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Lootbound highly impressed me with its simple yet expressive mechanics and its loot-focused, turn-based roguelike structure. Paired with its incredible art, vivid world, and interesting characters, and you have a game that is sure to stick with you long after you’ve beaten it. Lootbound is an experience that you’ll struggle to let go… much like that legendary but under-leveled piece of gear you’re hanging on to.
Folklands is a highly nostalgic city-builder, paying homage to a simpler era of games with its beautiful pixelated graphics and familiar mechanics. However, it might be nostalgic to a fault, with the game feeling somewhat dated and overly simple when compared to other indie city-building games on the market. For the price the game asks for, it’s not a terrible buy, but you might find yourself bored before finishing your first settlement, especially if you’re a more experienced city-builder.
Leafy Corner offers a small, consistent, relaxed gaming experience. However, I was left wanting, quickly finding the gameplay loop to be repetitive and boring. Simple, perhaps to a fault, I can see how Leafy Corner would be perfect for some who just want to relax for an hour or two after work. For others, however, you may find the game a bit too relaxed for the price.
Welcome to Elderfield surprised me as a delightfully spooky, terror-filled take on the cozy farming sim genre. Depicting small-town life as full of unexplainable phenomena and horrors that become the mundane, Welcome to Elderfield easily shines as one of the most unique titles in its genre, while still delivering the familiar mechanics and gameplay loops that fans have come to expect.
The pacing in Orc Incremental can feel slow, and the repetitive nature of the game is readily apparent, with frequently repeated encounters and an abundance of less-than-exciting statistical improvements littered throughout the game’s upgrade trees. However, build variety is abundant and exciting, making the game pretty satisfying when it does manage to pick up speed. You just might be left wishing it did so a bit more often, and with a bit more haste.
Dragonsword: Awakening delivers well-polished, albeit familiar-feeling gameplay made popular by titles like Genshin Impact, without any of the microtransactions. While I’m not personally a fan of the title’s gameplay identity, I can see how genre fans would love Dragonsword: Awakening, which does everything the biggest games in the genre do for a fraction of the price.
BioEden is a fun environmentalist twist on the 4X genre, though you might not get much mileage out of it. While the mechanics are interesting and satisfying, the game lacks the depth to keep it engaging enough to warrant much replayability, and more experienced 4X players may find it trivially easy to master.
Halloween: The Game has its flaws: the progression doesn’t seem great, the single-player is nothing to write home about, and the game can easily hit a brick wall when it comes to long-term updates. However, I do believe it will provide a fun, unique asymmetrical horror multiplayer experience, and I can only hope it succeeds where other single-franchise multiplayer horror games failed.
Memoirium confidently executes the aesthetic of the dreamworld, feeling like a lucid-yet-violent walk through a distant reality accessed only in the late hours of the night. Solid, if occasionally tedious, combat mechanics inspired by the Souls franchise accompany a visually and sensorily vivid world that could only be dreamt up by the maddest of minds. If you’re looking for a truly memorable indie gaming experience, Memoirium is the title for you.
LIFTED succeeds not because it reinvents the genre, but because it executes its ideas with confidence and charm. The endearing cast and entertaining dialogue combine with surprisingly challenging-yet-engaging level design to create a truly memorable experience. While it may not be the most ambitious or groundbreaking platformer on the market, it doesn’t need to be. LIFTED knows exactly what it wants to be, and it accomplishes that goal with style, humor, and a lot of heart.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope left me with mixed emotions. On one hand, it is the best of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, with iconic new areas to explore and a return to the franchise’s sense of mystery and horror unlike anything else in the base game. However, it is hard to escape the feeling that much of the DLC is content from the main game, repackaged and sold for an additional price. While I would highly recommend any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 fans give the DLC a try, I would understand if they were left feeling a bit jaded by the cost of entry.
While Yet Another Zombie Survivors doesn’t do much to reinvent the Bullet Heaven formula, it still offers something unique thanks to its memorable cast of characters and charming, comic-book-inspired style. The progression can become a grind, and genre veterans may not find many surprises. Still, for fans looking for a polished and personality-filled entry in the genre, it’s an easy recommendation.
Darkest Dungeon: The Fire’s Edge is a fine, non-intrusive complimentary DLC for Darkest Dungeon, adding new content to the game without drastically changing the original experience. The two “new” heroes bridge the roster between Darkest Dungeon I & II, and provide the perfect excuse to come back and give Darkest Dungeon another playthrough.
Overall, I was deeply and thoroughly impressed and entertained by Twisted Tower, which has become my new favorite game of the year. I highly recommend it to fans of BioShock, horror, or anyone looking for an incredibly unique and memorable gaming experience. The combat is fun, the level design and enemies are immaculate, and the setting is something that is certain to stick with you long after you’ve beaten the game, just like a recurring nightmare.
Wreck Runners is a fine entry into the co-op extraction genre, with solid genre fundamentals and a few interesting twists or additions to the formula that make it exciting for genre fans. However, if you’re not a fan of the genre, there really isn’t much here that’s likely to change your mind, and the game’s world doesn’t do a good job of keeping tension or suspense for very long. Again, if you’re a fan of the genre and you’re looking for something new to play, this title is for you. If you’re not, I don’t think there is much here for you.
While I would love to see more games from this franchise, Creepshow itself is a fun but flawed first entry. Fun stories and striking visuals carry the show, but awkward animation, boring gameplay, and a disappointing two-story length hold it back. Horror and franchise fans are still likely to enjoy this game, but may be left wanting more, with very little to no replayability to satisfy that hunger.
My gripes aside, I can honestly say that Low-Budget Repairs is one of my favorite new renovation games, if not my downright favorite. It does many mechanics in the genre well while also adding a real, comically dingy and cheap feeling to everything, entertaining beyond the satisfying process by allowing you to be a garbage handyman and accompanying the experience with great dialogue and characters. While I think the game could be a bit more open and make more frequent use of its immersive mechanics, it was still an overall fun game and one I think fans of the genre will really enjoy.
Looking for Fael is a fantastic puzzle game with some clever challenges to overcome and an interesting, multi-dimensional mystery to unravel. While the game’s reliance on physical note-taking feels like a flaw inherently baked into the game, it is the only one I really found worth commenting on. Fans of the genre are sure to have a fun time unraveling the threads of this multiversal conundrum, conveniently located within an apartment complex.
Mistfall Hunter has the bones of something that could be great. However, the current, bare-bones state of the game is full of unnecessary restrictions that limit solo play, an awkward core loop, and predatory monetization tactics befitting of a mobile game. The game’s beautiful world and exciting setting simply were not enough to help me see past its flaws, and while I can see where some players would enjoy the game, I personally would call it “mid” at best.
For a simulation title, ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs is exceptional, giving you a great simulation of a very niche idea in an even more niche setting. That being said, the game’s main mechanic could use more complexity, and the loop can get a bit repetitive and grindy, making the game best enjoyed in short bursts.