They Don’t Sleep is a management game centered around surviving waves of zombies through day-night cycles until you repair a vehicle to flee to safety, all while you have to gather supplies and watch over not only yourself, but you infant son. They Don’t Sleep finds a great balance between giving you space to watch over your health stats and making you feel like the world is closing in on you. The addition of a roguelike leveling system makes each attempt feel worth giving your all, since the next loop will be easier.

Managing your supplies and status bars requires you to constantly be thinking on your feet and setting priorities on what can wait. Staying in the house to replenish a need such as hunger or rest will leave your fences at risk, which will cause a reset in the loop when a fence hits 0% health. If you stay outside to fend off zombies too long, you or your son will have their needs be at greater risk, especially your son since he needs to constantly be fed and have his diaper changed. Do either of these too long, you will run out of supplies, which will require you to run out to scavenge resources. They Don’t Sleep perfects this constant struggle of self care and risk, you need to scavenge to get parts for your vehicle to reach endgame, but you can’t just sprint to the end, there is a sort of grind and waiting game to the process which does not grow stale on multiple loops. Narratively the rogue like elements are unique, the main character has no idea why the loops occur, but she will remember each loop to further improve. Having the loop be a random glitch in the universe is refreshing, leaving some elements unexplained is something many titles of today sorely lack.

Graphically the game is your standard indie pixel look, everything looks how it should which all that really matters, there is no questioning what piece of furniture you are looking at. Sonically the game is also standard, no real complaints in this department. Movement feels good, especially when you get your fitness upgraded to max level.

A very welcoming aspect of the game is that the leveling system is actually bulletproof; there are no perks that are useless. Some will definitely be more useful to upgrade earlier than other such as fitness and parenting, but what happens is that the less useful perks in the beginning become vital to surviving late game such as cooking and stress management. Too often we see perks and leveling have some branches that you can 100% skip, but They Don’t Sleep strives for quality over quantity.

The new game+ section provides a tweak to the original formula that provides a new set of challenges, such as the fence number being lower, the vehicle needing more parts, and the space for zombies to travel is shorter. The levels earned beforehand make this manageable but still make it challenging enough to play. Being able to add modifiers to the game to offer a new challenge is something I normally do not do in roguelikes unless it is required, but in this instance it works well.

They Don’t Sleep is a prime example of why I sift through a ton of indie games to find the diamonds in the rough. Digging through unity asset flips to find games such as this is what makes sitting through mid worth it. I would highly recommend They Don’t Sleep.

Post Void is essentially a fentanyl shooter that takes the adrenaline idea of bright and scattered visuals with adrenaline pumping gameplay to make a product that probably needs narcan.

Visually, this game is a sensory overload. The lighting is extremely bright and colorful, the enemies look like sleep paralysis demons that explode into gory bits when shot, the levels have a 50’s interior design which combine well with the king and winding layout of the levels to add an uncanny feeling. You can question what you are seeing and shooting, but you have to make it to the end of the level in a dead sprint.

Combat is brutal in this game. Your health is constantly draining, you gain health by killing enemies; these two parts force the player to engage in combat instead of just sprinting through to the end. You can skip enemies but not all. 3/4 weapons feel great to use: the handgun you start with, the SMG, and the shotgun are great. The knife could be better but since you don’t need to use it, it’s not a major deal. The gameplay is structured like a rogue-like: you reach the end goal of each level and you get to pick 1 of 3 randomized perks, they mostly deal with what weapon you can swap to, general weapons upgrades, and movement upgrades. Most of them are useful, there’s only two I’m not a big fan of but again, not a big deal. Enemy variety is actually really good, in terms of visual and gameplay. Every enemy provides a threat and all of them are balanced perfectly.

The game is fairly short, you can beat it in with 30 minutes to a hour, but for the price it is worth it. The narrative just gives context to what you are doing, which is all you really need, nothing bad but nothing mind blowing. The music fits well to add the feeling of being at 200bpm while making enemies splatter on screen. Controlling the game feels like gliding down a water slide, the movement feels buttery smooth when sprinting down hallways.

For the price, Post Void packs a heavy punch. Elevator pitch for this game would be: pack your lip with crack and LSD and be John Wick.

My first experience with this game comes from hearing people online bashing this game. Particularly, a video saying that besides Castlevania 64, this game was the worst in the franchise. After beating Castlevania 1, I was a bit worried about playing this game considering what I’ve heard. I am happy to say that not only did this game exceed expectations, this game turned out to be a fantastic experience. Although not perfect, this game was extremely good and worth playing.

Taking a completely different approach from the first game, Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest is more of a RPG, with leveling systems, a day and night cycle, more than one ending, NPC’s, merchants, and needing key items to progress in the game. The game is essentially a very long, straight horizontal line but the game cleverly adds sub routes and requires backtracking to unlock and use key items to get farther in the story. You upgrade your whip, collect sub weapons that you can choose through a menu, there are several optional sub weapons you may not even encounter in your first play through, although the only one truly required to progress is in the first town to buy. You talk to NPC’s to get hints on where to go and what to do, but please just use a guide, the biggest flaw of this game is the bad translations that actually make the game extremely hard if you don’t know what you are doing, in particular the puzzle with the red crystal and cliff has such a bad translation of you followed what the NPC says, you will not progress the story. This game focuses more on backtracking, level grinding, some dungeon crawling, and atmosphere more than a gauntlet of boss battles compared to the first game.

The graphical improvement from Castlevania 1 and 2 is astounding. The backgrounds are gorgeous and high quality given the time, they hold up perfectly. The enemy designs work really well, Dracula himself has a fantastic design. Unlike a lot of games from this era of gaming, the items in game actually look like what they are, you don’t have to really guess what each one is based on look. The UI is very clean, any information you need is in the pause menu which cleans up the screen. The only thing you see is your health when playing, it really declutters the screen and lets you enjoy all the visuals this game has to offer.

The game handles well; I played through the anniversary collection on Steam, the game control wise doesn’t suffer, you can adjust the controls in the collection since the collection itself seems to have swapped buttons, but for a nearly 40 year old game, it holds up well. The game sound also holds up well, the 8-bit music sounds great and doesn’t get old, in game sounds fit well and are pleasing to the ear. Overall the age of this game does nothing to hinder the experience in the modern time.

The combat is well fleshed out; once you get a few items, the combat is pretty versatile. Pairing your sub weapons with your whip feels really good and not forced in the system. Running the flame whip with sacred flames feels like you are the terminator sent back to medieval times to hunt Dracula. I also enjoy that the game does not tell you everything and lets you figure out what weapons and items do and if the cost hearts. This game heavily rewards experimentation and thinking outside the box.

If I were to have complaints about the game, the translation, as previously mentioned, is the biggest flaw of the game. I cannot stress enough, use a guide. I would also say that the two boss fights before Dracula are too easy. Also the ring item does nothing, which is lame.

I am very happy to say the Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest is a fantastic game, one I will revisit, and is far better than its perception given to it in the modern time (the game upon release was reviewed positively, and held that perception until the AVGN review, the timing of the review and how early internet content sharing was, tanked the games image). This game is worth seeing past its flaws and has aged gracefully.