Masquerada: Songs and Shadows is a timely reminder of the power that fantasy stories can have to explore real-world issues. Fantasy and science-fiction have a long history of taking on things like class conflict and racism through metaphor, but it seems to often fall short, especially in video games. I …
Rise of the Tomb Raider was one of the best games of last year, but it didn’t get its due. It came out on the same day as a game called Drawl Out 4 (or something like that) and somehow got overshadowed. Despite a concerted marketing push from Microsoft, the timed …
Rose of Winter is one of the cutest games I’ve played. It’s a simple, short, no-frills otome visual novel, but with its lovely art style, fantastic writing, and absolutely frickin’ adorable characters, it filled me with a giddy joyfulness to a degree that’s rare, even within the realm of dating …
With its square-jawed focus on the inner workings of Bruce Wayne, Batman: The Telltale Series has, until now, been missing a lot of the sort of relationship drama that’s the highlight of the best Telltale games. I must admit, the previous episode, Children of Arkham, worked so well as a …
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 …
Looking at screenshots or even video footage of Yomawari: Night Alone, you might not expect a particularly creepy game. With its chibi character designs and isometric 2D world, it looks adorable, but that’s a big part of what makes it so unsettling. Japanese horror has a long history of twisting …
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, …
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 …
