Richard 
Welcome to 2008. The heyday of the Xbox 360, and the International Year of the Potato. Obama was also first elected, and Bitcoin was introduced. Amongst all of this, a bizarre indie RPG known as OFF released on the RPG Maker website, entirely in French. A fan translation arrived in 2011 to a Velvet Underground-esque …
What do you get if you mix Danganronpa, Balatro and the mind of a pubescent teenager? Why, All in Abyss: Judge the Fake of course, a visual novel where you play games of poker to progress the story whilst trying not to let your wife see the more suggestive cut-scenes and dialogue. You play as …
There are entire universes that we don’t even know exist. Take MACROSS, for instance. Before this week, I’d never heard of it – not even its US incarnation Robotech. Considering I was tasked with reviewing a new MACROSS shoot’em up, it only felt right to do some research. It turns out this Japanese series has seen …
Here’s a game tricky to review. On one hand, it’s a fairly simple proposition. Star Trek: Legends is a turn-based RPG where you play as characters throughout the franchise’s history. On the other, it’s a belated console iteration of a mobile game that originally had microtransactions, since removed. It’s a shallow experience, with not much …
Detective stories are hard. Not only must they work as stories in their own right, designed to introduce interesting characters and intriguing locations, but they need a sense of mystery. If the solution comes out of nowhere, that mystery can seem contrived. If the solution is too obvious, the entire thing becomes an exercise in …
In Cash Cow DX you play as a cow trying to collect cash. We are so back, as the youths say. It’s from the same developer as Donut Dodo, which we showered with praise upon release. A genuine triumph, it was a love letter to early ‘80s arcade game with warmth, style and a rare …
This short top-down 2D adventure game is styled like an original Game Boy title. You play as the eponymous Cat, as it tries to brighten the boy’s mood following his parent’s divorce. It’s clearly a very personal tale to the solo developer behind the project. The Cat, called Midnight, wanders around the house and interacts …
Turns out Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore isn’t the only unlikely Philips CD-i revival. Created by Twitch streamer SuperMegaDav, the idea for this old school single screen puzzle platformer comes from the CD-I’s Hotel Mario – a title which Nintendo had nothing to do with outside of a licensing agreement. You can watch SuperMegaDav play …
When I play games, I play with the experience gained from other games. I might mess around with the combat system to see how it differs from similar titles. I might look at the responsiveness and intuitiveness of the controls and compare them to genre standouts. With Endless Ocean Luminous things were remarkably different; I …
How can you tell something is the result of passion and care, rather than cold, hard economics? For me, it is the little touches. The things that developers add in when there’s absolutely no need whatsoever. In Inkulinati, a game where you draw beasts onto a battlefield, your hand is represented by a human hand. …
They got it right the first time. That’s the headline here. I was going to start this review with a load of waffle about remakes and remasters and rose-tinted glasses and all that. But playing Tomb Raider, the thing that kept coming back to me was that simple phrase. The most important thing that this …
I love board games. There’s nothing better than getting friends together, rolling dice, and dealing cards. In the last decade, there’s been an influx of interesting board games, powered by interesting decisions and video game inspired mechanics. Now board games are feeding back into video games in interesting ways, influencing people like Gamma Minus – …
If you’re a Switch owner with a passion for RPGs, you’re spoilt for choice. A handful release every month, which is a remarkably different situation to the GameCube era. When Nintendo’s purple cube had its plug pulled, it had only a dozen to its name – some of which never made it to Europe, including …
This hack ‘n slash RPG hybrid was originally released on the PSP in 2012. You might not have heard of it until now, and that’s because it was never translated and brought to the West. With the success of the Switch making portable and smaller scale RPGs viable again, developer Falcom has decided to fancy-up …
Fitness games are inherently very difficult to review. Everyone has different fitness needs and there’s a ton of fitness games currently on Switch vying for attention. Zooming out even further, there are the likes of Nike Fitness on Netflix, YouTube fitness channels, and things like Peloton and Apple Fitness. Fitness Circuit certainly has its work …