Richard 
Ever get the feeling that you’re a bit thick? If the answer is no, boy howdy, have I got a game to test that confidence. Order of the Sinking Star is Jonathan Blow’s latest endeavour, and it melted my mind on an hourly basis. The set-up drops you into a top-down overworld, possibly the afterlife, …
Deduction games are in right now. We’ve had Curse of the Golden Idol, Duck Detective and The Roottrees are Dead in the last few years, all being massive hits. Now comes Little Problems with its own spin on the deduction formula. Firstly, what do we mean by a deduction game? Let’s do a little history …
Some games hand you the reins. Brigandine Abyss hands you a rulebook, points at a warring continent, and expects you to get on with it. It’s very enjoyable once it clicks, but getting there took hours of playtime and a couple of YouTube sessions. Reviewing games is only a hobby for me, not a career, …
Now is a great time to own a Switch 2. In addition to Nintendo putting out new releases regularly, publishers are porting the cream of the past generation’s crop to the system, often at enticingly low prices. Rise of the Tomb Raider is a great example: a rich and varied third-person narrative adventure, with a …
Inti Creates, of Mighty Gunvolt and Bloodstained fame, returns with this fusion of an action RPG and a city builder. You increase your level and gear in 2D hack ‘n slash platformer stages, before heading home to spend your hard-earned rewards on building a city, complete with taverns, shops and more. It’s a nice idea, …
At primary school, we had a single Acorn computer in our classroom, and if you finished schoolwork early, the teacher let you play on it. The game that fascinated me the most was simply called ‘Romans’ and covered Roman history. It was the graphics that fascinated me the most, in truth, as they were a …
Knowing genre conventions can be a blessing and a curse for both the game and the player. Take Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song as an example. I’m more than familiar with the genre, so I thought I knew what I was in for. I began my quest, chose a fun looking starting character, refused the ‘slow’ …
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 …