I went into this hoping for a little more than I got. It ended up being a pretty basic music game that makes a lot of references to older games. It has one or two funny moments among a much greater number of attempts to be funny and it just goes on and on.

The songs are not exactly a collection of greats, everything is just very middling. The gameplay is far too easy (though I'm a seasoned music gamer so could just be too easy for me). The story is a lacklustre excuse to romp through a variety of old video game worlds in the background.

In the hands of a better writer perhaps it could really capture something but this is clearly a small group effort fuelled by somewhat dated lolrandom humour that sadly misses the mark.

I quite enjoyed this to begin with but there's not much to experience. The game is an autobattler where you have a little army of guys that you equip with tools, each granting them a class. As they survive they get better at their weapon and survival will depend on class synergies such as defenders taking hits to protect melee units, and melee protecting fragile ranged units.

Each floor has a number of encounters and each win grants you tokens that can be spent on people, equipment, or food. Each move between rooms costs food and if you run out you have to sacrifice people to feed the survivors. As you can imagine there's a balancing act. There is also a skill tree which tends to be central to tipping the balance on a run.

It's a fun premise but relies heavily on the equipment you find, though I was surprised how quickly I managed to roll up a reasonable enough team and beat the game. Also the only unlocks are for different starting teams which is a bit frivolous, there's nothing of substance to gain from playing multiple times sadly.

A nice concept and good start but there's much more untapped potential here waiting to be accessed.

A fun reversal of the old school roguelike, this game has you taking the role of a fantasy villain whose only goal is to roam the lands and kill everyone. It's a simple premise and it makes for a pretty fun and repeatable concept.

Gameplay is standard Rogue fare albeit more accessible thanks to the action bar. The world is turn based with movement/actions progressing a turn, and everything is on a grid so combat has you taking advantage of choke points and carefully managing when and where to move. You have all the standard melee, ranged, and magic characters, and they're all offer fun and varied combat options.

Unfortunately while it starts strong the fact that key locations are always generated in very specific places, in the same shape, and must be completed in a specific order (because of level limits) undermines the point of any generation at all. Regardless of what you choose you're basically playing the same adventure every time with unsubstantial changes.

A fun twist on an old genre that's good while it lasts but its disappointing for it to end up so repetitive given the medium that inspired it was all about making repetition interesting.

Boneraiser's schtick is that you summon undead minions at intervals selecting from a randomised list of undead. Minions of different types can be fused together to make more powerful minions, and you have to balance between quality and quantity.

This sounds pretty straightforward but the game has real issues conveying information. The only way to see what undead you have is in an out of the way menu option and you can't be sure how your decision to fuse or add undead impacts the game. The evolution tree is only visible in the lobby so it's tough to remember which undead you're missing or how to create specific ones. Also the game insists on this old timey way of phrasing everything that makes everything take longer to read and it does it for every single piece of text in the game.

The classes largely play the same (bar one), and while there's lots of features to unlock the game expects you to tactically turn some features off to optimise your run, but who wants to turn off their power ups? The UX is also annoying as everything is laid out in grids rather than a clear list with the descriptions visible to compare and make decisions.

The customisation of the maps is a cool idea in principle but just ends up feeling like padding as do the mini games. Plus the dedication to the 8 bit art-style is at the expense of clarity, this game has a real issue with contrast that is necessary in a game where a pixel of overlap kills you in a second. You can customise some of the visuals but it makes little difference, especially when enemies spawn under you.

If the game was willing to put substance before style then I could probably dig into this more but as is, it feels messy and rough.

I first discovered this series while going through MAME roms years ago but quickly fell in love with it. It's a classic 80's arcade coin eater that plays as a top down shooter.

Reshrined is an HD remake that plays exactly like the classic game down to the incredibly hard and ruthlessly punishing gameplay. While the game is plenty of fun to grind through with infinite credits you're going to be fully aware that you suck the entire time as you struggle your way through each stage, inching your way to the finish line.

The rigid 8 way shooting combined with small projectiles means you can open yourself up to being hit quite easily. There's a dodge, and some subtle tricks like using your melee to deflect bullets but everything moves fast so you need good reactions or a great memory.

New to the game are 2 characters, some new attacks, and some new stages which are all cute bells and whistles but these are going to be more appreciated by the pro's who can make the most of them.

Needless to say this is a very authentic remake and its no wonder that only 2.7% of players have the 'no continues' achievements for each character. If you're looking for a fun cute arcade action game you may end up discovering a tough as nails grind fest! Fun with friends but alone you're in for a long fight.

Not had a lot of experience with sokoban type puzzles and The Golem was not a very engaging introduction to them sadly.

Maybe this is intended for those already well familiar with the premise of sokoban but it doesn't ease you into it. I got stuck pretty quickly despite only having 2 pieces to move around on the 2nd or 3rd puzzle. Could be skill issue on my part but it doesn't feel very intuitive.

The game also lacks a lot of polish. Puzzles are presented with zero set dressing, the titular golem is given zero fanfare or personality, pieces move on a grid but you don't. It's minor gripes but it leaves the game without much charisma and since the puzzles don't feel very accessible either the whole experience feels cold.

From what I've read of other reviews there are a large number of steps to each puzzle solution which would explain why I felt tedium even with the few puzzles I did solve. Disappointed to be disappointed.

As others have mentioned, it's ironic that such a pretty game needs more polish. The developers strikes me as chefs with all the same high quality ingredients the best restaurants in town use, but only the basic ability to cook.

Combat is there but feels clunky, repetitive, and slow as all the recovery times and iframes are unbalanced, and everything is animated too slowly to allow for responsive and reactive engagements. On the same note there's a huge variety of weapons, and while the devs understand light weapons are fast, and heavy weapons are slow, there's no mechanical nuance to one over the other in combat beyond the attack speed and damage.

The enemies do have varied attacks and timings but large health pools and no knockback, hit stun, or behaviour which gives it a very dated feel, like a flash game. This makes every fight feel very static, repetitive, and mechanically uninteresting. Each weapon should feel like you have a different kind of advantage but the enemies just aren't programmed to offer that depth of interaction.

Another amateur quality is in the movement. There's a delay after touching down after a jump that destroys any momentum you have and slows the whole game down, this destroys the responsiveness of the game and just feels sloppy. You also begin with a dash, sustainable jump, and you can extend a jump by doing an attack - but there's no reason for this last one as you can dash after jumping from the the start. Having so much movement right away feels excessive, unearned, and wastes the beautiful opening background artwork.

The game also has 2 different crafting systems (crafting and cooking) both of which are as boring and by the numbers as all the others are these days. Collect x, collect y, combine for z, it's all numbers and busy work that doesn't add anything but tedium to the game. And the menu's don't help - every sub-menu remembers your cursor position, but the menu tabs always open to the inventory which creates a lot of extra page flipping that made checking pick ups or trying different weapons a chore.

Another sin is giving you too few skill tree points to actually buy anything when you're introduced to the skill tree - but looking at it, it's gigantic and every upgrade seems like tiny number improvements that no one really cares about but are easy to program and give the illusion of choice and variety, but actually you're just climbing the planned linear curve of difficulty as the game goes on.

As for the story I'm a big can of Christian fan fiction, it's a fun mythology to work with, but nothing here is spelled out or made clear. It's all vague imagery, allusions to depth, and obvious symbolism with anime thrown into the mix. Your save points allude to the fruit of knowledge, the world was ruined by a flood, god is dead or gone or something, and you're the chosen shonen to save the world. It just comes off as pretentious and shallow but I also didn't play very long as you can see.

Every aspect of this game just feels... rough around the edges. It's a lot of small amateurish mistakes that leave the game feeling so unpolished despite the excellent art and it leaves the game feeling like it lacks quality. The end result is much like my 2nd girlfriend - pretty, pretentious, and surprisingly shallow. 2/5.

A new entry in the emerging Enemy Hell/Bullet Heaven genre popularised by Vampire Survivors as a remix of the Bullet Hell genre. It has nice sharp pixel artwork and a clean art style, but there's not much else on offer here.

There's a variety of characters each with their own gimmick, a variety of weapons which vary the shooting pattern and some power up interactions, but once you've played to the end you've experienced most of what the game has to offer. There are permanent upgrades but what they add feels like it gets lost in the noise and can't really be felt from one game to another.

The power ups don't feel well thought out either. There's not any meaningful interactions between them and there's nothing more to discover - what you start with is what you get for the rest of the game. A given playthrough basically ensures you'll unlock 70% of them every time anyway and several are required every run to maintain damage output so every run feels very samey.

If you're looking for substance it's probably worth looking elsewhere, but that seems to be a staple of the genre so far.

I sure do love a good devolver game, and Loop Hero has that quintessential indie goodness at it's heart. The concept for the game is very engaging - an RPG that plays automatically on a loop and while your character levels up and collects loot, you collect cards which you can use to build structures on and around the track which add enemies, villages, and events.

It's a cool idea so it's disappointing that it exhausts itself quickly. The game is intended to be played many times in order to collect resources which you use to build a town in a micro reflection of the main game, placing structures to unlock permanent upgrades, character classes, and special features like resurrections.

As you unlock structures you also unlock new cards and you can customise your 'deck' to access different combos and synergies between the structures in-game. Unfortunately there's a very limited number of cards overall and their actual impact is pretty minimal just affecting some monster spawns. There's also only a handful of strategies that will actually result in a winning game and that is still dependent on the luck of equipment drops. Features like the alchemist, power-up crafting, and farms just feel like they exist to ease the grind a bit but it all feels mathematical, not substantive in gameplay.

The story is interesting but very short with the game only having 3 levels that are effectively identical beyond some stricter rules and number changes. Most of the game will be spent grinding resources to build your home town up. The environmental card combinations were fun to discover, and some of the structure interactions were fun, but in the end it felt like too little to really support the game long term. I imagine that's why there's only 3 levels.

Creative, interesting new ideas being explored, but not very deep.

This is an anthology game which consists of 4 stories, each of which explores different styles of puzzle gameplay through largely static set pieces.

Without getting into the spoilers the game is pretty short, and while each story on its own makes for an interesting little horror story and explores some very creative mysteries - each one feels like it fails to really stick the landing. Every one of the mysteries ends up feeling more compelling than the reveals and the last story take an abrupt turn that feels kinda out of left field.

It feels like someone put a lot of heart into the ideas in each episode, but they really end up with that JJ Abrams mystery box problem - the resolution for each mystery and how it all ties together ends up feeling like an afterthought - which is genuinely a shame because they each start off with such compelling ideas.

A fun creative experiment from the developer, but would be nice to see them explore each idea more fleshed out rather than the resulting mish-mash seen here. Points for sheer inventiveness though.