There was a ridiculous bundle deal on the Switch eShop last week where you could get 21 games for 89p. Of course, they’re not going to be good games, are they? In fact, I already had several of them from a similar bundle last year so knew the quality I was going to be getting. That said, they’re not all shovelware. So much of the eShop is full of terrible games that are clones of “real” games and have similar …
It may have taken a while for me to finally get round to playing SteamWorld Heist II, but when it – and all the other SteamWorld games – were reduced in a massive eShop sale I was reminded it was the only SW game I hadn’t completed. And now, it isn’t. Like the first game, it’s a 2D, side-on, turn based strategy game. In that respect it’s more of the same as the original, and I’ll leave it to you, …
I don’t know why it took me so long after completing the first Moss game to get into the second one, especially since I bought it almost immediately after reaching the end of Moss Book I. Maybe other games came along. Maybe dealing with charging and updating and wearing the VR headset was just hassle. Maybe I forgot. Who knows. Anyway, it’s here and done now. And of my, what an experience. Book II follows on directly from the first …
Searching for this online is a pain because Google thinks you’re talking about the animated film “The Sword in the Stone”, which this Game Gear game, hidden in the Evercade’s firmware, has nothing to do with. Instead of being related to that, the game is essentially a visual novel, albeit one that plays out more like an RPG. You pick one of three characters, and then have a quest given to you. The world you all inhabit is, well, here’s …
Another SNK cartridge (actually, two) arrived for the Evercade and since my daughter and I enjoyed playing the first Metal Slug in co-op recently, we did the same with the sequel. Naturally, it’s more of the same. Only now you can ride camels as well as tanks, and after a few levels it becomes clear that Definitely Not Any Real Middle Eastern Military Dictator is in cahoots with actual aliens. It still has the slowdown issues of the first game, …
I do like a Kaz Ayabe game. I’ve played a few recently, including the previous Shin chan tie-in. They’re all set in sleepy Japanese villages where very little happens and this one is the same. However! Shin chan’s dog, Shiro, wanders off and finds a mysterious train that take him (and, when he is led there, Shin chan) to Coal Town – a mining town that nobody in the village seems to have heard of. Your days are split between …
A little Pico-8 game which I picked up from itch a while back, Explorers has you boating about a randomly generated archipelago, finding treasure, meeting other people who you can try to convince to trade with you or help you, and sometimes stealing their boats. The aim is to complete your map, which you can do by visiting everywhere, but you can also fill it in more quickly by asking the people you meet about where they’re from or have …
Obviously the reason I started playing this is because of the absurd name. How I came to own it in the first place, however, is a mystery. Was it free on Amazon? Did I get it in one of those itch.io charity bundles? Ghosts? Who knows. CCFWTBT is a platformer where you, as an acrobat called Belle (along with her pet bell called Chime) have to rescue her boyfriend who is kidnapped by an ex-friend. It plays out like a …
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is a silly little game where you, a bored child left with your uncle while your parents have gone on summer holiday (leaving you behind to go to summer school because you’re bad or stupid or something), decide to get a driving licence, a car, and then modify it so you can drive off into space. Obviously. And just LOOK at the art style. Look at it. It plays out as an open world game where …
Nintendo were kind enough to give this GameCube game out to people who pay for the top tier of their online subscription service. Back when it originally came out – at the GameCube’s launch – it was perceived to be a disappointment. Indeed, I eschewed it in favour of Super Monkey Ball and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 because it wasn’t the follow-up to Super Mario 64 we all hoped was happening. Of course, I did eventually play it and …
What if Vampire Survivors was a chop-chop, dig-dig game? As in, as well as auto-attacking swarms of enemies with increasingly more powerful weaponry, you also plant crops, mine ore and catch fish? Well, Pesticide Not Required answers that question. As with other Survivors-type/Bullet Heaven games, there’s the usual kill things, get XP, go up levels, spend points on mostly random updates, and repeat. Only here, in order to progress, you have to buy seeds at the end of each day …
Un Pas Fragile is a short narrative game about a frog who wants to do ballet. As all frogs do, I expect. It plays out over a few days, where you leave your house, get the bus, go to ballet school, and do some ballet. Of course, other people (er, animals) are not as accepting of your life choices as you’d like, so you get laughed at and bullied to begin with, meaning that you have to do some simple …
From the name I fully expected this game to be a soulslike so just clicked nope-skip every time I saw it for sale. But then I stumbled across it on a Metroidvania Games You May Have Missed list and I re-evaluated. Then I noticed it was on sale for about three quid on PSN and so bought it. First thing I have to say about it is that it’s HUGE. I’m used to 2D Metroidvanias for being 8-10 hours long, …
Piffle, or more accurately, Piffle+ (it’s a free IAP-less Apple Arcade version of an IAP’d game), is a simple arcade puzzle-ish game that is a bit Breakout and a bit Peggle. You throw balls (which are cat heads) upwards at blocks, destroy as many as you can, and then they all move down a row before you have another go. Different blocks have different properties, like they can only be hit from certain directions, or they replicate, or they capture …
Apparently, there’s no Goat Simulator 2 for the sole reason that it will annoy people. Makes sense, when the main purpose of the game itself is to annoy people. Like the first game, you’re a goat who can lick stuff and headbutt stuff, with janky physics and silly things to do. Although there was a sort of plot to the original, it was pretty sandbox-y and directionless. Goat Simulator 3 is more structured, with events and actions to complete, which …
