STG's

X-Morph: Defense is an interesting hybrid of tower defense and top-down shooter. You are an alien force defending your tower, which came to Earth to take our jobs (er, I mean resources). As usual, you have to place towers (which seem to have only types, not strengths) to make enemies walk on mazes and to destroy them. As is traditional, there are several types of towers - regular, artillery, anti-air, etc. They can also have laser fences between them, so as to make more sense to why enemies just don't on their sides. You also get an alien ship with various weapon types (you can make different choices on what are available on each mission). Graphics are good. What frustrate me a bit is that the controls feel a bit clunky, and it is quite annoying to change bunches of towers between waves, as suddenly they stop making sense or can be destroyed by certain enemies (you lose nothing, but building towers in the middle of a wave is too time consuming). Overall, pretty interestin...

Heat Signature is an interesting title, with roguelike parts. It is a top-down "shooter" where you invade a spaceship per mission and try to achieve objectives (such as kill someone, steal a device, etc) while using several objects - such as guns, stealth shields, the old trusty wrench, etc. You can pause to issue orders, which makes a big difference. So far I find it quite enjoyable. Graphics are very adequate, and run quite fast. Story is minimal and tutorial is somewhat adequate (I didn't get that you could throw objects at first, which was a big problem). Some people complained that the missions are too similar, but I haven't played enough for this to be a factor yet.

Splasher is a platformer with an interesting use of paints, for different effects in surfaces. That reminds me a bit of Portal 2. I'm not a big fan of tricky jumps and redoing sections, though, so it is really not for me. Nice graphics and probably interesting for platformer fans, however.

Drawkanoid is an interesting game based on Arkanoid. I've playing these since the 80s, and there many variations. I got it from the Humble Monthly Bundle. This variation is defined by drawing the position of the paddle, with a slow time zone (otherwise you wouldn't have time to draw). The graphics are pretty nice looking, with an abstract style and 80s neon colors. The effects look good. There are also many possible upgrades, such as a bigger paddle, more lives, more damage, etc. For extra flavor some of these are activated by a number of bounces, which is an interesting choice. Overall, though, the reactions needed on constant use of bullet time end up being very tiresome, so the game is fun for a little while, then feels like work. Interesting concept, though.

I've read It - by Stephen King - way back, when it was somewhat new. But I've seen the 2017 movie, loved it, and wanted to re-read the book. I really liked it, and the mixing of the past and the present is certainly more suspenseful than the approach the movie took (part 1 has only the past section). The books feels WAY too verbose, through. Mine had 1090 pages, but it feels like it could be trimmed to almost half without losing much. Still, the ending was pretty great and I hope the second movie does something similar - it'd look pretty epic. Of course, not sure how good the "mind space" will look visually.