I was excited going into Duck Detective: The Secret Salami. Since it came out earlier this year, it’s a game that’s lived rent-free in the back of my mind, largely off the strength of its humorous title and fun premise. A cute little duck acting as a hard-boiled detective and interacting with a cast of colourful characters is the kind of thing that seems tailor-made for my tastes, and the fact that one of its primary mechanisms is a fill-in-the-blanks method of making deductions (sorry, “deducktions”) a la The Case of the Golden Idol (a game I haven’t played but thoroughly enjoyed watching a playthrough of) is the icing on the cake. Add in some great voice acting, solid writing, and a tightly-paced runtime, and you’ve got a recipe for a quality experience. And without burying the lede, while it didn’t blow me away, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is still an entertaining mystery game that kept me engaged the whole time I played it.
Minami Lane Review
It’s a great time of year for cozy games. With the weather getting colder (though where I am it’s still unseasonably warm) and the days shorter, there’s nothing quite like curling up with a welcoming game. Well, maybe not literally; it’s hard to curl up at a computer desk without getting into spine-mangling poses. Be that as it may, jumping into Minami Lane at this time of year turned out to be an excellent choice on my part. It’s a brief experience, but one which I absorbed in bite-sized portions, making it seem longer than it actually was. And for my money, if you like the idea of a city-builder game but get easily overwhelmed, it’s well worth a look.
Coin Factory Review
I don’t know if I get Coin Factory, and that’s weird, because really, what’s there to get? It’s a game about making money, plain and simple. It’s so straightforward on the face of it that the tutorial can be completed in less than a minute. And to be clear, I understand what the goal of the game is: place down tiles to create a little money-making engine until you’re able to generate ten trillion dollars and buy the Box tile that ends the game. Continually tweak and optimize your designs so that you can cut down the time it takes to buy the Box on a given level, or branch out and try different maps to test your skills under an assortment of restrictions. It’s really not that deep, which is why I find it confounding that it baffles me so. Perhaps, then, it’s silly for me to be writing about a game that on some level I find completely inscrutable. However, it’s my hope that in doing so, I’ll be able to achieve some level of clarity on what Coin Factory is trying to do, and whether it succeeds.
Little Kitty, Big City Review
Open world games have a tendency to get bogged down in tedium. One need only look at the latest guff put out by the AAA gaming sphere to see countless examples of games promising massive open worlds with hundreds of hours of content … which tends to boil down to mindless fetch quests and a sea of meaningless collectibles. Enter Little Kitty, Big City, a game which – on the face of it – may seem a bit lacking because of its length. According to How Long to Beat, it can be completed in a mere two and a half hours if you’re mainlining the story, and my playthrough took just over five with many side objectives completed and collectibles found. As is so often the case, though, brevity breeds quality, and while Little Kitty, Big City is not without its faults, it’s still a shining example of an open world that’s actually fun to explore.
Antonblast Review
The first thing you need to know about Antonblast is that superlatives can’t properly capture how truly bonkers it is. From its neon graffiti by way of Courage the Cowardly Dog aesthetics to its blasting rock-infused rhythms to the fact that the game has a damn button that does nothing but make your character scream, this is pretty much the definition of firing on all cylinders insanity. I lost count of the number of times I could barely process what was happening on-screen – where I was just pressing buttons and not dying and calling that good. My first play session lasted for about an hour, and it simultaneously barely felt that long and had me needing a break afterwards just to stop my retinas from frying. If you want calm, collected, cultured commentary, look elsewhere, but if you want a game that hits the gas from moment one (even the opening titles got me hyped every time) and never lets up, Antonblast is your game.
Mini Airways Review
I’ll admit that I was a bit put off by Mini Airways the first time I saw it. Scrolling through projects on Kickstarter and – after filtering through the billionth asset flip/generative AI piece of guff – seeing something that appeared to be little more than a rip-off of Mini Metro – a game I love – had me rolling my eyes and moving my cursor to close the tab. However, after doing a bit of reading and learning that the devs were not shy about where their inspiration came from and had actually been in communication with Dinosaur Polo Club (Mini Metro’s developer) about the similarities between their games, my mind was put more at ease. I decided to back it, and the wait began for it to fund and release. A few months later, and having played the full game, the question remains: is it any good, and does it differentiate itself enough from Mini Metro to be worthwhile?
Mice Tea Review
Let me get one thing straight: I am not a furry. Hey now, I see you looking at the subject of this review and rolling your eyes dismissively, ready to loudly proclaim, “Thy lady doth protest too much!” It’s true, though, I swear! The presence of anthropomorphism in sex doesn’t entice me to engage with it any more than the average piece of smut. I’m not actively repulsed by it, mind you, but my casual indifference towards the presence of catgirls in my romantic fiction should hopefully speak volumes about how this kink just isn’t really my thing.
Jill O’ Lantern: Final Cut Review
I’ve been playing a decent amount of visual novels recently, and a common throughline with them all has been romance. In some of them it’s been more benign, while in others it’s gotten decidedly … *ahem* … steamy. But generally speaking, the genres of dating simulator and visual novel tend to go hand in hand. That makes Jill O’ Lantern: Final Cut a bit of a standout from the get-go: it’s a murder mystery, plain and simple. There are interpersonal relationships that get built up as the game goes on, but the focus is on getting to the bottom of a spate of killings and finding a way to stop them. Add in a whole lot of queerness, and you’ve got a recipe for quite the entertaining ride.
Awaken – Astral Blade Review
It’s rarely a good sign when I can’t remember a game’s name. For the first couple of days I was playing Awaken – Astral Blade, I kept getting its name confused with everything from Astrea to Stellar Blade. The only thing that managed to stave off this thoroughly generic title was a joking innuendo I made with one of my friends (“I’ll awaken your astral blade 😉”), which isn’t exactly an early point in the game’s favour. Even having beaten it, I couldn’t tell you what the real meaning of the title is; I suppose the protagonist Tania wields a blade, but it’s not particularly astral in nature. Perhaps it’s just the nature of video games to have nonsense titles that don’t seem to mean anything. That being said, what really matters is if Awaken – Astral Blade is a more enjoyable and memorable experience than its title, and while I do have reservations, I think it manages to be a fairly competent action platformer.
GOST of Time Review
Like many people my age, my childhood featured a non-trivial amount of time spent playing Flash games on sites like Miniclip, Nitrome, and more. One of the standouts was called Chronotron, in which you created a little robot, “recorded” its movement through a level, then moved onto a new robot while your past self executed all the previous actions. Solving puzzles in this way was unique and incredibly clever, and it’s always held a special place in my heart, to the point where when GOST of Time crossed my desk, I was instantly excited by it containing this gameplay mechanism. Add in the fact that it was billed as a fusion between Hotline Miami and Rick & Morty, and I was completely sold on this pixelated time-traveler. And to engage in a bit of time-travel of my own, I’ll bring a piece of the conclusion to the front of this review and say that, while GOST of Time doesn’t deliver on all its promise, it’s still a competent little puzzler that kept me engaged through its relatively short runtime.
Olive's Game Garden 