLY hyped for Kirby Air Riders. I couldn’t wait until November, so I tried the original game on an emulator to give myself a taste. And oh man, they weren’t lying, this game might be peak. Air Ride mode is kinda meh and I didn’t even touch Top Ride. But City Trial? I get it. I get it now. I understand. This mode is so incredibly addictive. It’s even doubly cool because I used to play Smash Run a lot as a kid, and playing the thing that inspired it was quite special. Anyway, now I’m even MORE hyped for the Switch 2 sequel. I can’t wait for that game…

Final Fantasy VII

My uncle recommended this game to me when we were talking about video games, specifically video games that have had a large impact. I’ve always wanted to try this game out because of its aforementioned historical context, so that convo finally gave me the push to buy it! I haven’t played much of this game yet, and to be honest I don’t know if I’m ready for a potentially hundred-hour adventure, but I’m glad to have gotten a start on this.

Tetris 99

Woo! More Tetris! A new DK Bananza theme was released, and playing made me realize that I’m not a huge fan of the Zebra song unfortunately. It’s not a bad song per se but it does not live up to the energy of the Kong and Ostrich themes. Or maybe I just like rock a lot, with electric guitars and drums and what not… Anyway, apart from that there was also the rerelease of three Kirby themes (Forgotten Land, Dream Buffet, and Return to Dreamland Deluxe), which was perfect because I didn’t have any of them. That makes four new themes this month! Rapid fire reviews: Forgotten Land’s ís… not the best, I like the main theme for the first phase but the level one theme for the second phase does not have the energy it needs, it feels like phase one music again; Dream Buffet’s is generally good but I don’t like how jarring the medleys are, it’s like they wanted to cram in as much music into each phase as possible and they picked a bad way to do it; Return to Dream Land Deluxe’s is my fav of the bunch, they went with medleys again but with better transitions this time and the music choices for each phase are perfect.

New Super Mario Bros.

I’ve got more coins… 3000 of them…

Clone Hero

🎶 Yeah, after all this time I'm still into you 🎶

Gartic Phone

Does this count? I’ll count it. I played this with friends and it was awesome. I have a board game called Telestrations which I liked despite not having a lot of chances to play. When I first watched a video on Gartic Phone, I immediately recognized the format. Glad to finally have the chance to try it many years later, it’s as fun as I imagined. My art skills are not the greatest but you do not need them to have fun here!

Donut County

I was bored one day and decided to pick a Steam game that’s been collecting digital dust for a while. This was a pretty neat game, even if a little short.

NSO Playtest Program

Again, I can’t say much here, but I have to mention it since the playtest period lasted till the first week of August. I still wanna say something so I guess I’ll say that the last day was the most satisfying day of the test. I did everything I wanted to do, I left no stone unturned and completed all my unfinished business. And I had a lot of fun, like, a LOT It really was the best day ever. Now I’m sad again. The final hours leading to the shutdown were so beautifully bittersweet. I miss this game so much man, please come back… I miss you so so much…