SAM READER
Mechanicus II Review
Beneath the bugs, visual confusion, dull palette, and gameplay so punishing it borders on the sadistic, there’s a good game in here. The bones of the first Mechanicus slumber beneath the surface, and the Necron mechanics have some interesting wrinkles on top of the basic campaign.
But much like the constantly spawning onslaught of reinforcements, all this stuff just frequently gets in the way.
Tiny Bookshop Review
For all “cozy” is in the public eye, for all “cozy” is a genre of game, it does require some element behind the coziness. What Tiny Bookshop gives us instead is a glorified screensaver and some minimal adventure game elements, a strangely transitory experience much like customers wandering in and out of a bookshop, never really building the lasting connections with players that a cozy game should. It’s a game that’s about coziness more than a game that’s actually cozy, and in the end, that’s the thing that undoes it.
Edgar Allan Poe's Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition
So this puts us in an interesting position— the game is excellent, a bona fide classic where art and atmosphere ooze from every pore and you can feel the care in every frame of the game— but the retail release of said game is so lazy and unnecessary that charging fifteen bucks for something that exists in a form it already exists in that I can’t give this classic game anywhere near the score it deserves. It feels like this was rushed out to capture the market and gain the copyright info, but without doing much to earn it.
Book of Hours Review
If you let this game in, you will lose whole weeks to its engrossing depth and complex interactions. It’s a beautiful expanse of a game that stretches outward from the vertical slice seen during NextFest, and it demands you invite it in.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie Review
Unfortunately, while Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a gorgeous, finely tuned visual novel with an affecting story and clear care put into every inch of the game, dissonant mechanics and sometimes confusing narrative choices are that more glaring. The result is, frustratingly, an excellent game dragged down by some of the same things that make it so excellent.
Shadows of Doubt Early Access Review
Shadows of Doubt has had a six-month early access period shows it growing by leaps and bound and its unorthodox focus and procedural story-generation engine make it stand out even among the high number of narrative-generation games coming out these days. An instant indie classic for fans of immersive sims, film noir, and weird dystopian adventures.
Wartales Review
It’s intricate, just technical enough to grasp, and genuinely fun in a way few strategy RPGs reach for but fail to grasp. While it does have the odd technical glitch, if this sounds at all like your kind of game, saddle up your homicidal pony and head for the nearest Emissary.
Terrascape - Early Access Review
Terrascape doesn’t need to be some grandiose and weighty thing. It’s a beautiful little game meant to be played as a break, or as a wind-down, or otherwise in those moments when you need to take a breather. It’s a relaxing city-builder. As a relaxing city-builder, it’s a gorgeous, lovely little game.
Contraband Police Review
The tension and long stretches of running a checkpoint and the paranoid terror of the criminals who run the area work beautifully, making Contraband Police a game that, while rough-edged, is well worth the time and energy.
Shadows of Doubt Preview/Demo Impressions: Delightful Detective Dystopia
While the game suffers a little from lack of polish, Shadows of Doubt is a beautiful thing even when something goes wrong. It’s satisfying to solve cases, easy to pick up, and feels deep enough that you can sink your teeth into it regardless of whether it’s a quick jaunt or you’re in for the long haul. Here’s hoping that when ColePowered Games finishes with it, it delivers on the promise this demo represents, because then this will be one for the ages.
Book of Hours Preview/Demo Impressions: The Thinnest, Tastiest Vertical Slice
Book of Hours arrives in full resplendence this June for PC. If this is the (admittedly thin) vertical slice we’re getting so far, I for one can’t wait to dive in.
Steamworld Build Preview/Demo Impressions
The Steamworld series is one that’s been around for a while now, mixing a focus on traditional video game concepts (miner, platformer, tactical strategy game) with a wildly imaginative setting, some outside-the-box mechanics, and a level of accessibility that means players can jump right into the action. From the demo, it feels like Steamworld Build, the upcoming city-builder addition to the Steamworld universe, carries on that tradition beautifully.
Moonshine Inc Review
It’s not often a game is a strong argument in favor of early access. Since I first played Moonshine, Inc. in what could be considered a “rough draft” phase, it’s made leaps and bounds in getting closer to a released state. But the operative word there is closer. While playable and a lot more accessible in its current state, it is still very rough, with bugs and quality of life issues that are still somewhat frustrating. It’s a game with good ideas, but one that needed a little more time to cook than it got, resulting in some solid concepts and a sloppy enough execution that perhaps they should spend some time working out the kinks that make it less than worth the time and money.
Black Skylands - Early Access Review
It’s really dangerous to like any game a lot in early access, as a game will change a great deal before it gets to that fabled 1.0. Things will shift, parts of the game someone thought would be a big part turn out to be less consequential, or that thing that felt really inconsequential ends up becoming a big part of how players engage with the game. But Black Skylands is good, very good, and has the potential to be properly huge as it builds. It’s a gorgeous balancing act, managing a sense of adventure with a dark storyline involving war, a high-flying airship combat-and-exploration game with a top-down action-adventure, and the sheer amount of freedom and stuff to do is mindblowing.
The Oregon Trail Review
A marked improvement over past Oregon Trail games? Certainly. It’s gorgeous, addictive to play, has a ton of content (and more on the way) and it’s worth it for those initial vibrant bursts. But once those bursts wear off and the honeymoon period is over, you’re left with a game that while interesting, fun, addictive, and great to look at, is also shallow and needlessly cruel. It’s a game that matches its legacy— fond memories of the good times you have while playing it, but a hesitation to start things up again once you finally make it down the Trail.
Railgrade review
It’s a logistics simulator, to be sure— you’re building a futuristic train network on an alien planet— but there’s a low enough difficulty curve and enough wit and guidance that you don’t feel like you need an advanced degree in programming or three hours with graph paper to plan things out. It’s one of the most relaxing dystopias you’ll ever have the pleasure of experiencing, and manages to make programming and logistics a lot of fun without sacrificing those beautifully complex networks of supply lines and ever-expanding production. If you’ve ever wanted to get into a game with just the right amount of crunch, you can’t do better than Railgrade.
Deadlink - Early Access Review
There’s a key to difficulty in games, and it’s often hard to work out. It’s a fine line to walk between frustration and satisfaction, between the relief of pulling off a difficult fight (and the knowledge of actual consequence), and making that difficult fight still easy enough that the player wants to keep fighting, rather than logging off to play something more relaxing. It’s a balance not every game can strike, as seen from the number of people who give up on Fromsoft titles. Deadlink, on the other hand, manages it pretty easily. The fights are difficult and the arena setting can turn into an absolute meatgrinder, but every time you squeak out a win, every time you pull that luck and skill together, you feel like a cybernetic neon god. It’s the best feeling in the world, and I can’t wait to see how they expand upon it from here.
Marauders - Early Access Look
When you’re in the moment, when you’re trying to figure out the next tense, tactical firefight or hoping the other bastard gives you an opening you can fill with a hail of bullets, it’s brilliant, an immersive, white-knuckle ride through an alternate history with a vibe rivaling the best used-future sci-fi. It’s one part skin-of-your-teeth looter, one part “how underhanded can I be” shooter, one part space-dogfight adventure, all of it tenser than the best psychological horror game.
When you don’t, you end up spending twenty minutes catching up on your reading, attempting to join the two or three crews in your region left unprotected by passwords, or otherwise passing the time in a different window while the queue time ticks ever upward.
Destiny's Sword - Early Access Look
Having received a free copy of the game, I feel like I was overcharged for the privilege. While there are some moments where the ambition of the premise shines through, it’s a severely broken game, so broken that I couldn’t even get an hour into it without the game soft-locking me within its opaque, typo-ridden purgatory. I’m sorry that I have to write this— I hate writing bad reviews, especially for games that seem relatively ambitious— but I need to remain true to my experiences.
Grid Force: Mask of the Goddess review
I feel a little sorry for Grid Force: Mask of the Goddess. It’s a game that wears its influences clearly, from the anime and webcomic-inspired artwork to the bright colors and parallels to the deckbuilding/action/rhythm roguelike One Step From Eden. There was also clearly care and time taken with the premise and worldbuilding— the characters all look unique, there’s clearly some deeper mythology at play with the world and its various goddesses and champions, and that style even figures into some of the tactics and elemental mechanics at play in the game. It has a very impressive look to it, and that’s at least half the battle of any game right there.
Now if only it played as good as it looked.