At first glance this is a JRPG, but actually, it’s somewhat different. There’s a wrapper story (with really nice puppet stop motion animation cutscenes) about a brother who is writing a JRPG to entertain his sick little brother. The problem is, he doesn’t know how to code the AI, so he pretends to be the AI while his brother plays, and so, as him, you have to decide which enemies to have appear in the random battles. If you make …
Ages ago, I played a graphical adventure game called Mr Pumpkin Adventure. It was good, but very, very bizarre. Isoland is by the same guy and is also very bizarre, although perhaps not quite so much. You begin on an island, and although it seems your job might be to figure out where everyone has gone, in fact you mainly just discover the presence of aliens, and find clues and items to crack codes to open areas or activate things. …
Bought on a whim because it was $1 as a download voucher from Target a while back, I really wasn’t sure what sort of game this was. From videos, it seemed to be much like Captain Toad, but in fact it’s just the graphical style and isometric view that it shares with that. What it actually is, is something closer to old Game and Watch titles like Mario’s Cement Factory, crossed with Lemmings, only in multiplayer and 3D. You have …
And that’s the pair of them. I’d never played this sequel before, but it turned out to be just as good as the first game. There have been a few quality of life tweaks, such as not needing to choose which challenges to do before you do them – now they act more like normal achievements – and some of the upgrades upgrade themselves as you use them, rather than need improved versions synthesising. The gameplay is the same as …
Bury Me My Love is an interactive story, told through the medium of phone text messages, about a Syrian refugee called Nour trying to reach somewhere safe in Europe. You’re her husband, Majd, and you have to offer advice and support as she gets turned away from transport, borders and hotels, followed, trapped in refugee camps, left with nowhere to sleep, and potentially killed on the way. It’s based on real life experiences, and it’s a powerful story. Along the …
Well that was the easiest WarioWare game ever. I’m not knocking it, as it was great, but I don’t think I failed more than a handful of times and it seemed a lot shorter. Yes, there are loads of things to unlock and there’s high scores to chase and stuff, but to finish story mode was a walkover.
Not that long ago (FIVE YEARS?! WHAT) I played, enjoyed and beat the 3DS version of this. I purposefully didn’t look back at what I wrote back then until just before writing this, and a few things surprised me. Firstly, I never did get the good ending last time. This time, I did! Secondly, I had difficulties in all different places this time. For example, the “fire boss” was a walkover before, but he was one of the difficult ones …
With a passing glance, Whipseey looks an awful lot like a Kirby game. In fact, even holding your eye for a time, it still looks an awful lot like a Kirby game. It also sounds not dissimilar to a Kirby game. But it is not a clone of a Kirby game. In fact, it plays a bit more like the old Castlevania games, albeit with cute Kirby/not Kirby graphics and music. This is due to your main character, who has …
Despite the hideous title, I’d seen this on the eShop frequently and thought it was silly enough to buy when I saw it cheap enough. And then it was cheap enough, so, well, here we are. It’s a hidden object game, only there’s only really one hidden object on each level – your Generic Handheld Gaming Device – which your mum has placed somewhere. You can rarely just pick it up, though, as there are things to avoid clicking on …
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is very much a return to the first game, rather than the multiple small mansion structure of the 3DS second game in the series. Not that the second game was bad, but it works better as one big mansion. Or rather, one big hotel as it is here. Each floor is themed, with a boss ghost that fits into that theme, and the aim is to beat the bosses to get the lift buttons to allow you …
My favourite Diablo game is Heroes of Ruin on the 3DS. This is mainly because it’s my only previously played Diablo game. Of course, Heroes of Ruin isn’t really a Diablo game, because having Diablo on a handheld device would be ridiculous. UNTIL NOW. Well, until about a year or more ago when Diablo III came out for the Switch. I wanted it, but I always seemed to have other games on the go and kept forgetting to pick it …
I had no knowledge of what this game was going to be like, but from the screenshots I anticipated a narrative discovery game, hopefully with one or more toilets. Sadly, there were no toilets. But I was mostly right about the narrative discovery bit. Discoloured is a first person puzzle game, although the puzzles require discovery more than logic. You are transported to a 50s style diner, but everything is in black and white. By finding and activating red, green …
I was a big fan of Marble Blast Ultra on the Xbox 360, and this, apparently by the same team, coming to Apple Arcade was great… until I tried to play it and found it totally impossible to control with a touch screen. Then I realised I could use my 8bitdo controller with my iPad and, despite having to balance the system precariously on my lap, it actually worked well. Well enough to complete, even. So the game isn’t as …
Imagine if Another World was a point-and-click adventure game about a milkmaid in space, and all the dialogue was in rhyming couplets. Well, that’s Milkmaid of the Milky Way. It’s only a couple of hours long, but tells the story of how a struggling milkmaid has her cows abducted by aliens (as aliens are wont to do) one night and then manages to get aboard their spaceship to try and rescue them. The puzzles are mostly straightforward, with the exception …
