This game has an unfortunate tension in its design. Every world is a set of levels that must be completed to face a boss and clear the world. once the boss is defeated you unlock a new set of remix levels to clear in that same world. The remix levels are the best the game has to offer and the platforming really shines, but unfortunately the standard levels to get to those remix levels are much less engaging and ultimately lost my interest.

Game Highlight: The Soundtrack is excellent. Also the jumps feel pretty good.

Spotted this while browsing [VERY LEGAL OFFLINE GAME STORE] and was immediately taken by the visuals. The backgrounds have a hyper compressed pre rendered look that i find extremely engaging. The character sprites meanwhile have a similar look to old mortal kombats roto/fmv style. Over detailed in a way that could only come from a non hand drawn process. The same studio was responsible for the home console version of the game and the two versions have remarkably similar combat mechanics and movement abilities. This leads me to suspect the GBA sprites are super low res renders of the home console 3d models either rotoscoped or just touched up by a pixel artist. Its an extremely cool look that i would love to try emulating someday.

Game Highlight: seeing an enemy shoot an ice ball at me, experiencing intense deja vu about that specific ice ball sprite, then realizing that the same studio later made the Bionicle GBA game my brother had in which im pretty sure they re-used the ice ball sprite.

This is a pretty bad pinball game. The game clearly wants you to learn to actually play pinball, which is cool, but it wants you to control the ball pretty precisely from screen one. This ends up being a big ask in part because the ball physics feel off. Youll spend alot of time trying to hit a specific button to open the path to the next screen, losing your ball on that screen, then dropping you back to that previous screen to try and hit that button again. Its tedious and not particularly fun.

Game highlight: the visuals are charming and the opening cutscene is very funny.

This is a very cute little management game with fun art and some clever writing. I enjoyed building little rooms and the woodsy aesthetic completely does it for me. I might dip in and out as the year goes on, but in the moment its failing to keep my interest. Theres just a bit too much running back and forth to manage your bookings, which is time id rather spend doing the fun parts of the game.

Game highlight: decorating little cabins and fantasizing about leaving Brooklyn to go live in the woods.

I had a great time with Strange Horticulture. Solving all the puzzles was satisfying and It was just the right length to not overstay its welcome. I loved finding all the new weird plants and organizing them on my shelves. I do think it had some misteps though. Some of the puzzles felt a little bit too vague and making me wait to refill my exploration meter was a bit tedious. I see how it was done to help the pace of the game but also sometimes the only thing i had left in a day was to solve a map puzzle and waiting was tedious. The elixir mechanic also felt underutilized.

Game Highlight: the mood was absolutely on point. I loved the cozy greenhouse and dark color palate they chose. Also it was very funny when being bad at my retail job caused my mind to shatter.

I was going to be snarky and say this isnt as good as Holocure but having put a solid few hours in now i do actually prefer Holocure. Its very likely this comes down to play context, i mostly play holocure on my couch where i only play VS on my phone while commuting. Mainly i just think 30 minutes is too long. Its rare that i make it to 20 and then fail to make it to 30 and those last 10 minutes feel like the game is holding me hostage. It was a great commute game when i regularly died earlier in my runs but now im further in that rarely happens. I get why this blew up though. The loop is definitely satisfying. I just prefer the version with an anime coat of paint and a fishing minigame.

I was bored with Tales of Arise, then i was having a ton of fun, then i was bored again. There are only like five enemy types in this game and the combat gets stale once you stop gaining new party members to change things up. I generally liked the characters, but the story was pretty much nothing so it failed to keep my attention. Not sure if i dont have the patience for these long character RPGs or if i just keep playing the wrong ones.

Game highlight: gorgeous environment art, i was always excited to see a new area.