Ian 
Kalanoro is a harmonious thing. Not just because it’s about a music-playing Madagascan forest spirit, but also because it’s a Madagascan-developed game, being Red Raketa’s debut. The main antagonist in this adventure platformer is a capitalist witch from overseas, Raneny – which is the Malagasy word for mother, so perhaps there’s an excerpt on the cutting-room …
I was immediately struck by how slickly presented NASCAR 26 is, with video introductions and all the official branding that you can shake a dipstick at. That plus Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd being the default music track in the playlist gives you some idea as to the target audience here. It’s been a …
The Royal Writ is so called due to King Mikolt II, the ineffective ruler of the kingdom of Aranfold, who rather than act directly against those who his ruling council advise are causing trouble, is more minded to send a letter decreeing the course of action. This is secondary to the matter at hand, which …
The mouthful that is The Alighieri Circle: Dante’s Bloodline is quite the descriptive title, all told. Hailing from Rome-based One O One Games, it riffs on Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century narrative poem Inferno, itself the first part of the Divine Comedy. Nothing to do with that bloke Neil Hannon in this case. You play in first …
The original No More Room In Hell debuted in 2011 as a Half-Life 2 mod in the grand tradition of Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead. Where NMRIH differed from Valve’s zombie shooter was in its eight-player cap, as opposed to the tightly curated gang of four. Also setting it apart was the fact that you …
In a rare departure for this reviewer, I’m reviewing a Switch game. Other than the fact that screenshots are a huge pain to copy off the system one at a time via the smartphone transfer, or bulk copy via the microSD card, it has been quite fun to dust off my Switch to play something …
From New Zealand-based husband-and-wife outfit Eat Pant Games comes Teeto, a fun, brightly coloured 3D platformer that at first glance recalls Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie. A shout-out goes to the misquoted Simpsons reference. The titular Teeto is an amorphous blue lab experiment, technically called T33-T0, while the Kazooie equivalent is Nory – though rather than a smart-talking …
At first glance, Viking Frontiers is the kind of game I tend to steer clear of, resembling a typical job simulator. Cut down trees, smash apart stones, tend to your cabbages, etc. Fortunately, it reveals itself to be more of a survival game. You wake up stranded on a distant island among the ruins of …
Mechaconda comes to us from Brazilian solo developer NATO Games, aka Renato Gomes Marcacini. Do you see? They have a limited back catalogue to use as a barometer of quality, with their one prior game being Deep Deep Deep Nightmare. Going by the lack of reviews online, it didn’t generate much buzz. Fellow Brazilians QUByte …
Developed by Kalisz-based Polish developer Pixel Perfect Dude, #DRIVE Rally is an appealing arcade racer with rally stylings done in a cel-shaded manner. It’s also a loose follow-up to #DRIVE, which was originally released on mobile devices in 2019 before power-sliding onto the Switch. Now, everyone has the chance to drive recklessly around tight corners, …
Clarity, or to use its full name, Clarity: The Seven Demons of Vanguardia, from developer Team Quantum Games and publisher eastasiasoft, is pretty descriptive. It’s down to you to defeat the titular seven demons across a sprawling map in the grand Metroidvania style, even if it is actually not much more than an ordinary platformer. …
I love me a turn-based game, having cut my teeth on UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka XCOM) on PC and the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on GBA. That last one is still resident in my GBA SP, as it happens. Though I should probably get an IPS screen conversion as that display has aged …
I used to love Formula One, especially back in what you might argue was the sport’s heyday, when the likes of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna went toe to toe regularly, including the 1989 season, when they both ended up on the same team at McLaren and infamously crashed into each other at Suzuka in …