Reviews

Reviews of the games I play, aiming to quickly encapsulate the game’s essence and quirks. Most games have an audience; my goal is for the review to make it clear to you whether you are part of a game’s audience (whether or not I am).

| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Dust: An Elysian Tail

A 2D action RPG Metroidvania that feels like it’s set in an animated movie, because it basically is. Play as the amnesiac Dust exploring varied environments and fighting monsters to find answers and help people out along the way. While not everyone likes the art style (which is somewhere between Vanillaware and The Secret of NIMH) I found it beautiful.

Read more...

0 Comments
| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Kamiko

A short and simple retro-styled game that feels like an essentialized homage to Zelda dungeons. As any of three shrine maidens, progress through a series of four levels defeating enemies and solving simple puzzles to reach and cleanse four gates which also act as save points. Once you’ve cleansed all four, fight a boss and proceed to the next level.

Read more...

0 Comments
| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Stardew Valley

A life sim that casts you primarily as a farmer growing crops and raising livestock but also features fishing, cooking, crafting, mining, combat, and romanceable NPCs. The game is heavily influenced by the old Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons games, and is presented in a similar three-quarters overhead pixel-art style.

Read more...

0 Comments
| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Human Resource Machine

A puzzle game tasking the player with writing simple programs to manipulate numbers. Eleven different programming commands are available as building blocks for conquering forty one increasingly-complex challenges. Most puzzles also have optional goals to optimize your program’s line count and execution time. The experience is lightly wrapped in a shallow but ironic story that has your program executed by a human office worker doing pointless work to climb a corporate ladder.

Read more...

0 Comments
| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Ikachan

A bite-sized pixel-art underwater Metroidvania starring a squid. Swim to explore your environment, get new abilities, and do favors for sea urchins. It’s a solid foundation that feels more like a proof of concept than a finished game, clocking in at about an hour and leaving most of its ideas undeveloped.

Read more...

0 Comments
| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Fire Emblem Warriors

A Musou game set in a crossover Fire Emblem world, featuring a few original characters and many from previous games - mostly Awakening, Fates, and Shadow Dragon. As is standard for Musou crossover games, elements from the franchise have been incorporated into the standard large-scale hack-and-slash gameplay - and Fire Emblem turns out to be a shockingly good fit, resulting in easily the mechanically-best Musou gameplay I’ve ever experienced.

Read more...

0 Comments
| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Fill-a-Pix: Phil's Epic Adventure

A video game adaptation of a mathematical picture-drawing puzzle that plays like if Picross took a few steps toward Minesweeper. As with Picross, you have a rectangular grid where some squares are meant to be colored in to reveal a picture. Unlike Picross, here the clues are numbers from zero to nine found in some of the squares, indicating how many of the immediately-surrounding squares (plus the clue square itself) should be filled in.

Read more...

0 Comments
| | 0 Comments

Capsule Review: Iconoclasts

A 2D retro-styled Metroidvania in a well-developed world with platforming puzzles and varied combat that both make full use of your ever-growing toolset. The mechanics are satisfying and the storytelling is compelling, but the game doesn’t respect the player’s time quite as much as I’d like. Your main tools are your wrench, which can thwack enemies or turn bolts to activate mechanisms, and your stun gun, which can blast enemies or open certain barriers.

Read more...

0 Comments