The Western debut of Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection is one of the most delightful surprises of the year. It’s a localisation of Zwei II, one of Nihon Falcom’s lesser-known titles and a game that, having originally released in Japan in 2008, is almost a decade old. I can’t imagine there …
The original Bullet Soul was a game with some neat ideas, but it didn’t execute on them as well as it could have. It was a typical bullet hell shooter in a lot of ways, but it emphasised the negation of enemy bullets as much as it did evasion and …
Alwa’s Awakening isn’t just a “retro-inspired” game, but one that combines a modern design sense with the technical limitations (and creativity) of the NES. In a sea of increasingly wearisome “retro-inspired” indie platformers, it’s refreshing to play a game like Alwa’s Awakening. At a glance, it looks much like any …
If you enjoy picross (or nonograms, or whatever other name you may know these pixel-art logic puzzles), Pictopix is a game you need to buy. Until now, Jupiter Corporation – creators of Mario’s Picross and Picross e, among others – is the only developer that’s really done this puzzle form justice. …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
