A top down brawler/shooter. Don your mask and ready your fists as you carry out hits on various people. Its visual style is very distinct. Very colourful considering the content. The character portraits are... weird to say the least, but it fits with the game's style somewhat. It has pretty nice, electronic/synthy music too. The gameplay is fast paced, brutal and nearly every participant in combat dies one hit from weapons, including you, so the risk is high. Extremely high. A bit too high for me. At some point this just got to be too hard for me to find it enjoyable mostly. At a certain point I just kept going out of stubbornness and a desire to see the ending, which I felt mostly indifferent to at the end of it. I guess it can be your thing if you like your games severely hard.
A samurai themed action sandbox game. Take up your sword and shape your destiny in the small province you now call your home. You can go about doing things however you feel like really, with the events you experience, choices you make and actions you take influencing your standing in the world and the eventual ending. Aside from all that, you can see if NPCs have anything interesting to say, participate in a few silly minigames, do some sidequests to earn extra cash, or pick fights with people. You could fight and kill important characters if you felt inclined, and the game just keeps trucking along with the new alteration in mind. How much it matters varies, but this is certainly a fun aspect to explore. You can also easily choose between non-lethal and lethal attacks, which is another interesting way to affect the plot. The combat is mostly sword based, with their being multiple stances with different movesets to choose from. It can be difficult initially but can be pretty fun once you get the hang of it, and there's a lot of variety in terms of moves you could pull off. You have to get around on foot, which can be a pain if you need to keep moving between certain places, but the entire map is pretty small, so this isn't likely to be more than a minor pain. The game is set in Sengoku era Japan, presented with nice enough visuals and with wonderful music to act as the backdrop to your escapes. This version of the game unfortunately suffers from a framerate cap of 30FPS. There's also some jankiness in the controls, but you get used to it. It's a pretty fun game overall, would recommend it to action game and samurai enthusiasts alike.
A simple platformer. Help a girl bring colour back to her world. It's a mostly solitary journey through a bleak world that grows in detail and colour as you progress, with no dialogue to speak of, no explicit direction (beyond the game prompting you to perform actions in a few places so you don't get stuck) and nothing to keep you company, except for the very nice music the game has. This ends up making most of the game feel calm and somewhat meditative, and gives you plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of life and the nature of the universe (though the game itself only lasts a few hours). The game is also beautifully drawn and animated, which does a lot to make your journey an enjoyable one. Platforming is simple, with there only being a few simple but satisfying to solve puzzles to solve here and there. Movement in general feels nice too. It's a nice game overall, would recommend it to someone fond of artsy games or puzzle platformers.
A visual novel themed around being a barista. Mix drinks and change li-- I mean, brew coffee for your colourful cast of characters as you get to know more about them. The characters you can interact with are diverse and intriguing, each with an interesting story to tell. The game is set in Seattle but also has a fantasy theme, with this influencing the background events that take place before and during the story, and the races of the game's characters. More could have been done with this aspect, but there is still an interesting enough exploration of it. The game, like the titular coffee shop, has a cozy atmosphere, with character interactions being generally laid back and humourous in nature, though more serious topics and character arcs are present. The game has an array of laid back tracks to perfectly fit the mood of the coffee shop, that you can handily choose to play as you desire, and the characters have nice designs, helped a lot by the beautiful retro themed art style of the game. These also help contribute to the relaxing and pleasant nature of the game. Gameplay is simple, only requires you to to mix 3 ingredients to make the drink your customer desires, with there being no time pressure or significant penalty for getting orders wrong either (although this can influence dialouge), so you can easily just sit back and enjoy your coffee talk. It's a well made visual novel overall, highly recommended for anyone into the genre, or who just wants to relax over a nice cup of coffee.
An RPG and bullet hell game. Help the fallen child escape the monster filled underground. The game is generally silly, light-hearted, full of quirky NPCs and humour, and I found it pretty funny overall. It's also very fond of meta gags, and there's a surprising amount of your actions it pays attention to, which makes interacting with its world interesting. The battle system involves the lone player character and your enemies taking turns to act, with you needing to complete short bullet hell segments to avoid enemy attacks and survive. Your actions boil down to attacking and killing your enemy, or subduing them mercifully, with the latter usually being a different kind of puzzle for each enemy you face. This is fittingly escalated to epic proportions during boss fights, thanks to the more intense attacks and music. The art style is retro inspired and quite charming too. I would recommend this overall, to those fond of this style of humour, JRPGs or even bullet hell games.
A bartending themed visual novel in a cyberpunk setting. Mix drinks, change lives, and learn the stories of your unique patrons. The bartending mechanic is simple enough, you only really need to make sure your customer ends up with the right drink. This is perfectly fine though, since it means you can casually enjoy this wonderful game. The art is anime themed with a retro aesthetic, and it looks great. All the characters look distinct, and most of them are totally cute. The bar truly draws in the most interesting people, as they're all a joy to interact with (even the assholes!), with plenty of dark, sarcastic humour and interesting stories to tell in equal measure. It also touches on some social issues in an interesting way, as well as giving a unique take on common cyberpunk elements. It's amazing overall and I highly recommend it to anyone into visual novels and cyberpunk media.
The plot is interesting enough and the characters are likeable. Neither are groundbreaking, can be questionable at times, mostly serious, has fun with itself often enough, so generally pleasant. The dungeons have varying gimmicks sprinkled, which generally aid to make filling out the maps more interesting. Murder hunt mechanic is interesting but usually not really frantic. Combat is what you can expect, turn order is determined by stats. You have various options for your party members' skill and weapon setups, though it isn't too hard to find something that'll carry you through the game. The combat is enjoyable, but it can feel like the random encounters sort of just blend in, with their frequency and lack of variety. Some aspects of combat can feel underused, though I probably just used others more, heheh. It can feel like encounters in the last areas in particular are a bit too frequent, can make exploring the areas properly a bit of a pain. Balance can also feel slightly off, enemy damage output seems to go up faster than your defences do, so you'll get to the point where your party members get one-shotted more than you'd like, though you can also gear yourself up to bring on the hurt easily enough. The art is 2D anime-style drawings for the VN segments, and animated 3D for the dungeon crawling and combat (though your party is 2D only). Both of these are nice, though I do wish the 2D art had a darker vibe to it. Your party members have questionably revealing outfits for some of their classes, but it is that sort of game I guess. Enemy designs are kinda limited, you'll be seeing plenty of palette swaps, though usually only within the same area. The enemy designs are interesting but non of them feel particularly intimidating, especially not the Nightmares, which are the major bosses for the game. It is flawed but I would recommend it to those willing to overlook its shortcomings, if you're looking for another JRPG dungeon crawler.
A sort of top-down brawler/turn()-based strategy game. You take control of a duo consisting of a woman with no voice and a man who's only a voice to save your city from a grave threat. The combat is primarily realtime, with you having the ability to stop time and queue up actions, to deliver more precise blows or just to escape danger. You can use up to 4 different abilities for attacking at a time, chosen among a diverse pool, but you also have the option of attaching the rest to your active abilities for additional effects. This ends up giving you a nice selection of possible loadouts you can use to vanquish your foes. Your foes stem from a somewhat small but diverse enough pool, with different strengths and weaknesses, and you'll encounter stronger versions of them as you progress through the game. They each provide a decent challenge, though some will be more of a pain to deal with than others naturally, heheh. The game's story is told mainly by your voiced companion as you explore the city, and the backstories of some characters, central to the plot or only to the city's history are revealed as you make use of the abilities derived from then. Finding out more and more about the world and the people as you progress is intriguing. The game also has interesting theming, with a feel that can be considered cyberpunk and references to some mathematical and programming terminology thrown about. It also has good art overall. And its greatest strength is probably its music, which provides excellent, thrilling backdrops for tense combat, and emotional melodies to accompany your triumphs and tragedies. The vocal tracks in particular are some of my favourite songs. An amazing game overall, highly recommended for anyone who's looking for something with a futuristic or cyberpunk bend, intriguing and challenging combat, a subtle, intriguing tale or just a good excuse to listen to great music.
A 2D platformer and dig 'em up. You set off on a journey through a mysterious and hazardous world in search of your lost friend. The plot is interesting enough, but nothing spectacular. Decent motivation for advancing I suppose. The game has pretty nice art and a good feel to it overall. The exploration via platforming and tunneling through the ground is quite enjoyable, although I found the inability to dig mid-air or while attached to something to be a bit of an annoyingly artificial limit, but I got used to it. The game is on the shorter side, and you end up encountering upgrades quite frequently, which can give a rapid sense of progression that feels satisfying. A neat little game overall, recommended for anyone who wants into some short, platforming and tunneling fun.
A rougelike Space shooter. You take control of a lone space fighter to explore the vast, procedurally generated reaches of space. Being a rougelike, it does not have much in the way of story, what is there is decent enough for this type of game I suppose, somewhat interesting. The thing that kept me playing this obsessively until I actually had a successful run anyway was the gameplay. You can think of it to be like FreeSpace, with the ships controlling in a more arcadey way. Aside from moving how you’d expect, that is, being able to point in any direction and accelerate towards it, you can also move backward and strafe at will, which probably doesn’t make sense physically but it lets you perform really cool maneuvers, so it’s great. You can of course shoot too, important for this kind of game after all. You need to take your target’s and your own velocity, as well as your weapon’s range and projectile velocity into account if you actually want to hit non-stationery things, the game’s HUD will aid you with this if you prefer (which I did) though. Encounters are generally fast paced. You will be reduced to space bacon before too long if you don’t act to get yourself out of danger quickly, especially if you’re severely outnumbered. You also get flushed out of a zone by an armada if you delay too long. There are also an array of hazards both expected in this environment and bizzarre to keep watch of. Quick thinking, skillful flying and accurate shooting will mean the difference between life and death. And weapons. Weapons always help. There is a nice array of weapons, items and abilities to choose from, usually found as you traverse the various sectors in the game. Gives you decent variety in how to approach your interstellar (intrastellar?) journey. Equipment drops from enemies occasionally, but you’d normally find it hidden away in containers in the wreckage of ships and stations scattered about the various sectors. These sectors are procedurally generated, which didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment, and also feels normal enough since you could plausibly encounter so many different places in the vast reaches of space. And these sectors look gorgeous. The game as a whole looks great, you might feel tempted to take just cruise lightly and take in the scenery, and it also adds to the epicness of your space battles. Seeing an enemy fighter going up in flames is always satisfying, and watching as a large enemy ceases to be with an appropriately massive shockwave is sometimes ample reward for taking out an intimidating foe. As for dislikes, the only things I can say I wasn’t too keen on was the variety of your own and your enemies’ ships, but what is there is still good enough to keep one blasting through space for hours. Highly recommend it to anyone, and especially to those fond of rougelikes in general, and similar space combat games.
