Burly Men at Sea is a picture book in video game form. I don’t mean that it’s a visual novel, in the sense of a mechanics-derived game genre – though I guess it is that, too. Rather, I mean that it quite brilliantly captures the calm, simple sense of wonderment …
Comedy must be the most difficult thing to write. A weak adventure story can be salvaged to some extent by exciting action sequences and likeable characters, for example. Sometimes, an intricate plot can save a thriller from being cold and clinical to a fault. But comedy? When the jokes don’t …
I don’t think there’s any video game genre quite as timeless as the platformer. They’ve been around for more than 30 years, and the basic ideas have been iterated on heavily in that time, but a simple, well-made, classically-styled platformer is still a wonderful thing. …Wait. This is sounding eerily …
In a world full of games focused on being fun or exciting in some way or another, it’s oddly refreshing to play a game like Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor. Billed as an “anti-adventure game”, it’s a repetitive experience about the daily grind of being a trash collector – but …
A few years ago, I tried a demo of Ikaruga. I liked the concept of the game, and I had fond childhood memories of other shoot ‘em ups like Raptor: Call of the Shadows and TwinBee, so I thought for sure that Ikaruga would be a game I would like. …
In a world full of retro-styled JRPG throwbacks it’s hard for a game to stand out, but Norwegian indie studio Snowcastle Games found a way with Earthlock: Festival of Magic. It’s a game that’s heavily inspired by the RPGs of the ‘90s, but instead of banking everything on nostalgia, there’s …
I don’t think there’s any video game genre quite as timeless as the platformer. They’ve been around for more than 30 years, and the basic ideas have been iterated on heavily in that time, but a simple, well-made, classically-styled platformer is still a wonderful thing. Pankapu, from Too Kind Studio, …
The first rule of making a platformer is: you need to have reliable controls. This is true of most game genres, of course, but for platformers it’s critical – when level design and puzzles are built around precise movements and strict timing, the controls need to allow the player to …
Dex is a game I wanted to like, and for the first hour or two, I really did like it. It’s a cyberpunk action RPG reminiscent of Deus Ex and Shadowrun, but that plays out as a sidescroller with some gorgeous 2D artwork. The combination of action RPG staples, light …
Playing a preview build of Tanzia reminded me of days long gone, spent whiling away the hours in vanilla World of Warcraft. Indeed – and I say this as a compliment – Tanzia is like a single-player take on the humble beginnings of Blizzard’s powerhouse MMO. It’s an action RPG …
