Haven't played this in like a year but I played it enough back when it was first blowing up (due primarily by Northernlion, which is pretty funny) to get the golden poop hat, which was my main goal, so I feel pretty good about that.

This is basically Dota 2 Autochess / Teamfight Tactics but with the minimalist design ethos of Hearthstone. Like Auto Chess, you roll an inventory of characters every turn to most efficiently stack units together and build a team that synergizes well enough to beat another player's team. And like Hearthstone, there's an emphasis on small numbers, a clean minimal interface, multiple called instances of rng only a computer could comfortably simulate in quick succession, and several small effects that chain together and stack in unexpected, interesting ways.

The brilliance in this particular packaging is the asynchronous multiplayer. Whereas Auto Chess had a limited amount of players in a lobby taking simultaneous timed turns, Super Auto Pets lets players take their time and fight the whole player base whenever it's convenient, perfect for mobile and way less stressful too. Add the colorful emoji graphics and you got a perfectly wholesome looking, but powerfully addicting and surprisingly deep strategy game that's fun for the whole family (I'm aware they recently changed the emoji graphics to their own original style. This is a misstep imo, the emoji graphics were great).

Apparently they're still updating the game, adding new animals and food and game modes so that's cool. The core design is honestly pretty impeccable so I'm happy to see so many people enjoying it so much.

Some of the narrative themes are really interesting in concept, but I don't think the game lands the execution very well. I just don't care enough about the characters to feel that strongly about whatever happens to them.

That being said, the gameplay's really fun, especially if you're into bullet hell stuff. Very fast paced and challenging, but not frustrating enough to make me quit, at least for me. Music's pretty good too, there's a couple of catchy tracks later on that really impressed, me. But I think maybe because I listen to a lot of EDM type stuff I was a little less wowed than other people would be.

Also, it wasn't really a problem for me, but I can very easily imagine someone else not liking all the crazy visual effects that they pile on you for some of the battles. I get that it's rhythm game-esque and you're supposed to "feel" the music, but they do it a bit too often that it starts to get cheesy, imo.

overall: not as good as undertale lmao, but still very good.

I've never felt so in control of an onscreen avatar and yet so utterly out of control. The physics which the game's mechanics fundamentally depend on feel so incredibly random, and yet weirdly consistent? To master the game is to develop an intuition for how and when the physics will screw up and fling your character in a strangely predictable way. It's almost like you're using the game's glitchiness to overcome its own shoddy construction.

And yet it all feels so intentional, like it was meant to feel stupid, such that only the truly deranged could appreciate its exceptional game design. The obstacles seem impossible to overcome at first and yet, after throwing yourself at them over and over, you find that they are actually rigorously playtested tests of dexterity that provide specific challenges so that the player would be forced to intuitively master impossibly subtle mechanics to overcome them. Every tree branch that blocks your path begs you to hook your hammer in and climb it. Every jutting piece of rock that seems just out of reach taunts you, almost as if saying "Bet you wish you could jump, huh? Well...have you tried?" The simple placement of the terrain provides such a natural tutorialization of the game's unique and inspired mechanics that is nothing short of masterful.

An important question to ask, though, is now that I've completed the game, would I play it again? Hell no. This game is a nightmare to play. It's incredibly glitchy and chaotic and an incredible test of patience. I can't tell you how many tens of times my hammer fell through a length of rope for seemingly no reason. Or how many hundreds of times I tried to hook my hammer into a piece of rock after "jumping" into it, only for the tip of the hammer to read my movements as a "thrust" and fling me directly in the other direction. It also doesn't help that the game doesn't even lock your mouse to the window, so if you accidentally move your mouse away into a second monitor, you lose all control of your hammer until you realize what happened and move it back in, making it a rare case where a dual monitor set-up is actually a disadvantage. Nevertheless, while playing the game does let you recognize the genius of the design, I really would rather do literally anything else than play this game ever again. I'm certainly glad I played it all the way through once, but from now on, keep this thing the hell away from me.

The mixing of horror and comedy can be a tricky balancing act. Too much comedy and the horror elements can turn kitschy and ridiculous. Too much horror and the comedy turns into a lame distraction. Discover My Body, thanks to its punchy, ingenious writing, sufficiently manages both without taking too much of your time.

The term Kafkaesque is often used to describe works focusing on transformative body horror but it's rarer to see Metamorphosis-inspired fiction that seems to understand the famous author's wit and tries a similar kind of comedy. The game manages to be funny and horrifying! Yames' excellent brand of dark humor has been even more developed in his latest game Growing My Grandpa!, a game that further explores these themes of body transformation and human connection. And while this particular game is but a simple, five minute exploration of the idea, it can still serve as an excellent introduction to the developer's uniquely surreal aesthetic and pungent writing that is wonderfully expanded upon in their later projects.

This game is hilarious because it looks so bad (the art was literally drawn by a child) but the gameplay is rock solid. It's a roguelike deck builder before roguelike deck builders were even a thing. The dev, Peter Whalen, actually got hired to help create Hearthstone after making it 'cause some Blizzard devs couldn't stop playing this dang game. I always thought Slay the Spire was a rip of Hearthstone's Dungeon Run but it turns out neither of 'em would've even been possible without this little gem.

And I gotta say, it totally holds up! It's got the whole gradual progression and unlocking of new characters and cards thing down pat. The whole Desktop Dungeons-esque dungeon crawling makes it pretty unique as most newer games in the genre get rid of that part in favor of a more streamlined, "tree diagram route" overworld progression thing like in StS or even Darkest Dungeon 2 now.

Personally, I don't have the patience to gradually unlock everything or even beat the final boss, though. Apparently it gets pretty crazy in terms of difficulty, which sounds pretty fun. Unfortunately there's just so many games in this genre now and they all take so long to progress through that my attention gets too divided to properly digest the whole of a single one of these. This is a good one though. And it's arguably pretty important too, historically I mean. So give it a shot!

A repeat-after-me rhythm game similar to classics in the genre like PaRappa the Rapper. But whereas PaRappa uses hip hop and absurdism as a lens to examine themes of self-worth and masculinity, Space Channel 5 evokes the energetic spirit of musicals and dance to embrace a bombastic femininity. This game makes no apologies. It's sexy. It's in your face. It's got a beat that you can't get out of your head no matter how many times you hum that three horn note ending motif in the shower while posing like Ulala. The music has such an infectious energy to it and the presentation has such a ridiculous style that you can't help but smile the whole way through. I replay this game every now and then just to hear those blasting horns, mimic those sassy poses, and remind myself that sometimes a game can just be fun.

Pretty neat for what it is, which is basically just a Castlevania game with a cute gimmick where every enemy can drop an ability that you can use.

I like the combat, the music's great, and you can have a lot of fun with the abilities once the game opens up. It feels like there was a lot of heart and thought put into the game, but maybe they just didn't have the time or budget to really polish things up.

Things I like:
- The characters are fun (the few of them that there are), and I like that the game has a sense of humor
- The freedom to choose a truly customizable loadout from hundreds of abilities
- All of the neat little extra features, like speedrun mode, a built-in randomizer, alternate character modes

Things I don't like:
- Most of the abilities seem pretty useless, I ended up only sticking with a few that seemed obviously useful from the get-go
- There's only like three sidequests, and they all repeat like 20 times with no extra lore, just literally the same dialogue every time
- There's so much grinding. And the crafting system is cool in theory but it all just feels like such a chore. Why am I killing the same enemy over and over again for a specific material instead of actually playing the game?

Honestly, the core formula that this game is going for is really solid, I think. And I feel like if they ever make a sequel it could actually be pretty sick.

Many porn games have a tendency to separate the porn from the gameplay. Like you fight some monsters or read some dialogue and then after a while sex happens in a cutscene. Super Deepthroat was one of the first sex games to really utilize the interactive nature of the medium...in the actual sex itself.

It's a simple idea: using your mouse to control the customizable girl to have her perform the titular deepthroat. However, the majority of erotic games still to this day have failed to implement this incredibly simple idea of interactivity to their sex scenes. It's a little mind-boggling. Surely there must be demand for porn games that have more than a couple of still CG images? Nevertheless, even with its simplistic 2D flash animation, Super Deepthroat still stands today as the definitive interactive deepthroat simulator, with a fairly large modding scene to boot.

A marvelous tone piece. The muted, but not quite black-and-white art style complemented by the cold howls of echoey synths reverberating into empty factories and dark woodscapes produce a tense atmosphere of quiet dread throughout the experience only rivaled by the creators' previous game LIMBO. But whereas LIMBO relishes in the shock value of its edginess, INSIDE's edginess feels subtler, and more cohesive towards its themes of control and oppression. Playing INSIDE feels like being trapped in an Edward Hopper painting. Other people may exist right beside you but their sentience is only ever an idea. The city outside the cafe may be vast and its glass may be transparent, but even if the outside is clearly visible, one can never truly escape the feeling of being...inside.