SAM READER
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.
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.
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.
Foretales Review
While the moon-logic puzzles can get annoying and sometimes the game will get pulled into an unwinnable state, it just incentivizes you to play a little closer and a little more conservatively. Foretales is a gorgeous, fun, and unique take on card battlers that promises hours of play and replay, and a world you’ll want to revisit even after your first journey.
Sunday Gold Review
I really, really, really want to like Sunday Gold.
I should. It’s a retro-futuristic adventure/heist game taking place in a dystopian city based on ‘70s London Gangster tropes. The art style is an odd and impressionistic one similar to Disco Elysium, one of my favorite games of all time. And the idea of planning heists and putting together evidence to take down a megacorporation is brilliant, especially with the setting details placing the monolithic Hogan Industries at the center of everything from shady pursuits to violent sports. Even some of the mechanics are interesting, with various minigames used to represent the main characters’ abilities. But looking at those mechanics reveals the underpinnings of Sunday Gold, a game fighting itself and the player every step of the way. And unfortunately, that brings the whole package down, somewhat. So in the interest of honesty, I apologize, but I have to be true to my impressions.
Roadwarden Review
Chances are, you already know whether or not you want to play Roadwarden just based on the screenshots alone. It belongs to a very unique family of games with its pixelated sepia visuals and deep text-based gameplay. With games like these, it’s important to meet them on their own terms— yes, they can be frustrating and complex, but the audience they’re aiming for appreciates that complexity, frustration, and density. It’s a game where the mechanics and the story are so intertwined that one requires learning the other, and rewards careful study of both. But that being said, does Roadwarden thrive on its own merits and work as the kind of game it strives to be?
Well, sort of.
I Was A Teenage Exocolonist Review
If you like life sims, if you like games you can sink hours into satisfyingly, if you like visual novels or weird stories or branching plots, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist is the game for you. Jump on board the Stratos when it finally launches, a new life awaits you in the offworld colonies.
Sweet Transit - An Early Access Review
Sweet Transit, a new rail simulator/citybuilder currently in early access, is a deceptively frustrating game. From the start, it presents itself as something of a pleasant, relaxing, folksy builder game, with a bluesy americana soundtrack by Ely Robbins, a Western-style aesthetic with its laborers and “beginning of the rail era” atmosphere, and soon you’re set loose on a gorgeous map to build your first centers of industry, and, from there, slowly conquer the New World by connecting it up with trains. However, somewhere around building your first train you find yourself somewhat in error, and this was the point that I began to have flashbacks to when I used to try programming in Python.
Thy Creature Review
From the start, Thy Creature has a lot going for it. A gothic atmosphere, lovely music, a plot full of mysteries, and a rather unique art style and control scheme. It feels like a scaled-up RPG Maker game - one of those ones with a lot of places to explore, people to meet, and a story to gradually uncover as you do. It has all the makings of an interesting game with a lot of heart behind it, but frustratingly so.