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 satisfying bite-sized RPG that needs just a bit more approachability to be a perfect gateway game.
Moody and beautiful, but too unreadable to be a good rhythm game and too interruptive to be a good interactive album.
Bigger and better than the first one, and an excellent blend of the creative expression of a building game wrapped in the story and characterization of an RPG.
A solid but very simple snowboarding game with a score multiplier system that obscures your actual improvement as a player.
A cute little (less than an hour) shooter with minimalist plot, graphics, and sound. As Princess Remedy, progress through a series of areas presented with the look of an old-school RPG as you climb the ominous Boss Tower gathering power-ups and healing everyone you come across.
Each area has a number of NPCs to heal, which is accomplished via playing a quick single-stick shooter level (you continually shoot the direction you last moved in).
Serviceable Picross wrapped in shallow RPG elements that add basically nothing.
A short narrative adventure game where you play as a robotic vacuum cleaner named Rumu who is designed to clean messes and feel love. It soon becomes clear that things are not as they appear and there are mysteries to solve - possibly deadly ones.
The game features a sleek, ultramodern aesthetic with visuals that wouldn’t be out of place in some kind of near-future interactive IKEA catalog or a commercial for Aperture Science.
A short dialog-free comedic adventure that’s apparently intended to serve as a prequel to a fuller game later on. You play as a skeletal pirate seeking a great treasure who must deal with various setbacks, obstacles, and enemies along the way.
Over the game’s short run time (my playthrough was about forty minutes) it flirts briefly with many different minigame-like interaction methods.
A rhythm game where notes flow from the center of the screen to the left or right sides of an outer circle. Depending on the note type and the portion of the circle it hits, the player must press the correct button or stick (or on some platforms, tap the screen) in the correct way with the correct timing.
A pinball spin-off of the Senran Kagura franchise starring busty schoolgirl ninjas who take clothing damage (though there’s basically no ninjutsu or clothing damage in this one). Five of the series’s recurring characters (Yumi, Asuka, Murasaki, Ryōna, and Yomi) have been partially transformed into different animals (which mostly means they wear fur bikinis and animal ears while acting like a stereotype of the animal in question) and to restore them, you need to hit them with a pinball over and over.