All Elite Wrestling “Where the best wrestle” but clearly not where the best games come from.

Off the top I have to say that I am a fan of AEW. Been a wrestling fan for a long time and whilst AEW is not perfect its creation in 2019 was the breath of fresh air I and many wrestling fans needed.
WWE has never gone away and much like we see in any industry, when one company is clearly in the lead they get cocky, they’re too relaxed and the product starts to suffer.
Sure there are alternatives, I kept up with multiple UK independent promotions before WWE ruined many of them and I was well acquainted with New Japan and other US based promotions growing in the shadows.
Surviving off of these promotions as a fan though wasn’t quite enough, it’d be like using itch as your only source of gaming, plenty of good stuff but you’d be missing that “bite” of something with a bigger budget.

Now wrestling aside, what AEW coming into existence and thriving meant was eventually we would get another wrestling game that had money behind it. Years of very average WWE 2K games had passed, each feeling more or less the same if not worse, and none ever catching the enjoyment of (rose-tinted glasses fully on) No Mercy and the Smackdown games of the earlier Playstations.

AEW: Fight Forever sounded great on paper, Kenny Omega one of the top stars of the promotion and avid gaming nerd lead the charge in the public facing realm and he spoke up everything wrestling and wrestling game fans were wanting.
A little less simulation, a bit more arcade, bringing in people who worked on the legendary No Mercy but with modern sensibilities. It was going to be perfect.

Delay after delay and Fight Forever eventually hits the shelves and well, it stinks.

The basic grappling mechanics, the different fighting types and the styling of the N64 was there.
It just feels so basic, and old. Perhaps it was a monkey paw situation?
Graphically it looks fine, the character models are slightly more “arcadey” and exaggerated, in comparison to the WWE games it looks worse but arguably has a little more soul.
Everything around it however also looks worse, the crowd, the weapons and effects it all feels so trimmed back.

If you’re not a wrestling fan this may not bother you, but the roster is out-of-date and it was at launch.
This is always going to happen with contracts expiring, wrestlers retiring etc. but this was noticeable then and even worse now even with the potential for DLC additions.

As the game is not on Playstation’s “Essential” tier level of the online service I decided to give this another go, take a wrestler through the campaign of “Road to the Elite” and this is where I, a person who is not a fan of the WWE 2K games, was even more disappointed.
The campaigns in the 2K games are very silly but fun, a good bit of voice acting and however stupid a real story arc.
Road to the Elite does have multiple choices and paths you can take but the story is so simple and each block feels mostly unconnected that you are never invested. The comedy is also somehow worse.
It almost feels like the developers spent more time researching what food your wrestler can eat in each town more than building a narrative.

One thing Fight Forever boasts is a slew of mini-games and I am going to be simple and straight with you here, they are also trash. I had an ok time doing a short quiz, and some spot the difference, but any of the games which involved moving a wrestler round in the usual fashion, perhaps collecting coins or throwing bombs just felt crap and random - like the very worst stages of a Mario Party.

I understand wanting a unique selling point, but I wish they had used the resources elsewhere and the game had me feeling this at many points. Information in the campaign, spotlights for content creators, more music than you’ll ever get to appreciate. Fight Forever feels like the case of too many cooks.

An added USP that this title has added since release is the Stadium Stampede mode and is perhaps why they seemingly are wanting to get this on to the subscriptions services as it’s a Battle Royale mode. Not to be confused with the match type.

Stadium Stampede mode has 30 players online, running around a full stadium, collecting weapons, power-ups and even getting to ride horses and golf carts.
It has your typical closing circle and a variety of free-for-all and team choices.
As far as my time with Fight Forever goes, this is where I had the most fun, but do not be mistaken. It’s not good.
At this point it’s more a wrestling skin on a really underbaked Fortnite rip-off and we’ve already had a far more detailed wrestling themed Battle Royale live and die in Rumbleverse.
This mode has all the starting blocks here, some variation, upgrade trees for replayability, simple controls and silly things to keep even the most casual gamer amused but it all feels, like the main game, so stripped back and quite cheap.

Sadly the dream of a new big money wrestling game to contend with 2K and for rising tides to lift all ships is just that, a dream, for now.
AEW is five years old now as a company and it has released many other video games including Fight Forever, but each of them makes the awful tasting pill that is this game even harder to swallow. They’re all mobile, gacha, gambling, ugly cash-ins with the latest potentially having NFTs?
What a mess.
Take me back to that moment where Kenny Omega first announced AEW Games on YouTube where I was feeling positive and that something good was coming because I can’t see going back.

TLDR:
AEW: Fight Forever? More like AEW: Shite Forever!

When the opening of a game insists I have a notepad, I know not only is time to get that big brain working but I’m probably going to enjoy myself.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (LATLE) is the latest release from Simogo, arguably the best developers of single player mobile phone focused games in the past, as that pocket of gaming has changed they’ve started moving into more big screen games and the transition has been buttery smooth.
Device-6 and Year Walk are cult classics, while Sayonara Wildhearts crossed the divide releasing on iOS and consoles came and was another beautiful experience which was as different to their previous games as they are from each other.
Simogo may not be the biggest name, but it’s one I (and you should) sit up and take notice of.

LATLE is no exception to this, to say it upfront, I loved this game, I enjoy the genre, loved the style, was taken on a fairly fun journey with its narrative and really grew to appreciate all the smart innovations the game has, playing with genre and playing with mechanics in a way which sometimes shows their mobile game heritage, in a positive light.

Notepad and pen beside you, the game starts you off as the female protagonist leaving her car outside of a large and slightly ominous looking hotel.
Immediately you can fiddle with things and make decisions and when you take a look in your car’s glove box LATLE shows how it is going to play around with the medium, fourth walls and the like by giving you instructions to the game within the game.

You’re entering a world of a puzzle game, and whilst puzzle game is definitely what genre LATLE is, it almost feels reductive.
I’ve seen some comparisons, format wise, to Professor Layton and I agree with that, but it is also a simplification.
Sure, much like Layton there are many puzzles scattered around the world, every door needs a key or has a code and to get those you probably need to solve a puzzle, some being maths, some being simple logic but unlike the Layton games every single one of these puzzles does tie directly into the theme.
As the game progresses this may not seem true at first, but recurring numbers, names, words and themes appear that help illustrate the feeling of place you are in.

Another key difference is that LATLE is for the most part, non-linear, the hotel is not an open-world but it is a large space that means if you come up to a lock you can’t quite open, a puzzle you don’t understand yet, cannot parse, it’s fine. Simply move somewhere else, find another room, another puzzle and have a go.
A feeling that often comes up when talking about puzzles in games are eureka moments, LATLE is full of them and it is also full of another feeling I have written about enjoying and that is a domino effect of these eurekas.
That lock you couldn’t open, well maybe the other puzzle you succeeded with gave you the key, more likely though, it gave you a clue to something else, which in turn gave you a new perspective on the puzzle you were stuck on first of all. Then in LATLE it’s quite likely behind that door is yet another puzzle that will either hold you up for a moment or will have been figured out before you’ve even seen it via information you gained three or four brain teasers ago.

LATLE’s non-linear structure allows for situations to commonly arise where you will discover something a few hours in, not have the ability to proceed past it but already have an idea at what you’re looking for or you’ll need to find out. Hours later, you will have almost forgotten about this only for it to leap back to the front of your mind as you solve a seemingly unconnected mystery.

The hotel is a labyrinthian or even maze-like design, a distinction the game itself will teach you if you don’t already know, and have you thinking about.
You progress through multiple floors, into different rooms, even outside to different places.
As you progress shortcuts, unlocked with puzzles, make this grand house a home and you quickly start getting used to where you are and how things work - however, it never ceases to surprise.
Everything in this hotel adds to its narrative, the room numbers, the decoration, they make you think about where you are, who each character is, when things happened and why. To further explain any of this would be untying a knot that is best left tight before you play, but I feel the need to bring up the game's story because not only did I find it intriguing, quite enjoyable if not as deep as I expected, I found it very clever that even when I had “figured it all out” the non-linear structure of the game did not ever spoil me - if it did, those things felt more like natural revelations and were never an annoyance.

Simogo’s mobile heritage shows its face in a couple of clear ways in this title.
The first is the art style. It could be argued that LATLE has a very simple look, monochrome with a touch of neon pink-red for those “laser” eyes and other details, this game’s looks are not about fidelity but it absolutely oozes with style.
It’s a look that doesn’t blow you away with how incredible the use of reflections, amount of polygons or textures are, but how stylish and incredible things can look with restrictions and great direction, a direction which does take a few unexpected but very welcome turns.
This is all backed up by some wonderful music, the closing credits being something I have listened to away from gaming, that not only is drenched in the cool stylings of the game but somehow also echoes some of the narrative oddities of the game.

The other clear mobile game inspiration is in the way the game controls. Simogo’s aim is for their games to be as accessible as possible. LATLE uses any stick or d-pad for movement and all the buttons for the same simple “action” command, which the game shows what you will be doing on screen to never be too confusing.
I have seen a lot of hate for this scheme, and I understand. Most people who game even casually have learnt some language about games that is almost the same in everything you play and for me the one thing LATLE is lacking is a simple “cancel/back” button.
The game never locks you in too tightly, but sometimes misclicking one thing sends you on a path of tapping or scrolling through just to go back, only seconds of annoyance but this will happen often if your mind is (like mine) programmed to have a back button in games and those seconds will easily add up to minutes over the whole experience.
They are things I enjoyed about the scheme, one key thing was that I could play one-handed.
Using the left stick and the left shoulder button to take actions left my right hand free to scribble and flick through the pages of notes I had been taking. After a few hours this became natural and enjoyable.
Although I will admit, playing any game in between meant that when I returned to Lorelei and the Laser Eyes there was always a moment of readjustment.
I think there is one very simple solution to the issues people may have with the controls, options. Choosing from one simple or super-simple control scheme would release frustration that I can see a more stubborn person quitting what is a fantastic game over.

While I am speaking about small grievances I will mention one other thing and that is navigating the world.
Now the protagonist's walk speed is good, the camera is always cinematic and only occasionally did I find myself bumping into things due to the monochrome nature of LATLE’s look.
However, as the hotel starts to get larger as you unlock more doors that good walk speed does become a little annoying and Simogo has added a mechanic to help that.
Coffee.
A small mechanical spoiler, but around the hotel are espresso machines, which once you find a mug, can drink from and you will move faster for a while (and eventually need the toilet).
My personal issue here though, the discovery of that damn mug was deeper into the game than I would like. Perhaps I have been thwarted by non-linear gaming here and I’m sure speed runners or the like will find a way to get the coffee cup quicker but I wish it was something you’d discover an hour in.
The game has the metres for caffeine and bladder from the start of the game, so it’s hidden in plain sight as is.

I’d like to finish this review off with one small-complaint bundled within a lot of praise.
Lorelei and the Laser Eye’s puzzle design is fantastic, the hotel feels like a great big toy box, the puzzles feel simultaneously contained while connected.
If you need to unlock a safe, everything you need “physically” is within the space you are in most cases and the game will tend to be very clear if you’re looking for a physical key.
The key’s that are not within these spaces though are knowledge, and all of that knowledge you can learn within the game itself. Like many other puzzle games before it, LATLE uses roman numerals, astrology, codes, weird symbols but any of these you may not know about, the game lets you discover and does a fantastic job of logging it for you.
Not just in “memories” which are documents you can check at any point without having to travel (an issue I had with the recent Botany Manor) but the game keeps a log of objectives and the order you have been doing things, something that greatly helps if you’ve spent an extended time away from it.
One small thing the puzzle design doesn’t completely lack, but I would have preferred more of is feedback. There is a success and failure sound effect but sometimes for example a code may be something you type but the game will not give you a character limit.
Perhaps that is realistic and fair, I agree but a key puzzle to the game is a multi-levelled one of these and while that size of code input is fairly rare the feedback of failure is just too simple.
You know you have done wrong, but you don’t know where or how and although personally I never found myself bashing my head against things like this for too long, the lack of specificity could be frustrating, I love the lack of hand-holding, I appreciate the courage to make things not too easily guessable, but even just a more specifically timed sound cue would have gone a long way.

Overall though as I said earlier, if you find yourself in front of an insurmountable wall you can turn around and return later. I have played many puzzle games but rarely do any give the perfect balance of making you feel stupid and then later, the world’s smartest person as much as Lorelei and the Laser Eyes does.

Another interesting new take on the ever-growing sub-genre of Detective Games.

No Case Should Remain Unsolved (NCSRU) revolves around unpicking information based on quotes and memories.
Predominantly you are reading text, sometimes accompanied by small bits of art, taking these short conversations and rearranging them like a jigsaw puzzle.
Much like a jigsaw puzzle you are identifying where things go based off of your own logic and previous information you have gathered.

With a jigsaw you’ll put specific colours close together, with the assumption that they will create a piece of the wider picture.
In NCSRU, if you are reading a conversation where someone refers to their child, you may gather these with the assumption it was a mother speaking.

However as the greater picture reveals itself, in a jigsaw, perhaps the colours you grouped together are from two distinct places, a red apple and a red t-shirt?
With NCSRU maybe their child isn’t a child anymore, maybe they’re not a parent and it ties to their profession?

The genius of NCSRU is how the game plays with your assumptions throughout, and when you stop to look at things from different perspectives, that is when the eureka moments happen.
Like any good puzzler, this game is full of them and also gives a great endorphin release when a domino effect occurs, as one conclusion leads to another and more doors become unlocked.

The locks themselves have some variety. Firstly you gain actual keys within the game for not just assigning who said what correctly, but the chronology of it.
Other locks will be behind specific information such as confirming important dates and times or pointing out key contradictions.
NCSRU’s visual information mostly revolves around quotes, but each will get assigned hashtags that allow you to connect the dots a little easier.
At times I wished there was a search function, but I appreciate the challenge would be vastly different and in this case probably easier. However when you get deeper and are looking for that one thing you know someone said to progress, the search can be tiring and made a little more difficult for me personally by some similar and unfamiliar names due to the Korean origins of the game.

Sadly even though the small amount of art this game has is wonderful, you are spending the majority of your time looking at a screen full of columns of text, this is not a complete turn-off for me, but I imagine it would be for many others.
As I say, the art there is, is simple and nice. The music too, is not mind-blowing but brilliantly implemented to change alongside your progress and when you notice it, it fills your heart with joy.

No Case Should Remain Unsolved is a compact game, taking a little over three hours to complete, but this felt like just the right amount of time for it to tell the story it wanted to.
One where not only are you unpicking lies but one where it really cleverly conveys the unreliability of memories, how key things can be missed, assumptions can pull things together which are separate and so much more.
At times you are skimming text and it feels a little like busy work, but the rest of it you are piecing together a beautiful puzzle and feeling like a genius while doing so.

They finally did it, from the same people that brought us the quite successful demake of Bloodborne we get that same universe as a kart racer.

It may not share the title or character and location names, but we know what this is and it works perfectly fine circling that potential legal issue.
Everything you can imagine from the PS4 classic is here, the characters, the enemies, the weapons, the locations and each of these are fantastically and hilariously realised in a very different genre with a PSX aesthetic that goes hard, although perhaps too much so.

The music for me is stellar, an intersection of a venn diagram that shows the games two main influences in Mario Kart and Bloodborne.
Weapon implementation is great and I was especially impressed with the unique mechanic of killing the jobber enemies to increase your maximum speed in much the way coins do for MK.

The karts themselves are hilarious, there are steam-powered bikes and karts, but also General Grievous-like clock wheels and even the potential to run on foot.
Control wise you’re doing as you’d expect from Mario and friends’ racing times, power sliding to build boosts, little stunts of off jumps to also gain speed and when you can, simply using boost pads.
The feeling however is not to the same quality as Mario Kart, perhaps unfair to expect this. When things are going well it feels close to it, but when things are going wrong - my word, is it much jankier!

I really appreciate that the developers decided to go for more than just straight races, but here things feel even worse, aimlessly sliding around, the AI really not being up to much and more than once in my short time with it I powerslid out-of-bounds and died. Not great.

Graphically I am a fan of the demake look and most item pick-ups and signs are quite clear. The extremely short horizon, the amount of darkness however… not a fan.
It makes falling off tracks, much more unfair feeling, and it felt like I was mostly staring at the map when doing battle arenas.

Nightmare Kart has all the ideas, there is a campaign which was a pleasant surprise but like the rest of the package I just do feel the execution is there.
It’s pay-what-you-like and even with the issues I had, was more fun at the time than many other IP labelled Mario Kart clones I’ve played. A worthwhile experience but not one I can see myself ever returning to.

Hi.
At time of writing I have not given this a score but do not take that as a zero.
It's good. Looks nice, sounds nice, is very clever and is free to play.

My advice head here and play this game.
Tell your friends and like me, just say bugger all to explain it.

One of the things I love about discovering a new favourite is delving back into a back catalogue.
Be that with music, television, writers, artists, YouTube creators or games.
Not only do you feel like you’ve suddenly unlocked a treasure trove of new (to you) great things to enjoy but you’re setting yourself up for the future, having a name to follow that is likely to give you more things to enjoy.

Rocket Rat Games, a small (three person?) development team has become one of these.
I came a few weeks late to their most recent game, Cobalt Core, but fell in love with its ideas, style, music and mechanics. I wrote a glowing review here after I had squeezed almost everything I could out of it.

Enjoying Cobalt Core so much made me look into the back catalogue of the studio and I quickly added Sunshine Heavy Industries to my Steam Wishlist. It’s only around £12 and often on sale.

Going back and I have written about this with other games, I find it very enjoyable seeing a team develop. Sometimes a new project is so vastly different that you have to go beyond the surface to see this but with Sunshine to Cobalt the leaps are quite easily connected.

Where in Cobalt Core you are commanding ships in fights, Sunshine Heavy Industries is about building them.
Both games however, don’t quite take the first genre would you expect. Cobalt Core used card game mechanics for its dogfights and here, Sunshine is a pseudo-puzzle game as opposed to a straight up creation suite.

The mechanics for both games are quite simple but have a good level of depth and layer on new things as the games progress.
Music in both titles is fantastic, typically light-electronic music with an FTL-like feel, and art wise both share a visual identity, spaceships crewed by cute animal type folk that are quite chatty, usually silly and sometimes sarcastic. Clear, clean visuals with expressive characters and wonderful, interesting backgrounds.

All of these elements, Rocket Rat were already nailing early on with Sunshine, but every bit is improved by Cobalt. This does mean, playing in reverse, that Sunshine feels like a bit of a downgrade, the music and writing aren’t quite as good, the mechanics are not quite as smart but it is all still very much there and very much enjoyable.
It may sound like a disappointment but when you see how this small team could make two games in different genres but clearly evolve and improve so much within such a short amount of time, the future is bright.

Sunshine Heavy Industries is a simple, relaxing little puzzler. You run a (space)shipyard and get given requests to build ships.
When you accept these requests you are into the game. Along the left of the screen is a list of requests. At first this will just ask for things such as thrust, fuel and command - your engines, their tanks and the deck, with lovely windows, of the ship.
Quickly you are then introduced to other factors, perhaps the request asks for weapons, radars, experimental devices and more, each with their own restrictions you have to fulfil and all typically with a budget in mind.

To the right are dropdown menus for each of the bits and pieces you need, cargo, crew quarters, engines, pumps and more. Each of these have a size, a cost, some generate heat, some need energy, some give out radiation and this is where the puzzling comes in.

The middle of the screen is your workspace, the ships are made of squares and you need to create a 2D craft that hits all the marks whilst keeping it together and for things to not overlap or get in each other’s way. At the start the simplest thing is fuelling, both the engines and fuel tanks need pumps attached, but you quickly figure that one pump can connect these two pieces to save you buying more. Further in your weapons need energy and both the giant laser cannons and electric cores have heating issues and again, placing these two things close so not only do they work but a heatsink can touch both is your way forwards.

The creativity is here with how you decide to use your budget, how you like to align all your pieces but more often than not I did find my ships looking a little stupid.
At first this was a little disappointing but there became a charm to it and I loved that as the game progressed the background, showing space, would fill up with silhouettes of the ships I had built passing by. Some looked as I’d expect, a few early rocket-like designs looking quite phallic and even one looked like a giant toilet bowl. I couldn’t help but smile.

As you get deeper into the game some of these tasks feel more or less like puzzles.
Sometimes your budget is so great that you can make any shape or size of ship you’d like, conversely you are approached by characters who simply need a fix, you can’t move all their parts and are simply trying to rearrange parts.
This gives the game some nice variety and whilst all missions are not equally as enjoyable, each are fairly short so you’ll get stuck into something you really like sooner than later.

Finally, unlockable from the start but turned off in an option and recommended for when the story has finished are daily events. These have the usual scoreboards you’d expect and like some of my favourite chill puzzlers of the past, give you a reason to check in and something slightly different to do with the game each day.

Sunshine Heavy Industries has been an enjoyable step into the not-so-distant past and although mechanically I didn’t find it as fun or as engaging as Cobalt Core, I’ve still been having a great time and will probably be doing my dailies for at least a month or so.
Rocket Rat Games are one to keep an eye on, they’re new but they’ve got a great identity already and the quality speaks for itself. This game is a recommendation from me, but I will admit at the time of writing the indie space is popping off so maybe add it to your Wishlist and wait for a sale.

As soon as I first laid my eyes on this game, seeing what it was aiming for, what inspirations it wore on its sleeve, I knew that I’d love it.

One of my favourite TV shows as a child that I still adore today was “Knightmare”, for those not in the know it was High Fantasy style competition with child participants, a dungeon master like host and what I guess would be best described as crude “virtual reality”.

One child would adorn a helmet that meant they could only see the floor in front of them, a bag to hold items and shield bearing an eye which would be the (in universe) way that this adventurers three friends, “far away” could give out advice and command the dungeoneer on his journey.
The adventurer in real life was on a TV set, using green screen (probably blue actually) technology the child would venture through dungeons, avoiding traps, speaking to monsters and actors being NPCs.
The three back at base would not just be guiding the dungeoneer simply where to move but would huddle in and discuss what answers to give when something such as, a spooky golem, would ask them a riddle.
It was brilliant, at the time it felt like magic but also clearly felt like, because it was, a game.
Treguard, the gentleman who acted as the guide, was a real life equivalent to tooltips, one that, if memory serves me correctly, was a bit more obvious as the show moved on and the children continued to fail to see the finish.

Cryptmaster pulls a lot of its flavour from this show but specifically its main gimmick.
In Knightmare they would acquire magical spells to help solve puzzles and with the command “Spell casting” they would need to spell out the word letter by letter.
In Cryptmaster you can say anything and spelling out the correct things are not only your answers to puzzles but the way to fight combat, learn about the characters and even more.

From the start you learn the party’s names by typing them out, you soon come across a chest but your undead brain does not have all its memories intact and the same goes for our leader, guide and companion the titular Cryptmaster.
Rather than just pop open this chest and get an item, each thing you find is a guessing game.
Your only information is how many letters are in the name of the item and asking old Crypty to tell you what it is based on commands much like a retro text adventure “LOOK”, “SMELL”, “TASTE”, all these and more are commands you give and our undead guide gives us his opinion.
Some of these you will get straight away and some you’ll be drawing either literally or in your mind to figure out what he could mean. Afterwards you aren’t awarded with the item, most of them you would have no use for, but you are rewarded letters that fill in blank spaces near each of your party.
This ongoing game of “hangman” is where Cryptmaster’s version of levelling comes in.
Fill all the spaces or type out the word once you can see it and that will either teach you a new ability for a character or give you a little piece of their background.
You can’t skip ahead so simply just typing over and over is only going to give you confused and sometimes sarcastic replies from your guide.

Now you’ve started learning these abilities and attacks you are able to take on the many enemies that roam the dungeon. The game gives you a choice of real-time (sort of active time battle) or turn-based. Each word has a timer and costs souls (a currency I’ll get to later) and your and the enemies’ health bars are based on the amount of letters in their name.
As the game progresses some enemies hit harder, some have shields that block words containing the letters adorned and some may only be damaged by certain effects.
The combat due to its real-time nature feels like a more visceral version of the dice rolling mechanics many CYOA books had. It’s simple enough but there are tactics, and, in some parts, you may feel like avoiding combat is your best choice.

Unfortunately I can see the combat being something that may feel too simplistic for some. I believe there are so many distractions that it never needed to be too in-depth but did feel a little disappointed towards the end where it didn’t feel like there was enough variety and that things could have at least scaled faster.
A problem I had by the end as I went back in to find more secrets and collect some Steam Trophies (because I still wanted more) was discovering quite how many words each of the four main characters could unlock.
To put it simply, I finished the game on row two or three for each and it turned out there were seven rows of words I could have collected.
It was nice to know I didn’t have to grind out these actions to see the credits but it also made it feel to me that the amount there was, was not really necessary.
I also found that the few times I did feel the difficulty had spiked, that having to learn the lore based words before eventually seeing one that could affect combat did feel like a chore.
Discovering the memories of your party is definitely a cool and interesting way to serve the player lore but I felt throughout that maybe these should have been separated which would have made the combat scale faster and potentially be more engaging.

Before even seeing Cryptmaster being played, I was intrigued by its art direction.
To me, and then confirmed through tweets, AMA’s and the like, the art reflects older fantasy books and specifically another text-based non-video game format, that being choose your own adventure books and another British classic in Fighting Fantasy.
The environments may be 3D but they look as if they are drawn with ink, gloomy, scratchy and full detail.
If there were one small criticism to make about the game’s looks it’s that although there are multiple locations the black and white dungeons still look a little too similar, but it’s a direction with a purpose and one I feel that if they did push for more variety would maybe have lost the game’s specific feel and fashion.

The characters all look fantastic, rats, knights, blobs and more, all as you’d expect and all feeling like they were pulled straight from the page of an old Warhammer book.
The only thing that sometimes doesn’t look right is when bumping into an enemy at an odd angle. It was never game-breaking but did sometimes look awkward when they’d shuffle into the camera and have to turn around - the sort of “glitch” that I wouldn’t actually want removed but a very minor argument for a teeny bit more polish.
One of the top points in why this game is worth anyone’s time is that the voice acting is top tier and is genuinely funny throughout and as an extra bonus, Treguard from Knightmare, the same actor is in it as a narrator.
There are many games that attempt comedy and for me, the majority fail, but between the silliness of the riddles, finding items and the great characters I was doing small chuckles from beginning right up to the end.

Finally I want to just speak on the “souls” currency I mentioned earlier.
As I said each word you say in combat costs souls, one per letter, and these are acquired not just from winning fights but from collecting bugs (typing their names when you see them on walls), fishing and the in universe card game WHATEVER.
WHATEVER isn’t particularly my favourite in universe card-game but much like Triple Triad, Gwent and the like it is an enjoyable distraction that runs parallel to the main quest without hindering your progress.
I wanted to give some focus to the souls because I found it a clever combination of currency and MP, action points or whatever you prefer. Too many games want you to juggle and remember so many different types and Cryptmaster keeps it all about letters.
Grab letters, use letters, spend them as money. It’s a small innovation that doesn’t change the world but one I’ve not seen enough people speak about.

In the end, Cryptmaster was love at first sight and a game that I felt like only I’d want, something that combines Knightmare, Atmosfear (coincidentally also known as Nightmare) and Fighting Fantasy, not only exists but completely delivers.
It looks good, sounds good, is funny and plays well. Sure there are a couple of minor balance things I would like to be different but nothing that ever had me close down steam.
It never outstayed its welcome, so much so I went straight back in to delve deeper into some of the games more cryptic puzzles, and by the end it had cemented itself not only as a confirmed good time but one I would happily recommend even to those who aren’t quite a nerdy child of the 80’s like me - although if you are, Hoo boy, get this!

A great little time with a silly, mucky dog.

Spent less than an hour to see the credits but I'm going to go back and get the badges because it's just nice.

It's simple fun, controlling a Pomeranian wondering around a new house trying to make the most mess you can spreading muck and interacting with a whole host of things to make your mark.

A simple game, but so much so that I hadn't changed the language to English and had no problems with it.
I was tempted to say I did this to further immerse myself as a dog, getting the gist of basic commands but not understanding language.

Free and fun for all the family... or something.

It may be a lil game, but it has a lot of heart. Maybe best described as “My First Open World” or "Breath of the Wild Jr" and this is not as much of an insult as it may sound.

Two points I know I like to know when hearing about a game I can tick off almost instantly in this review are the questions “is it any good?” and “how long is it?” by simply telling you that I finished the game in one sitting that took around three hours and the only thing that stopped me immediately cleaning up everything the game had to offer was it was time to feed the dog.

Once that had been done and I ate dinner myself I spent around another hour doing the rest.
So yes it’s good, and roughly 3-4 hours in length to do everything.

This may not be enough information to satisfy your interest so I will elaborate.
Lil Gator Game is a small open-world game mostly based on movement, some simple platforming, swimming, climbing, floating about and more thanks to a range of interesting items your hero picks up along the way.

Structure wise you are free to roam in whatever direction you like once you’ve completed the quests on the small, BOTW-like, tutorial island, in which you pick up the key three ingredients a hero needs - a sword, a shield and a hat.
About the island are many NPCs that you are aiming to befriend to create a town hub for everyone and impress your Big Sis, but more on that later.
Each of these would-be friends will have small quests for you, some range from clearing out nearby enemies, to classics such as fetch-quests or multi-part adventures where you’re needing to help separate folk to get the attention of one specific pal.
There are weapons, your sword of many varieties and later some ranged tools but the enemies… well they are cardboard cutouts so they don’t put up much (any) resistance.
“Combat” is really just a way of collecting things in the vein of coins, rings, rupees or whatever.

As mentioned earlier Lil Gator Game is more about movement. You can climb anything and, again like BOTW, have a stamina gauge that can be upgraded. Your shield has no need for defense as you can’t be attacked so instead you can use it like a sled, but as the first example of many, just sliding, is not all that the shield does movement wise and this shows the surprising depth Lil Gator Game has with its mechanics.
Different shields can slide in different ways, on top of this jumping while on the shield at the right point can bounce you further and this even includes some quite satisfying skimming along water.
None of these techniques are essential, you’re under no stress, you don’t need to go anywhere in a particular order or under a time-limit but the freedom of fun and discovery is there.
As you collect more items these movement abilities you have expand in the ways you would you expect, like better climbing, gliding and more, but also expand in a couple of fun ways you may not expect such as, minor spoiler, collecting a ninja headband that makes you Naruto run - which is faster.

Lil Gator Game doesn’t have every element or the sheer scale of a Breath of the Wild but it condenses a lot of what the joy of that game is into a tight package which has a cute, child-like aesthetic.

The aesthetic of big blocky colours, speech bubbles, googly eyes and cardboard cut-outs really work as a pleasant vibe that reflects its narrative.
You Big Sis as mentioned earlier, is back on a break from college and you want her attention. You see, as the game reveals from the start, you and her used to play and she was great at making rules for fun games and you were both heavily inspired by (for legal reasons not)The Legend of Zelda.
Sadly for our protagonist, time has passed, you’ve both aged and your Big Sis is busy with assignments and doesn’t seem to have time to play.
Your quest, to get her to remember the fun you had and grab her attention.

Lil Gator Game does a magically wonderful job of capturing a lot of what being a child feels like, and does a good job of giving you a view of this world through a child’s eyes.
The dialogue is fun, it isn’t minimised to monosyllabic words or baby sounding pronunciations though, if anything I wonder if a failing Lil Gator Game might have is that it presents itself for kids but is more for adults with nostalgia when considering how much dialogue there is throughout.
The ending especially, I will not describe the feeling as to not spoil, but it did make me a little glassy-eyed, an effect I don’t imagine it would have on a child but perhaps their parents.

Lil Gator Game is exactly as described in my opening sentence and it does it very well but this does leave stages feeling a little too simple and potentially repetitive.
I will take a moment to applaud the post-game as “cleaning up” in open-world games is a task for the sick honestly, but “gamer brain” does mean that an 87% for example, must become 100% or I can’t sleep and this title makes it as easy as possible.
It isn’t quite doing it all for you but it gives as much a helping hand that if anymore would mean you could just put the pad down and line, they manage to hit perfectly and give you a small reward for your time which feels as sweet as the rest of the experience.

For all of its child-like fun and wonder in design and aesthetic, Lil Gator Game is maturely put together, well-crafted and feels truly sincere. If you need a short game for a palette cleanser, but you still want a sense of play and not just story - you can’t go too wrong with grabbing this title or playing it for “free” via GamePass.

I will start by saying Return to Grace isn’t great, but it is good. It’s a walking simulator that I know isn’t a genre that appeals to everyone, but it’s short and sweet with enough little bits of interactivity to keep the pace steady and not monotonous.

You take control of a future space archaeologist, Adie Ito, who’s ended up on Ganymede (one of Jupiter’s moons) at the resting place of Grace: an AI seemingly worshipped as a god.

Here there is no life left but you quickly discover a piece of Grace.
The first of which represents her logic processing and is quickly dubbed Logic as expected.
Throughout searching this retro-future facility you have different aspects of Grace come into existence all with distinct personality traits.
These characters (I guess technically character singular) are excellently presented, with a great variety of voice acting and all give different and interesting perspectives on what may have happened to Grace, her purpose and views on Adie herself.

Presentation isn’t just from great voice acting, Adie has a little computer mounted on her left wrist which is used for some puzzles but mostly shows simply differently expressive and coloured faces to represent each of these personalities you interact with.

Other interactions involve climbing, pulling levers, small button puzzles and a couple more interesting things that I don’t want to spoil from this game’s extremely short run-time.

Graphically the game is neat, smooth and shiny. Quality lighting and the aesthetic is somewhat 60’s sci-fi but with a good variety of interesting locals to keep you engaged.

If you enjoy walking simulators and especially if you have access to Game Pass this is worth a pick up.
It took me a little over two hours to get through and I did reload some saves to check out alternate choices which can end up with a couple of different endings.
Strangely Return to Grace is more full than you’d expect a two hour story to be in terms of little touches, variation of locations and characters but also feels fairly basic too.
It isn’t doing anything new or particularly innovative and the story is good but it’s a little predictable.
Return to Grace doesn’t feel like the clearly talented staff stretch out further than what they know they can do but while it means it doesn’t necessarily excite it does do everything to a level of quality that’ll not have you upset if you spent a couple of hours with it.

Downton Abbey meets Gardeners’ World in what is essentially an Escape Room style puzzle video game.

To me, that’s the pitch of Botany Manor and whilst maybe that’s far too strange sounding I feel it hits all the points of how I’d explain the game more fully.
Botany Manor is set around 1890, as you can expect from the title you spend time in and around a manor. As a location, it’s quaint, colourful and pleasant to be around but is also much like a National Trust building you might visit somewhere in England.
It has all those positive aspects, but it also feels quite pompous and for me a little overbearing in areas. This tone is amplified by the little bits of story scattered throughout in various letters and other reading materials. It is a setting and style I know many will find enjoyable but I find fairly difficult to mesh with.

That’s the Downton Abbey part.
The Gardener’s World part, well really that’s just me throwing the first obviously gardening themed television show title that comes to mind - the Botany part of Botany Manor.
The main driving force of the story is that your protagonist Arabella Greene is a retired botanist who is exploring her old manor and of course gardens to fill out a blank herbarium by (re?)discovering the ideal situation for these, fantastical (fictional) plants to grow and by the end get a book deal out of it.
This gimmick does feel a little conceited, there’s a lot of hand waving in how the things in her own house are set up for these wild and magical plants, why no one is there but it’s recently lived in.
It is, as you may expect, not a barrier to enjoying the puzzles themselves but another small fence that I personally found hopping over to engage with the story a little difficult.
One thing that I did find intriguing that is sewn throughout the story is Arabella’s difficulties in getting a book deal and simply put, how much harder being a woman in that time period was, to even be listened to and respected.

So Botany Manor takes place in a manor and about botany. Exactly what it says on the tin.
Gameplay wise your objective is to fill out the blank pages of that previously mentioned herbarium.
Each segment of the house gives you things to interact with and some conveniently placed tables that include pots, soil and a set of drawers for the seeds you have found.
I’ve called these plants magical and fantastical because although things can grow in all sorts of circumstances the gamification and simplifying means what you grow is less about slowly feeding, waiting and pruning and more about the locations and the environments plants may grow in and recreating them.
To keep things exciting it may be a plant grows near a volcano, perhaps in lightning storms or together with specific animals.
I won’t give too many more details than that because I’d be ruining the thrust of the game.

The puzzles and the structure of the game is where my escape room comparison comes in.
Clues and items for each of the plants you must grow to fill the pages of the herbarium are found by searching rooms, occasionally interacting with parts of them to obtain key items and throughout the length of the game solving these will gain you access to more parts of the manor and its surrounding gardens, by either keys to unlock doors or revealing paths to connect areas in an enjoyable labyrinthine way.
The tension isn’t there, unlike an Escape Room there is no risk of losing outside of getting stuck, bored and closing down the game but whilst I played Botany Manor it felt a lot like other games I had played in the past.

As an aside, it reminded me of the MC2games series of Escape Room puzzlers, but with more budget giving it a slightly clearer story and nicer presentation.
Some of those games I have reviewed here on backloggd and although I don't rate some of them super highly, do enjoy them for what they are and the shorter, respectful, amount of time they want from me. Enough to scratch an itch.

Compared to these other games though, mechanically is where Botany Manor has a few issues for me. First off is the size of the place, it’s a large English Manor house so it is somewhat expected, I do also applaud the almost Dark Souls-like shortcut unlocking that makes traversing a little easier but even with that, for my liking, there is too much running back and forth.
The size of the setting and the annoyance of navigating is mostly due to the poor inventory and note taking management the game has.
Each page of the herbarium you can collect clues for, once you have selected the correct clues the description of the plant will change, filling out the story a little more.
The herbarium itself has maps which are nice and also a page on clues collected, but, significantly has no notes outside of where you found these clues to what they said.
If you find a pattern or numbers that you realise are useful elsewhere then you better have your own blank page to fill out in the real world because Arabella must have photographic memory as she doesn’t bother.
It’s a simple issue solved by real life note taking and that is not something I am opposed to typically, but in this setting, the amount of information surrounded by fluff, and with a blank notebook in-game hand it created a barrier to my enjoyment, a false way to lengthen the game and simply another thing that took me out of the setting.

The further you get into the game, the larger area you have. It is kind enough to not make you run back and forth throughout the whole house but this “escape room” ends up feeling a little more like an escape warehouse which might sound cool until I say that the size change does not mean the difficulty or even the amount of clues to find increase at the same rate.

One final complaint as a footnote is that interacting with items, the simple form of clicking to pick up and place down, is oddly too free. You can put things down anywhere which could cause you to forget where they are. This was not an issue I came into, but I did have a bug where I picked up one item, placed it on a shelf next to another and they became fused and then suddenly non-interactive. A minor bug like this would usually not be worth mentioning but that item, it was key to one of the final plants to finish the game and I was almost soft locked.
Botany Manor only has a single save and no chapter restarts, so if I could not unlock this fusion of items I would have to start the entire game again.
Thankfully with some extremely janky movement I was able to pick the item up again (clipping through a wall outside of where I could normally touch it) and finish the game.
I held off on putting down my thoughts about this title too fast because as you can imagine the annoyance and the time wasted on out bugging a bug soured me further. Now I can look back and laugh but it’s another small mark against the title as a whole.

Botany Manor is a pleasant time, the puzzles are perhaps too easy but fun and creative, it’s a fantastic title to have as a part of game pass but between some very strange design choices and a story and setting I did not gel with I didn’t really find that I enjoyed myself more here than I have playing much cheaper - at asking price and budget - equivalents on Steam.

There’s something you see online often that has become a parody: “Nintendo, hire this man”.
Typically this will be alongside Mario in a “photo-realistic” latest Unreal Engine world and have virtually no artistic merit what-so-ever.

However, I find myself thinking that stupid line, or at least thinking that I wish Nintendo would do more things like this.

Vikavoltius is a fan-made shmup in the style of Prodius and its ilk. Where instead of a spaceship you are controlling the Bug/Electric type Pokémon from Sun and Moon: Vikavolt.
The game is pay what you want and really it is so very short (1 stage) that I wouldn’t blame someone for paying nothing at all.

The single stage has you shooting down other Pokémon that fly in different patterns, some that fire projectiles and finishing off with a boss that I won’t spoil but I am sure there are pictures all over the page (it looks like a UFO).

Quantity there is not, but quality is where Vikavoltius makes you feel like the experience was a good use of your time. The sprites are fantastic, the remixed classic themes are brilliant and the simple but elegant power up system is enjoyable enough to do a small handful of runs without being bored to tears by the repetition of a single level.

It’s a shame there isn’t more as I feel there are a few other good Pokémon that could be transferred to a shmup and fit in perfectly.
Vikavolt themselves evolves from Charjabug and I’d love a road based level to start with, for reference it looks a bit like a bus.

I’ll finish as I started though. This may be a short-sweet proof of concept more than anything but I do miss having these mini-games from Nintendo themselves. DSiWare is long gone but Pokémon loves to shit out all sorts of other stuff and has done many other genres in a fuller form but in a much lower quality than Vikavoltius.

Cosy, wholesome, zen. I don’t outright hate these terms when discussing video games but as discussed on The Computer Game Show trying to use those terms as a genre title feels, incorrect, possibly disingenuous.
Horror is a genre, not “scary”, the decision of what something feels like is up to its audience.
It may sound redundant but acting as if cosy is a genre is the equivalent to filing a game under “fun”.

I have definitely used these words to describe games in the past. I am a fan of having games that I can relax with, zone out a little and not feel pressured or even stressed.
A Little to the Left aims for a feeling of being cosy, simple and just nice. Organising varying objects into a tidy manner as a simple puzzle, while along the way introducing a long-haired white cat to add to the everyday wholesome feeling the game is aiming for, using this cat as a game mechanic to either mess with your tidying or as a theme to the puzzles.

I love cats, but I feel that, let’s just call them “cat people”, end up elevating a lot of things that include cats to a pedestal they do not deserve.
This again just added to a feeling which may make me sound miserable, of being told I should like something which had me push back against it.
I will decide whether the game is wholesome, not the game itself.

As far as the organising and puzzles, A Little to the Left fails to do either in a way that really landed with me.
In terms of organising, the feeling is enjoyable for a moment and quickly repetitive. These items other than feeling quite “everyday” don’t really do anything else but act as icons, there is no story within them unlike Unpacking - the game I would say really pushed this subgenre.

The puzzles again are repetitive, organise by size, organise in a colour gradient, make something symmetrical, there is really not much else to them other than this.
Once you understand the game’s language, what it decides is organised, you can solve each puzzle within seconds, maybe replaying for different solutions but quickly moving on.

Another issue with the puzzles themselves is the interactions of simply picking up and putting stuff down never feels precise enough and also doesn’t feel marked out enough to do quickly.
Many times I would have items in the right order but the game had me fiddle with the items until lined up perfectly and that in my eyes, doesn’t feel relaxed or cosy, it feels annoying and like busy work. I will also add here that one puzzle the game would not allow me to solve even though I had everything correct (I ended up using the hint and then guides to check) but because it wouldn’t progress I spent minutes fiddling for no gain.

Sadly repetition is the biggest flaw of A Little to the Left and the finale really ramps this to a stage where I found myself saying “I don’t care about this cat”.

Perhaps there is an argument that I should have played this game in shorter bursts and to a degree I agree with that assessment. However, this further enforces the final point I’d like to make about this game. It’s in the wrong format.

This title is on PC and all the modern consoles, and outside of the Switch and maybe the Steam Deck I don’t think this fits. It has “mobile game” written all over it and whilst I don’t intend that to be an insult it does make it feel wrong playing on a bigger screen.
Multiple stages with tiny puzzles and little in the way of connective thread throughout them just reminds me of the classic games on iOS such as Angry Birds, Cut the Rope or even Monument Valley although that feels more narratively driven.

A Little to the Left is a Little Disappointing.

After I recently played VideoVerse and also having listened to them on The Back Page Podcast I knew that I could trust Lucy Blundell’s writing.

In a way this game has passed me by but I will also admit here that the title conjured up something in me that put me off. It wasn’t thinking about one night stands themselves but when videogames attempt to be sexy, more often than not it’s a miss, sometimes cringe and potentially offensive.
This title is not.

One Night Stand is a very short experience but one that encourages you to try it again to discover the different outcomes your decisions can make, surprising revelations and ultimately rack up a selection of different endings.

Each of these are full of wonderful writing, full of realistic and relatable notes. If there is any moment of cringing it is something you have opted to see. There are very few characters involved as you’d expect and the main being the woman you have found yourself awake next to - even their name is a spoiler.
She can be funny, sweet or even cold but again, feels real.

Replaying the story you can skip text and the options are quite diverse considering the, almost, one room setting. These retries also gave me a light feeling of a good detective game, discovering evidence and piecing separate dialogue together with a mental red string that not only painted a much fuller picture than I could visually see but one with some good “ah ha” and “oh shit!” moments.

Speaking of what I could see visually, I love the art style. A simple pencil sketch looking feel that gave me Hotel Dusk vibes. Great facial expressions from your one-night stand and lots of brilliant details within the room that again enhances the feeling that this story is not purely fiction.

In the end however, I feel a little conflicted about this title. It is smartly written, beautifully presented and executed well but whilst I do not dislike short games playing the same short game over and over made me feel contradictory views of wanting more but also finding getting the last few endings more of something like busy work than the mild detective feel I had gotten earlier.
An argument could be made to just get a few endings and put it down when you feel you’ve seen enough variation, but having a screen full of blank squares you know you can fill, boxes you can check - it’s hard to do that when you know the effort, at least in terms of time, is so low.

I enjoyed my initial ending with this game, I played it “as if” it was me and was pleased. It made me want to see more of the world and that is good.
I enjoyed doing things I would definitely not, going for things I felt were possibly the stupidest decisions and having a good laugh at them.
The writing carries this game and it is definitely worth a play considering it's about the price of a coffee - ultimately I’m just not sure that this format of short with a dozen endings is my vibe compared to long with a few endings, but that is fine. There is space for all types of storytelling and I’m happy that we get to experience them.

Bigger doesn’t always mean better. A cliché to kick off the review but it’s a fitting single line summary of how I feel when speaking about Lone Sails sequel.

FAR: Lone Sails was a special experience for me, both in just watching it streamed as mentioned in my review of that title and playing it for myself.
To this day I still play the OST while writing journals for my education, and occasionally depending on mood and my writing subject the music takes me to a place that I find myself getting very glassy eyed.

To hit that high again with a sequel was probably an impossibility and it pains me to say that in fact, it was.
Changing Tides is still a fantastic game in its own right, cleverly keeping the formula of controlling a vehicle, exploring an interesting unknown land and going on a journey, whilst changing up the types of scenery and the vehicular partner enough to be fresh.

Every review I write may be the first of mine that someone has read and I can only apologise if I lack the words for explaining this game, but rather than repeat myself I feel that as important as it is to play these games in order, it is to read my thoughts on them.

Changing Tides, rather than having a “car” like the first, you have more of a “boat”.
You’re still collecting junk which can be used for fuel or saved if you like, you still have nature as a pushing force as well as engineering and the places it goes in terms of travel are arguably more interesting and diverse.
However again, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.
I found this vehicle a lot more hassle, this not only gives some unwanted friction but doesn’t help build the bond I found myself having in the first FAR title.
What also doesn’t really help with this is I felt like I spent much more time away from my motorised-mate in this game than I did the first.
Swimming beneath the sea and doing some mild puzzles and platforming isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. Puzzles are predictable, some reveals are astounding and that scale is one place where Changing Tides does trump Lone Sails but the emotional connection to the journey feeling less didn’t help those moments stick.

Joel Schoch returns to play another beautiful, lonely, sometimes sad and sometimes uplifting OST and much like Lone Sails I can see myself listening to this when writing in the future.
An issue though, not of the music itself, is the weird lack of it in places.
There are points where silence is powerful but it felt too often, almost as if maybe the game was broken.

FAR: Changing Tides may not hold a place in my heart like Lone Sails did, but I had a lovely time and the ending, which I will not spoil, will at least be something that does stick with me. Powerful stuff.

Changing Tides is worth your time, but sadly it does almost everything worse than its predecessor, not terribly so but enough that it loses some magic.
I can only theorise that perhaps the four year gap between games gave the studio time to overthink what they wanted to do, what they wanted to say and what they were making.

I will take a FAR 3 though. Please and thank you.