A while back I played the Playdate game Chance’s Lucky Escape, which was pretty good. This game, is set in the same universe and is a Game Boy title (albeit on the Evercade). As the name suggests, it’s a prequel to another game in the series – Inspector Waffles. Which I didn’t know existed and have just discovered it has a cameo from Lord Winklebottom. Blimey. But never mind those games, what about this game? Well, it’s an adventure game …
See, Idle Slayer? This is how you make an interaction-necessary incremental clicker type game. It doesn’t outstay its welcome, you make constant progress, and (after a certain point) you don’t need to touch anything most of the time. In Timber Rush, you are a lumberjack. You chop down trees, wear high heels, suspenders and uh, make lots of money. On Wednesdays you also go shopping, probably. Chopping wood nets you money, and money can be spent on better axes, helpers, …
The title of this game is a bit of a lie. It implies it’s one of those cookie clicker type idler games where you kill things, but actually, there’s a lot of non-idle “gameplay” needed in order to actually progress. The basic idea is you run left to right, automatically, and collect coins and kill baddies. Coins let you buy upgrades for your equipment which basically act as coins-per-second increases and multipliers, meaning more coins more quickly with which to …
I do like Rusty Lake’s weird little point and click adventure games. What I hadn’t realised, is that I had this game, unplayed, in my library. Or that it even existed. I saw an article about it and looked it up on Steam and lo – I already had it. It’s also free, just in case you haven’t. It’s actually a meta game, being set in the Rusty Lake offices as they prepare for a company birthday celebration (which, cyclically, …
What if Balatro was a cookie clicker card battler? Well, this, it seems. Like Balatro, you have a deck of cards that – over time – you can modify to add or remove cards, and have special cards that add extra points or multipliers to hands you play. Unlike Balatro, hands played are automatic – you just click the deck and a hand is dealt. Quickly, you get the ability to autodeal hands on a timer, just like in cookie …
It seems like forever since there was a new Katamari game. Aside from that incredibly hard iOS one that was free on Apple Arcade, of course, but that doesn’t count. Running out of ideas for new things to roll up and places to do said rolling up, Namco Bandai Namco (Bandai) BandaiNamco have decided to use time travel in this iteration, with the King of All Cosmos taking The Prince across various stereotypical time periods and locations as Cave Man …
What seems like a very, very long time ago, I played the original Mario + Rabbids (apparently it’s “Mario Plus Rabbids” not “Mario And Rabbids”, which sounds clumsy) on the Switch and it was great and I was well up for the sequel when it arrived. But, like many other things, it got forgotten and I never got round to buying it. Until it was so cheap on the eShop recently that it was basically free. And I mean this …
I have a soft spot for games by Chibig. I like how they’re all set in the same universe, often with recurring characters (like Mûn). Probably the biggest game of theirs was Summer in Mara, a sort of Wind Waker-ish, Harvest Moon-lite adventure. Most of their games are of slightly different genres too. Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a sort of arcade adventure. It’s set on an island, at the top of which is a witch, whom you want …
Yes, it does look a lot like a Game Boy Colour Zelda game. It feels a bit like one too, not least because you have a sword and a hookshot and there are block pushing puzzles just like in Link’s Awakening. Only it’s only an hour or two long and there are only really three short dungeons. Which is fine. It was enjoyable and tight and all that. Once completed, however, you get access to a roguelike dungeon mode, where …
This is one of the games on the recent Taito cartridge for the Evercade. I’m not 100% on the timings, but it feels very much like a precursor to Bubble Bobble – loads of single screen platforming, baddies to destroy, a particularly nasty baddie that appears if you take too long, and so on. It isn’t anywhere near as much fun as Bubble Bobble though. The main issue I had is that often, especially on later levels, some of the …
It’s been a while since I last completed a Picross game, but I’ve actually been playing this one off and on for six months or more. It is, as they always are, more of the same – a polished, Jupiter developed, game of Picross with loads of puzzles. The difference this time, however, is that it’s Namco themed. Specifically, 8-bit Namco games from the 1980s. Pixel representations of the likes of Dig Dug, The Tower of Druaga, Pac-Man, Rally-X, Mappy, …
Teddison Inc is a cookie-clicker type numbers-go-up game. You’re a bear (for no explained reason, except – presumably – to enable the pun in the title) and you’d discovered you can use a bike to generate electricity. So you crank the Playdate and the number of watts goes up. Then you can spend these watts to buy automations so you no longer have to crank. And more cyclists. And then better electricity generators like solar farms and wind turbines, as …
Maybe I should have looked up the game before playing, but I naïvely assumed that this follow-up to Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! would be more of the same only instead of the sort of fantasy setting of that game, I’d be creating weapons in a more sci-fi environment. Which, I suppose, you do. But actually, it’s a turn based RPG. Whereas in Weapon Shop you just made weapons for other spuds, here you’re actually pilot of a spaceship and …
89p? Well why not. The two other Holy Potatoes games were also 89p each, so I got them as well. Yes, I know I have them on Steam already. Shut up. You’re not my mum. I’d played a little bit of this before and seem to remember it’s one of those management type games, like the Kairosoft ones, only you’re potatoes and you run a weapon shop. I mean, you could have discerned much of that from the title of …
It’s not often I play a big all-the-graphics modern games these days. In fact, even Spider-Man 2 is now a few years old. It does look amazing but the important thing is how it plays. Very few games are this much fun to just get from A to B. Batman: Arkham Knight was, and the first Sony Spider-Man was, but most other games don’t give you the freedom and the tools and the verticality that just make it a joy …
