Phantom Abyss offers a thrilling gaming experience, but it won't keep you hooked for hours on end unless you have a group of friends to tackle the temples alongside you.
Radical Rabbit Stew is a simple and intuitive puzzle game that is easy to pick up and play for a quick bit of fun. It ends up hitting all the right beats for an intuitive adventure that doesn’t require a massive investment of time from the player. The visual and musical make for the perfect ingredients for this enjoyable experience.
Piofiore: Fated Memories is a game that drips in style and premise, but unfortunately doesn’t really know what to do with it, so it ends up making base appeals to those who like dark, edgy, and more morally questionable entertainment.
Hardcore Mecha provides you with all the tools needed to scratch that mech action itch. While the main campaign lacks narrative and creativity, the core gameplay is solid, which finds its way into the boss encounters and multiplayer mode. There’s definitely room for quality patches that would improve the experience, but a few hours of fun are packed into this title for mecha fans.
Abyss of the Sacrifice is a strange game because it’s got so many elements I absolutely adore. It’s a story-heavy experience with multiple protagonists and a unique setting but manages to constantly interrupt progression and not take advantage of its own systems. The puzzles are fun, but they were integrated only to hinder the overall pacing. You’ll probably have more fun if you want cute girls starring in a puzzle game instead of thinking about its other elements.
Mazm: The Phantom Of The Opera is an extremely good adaptation that turns the classic novel into an enjoyable adventure game, and updates it for the modern audience. It faithfully recreates what the original story did well and improves upon what didn’t stick as much. Whether you’ve only heard the name of the story or you’ve seen multiple variations of the tale, you’re sure to get something out of this title, despite the strange lag.
Olympia Soiree has the makings of a decent romance that puts a lot of effort into its main protagonist and has many different moving parts in terms of narrative beats. Sadly, there’s just no substance or world-building, and the few enjoyable character routes aren’t enough to compel you to complete the game, let alone fall in love. However enjoyable it may be to some, you won’t find anything remotely new about this setup.
Ultimately, Demon’s Tier+ is a charming twin-stick shooter that doesn’t take a whole lot of skill to get into. Its entry-level mechanics make it approachable to new fans of the genre, but skilled players will quickly discover how to take advantage of the game’s systems and get through it without much trouble.
Pretty Princess Party is, at its core, an incredibly casual game. It’s a low-stakes and low-effort title that lets the player use their creative potential should they decide to get involved. If you’re a parent looking for a safe title for kids to play to explore their skills and reaction times, this is a solid pick. Otherwise, I don’t really know who’s going to play this game. On a more positive note, It’s got fewer bugs than Cyberpunk 2077.
What Comes After doesn’t go much further than “Remember happy memories” and “It’ll get better with time.” I just don’t feel that’s enough to really examine this topic. However, the presentation is charming enough, and the entire experience can be completed in less than an hour, to which it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Perhaps more time would have allowed them to explore the themes they introduced further.
Milky Way Prince: The Vampire Star uses an experimental visual style to tell a story about a topic that is very tough to talk about. While it exceeds in conveying these themes, it feels empty and pushy. All of the actual content in the game is condensed into the first few hours, and then there’s really nothing more to it. I enjoyed the artistic approach and themes, but the execution makes it tough to recommend.
Neversong is an aesthetically pleasing platformer with absolutely killer sound design and overall presentation. The six-hour adventure doesn’t overstay its welcome and is full of clever puzzles and interesting boss encounters. However, if you plan on playing this for the narrative, you’ll discover a decent set up that never pays off.
Code Shifter is a game that had me extremely excited when I saw it but managed to not only dash my expectations but bury them six feet underground. Inconsistent hitbox placement, a lack of movement options, and a lackluster story made for a game with a whole lot of missed potential.
It took me a while to pick up the game’s battle system due to my being a foreigner to this franchise, but once I figured out how to play the game, I got very, very tired, very very quickly. & seems to be a game made for fans who can get behind this battle system, but with no real characters or a reason to really play, I had no incentive to care once I’d cleared out the story battles.
Lily of the Hollow: Resurrection might be better experienced in its native language. The grammatical errors render it almost impossible to follow as you spend more time compensating for the errors than paying attention to the plot. It’s still visually a pleasing visual novel, but one that won’t leave any meaningful impact.