Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King is brimming with potential. Unfortunately, it's too buggy, boring, and repetitive to realize that potential.
Pascal's Wager has a truly terrible story, but its exploration, combat, and enemy design set it apart.
At its core, Dogworld is a satisfying, cathartic shooter. It's let down by difficulty issues, wonky core design, and some lethal bugs.
Paradise Lost may bring nothing new on the gameplay front, but its excellent atmosphere and heartbreaking story make it essential for fans of the narrative adventure genre.
Shadow Man Remastered infuriates as often as it delights, but it's a solid experience, and Nightdive has done an excellent job preserving it.
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights starts out promisingly, with a massive map, compelling exploration, and solid combat. Unfortunately, it collapses into frustrating, overly difficult repetition by the end.
A beautiful comic book aesthetic can't save Foreclosed from its mindlessly repetitive combat, poor story and characters, and overly linear levels.
Sherlock Holmes Chapter One has weak combat and an empty open world, but its excellent detective gameplay and powerfully emotional story easily put paid to these issues.
Solar Ash has a strong core gameplay loop, but its weak story and heavy repetition make it tough to recommend.
Kingdom of the Dead has solid combat and good level design, but it's let down by an absence of challenge and some severe performance issues.
Dolmen is yet another Soulslike that proves this formula is almost impossible to get right. It's a flat, boring experience with none of the spark and vigor it needs to transcend its many technical flaws.
Thymesia may boast more Bloodborne influence than its peers, but it fails to transcend its mediocre combat, appalling lack of enemy variety, and dearth of content.
Whether or not you vibe with Restless Soul's comedy will entirely determine whether you have a good time with it. I'm growing rather tired of self-referentiality in-game humor, and I also like my jokes to come from real characters, so Restless Soul's comedy didn't entirely work for me. If your sense of humor is different to mine, you may find the comedy more tolerable, and if you do, there's a perfectly agreeable quasi-bullet hell adventure to be had here. The whole experience is rather insubstantial and lacks a solid core gameplay mechanic to hang everything else on, but it's got a lot of heart, and that counts for something.
Steelrising never quite feels like a cohesive experience, but its warring halves of Soulslike combat and narrative RPG storytelling are compelling enough in and of themselves.
Soulstice's overwritten story and repetitive second half somewhat dull the catharsis of its glorious throwback hack-and-slash combat, but it's still great fun.
Squad 51 vs. the Flying Saucers occasionally overcommits to its retro vibe with punishing and unfair difficulty, but its action is tight and it's charming enough to overlook the flaws.
Cagliostro's Secrets presents a reasonably-sized extra chunk of Steelrising that doesn't reinvent the wheel, but gets the job done.
Evil West successfully revitalizes the third-person shooter genre with intense, satisfying combat, even if its level design isn't much to write home about.
Despite a promising setup, Red Tape accidentally embodies the concept of the banality of evil thanks to its boring gameplay and poor writing.
Elderand is, for better and worse, a fairly by-the-numbers Metroidvania. It does nothing exceptional, but it rarely slips up badly either.