Christopher Lannoo's Reviews
How to begin summarising an experience like Without a Dawn? For all its brutality, there’s a gentleness, even something delicate about how it presents its themes. Mental illness can be the harshest of things, but telling these stories can’t be as rough, as people wouldn’t be able to listen. Jesse Makkonen sticks the landing beautifully, though, with a game that’s as thoughtful as it is creepy. I found myself recognising so much of my own mental health struggles, without ever feeling attacked. No, I felt seen and understood, and that’s all you can ask of art. To make you feel seen and heard in a way that’s mesmerising and haunting.
Deck of Haunts gameplay loop, with the building phase during the day and the combat phase during the night, will keep you coming back for more as your mansion grows bigger and stronger. There’s a real power trip to be had, but just like giants can be taken down by many smaller enemies attacking at once, it’s tricky to not get overwhelmed by all these people wanting to figure out your secrets. But finding out your own strategy is a ton of fun, whether you go in for the kill or choose to cause madness galore.
Everything combines to create an incredibly addictive game. Drop Duchy throws you into its gameplay immediately, not bothering with too much story in a similar vein as Slay the Spire. You’re here for the gameplay, and boy does it deliver.
Like some of the best narrative games in recent years—I’m looking at you, Citizen Sleeper, 1000xRESIST, Spiritfarer, and Celeste— Many Nights a Whisper is ultimately a meditation on what it means to be human. Why we put ourselves under the stresses and burdens that we do and what ways we look for when it comes to finding ways to get away from those. And it succeeds in a magnificent way: not by telling us what to think but by making us question things we take for granted.
StarVaders is a game that takes the best influences from the genre—the seemingly simple basics that can be iterated on to make it as complex as you want, mostly—and adds its own unique twist. Maybe the best way to describe the game is ‘what if Cobalt Core leaned more into Space Invaders,’ with this one taking the best from both of those classics without being a copy/paste job. The game looks classy, plays wonderfully, and sounds amazing.
Despite there being a lack of big emotions and intriguing environmental storytelling, there is an absolute gem of a puzzle game to be found.
MiTale has survived an incredibly delicate balancing act where they mix many different gameplay mechanics to make something truly unique. It makes me happy to see that they have succeeded at making these different aspects all feel as part of one world.
Koira doesn’t do too many things you haven’t seen in games before. The puzzles are pretty easy if you’ve played any other game, and even some of the designs, like those of the statues in the forest, take inspiration from other games. The story isn’t particularly new either, but fortunately, the way it’s told through the eyes of you and your dog works incredibly well.