Gaming
2024
Important note: Although I only post positive reviews, that doesn't mean every game automatically gets one. My biggest layer of quality control is that I only review games I think I'm likely to enjoy. Even then, only around 75% of games reviewed have received my recommendation. Long story short? Just making it to this list is a mark of quality.
Demon Loop
08 September 2024
Demon Loop is an interesting digital boardgame with lots of unusual mechanics but it all somehow works. Levels are challenge-based which is fun. Also has a nice little story to tie it all together.
CyberRush
07 September 2024
CyberRush is a bizarre modern take on the old Tomy Racing Turbo dashboard game except with guns, police, even a boss battle. Only 8 levels but very challenging and also has an endless mode. Addictive!
Turbo Sliders Unlimited
06 September 2024
Turbo Sliders is a delightful spiritual successor to games like Micro Machines that I loved in the 90s but with sexy modern graphics. Controls are perfect, levels are well-designed and challenging.
FlipScapes
01 September 2024
FlipScapes is a brilliant new pinball game that absolutely makes the most of its digital nature with highly interactive levels, dynamic objectives, characters and special abilities. It's top notch.
Grimstone Valley
31 August 2024
Grimstone Valley is a fun little twinstick "shooter" (except you have an eldritch lasso arm) with a weird west theme, some unusual aesthetics which I've grown to love, and a surprisingly strong story.
Hadley's Run: A Starship Saga
30 August 2024
Hadley's Run is a solid twinstick shooter with excellent progression and metaprogression so it never feels tired. Good range of enemies and bosses but the environmental challenges are the best feature
Defenders of the Omniverse
26 August 2024
Defenders of the Omniverse is a top shelf Survivors-like. Looks & sounds great, good range of unlocks, enemies and fun boss fights. Love that each character's perks put a twist on core abilities.
DLC: Vacation Season
21 August 2024
This review took me a long time to work through (it's big! And relatively complex) - new Vacation Season DLC adds almost a whole new game-within-a-game to Highrise City.
100 Hidden Cthulhu Fish 2
20 August 2024
100 Hidden Cthulhu Fish is a short but sweet item finder. The fish are easy to find, making for a chill experience. The two overarching images are fantastic but I'd love more - beat the game in 10mins
JDM: Rise of the Scorpion
19 August 2024
JDM: Rise of the Scorpion is has a nice little story told through a manga but the real star is the drifting. It's an arcade racer (not a racing sim) so just strap in and have fun - handbrake to drift!
Silent Depth 2
17 August 2024
While Silent Depth 2 is a fairly clunky experience with small scope at the moment, the roadmap looks promising. This is a sim-lite, not a spiritual successor to Silent Hunter. Go in with an open mind.
DeathBound
16 August 2024
DeathBound's a clever fighter with a gnarly modern fantasy vibe and tons of demons ripe for slaying. You control a bunch of characters with totally different attacks/abilities, it's challenging & fun.
Baimason's Thing Finder
15 August 2024
Baimason's Thing Finder's as relaxing as it is fun - or race against the clock. Proc-gen and daily challenges keep it endlessly replayable although it could use just a touch more variety
Forgotten Mines
14 August 2024
Forgotten Mines makes for a very tight tactical experience. The maps are small and fixed, loaded with obstacles to manoeuvre around, and you're constantly overwhelmed. It's tough. Tons of unlocks.
Mini Airways
11 August 2024
Mini Airways is intense! Planes come from all directions and you have to somehow guide them - around mountains - onto tight runways that also have planes taking off. Gets the blood pumping!
Soul Park
10 August 2024
Soul Park is a theme park tycoon with a sweet spooky supernatural theme, a few side games (fixing your rides & catching intruders). Simplistic as far as tycoons go, which makes it kid-friendly.
Rogue Genesia
08 August 2024
Features different worlds with a roguelike campaign approach and shorter, mission-based levels. Graphics are pretty sweet too. Rogue Genesia is a sweet, top-shelf survivors-like, check it out.
No Creeps Were Harmed TD
05 August 2024
No Creeps Were Harmed is a highly polished tower defence game with some great level design and an even better sense of humour. Upgrades can be grindy but there's plenty of them. Fun, addictive.
Riddle Tower
04 August 2024
Huge game with excellent range of maths, text, rebus, and logic riddles/problems. Fun and challenging as is but could use more QoL features (progressive unlocks) and a better clue system.
MOODS
31 July 2024
MOODS is a sweet roguelike shooter with an unusual theme. Good variety of characters and play styles straight out the gate, plenty of unlocks, good range of enemies, boss fights are awesome.
Outrage: Fight Fest
30 July 2024
Outrage: Fight Fest is a fantastic party brawler. Highly polished - it looks great, sounds great, plays smooth as. Fast-paced, non-stop action, plenty of game modes and variety. Full of attitude!
Tachyon Dreams Anthology
28 July 2024
Tachyon Dreams is a fantastic homage to Space Quest and its ilk. Puzzles are occasionally obtuse but solveable through experimentation. Love the palette & faithful retro art style. Well-written
Treasure Journey
26 July 2024
Treasure Journey is a surprisingly challenging puzzle game. The premise is simple with limited mechanics but it uses 3 dimensional space well. Good range of levels with rapidly increasing difficulty
Towerful Defence
24 July 2024
Towerful Defence is a fun survivors-like that swaps mobility for control. Hold up to four weapons & configure their targeting or control manually to maximise efficiency. Fast-pace endorphin rush.
Seraphim Slum
22 July 2024
Seraphim Slum is a quirky visual novel about ... fallen lesbian angels. Also love and lust and freedom and control. Visuals are all over the shop but it's well written and voiced. Weird & interesting.
Virtual Presenter Room
21 July 2024
Virtual Presenter Room is easy to use; you just screenshare it to any conferencing client and away you go. Looks great, user friendly. Would also be a fantastic tool for roleplaying sessions.
Kriegsfront Tactics: Prologue
19 July 2024
Kriegsfront offers scrappy tactical mech combat in which resource management is crucial- you might win the battle but you have to survive the war. Also features narrative adventures and a strong story
SCHIM
16 July 2024
SCHIM combined platforming with visual story telling. Love the shader art. Very simple start but puzzles become more challenging as more moving parts are introduced. Nice game for younger players.
Granvir
14 July 2024
Reminiscent of MW3 but in a delightful roguelike format involving resource management and upgrading your mech after every level. Solid variety in mech components and weapons for different playstyles.
Block-ed
10 July 2024
Block-ed is an exceptional puzzle game. The premise is simple but the mechanics (bombs, lasers, teleporters, splitters, moving platforms) combine well. Has community maps and a great level editor too!
Metroplex Zero
07 July 2024
Metroplex Zero is a very solid card game involving resource and party management, deck building, and collection. Scenario-based combat. Actually requires strategy and synergy to win, it's great.
Grapplers: Relic Rivals
01 July 2024
Grapplers is an exceptional party brawler. Great level design with heavy environment & trap focus. Grapple as both movement and attack makes for an interesting challenge. More players = more fun.
Kurwa Sprint
29 June 2024
Kurwa Sprint is a faithful Mario clone. The environment's a little more forgiving but the enemies are a little tougher. Coins to collect, secrets to find, and it's a tough game, 90s-style. Cute & fun.
Giltsteader
28 June 2024
Giltsteader's a TD \with a stack of quirky features that set it apart from the others. Towers are random and must merge to upgrade, and there's farming. Very interactive, there's never a dull moment.
Ad Fundum
20 June 2024
Ad Fundum is a simple but addictive mining game. Dig for minerals, sell for $. Pressure is on managing fuel, temp, health & storage - oh, and earthquakes! Surprisingly large variety of upgrades.
Swarmsign
19 June 2024
Swarmsign is simple but very fun topdown shooter. Farm defence mode is good but herd defence is even more fun. Offensive mode's pretty cool too. Good variety of enemies & weapons/abilities. Moreish!
Quantum Conflict
16 June 2024
Quantum Conflict plays a lot like Asteroid or Gravitation. The graphics are much flashier and modern, and there's a good range of special pickups. Little clunky but still a fun multiplayer party game.
Zpellcatz
15 June 2024
ZpellCatz is a fun dungeon crawling looter-shooter. The graphics are cute and child-friendly although the game itself is surprisingly generic. But executed well - combat is fun, plenty of variety.
Songs of Conquest
12 June 2024
Pre-release review: Has some promising aspects; looks good, and bullet hell-style boss fights seem promising. Right now, it's a little clunky and the level & enemy attack patterns need more work.
Echoes
08 June 2024
Echoes is a visual novel that starts as a detective murder mystery but unfolds into a dark supernatural government conspiracy. It's very well written and the art style perfectly fits the mood.
Check and Slash
07 June 2024
Check and Slash is not what you'd think. It's essentially realtime hack-and-slash (except the baddies shoot) with some rogue elements. It's a bit grindy and repetitive but the boss fights are decent.
What the Car?
06 June 2024
What the Car? is a bonkers fun party-style racing game full of all manner of zany "driving" mechanisms. Levels are packed with shortcuts and alternative routs and the "bonus" levels are awesome.
Whispers in the Moss
04 June 2024
Whispers in the Moss is a fairly traditional JRPG but with retro text-based UI. Interesting characters, decently writing, interesting locations to visit, and the ANSI/ASCII art is impressive.
The Last WarMage
31 May 2024
The Last WarMage could use a little more polish but it's a lot of fun. Essentially tapper but with weapon & enemy variety, ammo management and dynamic controls. Thoughtful and can get hectic
Archaeogem
29 May 2024
Archaeogem looks good and plays smooth even if the whip mechanic is a little counter-intuitive. It's a challenging precision platformer with huge levels that require both thought and reflexes to beat
Vampire Survivors
DLC: Operation Guns
DLC: Operation Guns
27 May 2024
Operation Guns is a massive DLC and totally worth the price even if you know nothing about Contra (and of course there's a huge nostalgia bonus if you are familiar). It comes with two new maps; the main map is huge and I think one of the most interesting in the game with different regions separated by bridges, buildings, secret passages through forests, and of course it's populated by hordes of Contra baddies. The big mecha bosses are particularly cool. Also, Operation Guns comes with a whopping 11 new characters (and of course I absolutely love Bill Rizer with his long gun), and 22 new weapons - machine guns, homing missiles, and some cool new passive upgrades that don't take slots. As if that wasn't enough, there's also a new adventure. Oh! And the new music is bangin'!
Songs of Conquest
26 April 2024
Songs of Conquest is an impressive homage to HoMM while featuring enough subtle but key differences - lore, story, factions, mechanics - that it stands up on its own. Love the campaign & aesthetics
Parkour Legends
25 May 2024
Citadel Stormer is an exceptional retro-style shooter. Never mind the cute kiddy graphics, this is a challenging game with ammo management and platforming. Very fun, reminds me of Commander Keen.
Parkour Legends
20 May 2024
Parkour Legends is an exceptional platformer that makes the most of the sport it mimics. Run, slide, crawl, jump, grab, flip - timing is crucial and the controls are well thought out. Fast-paced fun.
Fay's Factory
19 May 2024
Fay's Factory is a gem. An RPG at heart, packed full of meaningful choice & consequence. Features top shelf low poly art, unique setting pivotal to the story, and an unusual & innovative combat system
Asta Pool
18 May 2024
Asta Pool is an exceptional pool game featuring a range of innovative cue game rules (I love freeze mode!), tables (no gravity rules!), balls & holes with special abilities. Very creative and fun.
Let Bions be Bygones
10 May 2024
Let Bions Be Bygones is an adventure game with an engaging, unexpected story carried primarily through dialogue and visual storytelling. Absolutely love the artwork and cyberpunk/noir aesthetic
Dice Assassin
05 May 2024
Dice Assassin is a chess-based tactical roguelike. Features a good range of enemies & special abilities but slow progression means it can get grindy. The boss fights are excellent.
Hexahedra
04 May 2024
Hexahedra is an interesting puzzle game that integrates (visual) coding. Requires critical thought, clever design, and the right sequencing with lots of complex moving parts. Fun and challenging.
Command & Conquer 3
01 May 2024
One of the best C&C titles and one of the best RTS games out, even today. It's aged surprisingly well - still holds up remarkably well even in 2024.
Pilapila
30 April 2024
Pilapila's a fun, challenging puzzle game. Concept's simple; lay blocks to get to the exit but new mechanics introduced every few levels adding complexity. 70 levels with challenges (and bonus levels)
Footgun: Underground
27 April 2024
Footgun is a super fun shooter with a fresh soccer-based shooting gimmick. That makes aiming tricky and there's lots of bouncing and special weapons and attacks. Love the bosses and bonus levels.
Rauniot
21 April 2024
Rauniot has a few imperfections but overall it is a very solid point and click with great artwork, an interesting setting that really comes to life, dark gritty characters, and an engaging story
Cakefoot
15 April 2024
Cakefoot could use more polish (esp. arcade mode) but it's actually really fun! Trying to move along a winding disconnected track while dodging a variety of moving obstacles and bullets is tricky!
Laysara: Summit Kingdom
14 April 2024
Laysara is an exceptional city builder with a unique Himalayan aesthetic that really concentrates on the environment. Challenges are fun & management mechanics are tightly interwoven, really well made.
Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
13 April 2024
Yellow Taxi is an exception retro platformer with a great sense of humour, really fun level design (which gets better as you play through), some tricky obstacles to beat and tons of secrets to find!
Nuke Them All
11 April 2024
Nuke Them All is a promising new RTS that replaces base building with Capture the Flag and tick timers. It's an interesting concept held back at the moment by balance issues. But still in Early Access!
Cease to Breathe
10 April 2024
Cease to Breathe is a faithful rendition of the parser adventure games from the 90s. It's big for the genre; tons of screens & interactables. Nice art. Very challenging - not for the faint-hearted!
A Living Room
09 April 2024
A Living Room is an interesting foray into.. existentialism, maybe? Presented as a quirky point and click. It's surprisingly clever, often funny, but only around ~30 minutes playtime.
Citizen Sleeper
07 April 2024
Citizen Sleeper is an absolute top shelf text adventure with a deep, complex narrative, engaging world building, and full of very real characters with very real problems. Every decision matters.
Mighty Mage
05 April 2024
A bullet heaven with some promising new mechanics that's unfortunately a little too shallow to really deliver on. Keep going, devs! This could really be great!
Koala Kids Golf
04 April 2024
Koala Kids Golf is fantastic, one of the best party/golf games I've played. Really fun (and huge) levels, love the special challenge levels & had a great time playing multiplayer with my young fella.
Azoove
03 April 2024
EA: Azoove is a fun new card-based survival game with strong resource management elements. I love the way you build your story as you play through. Could benefit from more variety but still in EA.
Outpost: Infinity Siege
02 April 2024
Outpost Infinity Siege is a very ambitious shooter with base management, exploration/salvage elements, and a campaign story. Looks great but needs more TLC, particularly AI upgrade. Keep an eye on it.
StarsAway
01 April 2024
StarsAway is a genuinely fun & challenging rail shooter reminiscent of maybe Star Goose (1988)? 3 difficulty modes which is good but could use a tad more variety in the track with each run
Cosmic Express
30 March 2024
Cosmic Express is a bloody big puzzle game. It's sokoban-based, but the addition of the rail system means you can't backtrack, adding another layer of complexity. Fun but gets challenging quickly!
Starlight & the Silver Key
29 March 2024
Starlight & the Silver Key has a grindy repetitive start that's a bit of a turn-off.. but once past that I was hooked for the next two hours. Decent puzzles, quirky story, great sense of humour
A Good Snowman is Hard to Build
28 March 2024
A Good Snowman is fun puzzle game built on a simple premise. Cute graphics & kid friendly although puzzles do get more challenging as you progress. Clever level design makes for a fun game.
Acolyte of the Altar
25 March 2024
Acolyte of the Altar is a strong entry to the card battler genre with a small range of exciting new mechanics for an engaging and challenging experience. Awesome card art & UI too.
Sokobond
17 March 2024
Sokobond's fun. Could benefit from a touch more guidance as working out the winning bond can be trial & error but good range of chemistry-themed mechanics, clean ui, and 100 levels to play through.
A Monster's Expedition
16 March 2024
A Monster's Expedition is a super chill puzzle game where the world itself is the puzzle. Its best feature is its sense of humour as you explore the strange world of humans through a monster's eyes.
Bonfire Peaks
15 March 2024
Bonfire Peaks under-sells itself. It's actually a great little puzzle game. Sokoban-based but it makes great use of all three dimensions. Includes a good range of layered mechanics. Looks good, fun.
Astral Vangard
11 March 2024
EA Review: Astral Vangard has the bones of a good game. Full version should have ample variety of upgrades & enemies. Needs animations or SFX and greater variety in enemy attack patterns to shine.
Cat & Onion
10 March 2024
Cat & Onion is a delightful little platformer. Cute characters, charming story, good sense of humour, few secrets to find. Fun but very short (~30 mins). Would love if it was 10 levels longer!
Bore Blasters
09 March 2024
Bore Blasters is an addictive loot & shoot game. A story pushes you through the game with missions but you can play each level in a different world. Tons of upgrades. Good simple fun - addictive!
