Ary and the Secret of Seasons is a basic my-first-adventure, that rarely lifts itself above mediocrity. Turns out having the power of seasons can’t stop the game being a disappointing rainy day in summer when you’d planned to go to the beach.
Windbound is a fun sailing game set in a world that’s different every time you play, but it’s a frustrating and punishing survival game at the same time. It’s highly likely to not be the game players expect it to be. Without any story or narrative to anchor it, the player is left adrift at sea without a raft.
Odd design choices and an unsatisfying yet incredibly demanding gameplay loop mar a game that boasts the cutest plant people in video games. A crafting and survival sim with added base-building, Drake Hollow is not compelling enough to justify the demands it makes on the player or the lack of reward even when you manage to do what it asks.
Pixels shouldn’t be this scary. Inmost is a short but very memorable metroidvania horror, full of cinematic lighting and intricate diorama-like levels. The visual storytelling is masterful, and it’s without doubt the most atmospheric 2D game since Hollow Knight. Grab some noise-cancelling headphones and turn off the lights, you’re in for a fright.
Solving puzzles while a disgruntled goblin is getting irate that you’re cheating because you’re taking off body parts, can be fun. Helheim Hassle certainly made me laugh quite a few times. But a repetitive gameplay loop, a tiresome numbers of puzzles, some frustrating controls, and a world that I felt no compulsion to explore or continue in, left me wanting a lot more than just a few lols.
With one foot in the classics, and one foot in the modern era, and a plethora of fun and witty puzzles, Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town is worth your time. It’s just a shame it’s such a short amount of time.
Spitlings is a satisfying and solid puzzler, and provides plenty of challenge for those who enjoy a fun mechanic with plenty of wacky design. There are so many Spitlings to unlock, that anyone will find the game lasting them a fair amount of time.
With fights that boil down to a pointless tussle with both crabs ending up face to face with the weapons and claws almost completely unable to fit, or get any purchase, I can’t recommend Fight Club on its combat. It has no story whatsoever, lots of painful menus and the craziest floatiest physics controls. But it’s certainly a spectacle.
Ageless is a passable but uninspired platformer, that copies aspects from the best, only forgetting to copy the polished and fun gameplay. That is a tale as old as time.
Othercide does not skimp on the hours it will take to complete, and the interruption mechanics are rewarding, but without any characters, hook or impetus to work through the difficulty, it became little more than a sequence of creepy battles, that are going to be far too hard for most people to progress through.
Ghost of Tsushima is Sucker Punch’s masterpiece. With the depth of its combat, its incredible open-world design and its rich historical authenticity and cultural legacy, it’s a heady contender for the most incredible release of this console generation. It’s definitely the best samurai game ever made.
Radical Rabbit Stew does start to get a bit dull pretty fast. It seems there really is a limit to how long you can play a game where you fling rabbits around (who knew?) and it seems to be about two hours, when that trophy pops. It’s better than a mobile game, because it’s on console and you can use buttons, but please don’t go in expecting much more than that formula. Probably best played in a dozen bitesize sittings than one marathon.
Towaga Among Shadows is something of a case of missed potential. What story it has is obtuse and hidden away in lore that no one will bother using their shards for. There’s some beautiful animation and smoothly made gameplay. It’s by no means a badly made game. For a little while the two battle modes will seem fun and offer a bit of challenge. But give it a few hours, and the odd design choices, lack of variety and a story that has little to no impact, and those good mechanics crumble under the weight of things that just could have been done better. It becomes stale, and no amount of survival mode score-chasing will entice me back.
For an indie pixelart RPG, there’s a lot going on, and Crosscode is polished, ambitious and charming. Combat is a treat, although it can get very challenging with the tactical demands of some enemy types. The puzzles are up there with the classics of the genre, but there are so many of them that the temples can become a marathon slog, only to find an unbeatable boss that’s so hard it’s no longer fun.
Yes, Your Grace is a very different sort of game. It has a delightful premise, tasking you with the minutiae of running and managing a kingdom and a royal family. It keeps the mechanics of this simple, where they could so easily become unwieldy, but it lets the ramifications and narrative spin from your decisions in all sorts of interesting ways. However, it is also somewhat bleak in tone and unforgiving in its gameplay.
If you need a Metroidvania in your life, it’s a good one. It’s simple to grasp and is very appropriate and playable for kids. It’s got a lot of charm. It’s just not very memorable for those of us who have played the greats of the genre.
With a vast interconnected cave system to explore, and all the genre trappings and pitfalls, Outbuddies has the elements most will be looking for in a new digital spelunking fix, just without the flair to find its way back to the surface.
Memories of Celceta is like a bite-size RPG for kids or for the millennial with time constraints who still wants to play RPGs, but can’t commit to 100-hour behemoths like Persona 5. It’s fun and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Combat is fast, but it also suffers from being simple and heavy on the button-mashing. The story takes you for a ride, but it’s also pedestrian and does nothing new – it’s like deja vu, in that it feels like an RPG story you’ve heard time and again.
If you enjoyed Hyper Light Drifter and like me, you’re a sucker for good pixelart, there are things to like in Resolutiion. It’s got plenty of HLD’s beauty, just little of its charm. Basic combat, an empty world devoid of reasons to return, and some odd design choices, mar its otherwise great potential.
It’s comic book art-style looks like no comic I’ve ever seen, and its story is a massive missed opportunity that feels unfinished. It does what it does well enough, but despite a long early access, it still feels like a pencil sketch of what it could have been.