Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Destiny Board Traveler

Final Yu-Gi-Oh! review for this year! Yet again, we’re moving away from the card game as it usually works to delve into a different type of gameplay – this time, a proper board game that involves dice and spaces and Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters- wait, again? Yep. Can’t escape those.

Destiny Board Traveler was first released in Japan under the name Sugoroku’s Sugoroku on March 18th, 2004; and then made its way to North American markets on October 26th of the same year. That original title is a reference to Yugi’s grandpa; Solomon Muto’s original name is Sugoroku, also the name of two ancient board games that have some similarities to modern Snakes & Ladders and Backgammon, respectively.

But of course, there needs to be a twist that involves the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game. The characters of the manga/anime appear as playable, there are several boards to choose from (if you unlock them), and the cards themselves will be integral parts of the strategy and gameplay.

Maybe this time I can keep it short.

’Round the Board

Makes sense to pick Yugi. ow I just have to hope his
legendary lucks rubs off on me. (Hint: It didn't.)

Four players move around one or more 5X5 square-shaped boards. Each player has a hand of monsters drawn from their Deck (this game doesn’t use Spells or Traps, and all monsters are treated as Normal and don’t have their effects). On their turn, each player creates their own die from cards in their hand by setting them onto its faces. They do not need to set monsters onto every face of the die, however. The value of each side of that die is equal to the level of the monster on it. The die has one side known as the Star Face, while the other five remain regular faces.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Dungeon Dice Monsters

Most Yu-Gi-Oh! games are all about the franchise’s card game. Those began appearing early in the manga’s pages, and it only took a few books before the story shifted to focus on tournaments. However, before those, the manga had several tomes in which Yugi’s alter ego played various games, against many opponents. The early days were DARK; Yugi’s first Shadow Game had someone almost stab themselves for a game about picking up bills with a knife. In another, he burned a criminal to death.

As far as game tables go, I think those in the manga (for
Duelist Kingdom and Dungeon Dice Monsters) make more
sense than the giant arenas from the anime.

Then, there was Duel Kingdom. Shortly afterwards, there was Battle City, which ended up with rules much closer to the real card game. However, between the two, a short arc introduced another game of Kazuki Takahashi’s making: Dungeon Dice Monsters (shortened DDM). Created by Duke Devlin (Ryuji Otogi in the original Japanese), an aspiring game maker whose family sets up shop near Yugi’s home, the game features monsters appearing when dice are deployed on a field. I will explain much more in due time.

These odds are looking good!

There was also a whole thing about a disfigured man in a clown mask, an intense desire for revenge, and arson, but that’s because the manga has always been ballsier than the anime.

Dungeon Dice Monsters was eventually adapted into a physical board game. It never quite caught on, probably due to the complexity of the system that demanded a full board to play as well as the associated dice – not quite as simple as just playing with cards! It also got an adaptation on the Game Boy Advance, released in North America on February 11th, 2003 (though it came out two years earlier in Japan), and a rerelease in the Early Days Collection.

What IS Dungeon Dice Monsters Anyway?

Try not to get yourself cornered.

I’ll open by explaining the game, its rules, and its mechanics. As the name indicates, this game trades cards for dice. The board is made of 13X19 squares, with players on opposite sides. Each player has a pool of 15 dice, which will be the ones they roll. Each player has a figurine named the Die Master in front of them; this figurine starts with three hit points.

Dice sides are called Crests. There are six different  types: Summon, Movement, Attack, Defense, Spell and Trap. Every die has a different selection of these Crests – as an example, a die may have one or two Attack Crests, or maybe none! The only Crest guaranteed to be on every die is the Summon type. Dice have levels ranging from 1 to 4, and the lower the level is, the more Summon Crests it will have.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories

The first Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling simulator was a bit of a mess, but some of that could be excused from the game releasing while the manga’s first tournament arc wasn’t over, the mechanics weren’t set in stone and the card game as we know it now did not exist yet, and being on Game Boy meant much smaller data storage space.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories (not to be confused with the next Yu-Gi-Oh! game, also titled Dark Duel Stories) was released on July 8th, 1999 in Japanese only. We get to play it freely and in English thanks to the Early Days Collection released in February 2025. With more space in the cartridge and a stronger system, surely this new installment improves on the first game, right?

...Hey, that box art is just reusing the
Volume 10 cover art!

The New Tournament

Ahhhh! Color!

Just like Duel Monsters I, this game is a dueling simulator split into stages containing multiple duelists. You must defeat every opponent in a stage 5 times to unlock the next. This makes some sense, since you are drip-fed cards to improve your deck; you only receive one card at each victory against a CPU opponent, dropped from that opponent’s pool of rewards. This justifies having to beat every opponent repeatedly, since you wouldn’t otherwise gather enough cards to stand a chance against better opponents.

The plot? Just a different tournament beyond Duelist Kingdom, again helmed by Pegasus. Who cares, really.

The Stage 1 opponents (Yugi, Joey, Bakura and Tristan) are laughable; I went through those 20 duels without editing my deck once. They’re basically a tutorial. None of them ever use monsters with ATK higher than 500. Enemy decks are once again randomized out of their personal card pools, with some cards having higher chances to appear than others. Opponents cannot fuse their own monsters, nor use Magic or Trap cards.

However, they can still destroy your monsters
if they get lucky with Alignments.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters I

Back with another themed month, and I return to the well of Yu-Gi-Oh! Except, this time, I’ll be focusing on older games. In February 2025, Konami released the Early Days Collection, which contains 14 (technically 16) games from the earliest of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. I already covered one of these, The Sacred Cards, in the first year of Planned All Along, which leaves 13 games to cover (technically 15; you’ll understand why I say that, but not until next year).

This volume had the duel against PaniK,
also known as the Player Killer of
Darkness in the original Japanese,
because the manga was edgy like that.

I figured that I would start with the shortest games (according to How Long To Beat); but the four I’m planning to cover this month, I’ll do in chronological order. I’m opening today with the first game in the entire collection, the original Duel Monsters, released for the Game Boy on December 16th, 1998. Several of these classics had never been officially released in languages other than Japanese before, so it’s a chance to discover them and experience the start of a legacy.

Technically, it isn’t the first Yu-Gi-Oh! game ever released (the actual first was based on a lesser game from the manga’s history, Monster Capsule), but it is the first to feature the card game that would then take over the anime and be the sole focus of every following series. When it came out, the manga itself was at its tenth volume, in the middle of the Dueling Kingdom tournament arc. Barely halfway in, not even in the finals. The duel against Pegasus is still far. The timeframe in which this game was made explains a lot about it. For starters, the characters we meet and duel are only the ones we have seen in the manga pages up to that point.

However, it’s most notable in gameplay, with duels obeying the, um… elastic rules of Duelist Kingdom. I’ll get there soon enough.

The OG Duel Simulator

Choose your fighter Duelist!

Before the game starts, Yami Yugi tells the player to input their duelist name. It’s not important in the Story Mode, but it is a screen name for dueling and trading with other players using a Link Cable (remember, this was the Game Boy era).

Story? What’s that? When the game begins, your first screen shows the mugs of Yugi Muto, Joey Wheeler, Tristan Taylor and Bakura Ryo. We can surmise, based on the background showing a large boat, that we’re on the ship taking our characters to Duelist Kingdom. Each of these four will say the same thing: If you want to proceed, you’ll have to beat them all five times. Why five? Shouldn’t one be enough? Nah, not here.

Okay, back to that pin about gameplay. The card game as we know it didn’t even exist yet. The cards at the time were the Bandai OCG, a short-lived version that ended in 1999, when the actual Konami card game began and overtook the former in popularity. As a result, early Duel Monsters video games had the bare minimum to base themselves on, gameplay-wise. All they had was the Duelist Kingdom rules (which would later be streamlined for the second tournament arc, Battle City). Also, take into account the hardware limitations: A Game Boy cartridge could only contain a maximum of 4 megabits of data, and the game had to be designed to account for the tiny screen.

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We end this today!

Krawlosphere

Final dungeon looks like a dump and is just not
interesting to explore. Checks out.

Rallen and Jeena land their ship inside the planetoid and step out. The place is nothing but writhing Krawl flesh. Gross. No other way but forward. I mean it, too; this dungeon is nothing but one long corridor forward with larger rooms for battles. You have exactly one unavoidable battle in each corridor, and then one longer fight in each room. Multiple rounds of enemies topped with mini-bosses. Thankfully, the mandatory fights don’t return once they have been cleared, which means that you can go back to the ship at any time to save, heal your Spectrobes and swap your team around.

Rice balls! Pluck 'em right out of the ground, and eat 'em!
It's okay, they're clean! Somehow!

Kinda annoys me that there’s no other way whatsoever to heal your Spectrobes, other than when they level up. The only healing items in this game are rice balls, coming in four varieties that heal your player character 30, 100, 300 or 1000 HP. Nothing for your creatures. No way to bring them back into action during a battle after they’re fainted, either – no Revives here! Nope, the only controllable way to heal any of these battle beasts is through a save point. And, oh yeah, you can’t buy rice balls anywhere. There's only two ways to find some. The first is to find them with your searcher critter. The second is to discard a cleaned fossil, which trades it away for random items – can be minerals or rice balls, gotta be lucky. Not a very reliable thing. Kinda sucks when you're short and need many, quick, before heading out to fight a boss.

These charged attacks are pretty awesome to watch.
They're better when they actually deal, y'know, good damage
to the enemies and bosses.

And the Krawlosphere being what it is, you won’t find any fossils, crystals or healing items here. Any light patches to investigate will summon enemy encounters. Which, to be fair, makes the planetoid a perfect training spot if your team is still weak against what’s coming up.

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

On to the next planets!

Sure, if you Slayso!

…I should have stones thrown at me for that pun.

While I'm preparing to attack this spider alien with a robot
in it, my shoes Spectrobe is kicking it left and right.
This is a weeeeird game sometimes.

After the stop by Wyterra to present the latest shard to Radese (and reporting on the planetoid-sized Krawl coming), Rallen and Jeena head over to Slayso, the fifth planet of the system, permanently covered by a sandstorm. Its only building is a thousand-floor memorial tower built right after the Great Krawl War, many millenia ago. Only two residents: Tidy and Scout, the robots who take care of the tower. On the ground floor we encounter a spider Krawl with a robot stuck in its body; after it escapes, the officers meet Tidy, who says that Scout was captured by that thing. It fled upwards, so we must go up the floors to rescue the robot.

Go on, lil' Spectrobe doggo! Fetch that elevator! Good boy!

No other NPC in sight, so this chapter is low on story events. We climb the floors using elevators. On several floors, there’s a puzzle to solve. On others, there are seven rooms with elevators, only one of which works, while the other rooms have Krawl encounters. Other times, an elevator is located out of reach, and so we send a child Spectrobe to bring it down after following a maze of pathways. So much of this tower feels like padding that an entire hour’s worth of floors could have been cut. The only perk is that, if you force yourself to do it, there’s a lot of options for level-grinding. Your beasts will need it.

There's a couple of decent puzzles in this tower. Lots of
fights, too. But damn, it's so freaking linear.
And so... damn... long...

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We’re continuing this quest in the Kaio planetary system!

Doldogo

Call it a hunch, but the river being turned into
Purple Drank isn't a great sign.

Eeyep, these Krawl are plants. Jeena, bring the flamethrower!

Rallen and Jeena land their ship near a village, only to see that the river going through it has run purple and poisonous. Upon meeting Gretta, the village's chief, we learn that her daughter has gone missing after going up to the Tree of Life, through the forest from the Verdant Village. The NPP officers head towards the Tree to investigate. They find Gretta’s daughter Salia, near the tree, attacked by plant-property Krawl. These aliens do adapt to the environments they invade! The monsters are defeated, and the girl is taken back to her village safe and sound.

These battles introduce status effects to battle, like poison,
or later, freeze, stunned, and so on. These are really annoying
because they impact your ability to fight, and there is
NO WAY to heal yourself from them, you can only wait for
them to pass. Poison will cause your character to stumble at
every couple seconds and lose HP as well. Augh!

Flying Spectrobes are only useful like this twice. Also, good
thing one species like it is so common on this planet! Or
else we would get stuck pretty badly!

However, the water remains nasty. Heading deeper into the woods, the heroes find large Krawl polluting the waters and harming the Tree of Life. The first two are dealt with, but the road to the third goes by a chasm they cannot cross. Jeena gets the idea of sending a flying child Spectrobe to the rocks above the cliff to break them and create a bridge. Using the C button, you can control child Spectrobes outside of battle in specific situations, to explore or solve puzzles like this one. Most Spectrobes are on the ground, but some are capable of flight. Later in this chapter, we control a walking child form through smaller holes in walls to activate mechanisms to open doors to new areas. The flying Spectrobe creates the bridge, and the officers carry through.

Little Komainu goes on a journey. Come back,
but only after you've opened the path!

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Steam alone lists four digits' worth of 'Mon Games.
Oh, excuse me, "Creature Collectors". (Not all of them
are about using them to fight, so...)

Beyond Pokémon, I consider myself a fan of the ‘Mon genre. It's all about collecting animals and using them for battle – with the where, how and why changing. Game Freak’s beloved franchise sits atop them all – if you follow the leader, you stay behind them. But a lot of single games, and even smaller franchises, went for a slice of that pie – on Steam alone, I can think of tons of ‘Mon games, some of which have made the news for, ahem, reasons. *cough*PalWorld*cough* Franchises include Fossil Fighters or Spectrobes.

In the latter, we find new creatures and add them to our team by unearthing fossils, cleaning them, and reviving the creature inside. Oh, and an alien invasion is involved.

…what? No, I’m not talking about Fossil Fighters. What makes you think that? I’m talking about Spectrobes. This series developed by Genki and published by Disney Interactive Studios takes a more action-RPG approach to ‘Mon battling and collecting, with the franchise’s main character joining their creatures on the field, both in combat and in finding more beasts to add to the team.

(Let’s Play by KillinCat)

Today’s game, Spectrobes: Origins, is the third game in the series despite the name, and was released in North America on August 18th, 2009 for the Wii only. The continuing adventures of Rallen, an officer of the Nanairo Planetary Patrol (NPP), his colleague Jeena who serves as mission control, and their pet Spectrobe Komainu.

Lost in Space

Look at Rallen, acting serious and dorky all at once.
(P.S. The screenshots were taken from this Longplay
by KillinCat. Go check it out!)

The Nanairo System is endangered by an alien species known as the Krawl, who cause devastation everywhere they go. Little is known of them, other than their leader is someone named Krux. This nefarious kind is planning to use portals to spread across the universe, and thus, the Officers are tasked with protecting those portals from the threat. Rallen and Jeena are sent to investigate an anomaly in Sector W. Despite warnings that this anomaly could be dangerous, their superior, Commander Grant, is confident that they can overcome any threat.

Exploring The Itch.io Collection #1

In my 2024 Retrospective at the start of the year, I stated that I had been meaning to explore the massive collection of stuff I had gathered on my itch.io account. Twice in the past, I contributed to causes by purchasing two large bundles of indie items on the platform. The result? Oh, last I counted, I had something like 2,500 items on there.

No, I didn't stutter. I know. That’s a ton.

Want to track my progress? I make sure to update the list
of tested games as I play them. You can view it here.

Itch.io is a space specifically dedicated to indie games, and plenty are on the short end. I have a bit of overlap between that collection and everything I currently own, or have owned, on Steam; when I checked, I had 23 repeats, some of which are still waiting in the Steam backlog. These bundles also included: Loads and loads of physical/board games (a category in which we can find solo journaling games and other stuff like that), tools/resources, books/novels/comics, and even a handful of apps. With the sheer number of items I had, it was tough to sort it all into categories that would make it easier for me to find stuff.

Late in 2024, I decided I’d do the exercise I do for my Steam collection, and organized the games I could find with recorded times on HowLongToBeat into a single list. I only really found, oh, 50% maybe? The end list was still something like 830 games, which means I have roughly double that to check out. Welp, I’m nowhere near done! Though what helps is that, compared to what remains of my main collection, a sizeable chunk of those games (around 350) will take me under an hour to finish. Hell, I've got plenty that can be finished in under twenty minutes.

This is only a tiny portion of what I have yet to cover. This
specific personally-curated collection, at time of posting,
still has over 300 games. Even at 20 minutes a pop,
that's 100 hours.

At some point eventually, I might trade out the Quick Reviews of Steam games for Quick Reviews of itch.io games instead, where I could very easily cover short games for several months. (I might also have segments like that for games on the Nintendo Switch Online, but I’ll see about those later.)

For the sake of completionism, I figured I would give every game its moment. What to do with games that can be finished in 1 to 10 minutes? Well, just one paragraph should do, right? Down here is my first list of games from itch.io, all of which are so short they can be finished faster than it takes to listen to the radio edit of an average song. How many am I covering? Well… in this article alone, there’s 29.

To make it a little easier on myself and everyone, I decided to split these games into categories to cover them here. Some register more like experiences than proper games, some exist to encourage self-care, some are inspired by a social situation and/or try to discuss something important, and some are just plain fun.

Experiences

Look out for scattered boxes.

Guide of the Butterfly: An atmospheric black and grey game about a butterfly reaching the end while an EKG beeps and peters out, signaling death. Meant to be powerful, but felt too short for the message.

He Plays the Piano: Keep pressing keys to keep the music going. Ambient, not quite a game. Nice but not too noteworthy.

Hope’s Peak: A Western story delivered 5 paragraphs at a time, with playthroughs randomized based on the words you can choose on each screen. If you want the full story, find all the words. However, you don’t have a way to know whether you’re making progress.

Still not sure how bringing random items to it appeases
the ghost. Especially stuff that could have hurt it.

Peace of Mind: Your new house is haunted! The start screen tells you what the ghost likes. Bring it three items representing what it likes, picked around the house, and… that’s all. To grab items, they must be at the center of the screen, and you have no cursor to help you there, so it's a bit user-unfriendly. Only a concept, at best.

Wave to the people: Hold down the mouse button to wave to people and see their reaction. Nothing more. Barely a game, but it’s cute.

Monad: Create dots of black and white over a black background. Those will get larger and larger before disappearing. The result is a tapestry of circles meshing for fun visuals. You can control the speed at which the circles disappear. That’s about it for this more meditative entry.

Are we sure the snacks the mayor gave us didn't
contain any psychotropes? ...No? ...Have we checked?

Mr mayor tells your fortune recounts a story and offers you snacks: The talk screens, the drawn cards, the story beats and the “snack” are randomized, so you never know what Mr mayor is going to say or do. It’s a zany “game” without a goal, but its sheer absurdity makes it endearing. The “story” never makes sense. Thanks for the fortune!

The Spark of One: Based on a Martin Luther King speech, the idea here is all about the strength in numbers. Move around, attract one type of particles by holding down Space; carry them all to the exit, and you get zapped; on round 2, all the particles will be attracted to your square, and it’s only then that you can go through. …That’s all.

Emptiness, and then one low-effort jumpscare. Meh?

Eizoku: A very short horror game put on hiatus by its creator. A low-poly environmental narrative game with just one scare at the very end, and lots of walking on bridges. There’s probably more surprises to it than I’ve seen, if the screenshots are any indication, but I was left with the impression that the current product was bland.

The Alabaster Donut Farm: In this environmental narrative game, you visit a “donut farm” in the middle of a desert. Interacting with numbered items leads to unconnected freeform poems. Hard to tell whether there even is a plot here, though the game does end after you find what looks like a spaceship in the distance. This one didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

Self-care

Thanks Borb!

Borb the Birb: Self-care, one advice screen at a time, with a funny round bird mascot. Not quite a game, but could be useful to some.

Kintsugi: A game about embracing imperfections, inspired by the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics using gold. Soothing music, Japanese proverbs, a short but relaxing experience.

A Lullaby of Colors: Move around an endless land of colors, while enjoying relaxing music. You can often crash into bouncing balls, which will change the layout of the land and the patterns of colors on the ground. Made for both PC and VR, this game doesn’t offer much of interest.

Social reach (Heavy topics ahead)

Not if you keep saying gibberish, I'm afraid.

I Hurt Myself – Postjam Edition: A rough game about suicidal ideation. You move around, grab a knife, and metaphorically end it. Oof. I hope the maker of this one is doing better.

Just one, must choose: Pick one of the five colors. Only one. Then, the game tells you to think about the ones you didn’t choose, using them as a metaphor for any other thing in life that is “not chosen”, and thus ignored. I get it, but eh.

Life: The Game of Chance: A game about how much about life is up to luck, from where you’re born to the chances presented to you. The are no happy endings to be found in this game, to emphasize that everyone else has it rough too, and you should empathize with the life stories of even complete strangers. (Not gonna lie, after the past few years, that lesson feels sour, considering how often people make choices specifically to make the lives of others more difficult.)

Saving You from Yourself: A quick visual novel-style game about being a therapist for transgender people. Though you don’t frequently have options to pick from, you do get to see what your questions and comments have as an impact on the trans woman your character discusses with. Thoughtful and important.

Lacrymo Tennis 2016/18: During a massive protest in France, you’re a tennis player tossing tear gas canisters back at the riot squads… at least until your lungs give up. Move with the mouse, click to swing back. Try to let as many protesters as possible through. Funny, maybe, but that's the only joke here.

Masks: Inspired by the 2019 Hong Kong protests, this text adventure is about a courier trapped in a lab as chaos erupts. Their only choice for survival may be what is found in the package they carried. Playthroughs change a little based on choices, but the more interesting part is how some text changes when you click a clickable word to highlight the gravity of the situation (ex. the word changes to something more dire).

Just plain games

Oh, and the track shape is randomized.

Hair Dash: Use two buttons to attack left or right, fend the waves of enemies. Looks nice, but is very short.

Bouncy Cars: The track is too narrow, hitting the “walls” hurts the car, and the cars turn way too fast. Hard pass.

Bear-ly There: It’s summer, time for Barris the Bear to eat a lot of fish and be full in time for the next winter! Would be fun, if Barris did move with WASD – but instead, he only ever moved when I jumped! And he moved like a ragdoll! Good thing this was short, because it was so annoying I didn’t want to play it any longer. Oh, there’s also a “poop” button.

It's not anywhere near as fun as it looks.

More bunnies in one picture means more points!

I’m Bored, Let’s Explore (Mall): Low-pixel short adventure of two friends exploring a deserted mall. Some funny comments. Not a ton to do, but it’s alright.

#hasicontent: Take pictures of bunnies in a field! Your pictures get Likes, and at every 100 Likes, you get carrots to attract more bunnies. That’s all there is to this cute game; no goal otherwise, though it’s fun to see bunnies get more and more frequent over time.

Hi-Score Boi: A gamer practicing high scores in his living room. Two modes: Endless, or go for the highest score in one minute. What’s gameplay? Pressing Space to score 1,000 points. That’s it. Sparks fly from the screen, even more if you button-mash fast, 1,000 points, that’s all. Looks nice, but it’s just bleh.

Why did the tree cross the neighborhood?

OddyTree: You are a tree seeking greener pastures, but a town was built between your forest and the one up North. It's gonna be a trip across homes and fences. You move with WASD and must rebalance yourself with the arrow keys. If you fall completely to the ground, you lose and must restart. This is the basis of quite a few mini-games I’ve played before, and here, it’s done well.

PizzaBoy: You deliver pizzas to people. You move with WASD, jump with Space, and throw your pizza slices with the left- and right-click buttons. You can often discover new toppings by meeting specific NPCs. Hard to tell whether there really is a goal here; it seems to go on forever with no indication of progress. It’s just a silly, wacky thing for the Heck of it. Which is fine sometimes.

Find the cat in every room! He hides very cleverly.

[SIBERIA]: A text adventure mimicking CRT screens, in which you play a character who has crash-landed in Siberia and must survive the elements. With some luck and clever use of what you find, you can make your way to safety. I liked this one, it’s very short, but it’s enjoyable and has a bit of self-awareness.

Where is Cat?: One of my favorite discoveries today, in this game for children you have to find numerous animals and items in seven rooms of a house. First a cat; then tiny plates, tiny glasses, tiny cupcakes, and finally, mice that will eat the cupcakes. All of this is done in an adorable art style. It’s not super difficult, which is understandable, and like everything else here it’s short, but it’s clever and well-made.

---

That was a lot, wasn’t it? Yeah, that’s a lot of games in very little time. Keep in mind that I also had to remove each of these from my collections on itch.io, keeping track of what I’ve covered and what I haven’t. It’s long work! This one article represented barely 1% of all the products I have on there, and yet I haven’t even played for two hours total. I hope to do more of these in the future. I might cut down more and more on the number of games I cover within one article, as the games get longer, and I have more to say about each.

Well then, I guess I’ll be seeing you in the next article like this. There’s a reason I called it #1 – it’s not the last.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links (Part 2)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Month 2025

Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution: Part 1 – Part 2

Master Duel: Part 1

Duel Links: Part 1 – Part 2

Missed Part 1? Read it here. This part? We’re diving into the fun part, for folks like me who love this game because of the connection with the anime.

From Duel Monsters to VRAINS SEVENS Go Rush

After a while, you'll be glad the game has an Auto-Duel
feature, since there's just so many duels to do against NPCs.
Sometimes the AI will make stupid decisions, but it usually
does alright against all kinds of opponents.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links started with very little content, building over time. The overarching plot of Duel Links is that Seto Kaiba, in his constant struggle to prove himself worthy of defeating the Pharaoh Atem (who left for Egyptian afterlife at the end of the original anime series, Duel Monsters), invented the Duel Links virtual world where duelists can meet and battle no matter where they actually are. At the very least, that’s what it feels like for average duelists. Characters from the various anime series, AKA the “Legendary Duelists”, exist in a variety of odd ways in this “world”. The land of Duel Monsters is explicitly said to be a simulation, so the Legendary Duelists met there aren’t real, even in-universe. That world specifically replicates the past, and as a result its characters exist all at the same time even if they didn't back in the actual series. Some characters express bewilderment that they somehow still exist, like Yami Marik (who was erased from existence; it’s a long story).

Oh, also, Duel Monsters is the only world that takes closer inspiration to the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga rather than its associated anime, but there’s still a clear inspiration from both regardless.

He looks just as unhinged as ever.