Rahul Shirke
It's a game with gameplay so rough, breaking the game feels easier and more interesting than actually trying to play it as intended. Ultimately, it's a shame that a game with an idea so promising ends up not only lacklustre, but thoroughly disappointing. Minor Key Games has done better than this, and hopefully, they will do better than this again. Slayer Shock, however, will have to remain as a faux-Early Access oddity of a game.
Rough design, a lack of polish, a discombobulated story, and hard-to-bear battles make it hard for me to recommend YIIK to anyone but the most fervent collector of 'odd' games. Save yourself the time, and replay the Mother/Earthbound games instead.
Fimbul is a case where I have to commend the developers for effort, but I also have to advise the customer to steer clear of this bland, snowed-out adventure. Literally everything Fimbul attempts to do has already been done better by a different game. It's best if you leave this one buried in the snow.
911 Operator is an original concept, and it's core gameplay hook of matching colours and watching vehicles trace blue lines across a city map makes for calming, even meditative play. You'd think that a game about being an emergency dispatcher might be stressful, but if the game taught me anything, it's that the job is mostly easy-going boredom. It's a game that suffers from having not much of anything: not much challenge, not much content, and not much to say.
Even though Truberbrook looks and sounds fantastic, its obtuse puzzles and forgettable storytelling make it difficult to recommend.
Islanders looks like an idyllic snowglobe, but it belies gears of efficiency and competition. Its islands are fun to tinker with, before you inevitably throw them away and start over.
It could certainly be enough to hold a child's imagination—and I suspect that's who this game is made for—but for anyone expecting more than that, the game wouldn't offer much. What is on offer, however, is an elegant, sharp-looking and colourfully illustrated book of tales that are told according to the reader, just like a good storyteller would.
Thanks to its pleasant palette and meditative sound design, The Gardens Between is a calming experience. It may not have too much to say, but at least it doesn't overstay its welcome. A little sadly, I doubt I will be getting all that nostalgic over a game about nostalgia.
Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire is a well-designed game, despite its brief length and limited scope. Its morose story is illuminated by characters who laugh in the face of death. Every battle is hard-won, and every victory feels like the result of a heroic feat, even if it leaves you with little to celebrate. All in all, the game is a fine little indie game of tactical decision-making, just don't go in expecting depth and length rivalling a Fire Emblem game.
Event[0] is the sort of game that could inspire developers and spark a number of clones. As an experiment in integrating natural language processing with a game, it's a success. Kaizen works. The game is not very long, which could be a downer depending on what you think of length of games. It does however, showcase high production values, and Ocelot Society have certainly made their mark with this intriguing science-fiction adventure.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that Supraland is a modern classic in the puzzle genre. It's approachable, meaty, colourful, and its puzzles are very, very clever. Don't expect anything more, and you stand to have a good time.
If you're an absolute sucker for life simulation games based on crafting and building, Graveyard Keeper will certainly be to your liking. Even if you're a genre tourist like myself, you'll find it hard to deny the game's ability to make you keep coming back for more. Whether you'll stick with it or not depends on how much you're able to tolerate busywork and planning without much of a narrative return.
Rainswept is a compelling effort. It's a heartfelt game that does its best to portray the messiness of relationships and the damage that trauma can do if left to fester.
When thrown into a shopping cart amongst its other peers and stripped of its author, however, Pinstripe is a very brief, pleasant jaunt that refuses to challenge, surprise or be particularly memorable. It feels like a trinket you'd place in a showcase: beautiful, and perhaps even evocative to the right person, but ultimately something you'll forget is there in your library.
All in all, Lovely Planet Arcade succeeds at what it sets out to do: creating a tight, compact and solid package of puzzle-solving and first-person shooting. Every part of the game comes together just right. It may not be particularly ambitious, but that's because it doesn't need to be. It certainly manages to delight, surprise and tickle more than games with exponentially larger budgets and sizes. That's really all anyone can ask for from an arcade.
Heaven's Vault is a different game than most, and that alone makes it worth celebrating. It comes with many a wart, and it never really gels together the way a more conventional game would, but I had a great go with this moon-hopping, language-studying archaeology adventure.
The Turing Test is polished—both literally and figuratively. The puzzles are never overwhelming, and the game's intriguing, hard sci-fi story is told with a suitable air of mystery. In the end, it delivers a satisfying yarn while upturning thought-provoking questions about the nature of thought, understanding, the mind, and whether it is better to use a red orb or a blue orb for this socket.
The Dream Machine is a meaty, psychological adventure that looks like nothing else you've ever played. It's a game of surprising balance: surreal, yet familiar; humorous, yet deeply morbid; bizarre, yet logical; subdued, yet striking. Through it all, the game cuts a straight and narrow line of being consistently entertaining. Not unlike the best of dreams, then.
It took a long time to complete what was really a short journey, and it involved a lot of punishment along the way, but none of that really mattered compared to the victory of making it through.
Whether it's the allure of recruiting a new teammate or uncovering lost treasures in ancient tombs, there's always something to expect when you play Pathway.