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).
A procedurally-generated 2D pixel-art run-and-gun shooter very much like its predecessor. Run to the right, pick up weapon powerups and shoot enemy soldiers, use crates for cover and try not to take too much damage yourself. Blow up a few enemy beacons and get to the chopper to clear the stage and fight a boss at the end of every set of stages before moving on to the next level with a different setting and tougher foes.
A procedurally-generated 2D pixel-art run-and-gun shooter. Run to the right, pick up weapon powerups and shoot enemy soldiers, use crates for cover and try not to take too much damage yourself. Blow up a few enemy beacons and get to the chopper to clear the stage and fight a boss at the end of every set of stages before moving on to the next level with a different setting and tougher foes.
A simple life sim casting you as the manager of a campsite. Collect fruit/bugs/fish/seashells, give them to the humanoid animals camping nearby in exchange for crafting materials, build furniture to decorate your campsite and your camper van to be able to invite more villagers to your campsite and become better friends with them.
A puzzle game in which your mini character automatically moves forward until hitting an interactable part of the environment, such as bouncing high on a springboard or entering a warp pipe. You have partial ability to manipulate the level - some pieces can be removed and replaced elsewhere, such as girders that can create floors, ramps, or walls.
A cooperative puzzle game where each player controls a shape that can ‘snip’ and thus modify the shape of other characters and sometimes parts of the environment. Players must cooperate to create the shapes necessary to solve puzzles such as making scoops to pick up and carry objects or gears to rotate mechanisms.
A spiritual followup to Disorient on the Murder Express that takes the logical-connection mystery solving and accusation mechanic and tries to build a fuller and more polished game around it with mixed results.
The game casts you as an investigator sent to a spacecraft that has lost contact with Earth to determine what happened.
A proof-of-concept born from a game jam. You play a washed-up detective on board a train with a few colorful characters, one of whom is shortly murdered. After inspecting the crime scene and available clues, you gather the suspects to solve the mystery. Here’s where the game’s unique mechanic comes into play - by clicking any two pieces of evidence (including the murder victim and each suspect) your character will explain their logical connection.
A match-3 game with a lightweight RPG framework. Combat is accomplished through match-3 gameplay, and in betwen battles you spend money and experience to improve your stats and occasionally get new abilities. You play as one of three elemental maidens who have different stat allocations and slightly different special moves, fighting a series of monsters who attack in varying ways - one enemy puts bombs on the board that deal heavy damage if not destroyed before their countdown runs out, while another poisons several tiles that each deal light damage every turn they are not cleared.
A rhythm game tribute to the long-running Final Fantasy series. There are songs and characters from every mainline numbered title from the original Final Fantasy to then-recent Final Fantasy XIII. Songs are grouped into a few different kinds of levels depending on the nature of the music - battle music has you fighting a series of monsters, event music plays over cutscenes, and field music has you journeying through the game world.
An exploration game roughly in the vein of Flower or Journey. Play as a diver swimming through underwater caverns and submerged ruins. There’s no dialog and gameplay consists mostly of navigating a beautiful environment against an emotive soundtrack. The star of the show is the sea life - hundreds of real-world species of fish, turtles, whales, and more lovingly rendered with up to several thousand individual creatures on screen at any given time.