When is an incremental game not an incremental game? When it’s a roguelite fighting platformer! Only… it’s still an incremental game. You do fight enemies, mainly by standing close to them. Which you have to do a lot because you lose health if you aren’t standing near anyone. Kill baddies, and you get currency. When you inevitably die, which you will do a lot, you spend your money improving your skills, like more HP or doing more damage, or making …
Yes, another incremental number-go-up game to suck my time. Just like Diggin and Loot Loop and Shelldiver and Unboxathon. This one, however, is based around the exciting world of lottery scratch cards. Buy a card! Scratch it off! Possibly win money! Wash some plates if you run out of money! Buy more tickets with your money! Earn enough to buy more expensive tickets with greater rewards! Unlock the skill tree to tilt luck in your favour and increase your possibly …
I was wondering how to describe this game, as it is very unusual and seems to defy proper categorisation. Eventually, I managed to come up with this: It’s like if Bad North and Into The Breach made a baby with Puzzle Quest after reading Alice in Wonderland in The Office on LSD. With CGA graphics. To see if that was really correct, I asked ChatGPT to tell me which game I was thinking of when given that description. To which, …
Many years ago, I was obsessed with a game called Diggers on the Acorn Archimedes. It’s was a slow paced mining game, sort of a bit like if you gave Lemmings some digging tools and got them to find gemstones below the earth in increasingly deep mineshafts. Since then, I’ve always gravitated towards games that scratch a similar itch – Miner Dig Deep, SteamWorld Dig, Mr Driller, Dig Dig Dino, and so on. Diggin is like a hyperactive mix of …
I know! It’s yet another incremental game! But! This one has a turtle in it! It’s also more action focussed than most of the others I’ve played recently. As in, you actually have control over your turtle while he dives for minerals and traps octopusseseses in bubbles. Minerals that need more and more hits to collect. Octopuses that need more and more bubbles to catch. Depths that require more and more air for you to survive in them. So, being …
I thought it was about time I got into another big RPG and fancied something a bit Persona-y. Kendrick (off off the ugvm Podcast) suggested Raidou, which is a remake of a lesser known Playstation 2 game in the Devil Summoner series. Which itself is, of course, Persona-adjacent. Set in 1910s Japan (…mostly), you’re Raidou Kuzunoha – a teenage detective who also happens to be the latest in the long line of trained devil summoners. You use both your detective …
I’m not really a big fan of side-scrolling shooters. I’ve probably lamented this before, numerous times. Still, unfathomably, I find myself playing them sometimes when they appear on Evercade cartridges or retro game compilations. Hence Andro Dunos, here. No, I’d never heard of it either. And it seems for good reason, as it’s almost entirely forgettable. It does some R-Type things and it does some Gradius things and it has most of the things needed of a shooter in order …
Surprisingly, this isn’t called Pizza Survivors. Because it seems that most Survivors-type games explain to you their genre by including that word in the title. But now you know, you can guess the rest of the game for yourself, no? If you can’t, then let me explain. It’s Vampire Survivors only you’re a pizza slice and your weapons are all pizza topping related analogues to those weapons in Vampire Survivors. So you have the gun type ones and the rotating …
Loot Loop, bought only because it was bundled with Gambler’s Table which I already own so it was cheap on the Steam Store, is an incremental auto-battler side scrolling RPG. In some ways, it is a bit like Idle Slayer, but it’s much shorter and much more fun. And by much shorter, I mean, it lasted a couple of days play instead of about six months. The aim is to walk right, fight baddies, beat the boss at the end …
I do like Rusty Lake’s weird graphical adventure/escape room games, with their creepy aura, Art Deco imagery and psychological themes. Cube Escape is another of those, mostly set in a single room with you able to look in each direction and interact with items, such as a clock, mirror and a telephone in order to solve puzzles to (usually) open doors and drawers, eventually leading to the unravelling of some event in your past where you may (or may not?) …
Yes, I’ve played all the Inspector Waffles games in the wrong order. Somehow they’re in neither release order, nor – as one is a prequel – in chronological order. After Chance’s Lucky Escape on the Playdate last year, and Inspector Waffles Early Days more recently on the Evercade, I was on the lookout for a cheap copy of the original. At least, I think it’s the original? Whatever, here it is. And it was great. Quite light on difficult puzzles, …
Why yes, I am seven years old. Because that’s clearly the age the game is aimed at. But you know what? It may be simplistic and childish, but it was good, actually, so stop judging me. It’s not like it’s Paw Patrol or anything. What it actually is, is a bit like all those Lego games, only without the building and smashing. Or the Lego. So maybe not like Lego games. It does feel like those Lego games though, with …
A while back I played an earlier game in the Momodora series and liked it enough to stick this, the (at time of typing) latest game, on my wishlist. I do like a good Metroidvania and, as it turns out, Moonlit Farewell is a good Metroidvania. It is, of course, more of the same, but much more polished and impressive with some huge bosses and great animation. If Reverie Under the Moonlight was Super Metroid, this is Symphony of the …
Remember that other Hades II? The one with turtles in it? That was a great game, wasn’t it? I bought that because it was so much like Hades and there wasn’t really any other Hades-likes around that had good reviews. Oh, except for actual Hades II. Which I finally got round to buying. Set a number of years after the first game, after Hades himself stopped being a Bad Dad And Husband and Zagreus brought the family back together, Hades …
I actually got this in a random game bundle a while back, and it was one of the better games in that pack, but for some reason I didn’t put much time into it. Over the last few months I’ve been doing the odd run here and there, eventually finishing it today. As the name suggests, it’s a Survivorslike. In this one, you’re a frog riding a mech because of course you are, and you have two basic weapons – …
