I would not have thought to ask the question "what if A Short Hike were about a child running around pretending to be Link in Breath of the Wild?", but I'm sure glad the developers of Lil Gator Game did. An unbelievably charming small-scale open-world exploration game with BOTW-inspired traversal mechanics (climbing on any surface with an upgradeable stamina meter, a glider, a shield you can surf downhill on), writing that's genuinely endearing in its depiction of childhood and growing up without coming across as overly affected, and an open world that's just the right size and density for it to be fun to explore without much in the way of navigational aids. The only reason I didn't give this a perfect rating is that I occasionally wished for more mechanically involving quest design (they usually don't involve much more than talking to one character or easily collecting/smashing a nearby item) or more bespoke platforming or puzzle challenges to make full use of the traversal toolset, but those are ultimately fairly minor complaints given how delightfully compact an experience the rest of the game is.

Given that this is DigiXart's first attempt at a novel concept (a partially-procgen narrative game with vaguely roguelike-inspired progression, though the game itself is definitely not a roguelite), it turned out quite well, with a mostly compelling cast of characters and a lot of narrative and mechanical variety across the episodes you'll stumble into along your road trip. The relatively short length of each episode helps break the pacing up and keeps it feeling fresh, as well.

That said, I do have some significant caveats: the various episodic interactions with the supporting characters tend to demand a lot of suspension of disbelief on the part of the player, as they frequently involve characters divulging personal information or making other implausible requests to a teenager they just met. The narrative's overarching premise of "road trip to escape a totalitarian state" is also handled in about as thoroughly apolitical a manner as possible, with little to no attempt on DigiXart's part to flesh out the ideology of the state, the Black Brigades group rebelling against it, or the nature of its internal repression, or why it is that teenagers seem to be the only ones trying to cross the border. Road 96 is still well worth playing for fans of narrative games and I enjoyed the large majority of my time with it, but its failure to engage more substantively with its own premise is a significant missed opportunity.

also, forgot to mention that there's a song that plays a lot in this that sounds way too much like Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" for its own good

More or less a lower-budget, shallower, more repetitive take on Doom 2016/Eternal with the addition of a rhythm gimmick, and while that’s fun enough for a few hours, it didn’t prove enough to sustain my interest for the entire campaign, even given its relatively short length. Also really not a fan of finite continues or the lack of any mid-level autosaves, features which are present here even on the lowest difficulty setting (granted, this fits with the overall score-based, leaderboard-focused design approach, but why force that on players who just want to play through the campaign from beginning to end?).

Admittedly, I did suck at the rhythm aspect and used the Rhythm Assist feature (all your actions are always on beat, and failing to press the buttons in time only means the difference between “good” and “perfect”) for most of my time with it; players who are better at rhythm games may well find this one more engaging.

I didn't think I would find a game consisting almost entirely of menus, text, and a single 3D model of a space station to be this compelling. It does threaten to overstay its welcome a bit towards the end (once you have enough upgrades and have completed certain quests that take the major antagonists out of the picture, the tension in staying alive and getting through each day is largely gone and it sometimes feels like you're just killing time to advance the quest meters), but the wonderfully textured writing and world-building still made me want to help everyone I could survive the crushing weight of far-future capitalism.

Nice little modern-fantasy narrative game about a girl dealing with a variety of tween crises (first crush, her former best friend turning on her, grandmother's death, parents separated, etc.) with the aid of a magical flower. Has a few tropes you might recognize from other tearjerker games of this sort, but still a charming, touching, and short play.

A bit surprised to see the preponderance of Western names in the credits, given the very Japanese art direction and setting (apparently, the studio was founded by Western expats in Tokyo). Also odd to see the game give you a bunch of obviously "good" and "evil" choices throughout the story (i.e. should I choose to "heal" the girl who's been mean to me, or "poison her heart?" Hm, I wonder), since the latter don't really square with the narrative's overall tone or how the protagonist is written outside those moments; still, I'll have to look up how choosing to play as a psychopath impacts the ending.

an impeccably designed and incredibly well-crafted game with great combat and production values that's still just too much of a roguelike for my taste; I didn't even make it to the Temple of Styx, let alone complete a successful run, and the repetition was already getting to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm clearly in the minority here and I absolutely get why this game has been so immensely popular and critically acclaimed, but honestly, I wish Supergiant had just made a non-roguelike ARPG with the same setting and combat mechanics.

I like the idea of a low-stakes, story-driven slice-of-life game set in a small open world, but a short ways in, I'm pretty certain that this isn't going to be for me; there's no apparent narrative hook, and the gameplay in the non-story sections is tedious and doesn't feel good to control. There's also some egregiously bad voice acting from one of the NPCs you meet early on, which struck me as a pretty bad sign. If you find the story and characters compelling from the outset, you'll probably be more forgiving than I was, but this came off to me as a pretty underwhelming execution of a strong premise.

Come for the film pastiches, the outstanding cast, and the themes of artists' and audiences' relationship with their art. Stay for Ty Molbak's abs and ass.

Not entirely sure the meta-plot holds up (though reading the linear plot synopsis on Wikipedia helps), but particularly as a cinephile, I found nearly every scene here enjoyable to watch even before getting into the additional meta-layer, which is a pretty impressive achievement (especially as Barlow's previous game Telling Lies stumbled pretty badly in that regard).

also, if you're playing on PC, definitely use a controller, as vibration is pretty crucial here

A game that sets out to do one very specific thing - it's a 2D side-scrolling beat-em-up designed in the style of early '90s arcade brawlers, and most specifically homaging the Konami beat-em-ups based on this very same license - and does that one thing extremely well, with excellent pixel art and animation, simple but enjoyable fighting mechanics, and lots of references to the old TMNT cartoon that probably went over my head, even speaking as someone who watched that show as a kid.

All that said... even though I have some affection for this IP, and a lot of affection for '90s arcade beat-em-ups (though I definitely prefer Capcom's to Konami's, for what that's worth), it's 2023, and I like my brawlers to have more depth than this, as well as level design more mechanically interesting than left-to-right corridors filled with enemies and a few simple obstacles here and there. Also feels a bit too long for the sort of game this is; at 16 stages, I believe a single playthrough is approximately the length of the original TMNT arcade game and Turtles in Time combined. Like I said above, Shredder's Revenge is setting out to do something very specific and I can't fault it too much for not trying to be a different kind of beat-em-up than it is, but it turns out my tastes in gaming have changed too much over the past few decades for me to be fully on board with it.