As I have a Netflix subscription, I get access to a number of games on iOS as a bonus. Most of them are shovelware nonsense. Some are tie-ins with Netflix shows like Squid Game or Queen’s Gambit. Some, are “indie hits” like Kentucky Route Zero. Some fit into more than one of these categories. Word Trails is probably shovelware. It’s one of $hlmun games which litter the App Store that are effectively identical, and when you see the screenshots you’ll …
No, I don’t know why I played this either. It wasn’t that great, with very flickery graphics, was very short, and did nothing much other games (even at the time of original release) hadn’t already done far better. Probably a miracle it managed as well as it did on the Game Boy hardware, although, I suspect, impossible to see on the original device’s blurry screen – it’s bad enough on the telly – but still average at best.
Keita Takahashi makes some really odd games. Most well known (and probably still his best) is Katamari Damacy, but I’ve also played, enjoyed and got thoroughly confuddled by Noby Noby Boy (the refrain from which is still a thing in my house), Wattam and Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure. to a T, completed with a lower case t at the start, is his newest and yeah, it’s a concept. Your main character, who I think is a girl but maybe you …
Season Two of the Playdate games have started arriving, and the first one I worked through is this lovely little archaeology title, where you dig down and find bones and… well, you do that a lot. It reminds me a lot of SteamWorld Dig, although it isn’t a platformer and has (almost) no combat, but progression is similar. The deeper you dig, the more energy it takes to dig, so you buy upgrades (with money earned from things you’ve dug …
I’ve always loved this game. It’s the Game Boy version of Donkey Kong, also sometimes referred to as “Donkey Kong ’94”. I talked about it more last time I played it, which I thought was maybe three years ago but it turns out it was FOURTEEN years ago. Cripes. This time, I played it on the Switch’s Game Boy game service thingy, but it’s just the same game as it ever was before. It’s still really slick, and plays well …
This Famicom Detective Club game differs from the others in a number of ways. Firstly, for some reason, “Famicom Detective Club” is now the subtitle rather than the title. Secondly, there are a few tweaks to the dialogue system (which I’ll explain in a bit), but the big one is that this isn’t a remake of a 40 year old Famicom title – it’s a completely new game in the series, with the murder mystery story written by the same …
So what if dominoes was an art deco dungeon crawling roguelike deck-building puzzle game? You’ve inherited a fortune from your great uncle, but only if you’re able to reach room 46 of his 45 room house. Getting to the room involves solving logic and cryptic puzzles, realising that random items in each room might actually be important clues, and putting together hidden messages and objects to understand your family’s past and the reason the house is so weird. The weirdness …
Remember a while back I played a game called Shin Chan The Endless Subtitle About Seven Days Of Summer Or Something? It’s one of those lazy Japanese summer games by Kaz Ayabe where you go fishing and catch bugs and do lots of minor things with very little consequence. Natsu-Mon is one of them. This time you’re a boy who’s part of a circus troupe, staying at a guest house in a small town for the summer. You run errands …
This is actually half of a double pack along with The Missing Heir, as they were released together but are actually separate downloads. It’s obviously very similar to the other Detective Club game, and has some of the same characters. This one is set a few years before the other, however, at the start of your private detective career, and centres around investigating a murder in a high school (where you meet the girl who will become your partner in …
I’d seen a number of reviews comparing this series of games to the Phoenix Wright games and let me tell you this – they’re not really much alike at all. Phoenix Wright has humour and puzzles and magic and stupidity and nonsense, whereas Famicom Detective Club is (despite appearances) rooted in reality with no magic or ghosts or stuff like that. And there’s no trial – just investigations. Which play out mostly like a visual novel. The Missing Heir is …
I’m a little sad now that the whole Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy has come to an end. This feature-length DLC for XC3 might be the last time we see the worlds created for the series, as although it did manage to forge some links with Xenoblade Chronicles X, I understand that’s not really related and the “links” are really little more than Easter eggs. Sad. But the good things! Future Redeemed is set about 500 years before Xenoblade Chronicles 3, in …
I went back after completing the main story, as there was still A Lot To Do. Not least completing the story unlocks two more Heroes – the Queens of Agnus and Keves themselves – but also because I had loads of other side missions and stuff I wanted to look into. There’s quite a lot more exposition on how the world of Aionios came to be, as well as more backstory on both the main characters and all of the …
I’ve been playing a lot of Huge RPGs in the last year or so, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 might be the longest one yet. I’ve completed it, but of course There’s Still More To Do, so it’s not over yet. Just 85 or so hours in. It’s hard to talk about everything in the game without spoilers. Normally, a spoiler in an RPG like this would just spoil the ending of this game, but in the case of Xenoblade 3 …
A short point and click adventure game in the style of something like Shadowgate, but themed like Elvira, Batty Zabella is a sometimes infuriating experience. The puzzles aren’t hard, but the lack of being able to tell where some room exits are (I didn’t even know there was a shed for ages!), fiddly combat (it’s a Game Boy game but really feels like these bits need a light gun or mouse pointer) and a weapon which needs recharging but you …
Lucas Pope, the developer of this game, has a reputation for making weird experimental games. But they’re also good. I’ll admit, however, that apart from some time on Papers, Please (I lost my save I think, following a reinstall or something) and the demo of Return of the Obra Dinn (which I fully intended to get the full version of but for some reason never did), I’ve not really experienced them. Until now! Hyped as a possible killer-app for the …
