The popularity of cooking shows is something that I completely understand. Despite previous discussions around my dislike of cooking, even I can appreciate the artistry that goes into prepping an expertly-crafted dish under a strict time crunch, or the schadenfreude of watching everything fall to pieces. So what would happen if you took one of TV’s most popular genres and made it so that — rather than simply collecting ingredients from a kitchen — competitors had to go out into the wilds and gather the freshest ingredients themselves? That’s a question that Battle Chef Brigade seeks to answer, and the result is a damn fine meal of a game.
Tag: Indie
Voidsayer Review
Pokémon games will always hold a special place in my heart. The first video game I owned was a copy of Pokémon Red that I played on a second-hand Game Boy Advance, and it was a truly transformative experience. Having so many different creatures to learn about and collect was exciting, and that combined with an expansive world full of mysteries and secrets made it something that I put countless hours into. Since then, while I’ve drifted in and out of the franchise, I’ve maintained an interest in seeing what it’s going to do next. In contrast, an area I haven’t explored much is the broader creature collector genre, which seems to be seeing a resurgence in recent years with games like Cassette Beasts and Beastieball becoming indie darlings. Enter Voidsayer, which combines classic creature collector trappings with some roguelite elements and a dark atmosphere to create a unique – albeit deeply flawed – twist on the genre.
A Little to the Left Review
“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” is the unspoken motto of A Little to the Left. It’s a game full of slots that have been perfectly sized for the right object to fit in, be it a battery or a button. Colour-coordinated bookshelves and leaves with perfectly matching holes await in what is surely an organization nerd’s dream. Every level requires you to place objects so they slot together in a satisfying way, whether it’s by carefully sorting them or creating symmetrical designs. Yet it’s also a game about letting go of that desire for perfection and accepting a bit of chaos, in this case taking the form of a mischievous cat who loves to mess with your meticulous patterns. It’s an interesting dichotomy, one which saw me cursing the wretched feline to high heaven at the outset, but then gradually warming up to it by the end. It’s an odd puzzler, in that it causes reflection as much on the solution being undone as it does on the steps taken to complete it. I think it’s for the best, though, as it kept me consistently engaged and enjoying my time with it from start to finish.
Tiny Garden Review
I never got into the Polly Pocket craze as a kid, due in no small part to a fairly strict adherence to gender stereotypes. That being said, I don’t recall them ever entering our household, even in the hands of my older sister. There were several Barbies and similar toys, but Polly Pockets seem to have passed us by. However, even now I find the concept to be pretty fun: a portable capsule toy that contains a customizable world within, featuring furniture, toys, and of course, little dolls. It provides all the necessary features of a dollhouse, without the large space and financial commitment inherent in one, easing the burden on parents wanting to provide a way for their child to play house or other activities.
Spoiled Milk
Generally speaking, games today try to be smooth, polished experiences. Easing the player in, providing room to learn the ropes and get acquainted with key characters and mechanisms, and avoiding technical hiccups are all important features in making games as enjoyable as possible to the widest audience. Certainly, I’ve been known to rain praise upon games that do these things well and criticism on those that don’t, because whether they succeed or fail, the fact of the matter is that most games are trying to do these things. This makes it all the more jarring when a game seems diametrically opposed to such ideas, not out of incompetence or inexperience, but out of a deliberate desire to make something off-putting. That’s the story with Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk (henceforth referred to as Milk Inside) and why it’s fascinated me to such an extent since playing it.
Spilled! Review
I love a good crowdfunding success story. Coming from a solo developer by the name of Lente, Spilled (stylized as Spilled!) blew past its funding goal when it was on Kickstarter, raising three times what it initially hoped for. From there, I followed its development as Lente documented not only the progress on the game, but also her time living on a boat in the Netherlands. It was fascinating seeing this game about a pollution-cleaning boat come to life from someone with first-hand experience of living on one, and while the actual interactions with the boat in-game are fairly limited (it’s not like you’re going inside to customize the interior or performing maintenance on it), the passion for life on the sea nonetheless shines through.
Unbox: Newbie’s Adventure Review
“Play more box games; it’ll be a fun bit!” was the prevailing thought when I decided to boot up Unbox: Newbie’s Adventure. After quite enjoying both my playthrough of Boxes: Lost Fragments and revisiting Flat Heroes to play it in multiplayer, checking out a boxy 3D platformer with positive Steam reviews seemed like a great step to continue the trend. And then I actually started playing it, which rapidly turned into one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I’ve had recently. Unbox isn’t the worst game I’ve played by far, but every design decision in it seems so vehemently opposed to fun that it’s a wonder the game was released in its current state.
Boxes: Lost Fragments Review
I love a good virtual puzzle box. In reality, they’re wholly impractical devices: complex, expensive mechanisms interlinked with one another that you solve once and then either discard or bestow upon someone else to see how they fare. In the gaming space, though, they allow for layered, multi-stage puzzles that stay manageable due to the simple fact that everything you need to find the solution is right in front of you. You may have to rotate the box, recall an indentation that perfectly fits an item you obtained elsewhere, or recognize that one of the box’s legs looks slightly different from the others, but at the end of the day it’s all there in a contained, isolated environment. I got some enjoyment out of a couple of games in the The Room series on mobile way back when (no relation to Tommy Wiseau’s hilariously disastrous film of the same name), but eventually they started branching out in design directions I was less keen on. So when Boxes: Lost Fragments entered my Steam library, I was particularly intrigued to check it out and see if it could offer a compelling puzzle solving experience.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Review
Mental health representation in entertainment media is a bit of a thorny issue, mired as it is in all manner of problematic tropes. Horror properties in particular suffer here. Whether they’re painting the mentally ill as gibbering lunatics in insane asylums or serial killers without a semblance of a moral compass, horror books, movies, and games so often are the place where subtlety and nuance about psychological struggles goes to die.
Enter Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a game which clearly wants to be a sympathetic, well-informed look at psychosis and how it affects people – so much so that the first names in the opening credits belong to mental health (as well as historical) consultants. And dammit, if any development team should need to front-load their consultancy credentials, it’s Ninja Theory, aka the same folks who (in this reviewer’s opinion) utterly botched their handling of slavery in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Of course, then the question becomes: is Hellblade a redemption story for Ninja Theory’s writing? The short answer is: … kinda.
Death’s Door Review
What is a Souls-like? I found myself asking that question a lot while playing through Death’s Door, as in some respects it clearly apes FromSoftware’s venerable franchise, while in others it distances itself. With the rabid fanbase those games have accrued (not to mention all the memes about “X is the Dark Souls of Y”), I’m always a bit wary when slinging the Souls-like label around, lest I be called a filthy casual who doesn’t understand the genre … or worse. In the case of Death’s Door, though, I feel relatively safe assigning the moniker, as even the Steam store page has it tagged as such; the fans have spoken, and all that jazz. I think that it’s also one of the more accessible Souls-likes I’ve played, though that’s not to say it’s easy. Rest assured that Death’s Door is more than willing to provide a stiff challenge, but – well – we’ll get into that.
Olive's Game Garden 