Let's look at some of the games I've cleared from my backlog recently

 I've been making a pretty big dent in my backlog this year. That was very needed because it was honestly getting out of hand a little bit. There are a lot of cool games I've played recently, including some smaller titles that simply aren't big enough to warrant an entire post. So I figured I'd make a little compilation post here to talk about some of the smaller games I've played recently that I really enjoyed. Let's cut the malarkey and get straight into it!

Mina The Hollower
This is a game that I played on release, so it technically wasn't in my backlog. But I don't know when else I would ever talk about this game so I'm going to include it. This game was developed by Yacht Club, who are mostly known for Shovel Knight, a couple of months ago and I knew I wanted to play it quickly. 
It's essentially a sort of mix of soulslike and Game Boy era Zelda. I love myself a good soulslike game and obviously I love Zelda style gameplay as well so this was a no-brainer for me. And I ended up really enjoying the game. This game has a lot of that old school charm that you would expect from this general premise and the gameplay feels pretty solid, though some mechanics like the burrowing took me a bit to get used to. I really enjoyed the dark Castlevania-esque aesthetics in this game. And I have to say that between this game and Shovel Knight, Jake Kaufman is slowly starting to become one of my favourite video game music composers.
I will admit that the story wasn't anything special to me, but the gameplay itself and the exploration element more than made up for it in my opinion. And it's a soulslike so it's of course quite unforgiving as well. I'm always up for a good challenge so I can always embrace that.

Pepper Grinder
I love a good precision platformer. And Pepper Grinder was one of those games where once I finally played it I was left wondering "why did I wait so long". I have to start off by saying that the movement in this game is very unique yet feels really satisfying. The digging mechanic is a perfect example of easy to learn, hard to master. 
A lot of the levels have their own little idea that you'll only see once in the game which makes it feel fresh the entire time you're playing. Though I will say the game is pretty short so even if it didn't do that you likely wouldn't have gotten bored by the end anyway.
I always enjoy pixelated artstyles like this and the music complement it well. Though I wouldn't say either of these aspects were a highlight of this game for me. That is really all in the gameplay. So if you want a nice and short precision platformer to fill up your day off with, I would say this game is a great way to go. 

Undertale
I know Undertale is a huge cult classic but for some reason I never played it until recently, even though I've always wanted to. I'm going to be honest, I don't think I love this game as much as a lot of its players do. But to each his own right? I did still enjoy the game though.
The presentation is definitely very charming and characters like Sans and Papyrus do a great job at making me want to keep going. The story can definitely be a bit confusing and meta but I think that's all just part of the charm to be honest. 
The combat wasn't really for me. For some reason I could never really get along with the dodging mechanic which meant that I struggled a bit during the harder fights in the game. It was still manageable enough for me to keep at it though.
But where this game really shines for me is the soundtrack. It's really impressive that Toby Fox did all of this on his own. The music complements the charm of the artstyle and storytelling perfectly and it plays a huge part in why I ended up really enjoying my time with this game. 

Rogue Legacy 2
I was a big fan of the first Rogue Legacy game so naturally I was very excited when a sequel came out. However I never ended up playing it until a few months ago. I'm not really sure why to be honest. But I'm glad I was finally able to get to it because it was a lot of fun.
This game pretty much just takes everything the first game does and cranks it up a notch. For example the character classes are much more fleshed out here. With each class properly having their own weapon and playstyle this time around. The artstyle also seems a lot more fleshed out as there was a lot more attention to detail while still keeping it similar enough to the first game. 
I love the levelling system in both Rogue Legacy games. The idea of levelling your character by slowly building up a castle with the money you've earned was very cool to me. This and the fact that you do feel a good sense of progression when you beat certain areas do a good job at keeping you motivated to go to the end. 
I will say that the combat took a bit of getting used to in this game for me. I can't really put my finger on why but the controls felt a lot more natural to me in the first game. However once I got used to it I had a lot of fun exploring what all the different classes could do. 
Other than that, the game is largely just the same as the first game for me. Which is not a bad thing by the way, as I thoroughly enjoyed both of them.

Cuphead
Another cult classic that took me way too long to finally get to. To me Cuphead is probably the most charming game out of the ones I've mentioned today. The biggest reasons for that are of course the artstyle and the music. 
The artstyle is very inspired by cartoons from the early 20th century. Then you take a wonderfully composed ragtime and big band jazz soundtrack and you have a presentation that blows most other games out of the water with no problem. 
This game is known for being very difficult. And rightfully so because I definitely struggled a lot in certain places. I have to give it credit for always being fair though. Whenever I die in this game it is clearly my own fault. You're never subjected to cheap tactics or any malarkey like that. This is exactly the kind of challenge that I look for in these types of games.
The bosses, which is what this game is centered around, are all very creatively designed and unique as well. A lot of people will be familiar with Cagney Carnation, the flower boss that does a silly little dance and became a pretty popular meme format. My personal favourite design is probably Wally Warbles though. I may admittedly be a bit biased though because I love birds. 
Overall I think Cuphead is probably my favourite out of all these games though. I had a fantastic time with it and I definately want to revisit it again at some point.

There we go. Just a snippet of the games I've been able to clear out of my backlog recently. I have a lot more games that I want to talk about but we will save those for future posts. I'm just glad that I'm making a decent dent into my backlog instead of just buying more and more games and letting them sit there for the rest of eternaty. 

With that I'm going to call it a post though. I'm going to keep clearing stuff out of my backlog. I'm currently playing a game called Kaze and the Wild Masks. Maybe that game will be featured in a similar post to this at some point.

Bring 'em to the pit!