I’ve been scrolling through that ridiculous itch.io bundle a lot recently. As I expected, I’ve never heard of 99% of the games there, but sometimes something catches my eye and a quick play of Rex: Another Island drew me in. It’s a pretty plain platformer in the open-world style common in the 8bit days. There are shades of Jet Set Willy and Chuckie Egg 2 here, and it’s really very good. Of course, there are modern additions like restart points, …
I played and completed this before, but for 89p I couldn’t turn down buying it for the Switch and playing it again, especially since I enjoyed it so much first time around. This time, I don’t think I found as many secret areas so didn’t get as powered up as I did before, but I didn’t really have any problems. Like I said last time, it’s not really difficult. But it is fun. A great, short, little Metroidvania game!
I have no idea why I decided to play this. I have very little interest in the Apogee same-game-slightly-different-graphics PC games of the early 90s (see also Commander Keen and Duke Nukem) and I know from experience they’ve aged badly. And yet here we are. It’s pretty boring. There’s a lot of backtracking as you often have to get to the other side of the level to get the key to open the exit which is right near the start. …
A lot of people have written a lot about this game already, and aside from the general sentiment that You Must Play It and the knowledge that Something Dark Happens And Then It All Goes Sideways, I’ve managed to avoid all spoilers and plot points. So I won’t be sharing them here. All I will say is the same as I knew going into the game: Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel about a literature appreciation club in …
I have the original of this (the Switch version is a HD remaster) on the GameCube. Back then, it was only available in Japanese and as such the plot, such that it is, made no sense at all. Now, it’s in English! It has made no difference. Some bad guy has built a drilling themed theme park under which he’s made a giant drill that he intends on using to drill to the planet’s core and destroy the world. But, …
Secret Little Haven is a visual novel type game that plays out in the form of an AOL Messenger style chat application, a little like Emily Is Away. You’re Alex, a fan of a Japanese Sailor Moon type anime and you take part in his interactions with friends in real life, from a fan forum, and his dad. Alex isn’t happy for a number of reasons, but centrally he doesn’t identify as male, and part of the game how he, …
One of my favourite platformers and a game I’ve probably mentioned on here before. We all know how this is the western version of Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure, but both games are excellent if different. Didn’t have any problems on my play through. I didn’t remember all the level layouts, but did remember the route to skip one of the bosses!
A few years ago, while Dan Marshall was developing this originally, I was following him live-tweeting the process. So hooked on the idea was I, that the second the game came out on Steam I bought it – even though I rarely played games on a computer and, in fact, it was pretty broken on the Mac at the time. I played it a fair bit and really enjoyed it, but found the bugs and wonky controller support (plus it …
This is an animal squashing game. You find animals around the town, then squash them everywhichway until they’re happy and then they move in with you. Or something? It’s utterly bizarre. Anyway, I squashed all the animals and then it was the end of the game. I felt unfulfilled. Maybe I need squashing now?
It isn’t clear why this game is called The Room, because there aren’t really any rooms in it. It plays like an escape room – which many puzzles, and puzzles within puzzles – but no actual rooms. Sure, there are a couple of doors but they’re free-standing portals really. Aside from that, it was a nice little thing to play. You’re given a puzzle box with various holes and buttons and handles to try and use or open hatches and …
I’d never have bought this but it was reduced from $sillymoney to about 80p and I’ll buy pretty much anything at that price. What I didn’t expect, however, was that I’d enjoy it. To the untrained eye, Kotodama is yet another one of the million Japanese school visual novels that fill digital game stores. Unlike many of those, it has both an interesting story telling mechanic and puzzle game punctuates some of the encounters as you play. The plot starts …
The White Door (yet another itch.io bundle game) is a point and click adventure game, where reality and dreams blur together as you appear to be recovering from a traumatic event. You’re staying in a sort of hospital, and each day you’re required to follow a schedule of eating, washing, using a computer, and so on. At night you relive what may or may not have happened to you and why you ended up in here in the first place. …
This game is another itch.io bundle game, and is a short narrative discovery title where you, a pizza delivery guy, finds something going on with one of your regulars. There’s not a great deal to it, but if you explore a bit during each delivery you make, you see a little bit of the story you’d normally miss. There’s a twist at the end which is obviously coming, except it isn’t quite obvious after all. I won’t say more because …
Kids is another game from that Itch.io bundle, and is very surreal. You interact with figures – ostensibly children – in various ways, making them clap, swim, but mainly jump in a big hole. I’m not sure what the purpose of all this is. There’s bound to be some moral or deeper meaning behind what actually happens, but I’m not seeing it. Maybe there isn’t and it’s just a quirky clicky toy. Or maybe it’s all about how mindless children …
Wulverblade is a great looking side-on beat ’em up, in the mould of Golden Axe or Final Fight, set in 120AD in what is now Scotland. You play one of three blue-painted Braveheart-ish Caledonians who are forcefully evicting the Romans from their lands, mostly by smacking them with swords. Levels are dark and blood is frequent, and it’s far more violent than either of the games I likened it to, but it’s a great example of the genre. There are …
