Playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 after Baldurs Gate 3 gave me a deeper understanding on the trajectory that Larian Studio’s games have taken over the years. This is a fine RPG with a deep, engaging storyline and complex systems, but in my tastes it had too many rough spots that could’ve been sanded out a little to make it truely shine. Perhaps the way I’ve played it - multiplayer co-op - didn’t lend itself perfectly to a first experience as well, but that was the way the cookie crumbled!
For The King is a neat boardgame-like role playing game where you move characters around the world, complete quests, fight monsters, improve your gear, conquer dungeons and level up. I was fully on board for most of the game, really enjoying the battle system, the style and the overall progression, but ultimately didn’t like the board game concept of moving slowly on a huge board over a certain period of turns by throwing movement dice around. I’m not sure if there would’ve been a way to do it differently, of course, so your milleage may vary!
SoP:FFO is a really cool game on paper, a cheesy final fantasy-infused action game having you punch, slash and blast your way through some semblance of the story of Final Fantasy 1 with just enough going slightly differently to really catch your attention. With a neat class system and the ability to customize your combos, special skills and gear, it could’ve been a slam dunk. That being said, I was eventually ground down by the difficulty, the overabundance of gear and the absence of ways, for me, to overcome the challenges the game placed in my way.
Exapunks is another neat little Zachtronics game about programming and solving complex puzzles through an interesting storyline about hacking, capitalism, physical media and the like. Much like their previous games, such as TIS-100, you’ll tackle challenges, write code using a small vocabulary - that still allows a lot to be done - and get ranked amongst your friends and the global player base. I had a good time with it, although I found the back-and-forth between a PDF and the game a bit tedious and got stuck fairly early.
The Messenger is pretty neat, with great chiptuney music, impressive pixel art and tight gameplay, it’s a Ninja Gaiden-esque love letter that evolves into an interesting dual-world metroidvania after you think the game might be over. I was turned off by the writing of the game, which kinda clashed with the overall themes, but still had a pretty good time with it!
Forager is a pretty neat game where you collect resources, build things, fight monsters, level up and go through an upgrade tree for your various tools, buy more land to explore, complete quests, unlock plenty of skills and complete challenges. My experience with it was a rollercoaster of mixed feelings - at first it was pretty slow and the upgrades were incomprehensible, but then progression became too fast and the upgrades didn’t come quick enough. I had a good time with it, but it lost focus too rapidly for me.
Hypnospace Outlaw is a really unique adventure game where you navigate a fake internet-alike as a moderator of sorts, trying to ban offenders and helping people with their problems by solving puzzles, installing apps and navigating through a lot of early geocities/90s-inspired nostalgia. With great humor and pointed design, it was an interesting experience, but I couldn’t really get into it and kinda checked out of figuring out everything by myself at some point.
Antimatter Dimensions is a recent idle game released on Steam where you buy dimensions to create antimatter. You buy dimensions that create dimensions that create antimatter until the point where you can reset the world, buy upgrades and start again. There are a lot of challenges to complete, achievements to unlock and the numbers get really big. That’s kinda what turned me off from the game; it seems like forward progress only meant that the number got bigger through some extra layers above the basic gameplay and at no point I got curious about what I could be unlocking next.
I had a jolly good time with the previous DOOM game and I went into Eternal expecting pretty much the same thing, a classic FPS experience with some modern sensibilities strewn over the whole thing, with a challenging but tight core loop that wouldn’t be too punishing or frustrating. Eternal goes into a few different directions that distracted me from the core experience and I also found that some of the new challenges and systems weren’t my cup of tea. Overall I enjoyed the game, but it didn’t hit as much as the previous one did in my case.
I’ve always looked at the La Mulana franchise from the exterior; A love letter to older games, it was always a bit too opaque and too rough for me, so I never really played the first one. The second one looked really promising and interesting, so I gave that a shot. It was indeed, full of possibilities and mysteries to solve, but still too opaque and difficult for me. The lack of direction, the ease at which the ruins will just kill you and the old-school style of saving your progress and losing everything else you do if you die made me stop playing. It’s too bad, because otherwise I really would’ve loved trying to go through La Mulana 2!
Kaiju Attack is a fairly simple match-3 game where you fight off various Kaijus using tanks, planes and other tiles with various effects. Based on your success, you get money after battles, which you can use to upgrade your special weapons and other stats. There isn’t much else to say about it! I enjoy premium games without ads and there seems to be a good chunk on content in this one, but it got fairly repetitive and stale for me kinda quickly. Pretty neat game, still! Love the monster design.
I’ve played NGU Idle for over a year now and I would’ve played it a bit more, but idle games live and die for me either by the promise or new mechanics to keep things interesting or by the visible incremental progress towards being able to do more things. For the longest time, NGU Idle did that for me. There was always a new mechanic coming around, there was always some system to power up until it was high enough that I could go and blast through and see something else to do. I’ve also spent a few bucks on this game, because I wanted to support it although the crude humor wasn’t really for me. Do I recommend NGU Idle? In a sense, yes, it might grab you like it grabbed me, although it ultimately starts to break down, let’s say at the one year mark.
Space Pirates And Zombie is a space strategy game about forming factions, upgrading your ship, fighting and conquering sectors while managing a zombie threat. I remembered having fun with the first game, so I went into this one wondering how it would go. I was overall pleasantly surprised, with the move to 3D being more or less only aesthetic and the core loop of the game still being pretty fun, but I had some issues with progression, both of your ship and of the story, so I didn’t stay with it until the end.
DEATHLOOP is an interesting first person shooter based around the concept of all taking place around one single day where your character is trying to break the loop by finding and killing 7 specific people. Combining puzzles, exploration and combat, it is a fine experience that I almost dropped because I wasn’t sure how to proceed, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The more interesting elements of the game were definitely its lore and puzzles, and I’ve found the combat and character upgrades/customization to be a bit lacking.
Diablo 2 Resurrected is the remastered version of Diablo 2, the 2000 action RPG classic, brought to more modern standards for today’s gamers to enjoy without having to download an extremely old game. It is still totally Diablo 2 under the hood, but there are some quality of life improvements, some tweaks here and there, and it’s showing potential for even more improvements in the future. I have extreme nostalgia for Diablo 2 and remember it as a great, deep action RPG with strict mechanics, but I also remember that it was too tough for me as soon as you got to higher difficulties. Twenty one years later I’m here to report that things didn’t change much.
At the core of Outer Wilds is a very interesting and unique idea about exploring space, figuring out clues, solving puzzles and ultimately making sense of the whole universe. Playing as a newly minted astronaut in a colorful, rich world, you visit many planets in a solar system trapped in a time loop, visiting ruins, absorbing lore and hints, working strange machines and dodging danger along the way. I really like the idea in theory, but what I ultimately played left a sour taste of confusion in my mouth, probably due to my own lack of spatial coordination.
I was a bit surprised to see a sequel to Infinitode already - since I had discovered the original only a small while ago - but this tower defense game is chuck-full of content with not too much of the usual free-to-play friction that appears in any game supported by that economical model. With tons of missions on each level, an addictive daily quest system, a bunch of upgrades, cool towers and a good difficulty progression, I had a good time with it still and played it a bunch.
SNKRX is a neat game where you control a snake made of different heroes that automatically attack enemies in multiple waves of increasing difficulty and complexity. The only mechanics you have during gameplay is to make your snake turn left or right, but otherwise the complexity lies in the hiring of heroes to compose your party, upgrading them and choosing power-ups after you’ve completed a few rounds. I had a good time with this game even if the difficulty felt a bit random at times, so I recommend it!
Raft is an interesting twist on the survival/exploration/crafting genre by putting the focus on oceanic exploration. Stuck on a small raft with not much but a plastic hook and your wits, you gather resources, fight enemies, explore islands, solve puzzles and progress through a storyline that guides your across the sea in a gameplay that clashes often between how chill it can be, how involved it can be and how repetitively frustrating it can be. Deciding to build an immense raft-tower, I had a good time with the game, playing with a good friend the whole way.
Bleentoro is a strange, yet interesting puzzle game inspired by Factorio playable on iOS. In each level you need to create factories in order to meet specific objectives, usually related to creating a certain number of a specific resource under a certain time. Starting simple enough with a bunch of new mechanics getting added as you progress through the levels, poor controls and confusing inconsistencies prevented me to fully wrap my head around the game, even if I did have a good time with it.