I don’t think I’ll ever cease to be impressed by what solo developers can achieve currently. Modern tools and game engines allow for some great-looking experiences, no matter how small the budget. Sergey Sergeich’s 33MM, 7th Sector, and In Rays of the Light are all good examples of this. Tonguc Bodur has been using modern …
It was inevitable, really. After over a decade of Souls-likes that promise to test your mettle, one brave developer has stepped forward with a friendly, accessible, take on the formula. Little Witch Nobeta has many of the genre’s trappings, from perilously placed enemies that respawn upon saving to the ability to level up individual stats …
If you’re old like me (but not quite Vampiric old), the concept of vegetarian vampires goes back further than disturbed boys with fancy haircuts sparkling in the sunlight. Back in my day of the late 80’s and early 90’s – she says waving her walking stick at the clouds – we had the British cartoon …
Combining genres is an easy way of creating something fresh and full of potential. Or at least, it was around 10-15 years ago. Adding RPG elements to just about any genre, be it a first-person shooter or even a sports sim, is commonplace nowadays. To shake things significantly up and garner interest, developers need to …
Here’s a patchwork tapestry of interesting genres. Get your PC-compatible joypads ready as you take on this ‘twin stick collect-a-mania bullet hell dungeon crawler’ with rogue-lite elements. It sounds chaotic, and it is, but it works. Imagine threads from the Enter the Gungeon, Forager, Undermine, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon weaved into something new and stylish, …
Even after playing the original Akka Arrh – present on the recent Atari 50 collection – I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from this Jeff Minter makeover. It’s a trippy, twin-stick ‘protect the tower’ style shooter with a ‘90s-style trance soundtrack, right? Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. To quote …
A pastiche of Honey I Shrunk the Kids serves as the opening world for this jolly time-traveling platformer. It isn’t long until our titular heroes – an adventure-seeking rabbit and his dependable chimpanzee chum – stumble across a shelf full of supersized video games. Platformers, specifically, with such comical names as Plonker’s Bad Breath Day, …
It’s easy to see how the incessant act of pogo hopping could form the basis of a video game. In fact, this is the second pogo-based platformer out this month, following on from the side-scrolling Go! Go! PogoGirl. On the same token, it’s also easy to see how pogoing could facilitate something risqué, simply by …
Let me start by saying The Redress of Mira is imperfect, but by no means unplayable. In fact, there’s a lot of fun in its simplicity and it’s balanced well with varied puzzle-solving, fantasy elements, platforming, and a good story. It’s one of those games that drops the player into the world with little context. …
In this pastel-coloured world, friendly forest animals dwell. They need your care and attention to help ‘The Tree of Happiness’ grow. If it wasn’t already obvious by now, this is vey much aimed at younger gamers. For ‘The Tree of Happiness’ to sprout, it’s up to you to gather happy feelings. This is achieved by …
Let me start off by being completely honest – Garden In! is a difficult game to review without putting in significant time. When you review a game, there’s often a short window that you must manoeuvre around your life in which to create a fair assessment, and there’s added pressure when it comes to reviewing …
The premise for this platforming beat’em up hybrid won’t be forgotten soon, starring foul-mouthed Spanish drunkard Benito and his dim-witted pet chicken Pepito. After accidentally mistaking a dojo for a Chinese restaurant while severely intoxicated, Benito dons a fetching blue ninja-yoroi and vows to become a martial arts master. This doesn’t change his way of …
This rhythm-based hack ‘n slasher serves to remind us that, even in this era of constantly ballooning development budgets, surprises can still come from nowhere. In this instance, from the unlikeliest of places too – this playful and energetic experience comes from Tango Gameworks, best known for the bleak horror series The Evil Within. Side …
With the Switch’s hardware limitations in mind, releasing 2007’s Raiden IV instead of the visually demanding Raiden V made a lot of sense. A retroactive re-release on PlayStation and Xbox formats in 2023 makes sense still, too. Europe never received the Xbox 360 version of Raiden IV, and enough time has now passed that the …
This management sim provides all thrills of owning your own internet start-up without the worry of being bought out by a competitor and shuttered in six months, or having an egomaniac take over your business. What are those thrills? Very simple pleasures, as we’re about to discuss. Assuming the role of a young but not …