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.
Tag: Stylized
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.
Wyrmhall: Brush and Banter Review
I find the popularity of games about work to be a bit odd. As someone with a day job that frequently drains me to the point where even fun extracurricular activities can feel like chores, it baffles me that people would want to spend their free time pretending to work at, say, a restaurant or grocery store. It makes a bit more sense for management sims; pretending to be the boss and run your own business can be an exciting and empowering glimpse into a world few will get to partake in. Yet for those where you’re a menial employee, I struggle to see the appeal of simulating the repetitive grind of a nine-to-five.
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.
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.
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.
Olive's Game Garden 