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List of Games Beaten in 2023

Some video games,

I beat in two-oh-two-three,

Snow on Mt. Fuji.

List items

  • 01/01. Ninth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. Nothing like power washing the previous year's collected grime away and starting over fresh. PowerWash Simulator is the acme of "why is all this busywork so compelling?" game design, as you take a high-powered hose and clean the heck out of some mucky buildings and vehicles. A genial sense of humor, an escalating story happening in the background, and a simple and pleasant interface all contribute too, of course, but the pure fun gameplay strikes me as the realization of a dream that Super Mario Sunshine didn't quite manage to fulfil. (5 Stars.)

  • 02/01. Eleventh game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A narrative-heavy adventure game with an RPG affectation, I guess is what I'd reduce it to, where you can spend dice rolls on actions to progress various questlines as well as keep your android body nourished and maintained as you attempt to survive on a ring-like space station hub while staying one step ahead of your former corporate owners. Not quite as stressful as it sounds if you're the FOMO type who usually dislikes the "hard decision" approach to branching video game narratives. I found the writing and the dice roll system to be equally compelling features and I'm thankful there's still games like this pushing the boundaries for the type of stories only video games can tell (or at least tell in this specific way). (5 Stars.)

  • 07/01. The three-hundred-and-first Indie Game of the Week. It was great to revisit this universe and its appealing characters, even if most of the new cast introduced here are kinda dicks, and the game still has a knack for exciting and inventive platforming levels set inside the minds of its more troubled characters. In many ways it's a little too beholden to the 2005 original, especially with how hoary the combat and platforming gameplay can feel, but I'll instantly fall in love with any 3D platformer that has this many collectibles to find and the imaginative and amusing story around it is icing on the cake. (4 Stars.)

  • 10/01. Twelfth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. An action-RPG that does away with loot and complex skill trees and has you jumping from one form to another while also jumping through hoops to complete some very specific and demanding goals for each in order to unlock their true potential. DrinkBox's inimitable style is also on full display here, as grossly cute as anything from their previous Severed, and though it could get repetitive and annoying at times (getting kicked out of one of its 20-minute long procgen dungeons near the end, for example) I admire the ingenuity of its novel approach to character development and its dark sense of humor. (4 Stars.)

  • 14/01. The three-hundred-and-second Indie Game of the Week. Another emotional adventure game from Sigono's Opus series, Echo of Starsong is a bit more like an animated movie than the relatively static previous two and has you follow a ragtag crew of explorers and scavengers as they make a name for themselves in a region of space still trying to recover from a long and drawn-out conflict over resources. Interactive elements boil down to making hard decisions that may help or hinder your dwindling supplies along with some mild exploration and mini-games. The point isn't so much the gameplay as it is being immersed in this world, its lore, and the love triangle romance between its principal cast members. Striking and beautiful. (4 Stars.)

  • 16/01. Thirteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A cheap and cheerful escape room game that puts the screws on you with its timers, though you're never really in danger of running out of time given how easy the game can be. A great introduction to escape rooms for anyone unsure about them before they plop money down for the real thing and embarrass themselves in front of a date or their friends. This is, after all, a learning academy. (4 Stars.)

  • 20/01. The three-hundred-and-third Indie Game of the Week. Image and Form take a moment away from their SteamWorld setting of sapient robots making their fortunes in a hostile universe to focus on Rani and Becks, two salvagers who chance upon the find of a lifetime with an alien world filled with valuables (including a potentially lucrative power supply) that's also being beset by a strange organic menace they refer to as the titular "Gunk". It's a short, compact action-adventure game with some brief (and uninteresting) combat to break up a lot of otherwise fine platforming and exploration. If you wished more games had something similar to Metroid Prime's scanning, The Gunk has what you're looking for. (4 Stars.)

  • 21/01. Fourteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. An absurdly addictive "reduced" dual-stick shooter that took the internet by storm ever since the early access version released late in 2021. Since all your weapons are automatically firing at set intervals, your only task is to weave around the hordes of vaguely Castlevania beasties collecting their XP drops while making good judgements on the level-up perks. The game has its deeper waters to explore, including weapon evolutions and secret unlocks, and there's content to keep you occupied for many hours; however, the game's true appeal is in how much it makes you feel invincible during a good run. A hard game to put down. (5 Stars.)

  • 25/01. Fifteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A Louisianan-bound adventure game set in the near future, where enhanced technology isn't necessarily making life any easier for its titular region's residents as they continue to struggle against adverse weather and corporate greed. Throwing the player into a shaggy dog story that escalates to something beyond ridiculous, the game occasionally grounds itself with its family drama and bleak outlook creating an intriguing dichotomy that might not be to everyone's tastes but was to mine. Remarkably accessible for an old-school point-and-click adventure game too, so don't get scared off if you weren't raised on Sierra and LucasFilm classics. (5 Stars.)

  • 27/01. The three-hundred-and-fourth Indie Game of the Week. A rare 3D explormer set inside the computer mind of an enormous machine superintelligence, working on fixing its critical systems one at a time while collecting decades-old chat logs between the AI and a small group of scientists working on a means for humanity to colonize outer space before the planet they're on becomes completely unlivable due to an ongoing war. It can be a little bit saturnine at times but Recompile keeps you busy with its third-person shooter combat and a whole lot of platforming: trouble is, neither side of this equation is all that interesting (until you get the OP final power-ups that mostly render them moot regardless), the bosses often too tough, and the level geometry too sterile and dark. (3 Stars.)

  • 28/01. Sixteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A confident reboot of the 1989 TMNT arcade game from Konami, and inspired by some of the few that followed, that sees the Turtles joined by their friends April, Splinter, and Casey Jones as they fight the usual suspects of Shredder, Krang, Rocksteady, and Bebop. The game's replete with cameos from the 1987 cartoon as well, though packed with an equal amount of modern touches and a greatly expanded array of attacks to pull off albeit none that require anything too complicated by way of inputs. It's a rare treat to have a brawler released in 2022 capable of making you remember what it was like to be a kid in the '90s huddled around a TMNT cabinet with some buds. (4 Stars.)

  • 29/01. Seventeenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. An adventure game that borrows a conceit from visual novels in how you explore branches in the story path that are doomed to failure for the materials and knowledge you need to reach the true route and the best ending. Visually attractive and with some witty writing, Beacon Pines's little YA adventure story occasionally runs counter to its cutesy character designs with some spooky plot twists but is otherwise a winning yarn that had me guessing throughout. (4 Stars.)

  • 03/02. The three-hundred-and-fifth Indie Game of the Week. A wholesome (or is it?) action-adventure game about outsmarting and trapping various species of food-bug hybrids for the sake of a community of furry monster things. Even though it focuses on the hunting/trapping mechanics that are usually mini-games in bigger open world games, it finds a lot of mileage from its conceit and the story is much deeper and more involved than it first appears. A little frustrating when the physics aren't playing nice, but otherwise an excellent and novel game and a darn sight more playable than the studio's predecessor Octodad. (4 Stars.)

  • 14/02. The three-hundred-and-sixth Indie Game of the Week. A Zeldersatz that mixes in some bleak post-apocalyptic storytelling with some cute pixel graphics that reminded me visually and thematically of the Mother/Earthbound games. The dungeons and action sequences are solid enough but it's the storytelling and life-sim aspects that are the stars here. That it also has an interesting roguelike 8-bit RPG as a bonus mini-game on top of all that is kinda overkill too. (4 Stars.)

  • 20/02. Eighteenth game covered by Go! Go! GOTY! 2022. A lengthy and feature-rich 16-bit throwback RPG from a sole developer which purportedly took a long time to come to fruition, Chained Echoes is an exceptional example of its particular brand of nostalgia trip and worth considering as a rival to the bigger budget RPGs out there. I was glued to it for well over a month, hitting targets on its Reward Board and playing around with its many characters and mechanics. (5 Stars.)

  • 23/02. The three-hundred-and-seventh Indie Game of the Week. An excellent if unremarkable "boomer shooter" in the vein of classic id Software joints like Doom and Quake, given a small number of modern improvements that have mostly gone into the game's visuals. Didn't quite push the envelope as much as the newer Doom reboots, possibly preferring to stay in the uncomplicated golden age of the genre. To some extent, I'm with the developers here: double-jumping around with a super shotty has and will never get old. (4 Stars.)

  • 24/02. The three-hundred-and-eighth Indie Game of the Week. This would be New Super Lucky's Tale, the updated version that was made for Switch and ported to other consoles. It's not doing anything new with the 3D collectathon platformer format but it's still a very playable (and visually sharp) one of those that's perfect for anyone looking for a Mario fix in this long hiatus since Odyssey. (4 Stars.)

  • 25/02. I wish I liked Hi-Fi Rush more, but most of the issues I have with the character action genre are still present and accounted for here even after all this time. If it wasn't for the game's incredible cel-shaded look and the novel "fighting on the rhythm" aspect mostly inspired by NecroDancer, I could've sworn it time-travelled here from 2010. Keeping to the beat isn't too tough and the platforming and exploration are a great deal of fun, but man if I never play another game that is constantly negging you with its grade evaluations or uses a terrible camera that doesn't keep track of enemies sneaking up behind you I'll consider myself a fortunate gamer. (3 Stars.)

  • 02/03. The three-hundred-and-ninth Indie Game of the Week. A stylish photography game that has you quickly achieving a bunch of objectives, Tony Hawk's style, before a time limit runs out. Has some real scrappy underground art chops and a pretty accessible set of mechanics, but prepare for a bit of repetition as you seek out all the targets over a few runs before you're ready to knock them all out at once. (4 Stars.)

  • 05/03. The last port of call with Xbox Game Pass, Sunset Overdrive is an Insomniac game that really feels like the end of this particular era of open-world urban shooters partly because the traversal feels so good with all its grinds and bounces but also because of how mercilessly it lays into the well-trodden genre tropes with its mostly stupid fourth-wall breaking humor. I'd feel embarrassed making another game like this afterwards, which is probably why there aren't too many. (4 Stars.)

  • 08/03. The first 64 in 64 game I think I ever felt compelled to go back and finish once its related blog was written. Sucker Punch's first game, a studio I love for its immediate follow-up Sly Cooper, there's plenty in Rocket to indicate the meteoric rise that would soon follow the developer. More than anything, it has no shortage of imagination for its set-pieces, even if they still needed more R&D on making an effective camera. (4 Stars.)

  • 11/03. The three-hundred-and-tenth Indie Game of the Week. A luxuriously rendered explormer about a war veteran rabbit and a paramilitary gang of metallic fascists he's pressed into taking on with a mechanical arm. While a tad sullen at times, the worldbuilding and visuals are top notch though its traversal mechanics and combat are nothing to sneeze at either. (5 Stars.)

  • 28/03. The three-hundred-and-twelfth Indie Game of the Week. A post-apocalyptic strategy RPG done in the XCOM style of using cover and a cool head to stay alive against deadly odds. Mutant Year Zero also has you employing stealth quite often, taking down patrolling enemies that wander away from their groups with silent firearms to make the enemy's numbers more manageable. Some great visuals and lore too, though it can get a bit repetitive towards the end. (4 Stars.)

  • 30/03. The three-hundred-and-thirteenth Indie Game of the Week. A thoughtful sci-fi first-person adventure game that has you exploring a yurt and a theme park on the Mongolian steppe as you piece together your own identity and that of a woman inside an artificial body on the verge of breaking. The environmental puzzles are great (when they aren't glitching out) but having the game spend equal time on an anodyne and occasionally irksome 3D puzzle-platformer mini-game is time that could've been spent better elsewhere. (3 Stars.)

  • 09/04. The three-hundred-and-fourteenth Indie Game of the Week. Pretty decent The Dark Descent sequel that retains what made that game work, and while the impact of its scares and fear-afflicted format have lessened after ten years and Rebirth doesn't have quite as many standout moments it does much more with the lore, Frictional bringing over more of the storytelling/worldbuilding prowess they sharpened with Soma, and visually it's often both breathtaking and unsettlingly surreal. (4 Stars.)

  • 13/04. The three-hundred-and-fifteenth Indie Game of the Week. It took this long to get a system that could comfortably run the lo-poly but still intense action movie scenarios that Superhot trades in, tossing you into a fight and letting time pause between actions to give you all the planning you need for your next move. What results is a game that never lets up on cool moments, all facilitated directly by the player rather than left to a QTE-enabled cutscene, and the game's sense of style is very much working towards the same goal. The whole AI vs. humanity angle to its unexpectedly involved story was a nice value add too. (5 Stars.)

  • 18/04. I'll just copy/paste this from a recent deep dive I did for this game:

    "As for Lost Judgment as a game, well, I liked it about as much as the first one. The story can be really fun at times, if also a bit maudlin and melodramatic (when has Yakuza/Like a Dragon ever not been?), but the characters and twists make it worth sticking around to the end. I still much prefer the real-time combat of this series to the new turn-based direction of the core franchise, and Snake style is a really welcome new addition due to how it prioritizes counters and being enough of a badass to intimidate goons into giving up. The game also does away with the awful mortal damage feature of the first Judgment without affecting the difficulty curve too much; boss fights are still tough because enemies hit hard and Yagami doesn't have a huge amount of health to tank it all, even with the upgrades, meaning defensive plays like blocks, parries, and evades are as integral as ever. The best new addition are the School stories: they're like ten highschool shounen/shoujo anime in one, full of clichés but embodying that blend of earnest drama and occasional goofiness that makes both anime and the RGGS games shine. Of those, I think the Motorcycle Gang had the best story and the Boxing Gym the best mini-game; never been much of a boxing game guy, but it's so fast and fierce and a nice change of pace from the usual combat.

    However, Lost Judgment still ultimately insists on being a detective game which means you have to deal with tailing missions (which suck), stealth missions (which suck), and chase missions (which would be fun if they weren't all the same). These were the worst parts of Judgment too, and it's not reassuring to know that the weakest elements of the series are apparently so indelible to the blueprint that they're almost certainly going to be with every subsequent Judgment to come. My hope is that the RGGS team continue to find new applications for this general open-world game format and apply it to other characters, stories, and thematic genres, if not whole other licenses like they did with Fist of the North Star. At this point I am very much ride or die with whatever they choose to make next, but my misgivings with fundamental aspects of both Judgment and current mainline Like a Dragon has me hoping for something fresh in the near future." (4 Stars.)

  • 22/04. The three-hundred-and-sixteenth Indie Game of the Week. A Zeldersatz with a very involved spellcrafting system that had you mixing elements to custom-create spells to your liking. A slightly harder difficulty curve compensates for how broken some spell combinations could become, and although the story and graphics were a little plain they were definitely competently done. Decent length, decent puzzles, and the crowd combat was often chaotic and demanded more focus than you might've first expected after the first couple of run-ins with goblins. (4 Stars.)

  • 28/04. I may have let myself get overhyped for the first new Metroid game in fifteen years, but Metroid Dread does a lot competently and in other respects feels like a game built by an Indie team outside of Nintendo (which of course it was). The good included bringing back Fusion's sense of helpless peril, the improved shooting and combat tech, a very nostalgic reintroduction to the usual Metroid assortment of power-ups (gotta love that Screw Attack, though not so much the shinespark and the tough environmental puzzles associated with it), and some clean if a little dry visuals. The parts I cared less for included all the instant-death EMMI sequences, since those things could be annoyingly prescient, and the higher emphasis on parry-based QTEs that often made me feel like I wasn't doing damage to the boss until one triggered. I'd much prefer a health bar to whittle down to nothing than pushing closer to some unpredictable sudden cutscene closure.

    I do think Metroid Dread is an exceptional 2D explormer that can stand proud against any Indie example from the past ten years, though even for as antiquated as they are most of the older Metroid games had something special this one lacked. Maybe it's just because it didn't push the envelope to the same degree, or perhaps its new additions rubbed me the wrong way. At any rate, it did at least make me more excited for the upcoming Metroid Prime 4 and a possible "Aranaissance" to follow. (4 Stars.)

  • 30/04. The first May Magnanimity game. After playing around with a few of the Itch games received in various charity bundles in recent years, I made a little progress in this neat lo-poly 3D FPS explormer but had to put it down because my old system struggled with its modest charms somehow. Inspired by the aforementioned renewed hype for Metroid Prime 4 I gave it another shot and accidentally completed it within an hour. I'm all for games of this type to get in and out once the novelty's worn off and the shooter gameplay was decent enough if a little basic, so well done to this developer and I'll be sure to catch more of their output in the future. (4 Stars.)

  • 03/05. The third May Magnanimity game. A short narrative adventure set in a teenager's bedroom. A teenager's bedroom is usually the place for a short adventure if you know what I mean. I'm talking P.E., and not the kind you need a gym uniform for. Wait, I'm getting off-topic. It's a thoughtful and sad tale about growing up that deserves more respect than I'm giving it here. (4 Stars.)

  • 04/05. Been playing this episodic SFC picross game on and off since October of last year, finally completing all eight episodes this month and earning whatever the equivalent of a platinum is over on RetroAchievements. That's a lot of Picross, much of which was recycled for the Picross e series for 3DS. (4 Stars.)

  • 05/05. The three-hundred-and-eighteenth Indie Game of the Week. A slick and stylish first-person murder simulator with a neon-soaked cyberpunk theme. Perform absurd slo-mo acrobatics while killing whole rooms full of cussing guards in your attempt to escape your fate. (5 Stars.)

  • 06/05. The fifth May Magnanimity game. Tried this once a little while back and was able to complete it with a better system. Intriguing retro first-person shooter with some philosophical leanings that's definitely a journey and a half. Also FF8's Selphie shows up too? (4 Stars.)

  • 08/05. The seventh May Magnanimity game. Cute but tiny adventure game about hanging out with a bud over the summer holidays, writing letters and finding cool trash on the beach. Could've used a bit more substance but otherwise a nostalgic little morsel. (3 Stars.)

  • 12/05. The three-hundred-and-nineteenth Indie Game of the Week. A game where you're maintaining a wind- and gas-powered rolling tank thing, ever futzing with sails and fuel tanks to keep it in motion. It has the sort of scrappy, "make do with whatever's on hand" energy that draws you in and pushes you forward to its eventual end. It's also gorgeous, in a mostly desolate way. (4 Stars.)

  • 13/05. The ninth May Magnanimity game. A short-scale Nifflas project where you're some kind of microscopic fish creature hopping from one cell to the next in order to save your friends. Uses gravity and momentum as mechanics to make forward progress, more intuitive than it sounds. (4 Stars.)

  • 13/05. The tenth May Magnanimity game. Not so much a TWEWY prequel but an Ico-style environmental 3D platformer with a quiet, melancholy vibe and a handful of puzzles. Mostly just a mood piece that does a good job showing off the developer's (a graphic artist) chops. (3 Stars.)

  • 13/05. The eleventh May Magnanimity game. Another tech demo from a single person team, MiniNatura is a short little action game where you run around a picturesque diorama looking for seedlings in out the way places. Reminded me a bit of Captain Toad Treasure Tracker. (3 Stars.)

  • 14/05. The eighth May Magnanimity game. A jigsaw game that's pretty standard as far as the genre goes, with only brief flashes of animation to set itself apart from the tabletop versions. It does tell a story with its series of puzzles though, which isn't quite as common. (3 Stars.)

  • 14/05. The twelfth May Magnanimity game. No particular reason why a bunch of these are lesbian romance visual novels, just that there were a lot in the Itch.io bundles I bought. This was a little paper-thin as far as narratives go but maybe the 18+ patch adds a lot. I mean, besides nudity. (3 Stars.)

  • 17/05. The thirteenth May Magnanimity game. The DX version specifically, which updated the graphics to resemble something like WayForward's Shantae games. A platformer with a lot of puzzles involving Mario Bros. 2 style picking up and tossing enemies. A bit rough around the edges but often inventive. (3 Stars.)

  • 20/05. The three-hundred-and-twentieth Indie Game of the Week. A puzzle-platformer about horribly maiming yourself to get past obstacles in your way, all the while searching for your missing girlfriend Emily who occasionally checks in with creepy backwards-talking phone calls (wouldn't be a SWERY joint without some Twin Peaks business). A neat, if grisly, hook for a game of this type with all that inimitable SWERY oddness to enjoy. (4 Stars.)

  • 20/05. The fourteenth May Magnanimity game. Another lesbian romance game, though this one has a low-key tragic Gothic vibe to it as the heroine (or the main one, at least) struggles to save her own life from a wasting disease. Some great visuals and script, but it's pretty short and uneventful. (3 Stars.)

  • 22/05. The sixteenth May Magnanimity game. A platformer where collecting the coins isn't necessarily the best idea, based on the spiritual idea that wealth and greed makes your soul too heavy to reach heaven. Lots of inventive level design that require some thoughtful planning and experimentation, and the yokai-infested visuals and eclectic soundtrack are also winners. (4 Stars.)

  • 22/05. The fifteenth May Magnanimity game. A "Lunar Lander" style gravity action game where you descend through planets each with their unique hazards and obstacles to overcome. A really challenging game, especially when playing on the harder difficulties and/or without incurring lost lives for the maximum score. (3 Stars.)

  • 24/05. The seventeenth May Magnanimity game. A cute idea for a puzzle game, spinning 3D objects around and looking at them from certain angles to transform them into new objects. Suited best for a mobile device with touch controls, Vignettes has a surprising amount of ideas and depth to such a simple, intuitive premise. (4 Stars.)

  • 26/05. Not my first Yoshi rodeo, but I was motivated to replay this 16-bit nonpareil for the Retro Achievements. There's some real harsh ones that I'll probably skip but I achieved most of the rest and learned a lot more about this game in the process, similar to what I've been undertaking with Super Mario 64 and my Kobayashi Mario feature. (5 Stars.)

  • 26/05. The three-hundred-and-twenty-first Indie Game of the Week. The third and last part of a trilogy I started with The Cat Lady some years back. Lorelai gets deeper into the lore behind the Queen of Maggots, a chthonic deity that grants the freshly murdered a chance to avenge themselves by eliminating the sociopathic "parasite" that killed them. For Lorelai, it's her deadbeat drunkard stepfather, and she's pushed to save her own half-sister and would-be boyfriend in the process. (4 Stars.)

  • 27/05. The eighteenth May Magnanimity game. An 8-bit run-and-gun homage that involves a bunch of very '90s anthro superheroes chasing after a robotics genius in a series of increasingly tough levels. No lives means taking as long as you want on each stage, but it can get a bit hairy later on. (3 Stars.)

  • 27/05. The nineteenth May Magnanimity game. A lo-poly first-person adventure game where you find a fluid that will be the catalyst for the next plane of reality. As wonderfully weird as it sounds, but also too repetitive for its own good due to how it's set up. (3 Stars.)

  • 27/05. The twenty-first May Magnanimity game. Another lesbian visual novel, only this one has a spooky haunted house theme. A rich girl, her devoted servant, and her kindhearted penpal embark on a love triangle inside a supernatural manor. A few narrative branches but the game is otherwise short story length and doesn't have enough runway to properly take off. (3 Stars.)

  • 28/05. The twenty-second May Magnanimity game. Despite the simple visuals and goofy name, My Rabbits Are Gone is a quite complex and deep explormer with many environmental puzzles that require a command menu to solve set across four whole maps. This game will keep you busy for a while looking for cute bunnies to rescue. (4 Stars.)

  • 29/05. The twenty-third May Magnanimity game. A real short sci-fi explormer with just the basics, built to be played on browsers with limited controls (though it's on Switch too). Kinda like Xeodrifter in that it's a very compact, streamlined game of its genre. (3 Stars.)

  • 29/05. The twenty-fourth May Magnanimity game. A lo-poly horror adventure game with some deeply disquieting vibes as you attempt to decommission a research station that hit a small snag with subterranean Elder Gods killing or brainwashing everyone. Great use of its PS1-style visuals and the mood setting, though there's very little that needs doing. (4 Stars.)

  • 30/05. The twenty-fifth May Magnanimity game. A side-scrolling action game going for a Zelda II/Faxanadu RPG angle, complete with new moves and equipment to acquire with enough funds. Gets pretty tough towards the end with its platforming (another Zelda II similarity). It serves as a prologue to something bigger, so it can feel a bit basic. (3 Stars.)

  • 30/05. The twenty-sixth May Magnanimity game. One of those currently-trendy "forever ascending" type of games like Only Up or Getting Over It, except it actually records progress regularly and lets you resume from your highest point. Climb a massive tower, keeping out of the sun on the way up, to find your destiny. (4 Stars.)

  • 31/05. The twenty-seventh and final May Magnanimity game. One last lesbian visual novel to see us off, this one shows its hand relatively early but you still have to put the pieces together about every character's circumstances. Once there, you can decide whether your protagonist deserves a second chance or not. A heavy story about being an outcast and finding one's place in the world. (3 Stars.)

  • 04/06. The three-hundred-and-twenty-second Indie Game of the Week. A cute survival game about a couple who escaped their oppressive society that determines romantic partnerships through an algorithm so they can be together on the frontier of space where no-one can find them. Gameplay's relatively sparse with some minor exploration and platforming but the star of the show is the central relationship and the many hours of dialogue the pair of lovers share. (You can be two dudes or two ladies too, continuing a certain theme from last month.) (4 Stars.)

  • 10/06. The three-hundred-and-twenty-third Indie Game of the Week. A Soulsborne type that's been greatly streamlined for the sake of its relatively small amount of content. For one, you don't develop a character but have several "shells" to choose from with their individual skills to acquire and stats best suited for certain playstyles. The game's also big on counters, parries, and getting one free resurrection per rest, so there's a Sekiro angle to it too. (4 Stars.)

  • 20/06. The three-hundred-and-twenty-fourth Indie Game of the Week. I didn't care for having NPCs constantly and permanently dying on you whenever you screwed up, but otherwise this sci-fi Zeldersatz has a great vibe, speedy and compelling combat, and a great variety of puzzles and fights to take on. Also lesbians again. I swear I'm not going out of my way for games with these relationships. (4 Stars.)

  • 24/06. The three-hundred-and-twenty-fifth Indie Game of the Week. A platformer that feels a bit Mega Man X-like with its wall-jumps and gunplay, albeit with a whole lot of grapple hook mechanics thrown in. It has a cute adventure game element where you're attempting to solve the conspiracy behind an attack on your multiverse cop headquarters, asking fellow agents about certain clues you've dug up. (4 Stars.)

  • 01/07. The three-hundred-and-twenty-sixth Indie Game of the Week. An adventure game in the Broken Sword mold with a whip smart everygirl protagonist who finds herself trying to track a Lithuanian treasure that led to the disappearance of her father. Some witty scriptwriting and a charming visual style elevate what might otherwise be another run-of-the-mill point-and-click throwback. (4 Stars.)

  • 07/07. The three-hundred-and-twenty-seventh Indie Game of the Week. A run-based shooter about quickly collecting resources from dilapidated spaceships, occasionally fixing up its systems in the process. The loop was fun and the game not so long that its run-based nature began to feel overly familiar. I don't think trying to play this stealthily is all that feasible, though. (5 Stars.)

  • 18/07. The three-hundred-and-twenty-eighth Indie Game of the Week. A gorgeous and thoughtful exploration-heavy action-adventure about a young woman discovering herself on a pilgrimage. Plenty to see and do, even if it's streamlined to the point where there isn't even any combat, and it's just an attractive, chill time scouring the desert for places of interest. A great distillation of what made Breath of the Wild's quieter moments work. (5 Stars.)

  • 21/07. The three-hundred-and-twenty-ninth Indie Game of the Week. A lo-fi but well-written adventure game featuring a real-life figure from ancient China as he investigates a series of grisly murders. Though the style is rudimentary and the puzzles straightforward, there's plenty of craft and consideration that went into every facet. Hopefully the devs can use this as a springboard for something more ambitious. (4 Stars.)

  • 25/07. Sometimes a Tales game is a whole lot of fun because you fall in love with the ensemble and want to push through some otherwise fine combat to see the next skit or story cutscene. Rarely, the opposite is true, where the cast and story is just whatever and the combat and progression mechanics are where the game truly shines. The latter is both the case here and for Graces F, the last Tales game I played prior to this. I do think the story of Alphen and Shionne and their attempts to bridge not only the gaps in their own personalities but the far-reaching one between their respective races is relatable and well-told, though it's already well-worn territory for the Tales franchise and its predilection for taking a "two worlds" theme into many directions, but the enhanced LMBS with its additional emphasis on evasion and character-specific playstyles really adds a lot to the usual formula. Its other mechanics, like buying new skills through unlocking the achievement-like titles or the simplified Mystic Arte requirements, were Graces carryovers I was happy to see return. Overall I had an excellent time with Arise; even its worst aspects (very little humor, too few enemy types) were relatively inconsequential. (5 Stars.)

  • 28/07. The three-hundred-and-thirtieth Indie Game of the Week. A puzzle-platformer that uses gravity-shifting as its chief mechanic for its many curious puzzles. Excellent sense of style with its monochrome visuals, and while they weren't always welcome the occasional times where you had to evade a ghoulie of some sort added a bit of thematically-apropos variety. (4 Stars.)

  • 04/08. The three-hundred-and-thirty-first Indie Game of the Week. It's barely holding itself together but this vaguely open-world platformer is full of curious nonsense to discover and some scrappy mechanics revolving around being a rambunctious ratite. It's oddly fun, though you need a high tolerance for its sloppy construction. (3 Stars.)

  • 13/08. The three-hundred-and-thirty-second Indie Game of the Week. A competent if unremarkable explormer with a Soulslike flair that plays a bit like an IGAvania. It's lengthy and possessed of a decent difficulty curve (it can get diabolical at times) so it should keep you in good company for a while, but don't expect a whole lot of nuance or innovation behind its modest charms. (4 Stars.)

  • 18/08. The three-hundred-and-thirty-third Indie Game of the Week. Definitely taking a leaf from the Donkey Kong Country series, and in particular the more recent Returns reboots, Kaze's a tough but fair platformer with some gorgeous pixel art and a few tricks up its sleeve regarding its titular wild masks and the abilities they confer. If you're tired of waiting for a new DKCR I'd strongly recommend giving it a look. (4 Stars.)

  • 24/08. The first Great Ace Attorney, and the first half of the compilation that was also both games' global debuts. While a tad loquacious, to the extent it occasionally felt like it was padding out its word count (yeah, yeah, glass houses and all that), there's much to enjoy here between the new but occasionally familiar characters, a great new prosecutor foil, a kooky if sometimes frustrating (by design) jury system, and some inspired sections where you correct the "great detective's" flawed abductive reasoning. This franchise has yet to miss a beat and I can't wait to play the second GAA game later this year. (5 Stars.)

  • 29/08. The three-hundred-and-thirty-fourth Indie Game of the Week. A pretty but overambitious Eastern-style turn-based RPG that uses time travel mechanics in both its combat and puzzle instances. Loses the plot towards the end with its sudden twists and even after years of patching up its poor performance it's still beholden to glitches everywhere you turn, and mechanically it feels stuck in the genre's stone age era what with lacking QoF features like out-of-party levelling and a high random encounter rate, but there's some heart here and a great presentation to distract you from its core issues. (3 Stars.)

  • 01/09. The three-hundred-and-thirty-fifth Indie Game of the Week. A reflex-intensive "masocore-lite" 2D platformer from the team that would later bring us Tinykin. Their keen sense for level design and natural feeling traversal was still apparent here, and while the game is tough it's a fair kind of tough that encourages you to improve your skills. I've no truck with all its extraneous time-trial business, but as a zippy platformer that never settles in one place for long it's a real joy. (5 Stars.)

  • 09/09. The three-hundred-and-thirty-sixth Indie Game of the Week. It's another The Room game, one of the better series if you want your environmental puzzle/escape room games to have a more tactile feel. Old Sins had a neat dollhouse "hub" that meant a little bit of non-linearity towards its puzzles, or at least an illusion of same. Not as complicated as it seems, but very sharp looking and rewarding. (4 Stars.)

  • 19/09. The three-hundred-and-thirty-seventh Indie Game of the Week. One of those emotional puzzle-platformer dealies. It has a lot of tricky precision puzzles based on firing a beam at a specific angle, so the exacting nature of the format can be frustrating in the same way something with 2D aiming systems like a Yoshi's Island often could be. Some inventive puzzle scenarios and an excellent presentation to tie everything together makes it a winner though. (4 Stars.)

  • 22/09. The three-hundred-and-thirty-eighth Indie Game of the Week. The first Glass Masquerade made a strong impression with its glassware take on jigsaw puzzles along with its chill vibe, but successive games have been increasingly more generic and uninteresting as they pare off the more distinct elements of the format. Honeylines gives you a lot of customization options to work with, but it serves to make each of its puzzles feel cookie-cutter. (3 Stars.)

  • 29/09. The three-hundred-and-thirty-ninth Indie Game of the Week. An emotionally resonant story about loss and depression as seen through the eyes of a precocious child writing their own increasingly-warped fantasy story is a strong hook for what is a pretty rudimentary puzzle-platformer that uses word-based spells as traversal tools. A game best suited for a younger audience. (4 Stars.)

  • 07/10. The three-hundred-and-fortieth Indie Game of the Week. An action-adventure game about fixing the problems of ghosts and recovering your own stolen body from a vengeful wraith, made in the same style as the studio's earlier Stick It To the Man!. The platforming felt a bit rudimentary (though I'm glad they took SITtM's stealth out) but the puzzles and humor made up for it. (4 Stars.)

  • 15/10. The three-hundred-and-forty-first Indie Game of the Week. A scatological 3D collectathon platformer wherein a low-level employee of Hell's corporate structure gathers ingredients for the worst pastry in creation. The platforming is pretty tight and its hub levels impressively vast, and the subversive humor's never so edgy or meme-y as to make me want to crumple up into a ball from embarrassment. (4 Stars.)

  • 21/10. Played some classic Dark Souls in a not-so-classic fashion by implementing both an item and an enemy randomizer to make things a little more interesting for the future Dark Lord. It turned the difficulty curve into a difficulty electrocardiogram chart, replacing half the bosses with Kalameet while making the other half instantly kill themselves or remain inert due to behavioral AI snafus. It was hugely entertaining as a Dark Souls veteran to see the crazy shifts, and I feel like it helped me understand the underpinnings of the game as well. (5 Stars.)

  • 21/10. The three-hundred-and-forty-second Indie Game of the Week. A surprisingly dry shark RPG-simulator given how much water is in it, Maneater has you evolve into a massive whale-eating shark through random acts of homicidal beach terrorism and territorial disputes with other aquatic lifeforms. Lengthy but not as robust as you'd hope, regarding the amount of variety it provides. Looks good and controls well enough, though the latter did involve memorizing when to use a dozen buttons. (4 Stars.)

  • 31/10. The three-hundred-and-forty-third Indie Game of the Week. A 3D platformer set in Hell, the second this month, Demon Turf is much more geared towards the "git gud" crowd of time trial chasers with its tough gauntlet levels. Fundamentally at odds with itself as a collectathon platformer that emphasizes speed and precision over exploration, it has just a few too many issues to really recommend it wholeheartedly. The irreverent, MS Paint-festooned aesthetic is kinda charming though. (3 Stars.)

  • 04/11. The three-hundred-and-forty-fourth Indie Game of the Week. A barely improved explormer sequel, Guacamelee! 2 gets a little more meta with its storytelling and adds a few new ideas and expands the chicken transformation a bit, but is otherwise pretty much a second run of the first game. Same issues too, sadly, though I'll say its charms were a bit more apparent here. (4 Stars.)

  • 08/11. Played for VN-ese Waltz Book 2. A spooky '80s-set supernatural horror VN about a series of cursed objects and how they allow their owners to curse others to death, with the goal of bringing someone back to life. Twisty, and with multiple protagonists, there's an investment required to plumb its depths but it's overall a bit more straightforward than the truly labyrinthine "your choices matter" VNs out there. (4 Stars.)

  • 10/11. The three-hundred-and-forty-fifth Indie Game of the Week. A short narrative adventure game about a friendly (or are they?) alien visitor purporting to help mankind with its little "extinction-level epidemic" problem. Playing as a series of viewpoint characters, it's the player's task to figure out what the visitor's true mission might be. Suspenseful, though with a softer empathetic edge common to Bithell's games. (4 Stars.)

  • 12/11. Played for VN-ese Waltz Book 2. A truly dark psychological horror VN about a group of troubled folks building up their own sinister urban legend about a website that kills anyone whose details are uploaded. There's a glimmer of humanity to be found deep within but much of it is just bad things happening for no reason for all the cynics of the world to enjoy. The art and VAs are pretty good, at least. (4 Stars.)

  • 17/11. The three-hundred-and-forty-sixth Indie Game of the Week. A hidden objects puzzle game much like Hidden Folks in that you have these impressively detailed crowd images to pore over looking for specific targets. Plenty of humor too, though like the UFOs themselves not all of it lands. (4 Stars.)

  • 24/11. The three-hundred-and-forty-seventh Indie Game of the Week. While I loved the presentation and its deep cuts regarding the RCR lore, it felt a little too beholden to the 16-bit brawlers of the past to be much fun. Especially with the too generous enemy hitboxes and some unfortunate difficulty spikes here and there. Dig the style but not so much everything else. (3 Stars.)

  • 24/11. Played for VN-ese Waltz Book 2. The When They Cry franchise has some degree of notoriety among those in the know, and this was my introduction to why that is. The four chapters of Question Arcs (collectively the first half of Umineko When They Cry) were super twisty and kept throwing in surprise after surprise, even though the goal was to recreate the same two days on the cursed island of Rokkenjima as the Ushiromiya family is murdered to the last for the sake of a witch's ritual. Dark, strange, occasionally exciting, and very much marching to the beat of its own drum. Definitely curious enough to finish it someday. (4 Stars.)

  • 26/11. Played for VN-ese Waltz Book 2. A brief lesbian romance visual novel that explores the height of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s as a detective and a folklore consultant are tasked with investigating some apparently ritualistic cases of arson. The case often takes a backseat to the central relationship, which picks up years after an acrimonious split that is explored in flashbacks. Given the short length it doesn't have much substance and its main crime story lacks bite but it's unexpectedly wholesome and has some attractive visuals to make up for it. (4 Stars.)

  • 27/11. Played for VN-ese Waltz Book 2. Much like Night Cascades, this lesbian romance visual novel spends much of its time reminiscing about a relationship gone sour while following the same pair in the present as they slowly repair their union. This one has a fantasy theme and explores both a class divide as well as insecurities about whether one side is "good enough" for the other. Typical teen angst for the most part, but buoyed by some decent voice performances and a cute anime art direction. (4 Stars.)

  • 30/11. It took three months to finally put WotR to rest, but what a time was had with this enormous and deeply ambitious RPG made in the classic Infinity Engine style. Even though I spent nearly 200 hours with this thing it didn't feel like I'd plumbed any of its depths; there's so much you can do with the robust Pathfinder ruleset between metamagic tomfoolery, "class dipping" across multiple disciplines for some truly munchkin builds, and near a dozen "Mythic Paths" each with their own side-quests and approaches to story-critical hurdles. I went with the Angel path, sticking to the "canon" route suggested by the subtitle, but the overly literal and meta Aeon path, the fey freedom-loving Azata path, the sinister power-consolidating Lich path, the humorous fourth-wall-breaking Trickster path, and the fully power fantasy Legend path all seem fascinating choices too.

    I can't imagine ever replaying something this huge, especially as the time-consuming Crusade management half was a comparatively damp squib compared to the core adventuring (HoMM's "mad stackz" approach was always too abstract for me), but there's many options available if I do. I almost feel compelled to build my own party of monsters now that I have the ruleset familiarized and just stomp the game with one of its more entertaining mythic paths, but I'll resist the urge. I do want to play other games within this finite lifetime of mine. (5 Stars.)

  • 04/12. The three-hundred-and-forty-eighth Indie Game of the Week. Pretty standard Portal-esque puzzle-platforming for the most part, but I liked the story for as slight as it was. The DLC where you were collecting colored medals in addition to solving puzzle rooms felt more attuned to the type of experience you'd expect. Overall solid stuff, though I still dislike any puzzle that relies too much on a capricious physics engine. (4 Stars.)

  • 10/12. The three-hundred-and-forty-ninth Indie Game of the Week. I bristled against this explormer's higher-than-average difficulty at first but I eventually grew to like it on top of its surreal aesthetic and deeper narrative waters as I learned more of its world and characters. Pretty memorable ending for one of these too. (4 Stars.)

  • 14/12. Mostly so I could have one strong contender on my GOTY list, which is really just this and Paranormasight as the year closes. I loved that this was mostly a remake of Pikmin 2 with some really welcome additions like Oatchi and the rewind feature and the Pikmin 3 Pikmin as well as some maybe less welcome ones like anything "dandori" and the tower defense night excursions. Pikmin 2 is probably my favorite GC game though so it would take a lot of problems to make me not love it. (5 Stars.)

  • 16/12. Replayed this with the "tag anywhere" hack and it suddenly got way more palatable. I was also on the hunt for its full Retro Achievement set and even built a blog feature around it. I could've done without the no-damage boss clears but the other achievements gave me some fun new challenges to try out. (4 Stars.)

  • 21/12. The three-hundred-and-fiftieth Indie Game of the Week. Enjoyable time-loop adventure game with some decent worldbuilding and characterization. Felt a little talked down to with the game's elementary grasp of mythology and moral philosophy. (5 Stars.)

  • 29/12. The climax of the Great Ace Attorney duo means the last three cases have to be dedicated towards the big conclusion while the first two suffer from an unfortunate amount of Soseki Natsume (I know he's a national treasure in Japan, but he's still annoying here). Still the usual mix of some strong puzzles and great freakouts even if the mastermind was expected (that dude had final boss written all over him). (4 Stars.)

  • 31/12. Fun idea, attaching a run-based dungeon-crawler model to Zelda. Reminded me of the LTTP randomizer, though having to go at the game's rhythm instead of my own was always too restrictive for my liking. Obviously it's not a patch on any extant Zelda but as a Zeldersatz (if it qualifies) it's high up there on the ranking table. (4 Stars.)
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