I've heard this game described before as a 'playable anime', and honestly? It's a very fitting moniker for Asura's Wrath.

It has the energy of a title made by Platinum games, minus the gameplay depth/innovation you'd expect from them.
The fight scenes are huge and exaggerated, with focus on cinematic camera angles. The character designs are bold and memorable, with inspiration from Buddhist and Hindu mythology.

The art style is also quite unique with a cel shaded, almost cross-hatched look to the characters. I really loved seeing the characters in action doing crazy moves and transforming, it's all so over the top yet awesome.

The music is fitting towards the feel of the game and grand nature of it, but the way it used to convey emotion and accentuate the mood is impressive.
and the game is played in episodes; you'll frequently get recaps on the story akin to the ones you'd get in anime.

The story itself has a fairly interesting premise, where divine beings backdropped against advanced technology fight the evil spirits of the Earth, essentially. Without going into spoilers, the main story actually focuses on Asura's path to get revenge against those who have wronged him.

It's a fairly straightforward story with one or two twists, but the presentation itself is what makes it so special.

I think the pieces to make this game a masterpiece akin in quality to something like Metal Gear Rising are there, but it just doesn't quite reach it.

The game's combat system is rather mindless and shallow, and this is the one thing apart from very noticable performance issues that bring this game down for me.
You'll mostly just be mashing the same buttons over and over in the fights, and in a game where almost everything else seems to have such a high level of polish, this is kind of a bafflingly important aspect of the game that seems to be overlooked.

Other the actual combat, the game is dotted with quicktime events and rail shooter segments that are implemented into the episodes that the game is split into.
Although quick time events are frowned upon these days, I think their use in this game is actually quite good, and doesn't detract from the quality of the game.

Asura's Wrath is still a unique and enthralling title, greater than the sum of its parts, and had a novel idea at its core.

I'm not really into fighting games, nor am I a vtuber fan, but one of my friends wanted to play this with me, and since it's free, I decided to give it a go.

It's a very solidly-built game; the moves feel snappy and responsive, the music is nice, sfx feel punchy and the spritework is fantastic.
It's simple enough for a fighting game newcomer like me to get a grasp on, not sure on the overall depth of combat, all I can say is that in terms of defensive moves or maneuvers, it's very lacking.

The roster isn't huge, but I don't think you can ask for much from a free game like this. Despite that, the developers are working hard on putting in more characters and so far put out 1 new fighter along with new assists and other stuff.

The multiplayer aspect is not amazing, but good, and even has spectator mode now.
With the new update, the game has crashed on my friend and I a few times but it's nothing that devs can't fix with time, I'm sure.

Overall, a good game, even better if you're a hololive fan.
It's very clear the devs put a lot of love and effort into this title.

I've scoured the pirate-themed games market, and I can tell you that there's three main games that people point to;
Sea of Thieves, Sid Meier's Pirates! and Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag.

And yet, out of all of these, Black Flag seems to hit some chords better than the other two, at least for me.
It feels more authentic and tries to actually deliver upon the promise of a true pirate experience.

The problem is, a lot of "pirate" games tend to have a focus elsewhere, for example, a lot of them are just naval warfare games, or like the new Shadow Gambit, it is more a stealth strat game with pirates in it than an actual pirate game.

And I think the reason the aforementioned 3 games stand out among the crowd is because they try to actually put you in the experience of a pirate rather than "Oh there's pirates in this game".
The other problem is that Sea of Thieves is a mandatory multiplayer game and Pirates! is a very old game, and hence outdated.

That leaves us with Black Flag, a singleplayer campaign that allows you to freely roam the seas in your ship, stop at islands anytime you want and explore, hunt whales/sharks, find buried treasure, steal loot, rescue other pirates to join your crew, I can keep going.

Black Flag's colour palette choices and picturesque recreations of the Carribean islands hold up well even today, and among that are lots of different towns, cities and settlements to find and explore too. I really enjoyed finding the different locations in this game.

The game offers you a lot to do on the seas as well, with the naval warfare itself being good, but not really deep. When you take down a ship, you have the option of raiding it before it sinks to get more loot and crew members.
If you hunt too many cargo ships, a hunter comes after you.
You also have parts in the game where you can capture islands with towers on them to make them your territory, and it's a really cool idea.

You probably won't play this game for the story, but that in itself is not bad and a lot of people say this is one of the best stories in AC (for all that's worth).
Edward Kenway is a decently interesting protagonist but the real interesting bit that the game does is it actually introduces you to the most well known figures in pirate history, such as Blackbeard, Ben Hornigold, Mary Read, Anne Bonny etc. and this game made me interested in finding out more about these people outside of the game. Besides Alestorm, this is the other piece of media that made me interested in the history of pirates in the first place.
Kenway's character throughout the game has a well-realised arc, and his interactions and relationships with the other characters, his plights, achievements, they create a more engaging storyline than plenty of AC games that came before and after.

It is a great shame this game was made by Ubisoft, because it means it has the same Ubi open world game bloated junk that the other games have like tailing missions, escort missions (both of which include tailing IN A SHIP), other pointless missions no one cares about, all that.

But I think that's not even the worst offender, because the real pain in the rear is that Kenway's expeditions are interjected with possibly the most baffling, boring and tedious parts of a game that Ubi could've EVER thought up.
And those are the office sections, because the whole thing is a simulation from your ancestor's memories (typical AC game lore) and ironically Ubisoft made themselves a real game studio in the game that you work at, and shocker, they're bad.

The office sections just make you walk around super slowly and talk to people, it's so so garbage and I will never understand why they put these sections in the game.

Apart from all the above, Black Flag has something else that is very much a unique aspect to this game specifically: the shanties.
Brian Tyler's score for this game is truly incredible in itself and it is one of my favourite video game soundtracks full stop. This and Hollow Knight made me appreciate the cello and violin as instruments.
But besides the normal soundtrack, your crew can sing shanties when you're traversing the sea, and you can find more shanties to give to them when you explore different locations.
It's an amazing addition to the game that brings it up a notch above the other pirate games.

Overall, Black Flag is a good game but it is plagued by issues involving Ubi game jank.
Somewhere beneath all this, however, is the ideal pirate game.
And the sad truth is that it managed to have such a massive scope and so many features because Ubi have the budget for it, meaning not many others can compete with it.
And clearly, Ubi don't know why people loved this game so much, because their attempt at an original pirate game, Skull and Bones, is looking up to be a massive flop.

Make no mistake, this is a fine enough game with LOADS of potential that feels squandered on poor game design overall.

I enjoyed the first maybe 3-5 hours of the game and I managed to get to the 3rd world/2nd portal, but as much as I enjoy some parts of the game, the other parts frustrate me to no end.

I think the guided story-based approach makes DQ Builders feel like a much more grounded sandbox game compared to Minecraft or Terraria, which it very obviously took inspiration from.
And to be honest, I really like the idea of it, because it gives you stuff to do gradually instead of letting you loose into an open world and making you overwhelmed. There's also potential for some good writing/characters.

In DQ Builders, all of the above is tangibly superficial.
For crying out loud, the main premise of the story is that people forgot how to create/build things and you as the player are the "chosen one" aka the Builder that has that ability and uses it to help everyone around you.
If that's not dumb, I don't know what is.

The rest of the writing in this game is nothing to write home about either.
NPCs spend more time telling you about the next busywork quest they want you to do rather than establishing any meaningful exchanges.

The actual gameplay itself has a good base. It works, but it's not amazing.
Putting down blocks, especially if you have a lot of them to replace, is tedious, slow and not fun. It just for some reason doesn't feel as intuitive as it should be. The combat is servicable at best imo.

There's also other issues I ran into where the game constantly asks you to create a lot of buildings but it feels like it doesn't allocate enough "town room" to do that, at least in the starting town.
The game never recognised when I built extra space for NPCs that was joined up to the main area for some reason.
There was also issues when I did exactly what the NPC asked and it couldn't recognise that I had done the task, no matter what I tried.

Things like this are especially irritating when you look at everything in total and see that there is a good game somewhere underneath all of this, but it rarely gets a chance to truly shine.

I didn't finish it but it's so boring both in gameplay and narrative, that I can't even bother forcing myself to keep going.

Basically you just draw circles around Pokémon in a little arena and if they touch the borders of your circle, they break free. You "capture" the Pokemon when you manage to draw a certain number of circles around it.

The writing is very bland and by-the-book for a kids' game, it's just there to be there and doesn't do anything to keep your attention.

The only thing I can really give Ranger is that the concept itself is interesting - Instead of Pokémon Trainers, in the Fiore region there are only Pokémon Rangers.
And instead of capturing Pokémon, you kind of herd them to help you put out fires, calm down frenzied Pokémon, clear a blocked path etc.
The game has an overarching theme of living with nature and protecting the environment, which I think is a charming and fresh take on Pokémon.
Other than that, I guess the spritework is fairly decent, but nothing amazing.

Unfortunately this fresh take is severely dampened by the overall game standing on dull gameplay loops, as well as the previously mentioned bland narrative.

There is much to be said about the fickle nature of man, and how this simple, yet robust piece of art is evocative of the constant struggles and experiences we go through everyday of our lives.

The dinosaur gracefully leaping over the cacti, is not so different from us having to climb our own separate mountains of adversity, individually.

The flying monsters, the pterodactyls, our own kind going against us. So close, yet so far away from our true selves.

We have a choice, however ; to face these difficulties head on and overcome, or duck and weave under them like a limber gymnast.

In the end though, few of us see the forest for the trees.
We only see our other ilk as little more than obstacles, roadblocks - even stepping stones - towards our own personal victories.
In the game, the aforementioned overcoming, by jumping over them, or ducking under the pterodactyls, are the only ways you are given to deal with these threats.

Time of day, the eternal marching of time, never ceases for any of our whims.
The game reflects this clearly. The dinosaur never halts through the blistering rays of the midday sun; neither the frigid, lonely grasp of the night. Their only friends, the parasocial moon or the stars stranded among the sea of the sky.

We, as human as we are, we're not perfect. We can never withstand being herded and stolen away by death. We cannot persist to fulfill all we are, all we wish to be.
The Chrome Dino game, is unable to be completed by human will without the assistance of an AI or technology.

Much like our friend, the dinosaur, we are not fated to last.
All we as humans can do, is try to persist in the face of difficulty. We are all dinosaurs running in the game of life, and the haunting truth is, none of us will ever reach the true end.

As such, all we can make of this life, is the happiness and milestones we each set for ourselves.
Thank you, Dino.

This game was actually a mixed experience for me.

On one hand, it feels like it has elements and ideas that would make it into a great game, but it all feels very disjointed and ultimately, without direction.
Think about it as, they had all the ingredients, but somewhere along the way, they followed the wrong recipe..

I'll start with the positives.
The art direction in this game is very nice, I like the painted terrains and the design of the main character as well as the enemies. This is Isles of Limbo's strongest aspect, in my opinion.
The music is okay, nothing mindblowing but it does the job, same can be said for sound design.

About the negatives, though...

Isles of Limbo's gameplay is a mix of hack and slash/arena combat.
You have two attacks - a sword slash with greater range and a hammer that does more damage but is slow and imprecise.

This would be fine, if the gameplay loop was actually any good. The main problem is, that the game doesn't feel fun to play. Your attacks don't feel like they have any weight to them, especially against the smaller enemies, and you can just spam the same attack to kill everything. It definitely feels like something is missing here, but this can all be excused since it is a student project, as well as a free game.

This doesn't change the fact that there isn't really a point to playing this game except out of curiosity. There isn't really anything to talk about here except what I already talked about.

My message to the devs, however, is that if they plan to continue developing this in the future, or making something bigger of it, that the gameplay REALLY needs to be revised. You have a good base here, it's just that the elements that make this game, lack synergy and satisfaction from playing it.

Breeze is a short point and click game about a detective who goes to a small village in search of their lost friend.
What they don't know however, is that the small village of Ereb hides a secret within...

Even though the puzzles were alright for the most part, and I managed to get through it without a guide, the translation in this game is very rough and can sometimes be misleading and/or incomprehensible.
You can get by with the translation that's given, as a few dialogue pieces give you a clue as to what you have to do, but it can be a little bit annoying trying to understand what the characters are saying.

With that said, Breeze has a wonderful, soft hand-drawn artstyle that resembles children's storybooks and that is the strongest point of this game, by far.
Even though the translation can be difficult to understand, the characters you meet are all different and can be interesting or mysterious.
The game will probably last you about an hour going in blind, and since it is free, there is nothing to lose.
Good point and click adventure that could be made better with an improved English translation.

Fun little proof of concept with some janky hitboxes.

There's not much to it, you play as a cat fella that traverses the environment using the player cursor to draw lines/platforms to get you from point A to point B. You can throw your paintbrush to take out enemies in your way.
I can see loads of potential with this gameplay idea, if it were expanded upon.
Very cute and colourful!

Doggone Hungry is a very good concept for a simple, fun (and wholesome) little game; You are a small dog, and your plushy duck has been stolen! Eat food and get fat to knock him from the tree or break into the crab's lair, and save him.
The artstyle is very nice and cozy and the dog is adorable! It is very clear a lot of love and effort was put into this game.

Unfortunately, this game can be quite buggy at times, but since it is a free game and not very long, it can be forgiven.
Would love to see the developers expand upon their concept in a full game!