Like a lot of people, I have fond childhood memories of playing Micro Machines. I used to play with the Micro Machines toys as a kid, building make-believe cities out of whatever I had at hand and then driving these little tiny cars around. Then Micro Machines came along, and …
Games often struggle with the apparent rift between “casual” and “hardcore” audiences, and there are few genres where this challenge is as apparent as in city management sims. At one extreme, you’ve got the intense micromanagement of competing priorities and complex systems that are interconnected but also fundamentally at odds …
RPG Maker Fes may not have the power or commercial possibilities of its PC bretheren, but it’s still a great, easy introduction to the world of game making. My first experience came with RPG Maker 95, back around the dawn of the 21st century. There was no official English release, …
Final Fantasy XII polarised fans when it came out a decade ago, but it’s undoubtedly one of the series’ best. The Zodiac Age gives it a new lease on life. When Final Fantasy XII first came out in 2006, I was one of the many people who really didn’t like …
The PlayStation Vita is a great console for fans of yuri (lesbian romance) games – at least, in Japan it is. In the West, yuri is flourishing on PC, but options for Vita owners have been limited, despite the success of heterosexual-oriented romance games like Hakuoki and Code: Realize. Fortunately …
Tiny Trax captures the simple joy of slot car racing, using virtual reality to push it to new levels of excitement and wonder. If there’s one thing that FuturLab is great at, it’s taking a fairly simple idea and delivering it to perfection. Just look at Coconut Dodge, a game …
In a world that’s still obsessed with the tired, harmful, and inaccurate trope of “crazed lunatics” in its horror stories, The Town of Light is a welcome breath of fresh air. This is ostensibly a horror game, and one set in a mental asylum no less, but there are no …
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the work of FuturLab – after all, Velocity 2X still remains one of my favourite games on Vita. When they announced they were working on Tiny Trax for PlayStation VR game, I naturally got very excited. I’ll have a review of the game published soon, …
Ghost Blade HD goes back to the roots of the bullet hell genre, and what it lacks in originality it makes up for in polish. There’s an impressive amount of innovation in the bullet hell shoot ‘em up space. It’s such a niche genre that developers are always looking for …
Over the years, Koei Tecmo’s Warriors series has made a name for itself as one of the foremost efforts to gamify history. Dynasty Warriors took inspiration from Romance of the Three Kingdoms – one of the most significant pieces of historical literature the world has ever known – and forged …
