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Dead as Disco swings hard. It is loud, political, difficult, stylish, and unapologetically angry about the state of the world. One minute you are beating someone senseless to the rhythm of a rap track, the next you are listening to a story about a controlling corporation exploiting its artists – even its AI artist. The developers seemingly built a rhythm game and screamed their capitalism frustrations through bright lights, martial arts, and sick song choices.
There’s a quiet confidence to Aphelion that I didn’t expect, paired with a stubborn refusal to make things easy for the player. It takes story, platforming, and familiar sci-fi ideas and creates something that feels thoughtful, yet oddly punishing. It pulled me in, pushed me away, and then pulled me back again just when I thought I was done with it.
Sintopia looks playful, but nothing feels simple. You juggle systems that don’t always want to cooperate, and trying to reduce the Sins of your Humus when they enter Hell quickly spirals out of control. It’s like having a queue of people who want to get on a ride that never ends and never gets shorter. All the while, everything else in the Overworld, above Hell, continues to spiral out of control as monsters attack and set things on fire. It’s funny, overwhelming, and it definitely left me feeling like Hell was managing me instead.
Dosa Divas ended up being one of those games that just… clicked for me. It doesn’t try to overwhelm you right away or throw everything at you all at once. Instead, it builds, layer by layer, until you realise you’re fully invested. In the story, in the characters, and in the gameplay loop that somehow keeps pulling you back in every time you think you’re done for the night. What really stands out is how well everything works together. The cooking, the combat, the exploration with Goddess, it all feels connected in a way that makes sense…even when it probably shouldn’t on paper. Nothing feels like it was added, “just because”. It all has a place, and it all works.
What makes the game a challenge, and this is where the core gameplay comes in, is the enemies throughout the dungeons. Hordes of various nasty hellspawn gravitate towards you, the skull, and your band of merry murderers. In Skull Horde, it’s a matter of getting from point A to point B without being overwhelmed and collecting enough resources to reinforce for the next area. Akin to Risk of Rain 2, Skull Horde uses a timer mechanic to gradually ramp up the difficulty of each run. So, the weigh up is: grind out enemies for more resources, but end up with significantly harder enemies in the next area, or rush through and end up underpowered. The final boss of each level is much more of a struggle when its minions are beefed up from a slow run-through.
At first glance, it might seem like just another game in a well-loved genre, but KuloNiku: Bowl Up! adds its own flavour with playful mechanics and a dash of personality that keeps things feeling fresh. It balances its narrative beats with hands-on cooking in a way that never overstays its welcome, creating a loop that’s as easy to sink into as your favourite comfort meal.
Fishbowl is not an easy game to pick up, and it’s not always one you want to play. The discomfort of the game is seemingly intentional, asking you to sit with Aloo’s grief as she lives through this part of her life. You can’t run, or hide, or distract yourself. As the days pass, Aloo confronts more of the memories she thought she’d forgotten, and, in doing so, she starts to heal.
Life is Strange has always been about consequence, and Reunion leans into that more than anything else. The game opens by grounding you in Max’s history: her childhood with Chloe, the storm, the impossible choice, and the grief that follows, no matter what you originally chose. By the time you reach Reunion, Max is still carrying all of it. Whether you saved Chloe or the town, that decision has shaped her adulthood in a way that never really settled. I do not believe that there could be a game anymore deserving of Chloe and Max's ending than this one. Life is Strange: Reunion builds on every major choice from Max's games, and it doesn’t ignore the major decisions that players made. Your past actions shape how this story plays out, from who Max has loved to who or what she’s lost. It's a story that we've been watching for over 11 years.
Neopets: Mega Mini Games Collection brings back the games we grew up with, and for a moment, that’s enough. You feel it straight away — the charm, the challenge, the familiarity of it all. But the longer you sit with it, the more the cracks start to show. What should have been a full return to Neopia ends up feeling like a smaller, quieter version of it, missing some of the heart that made it special.
At first glance, the game looks like a peaceful experience focused on tending and restoring a garden. Something slow, relaxing and easy to settle into. However, as I spent more time in the game, I realised there was a little more happening beneath the surface.
Honestly, I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s a perfect amalgamation of relaxation, whimsical joy, and heartwarming story beats. It’s a world that you feel compelled to return to again and again. The gameplay demands very little of you, and you can take everything at your own pace. It’s a delight of a game, and carries a very generous price tag.
Under the Island leans heavily into classic action-adventure design (parts remind me of Undertale), drawing clear inspiration from old-school titles. The moment-to-moment mechanics are easy to grasp, but the game’s limited guidance means enjoyment often depends on how comfortable you are with trial and error, and getting lost.
I was hoping for something fun and new with Crimson Capes. I am relatively fresh off SilkSong, which probably doesn’t help, but I didn’t go into it expecting something of that calibre. What I found was a game that could have had a rich world with interesting quest lines, innovative combat, and novel enemies, but really failed to deliver on every count. The world was empty, the enemies were a predictable grind, and the combat was uninspired. It’s just another 2D Souls-like that fails to bring anything new to the table.
Starsand Island was made for cosy gamers who want something familiar but softer, more modern, and more romanticised. The characters lean into a gentle shoujo anime/manga style, while the world itself focuses on atmosphere. Starsand Island is escapism in the quietest sense, whispering as the tide rolls in and the sun sets overhead. If you’ve played everything from Sun Haven to Coral Island, Fields of Mistria, Dinkum, Animal Crossing, and Disney Dreamlight Valley, you probably know the feeling I had coming into yet another cosy life sim. I wanted something new, but I also wanted to feel welcomed home. Starsand Island understands that impulse, and most of the time, it delivers.
Cairn may focus on Aava, seasoned climber that she is, but it's not just about her. Cairn is about everyone who is attempting to summit Mount Kami, a mountain that has killed over a hundred people and remains unconquered. Aava is sponsored, yet she wants nothing to do with any of it. She destroys the camera off-screen before you ever start playing as her, and she screens calls from her liaison. She climbs because she has to, not because anyone is watching. As you ascend, the mountain tells its own stories. You find abandoned backpacks, bear-proof supply boxes, lonely Climbots without their climbers, and campsites left behind by people who did not make it back down. Some discoveries are quiet, but others are devastating. You'll find letters from climbing partners, notes from couples who returned again and again, inching higher up each time. But you'll also find bodies, and that will remind you how thin the line is between progress and failure... The mountain feels crowded with absence.
There’s a huge lack of customisation across the board. Character customisation is almost nonexistent. You get four characters. Three of them are men. That’s it. In an industry where one-dev cosy sims let you change hair and eye colour, this feels dated. World customisation is also missing entirely. You can’t tweak hunger, stamina drain, bug difficulty, loot drop, or day-night length. You can’t even increase enemy spawns if you want more challenge. Games like Enshrouded, Grounded, and Satisfactory set a standard here. StarRupture doesn’t meet it yet. The building and inventory systems are rough. Rails can vanish when connecting buildings. Buildings refuse to place due to “collision” when they clearly aren’t colliding. Crafting doesn’t pull from storage, which means wasting hours shuffling items. You can’t shift-click. You can’t store similar items quickly. Carrying 24 single items fills your inventory completely, which forces constant backtracking. It’s exhausting. ...the rupture feature saves this game. Before I experienced my first one, I was pretty much ready to write the game off, but they are chilling. After running to your habitat, you can watch the blaze occur, and then witness “night” fall upon the planet, everything going from golden to fiery red to charcoal in mere moments. Walking outside once the temperature drops feels… Sad. It feels sad. There isn’t much life on this planet, but the ruptures reduce it to rubble.
Death Howl is a bold combination of grief-driven storytelling, deckbuilding strategy, and soulslike challenge. It’s not an easy game to settle into, and the lack of a tutorial makes the first hour harder than it needs to be. But if you can push through the rough start, there’s a deep, soulful experience waiting for you. The atmosphere alone might keep players going even when the difficulty bites back.
The decorations and keepsakes inject personality into the space, with many items appearing so tactile that you can almost feel them (and some even invite interaction for a short animation). Chairs look hand-painted, lamps cast soft halos… Even the suitcases have a slightly worn look that suggests they’ve travelled with you. When everything comes together — your cabin, your cat, the drifting weather — it creates something that feels like home. It’s like Cozy Grove during its quietest moments.
Bosses do feel challenging, but never to a point of being impossible. My first encounter with a boss resulted in me eating pretty much all of my snacks for health. The more you explore, the more items you can find to assist in fights: it turns out there's a multitude of strong weapons out in the world. Once I figured that out, battles became a lot easier to succeed in.
Even at 60FPS, Project Motor Racing boasts some stunning visuals and a keen attention to detail you don’t see in every sim racing title. Cars visibly kick up debris and rubber from the track, which is a lovely touch, particularly in the cockpit view. On that note, birds take to the skies as you drive by, and it was especially noticeable racing around the infamous Green Hell. That attention to detail extends to the car models as well, and many of the vehicles sport a selection of liveries. I thought the visuals during my afternoon race at Monza looked a little washed out, but I discovered far more dramatic lighting when I set races for different times of day. Driving at sunset is breathtaking, and Straight4 Studios has crammed Project Motor Racing with plenty of stylish flourishes, like exhaust flames.