The only good Plants vs. Zombies game. Predicted idle games and is a perfectly designed and unique spin on the tower defense genre in its own right. The difficulty is tuned just right and the feeling of progression is immaculately paced. The music is well-composed and catchy and the sense of humor manages to be charming without being loud or annoying. The invisible guiding hand of the game design exudes from every facet of the experience. Which makes it all the more shameful that EA turned this precisely crafted game into a sloppy mess of sequels and spinoffs. Don't be fooled by the rest of the money-grabbing franchise, this game is great and is still plenty of fun to this day.

Great for college dropouts. A story that attempts to combine the personal story of a directionless millennial youth with the setting of an economically declining rustbelt town nostalgic for the good old days. The central mystery driving the plot almost immediately takes a back seat for most of the game in favor of the actual main focus of the game, which is just hanging out with friends, reading witty dialogue, and awkwardly trying to avoid talking about why you dropped out of college. As much as I enjoyed the fun and riffy interactions between Mae and her friends, I would have liked just a bit more focus on the actual mystery side of the plot. But overall, the game still offers a heartfelt and quirky experience. Would definitely recommend to my fellow disaffected Midwesterners in their 20s.

A pale imitation of Parappa the Rapper, and yet I cannot deny the funkiness of the beats. When I first played the game, it kinda ran like garbo, but over time it seems like they managed to tweak it enough so that the timings aren't affected at all anymore, which is great. The art style obviously continues the sort of blocky, flat look that many of the old Newgrounds mascots all seem to have. In fact, the very inclusion of those mascots into the game don't even feel that out of place here and also gave me some unexpected nostalgia. It's a little weird to think that kids nowadays will only know Pico and the Tankmen from this game instead of y'know, Newgrounds, but I digress.

The music of course, is actually really bumpin', which is good because otherwise the game wouldn't work at all. The use of chopped up Banjo-Kazooie-esque electronically manipulated voice beeps works flawlessly into the mix and the gradual transformation of the simplistic turn-taking rap battles into blossoming simultaneous duets is a welcome innovation to the Parappa formula I wasn't expecting. The genres start off as hip-hop-ish but over time takes cues from increasingly higher-bpm electronic stuff with some dance inspired tracks as well as, unexpectedly, some gabber type beats? It's all pretty danceable really and I found myself swinging my head to most of the songs.

I'm not too familiar with the fan community, as I'm probably at least a decade too old for it, but it seems like there's a pretty big modding and youtuber scene associated with the game, which is good news for the longevity of any rhythm game, really. It also seems like mods will be fully supported in the full game, which is always nice to see. Overall the developers seem pretty capable, so I'm looking forward to the full release, whenever that happens!

A fun free game that the developer himself admits is pretty much just fanart bait. The art is cute and stylish, and the characters themselves are excellent at appealing to a very specific taste. I'm actually pretty impressed by how the designs manage to feel cool and sexy without being revealing at all or feeling fanservice-y. I almost feel like I need to hear a fashion designer's insight on these outfits. The puzzle gameplay is quick and snappy and the main music track is infectiously bouncy. Pretty much the entire experience feels quick, polished, and to the point which is a great way to make a free game like this go viral for a bit, but also causes a lot of the new fans to want a bit more. And while there's not much to the game, what's there is quality. It really is amazing how much I ended up liking all of the girls despite them having such few lines of dialogue.

Admittedly not much of a "game" yet, but still an incredibly original fever dream brimming with cool ideas and psychedelic, yet weirdly chill vibes. The whole world (er, galaxy) feels like splatterings of vividly colored blobs finger-painted by an ecstatic child lovingly brought to life by an older sibling game designer. The absurdist dialogue is hilariously matter-of-fact and what scant "plotlines" currently exist feel like the recordings of imaginary adventures collectively brainstormed between excitable kids on a playground. Even the combat system of manually flailing around your weapon with the mouse brilliantly invokes a kind of viscerally simplistic, childlike joy that only a game that isn't afraid to be dumb could afford to implement.

There's no music in the overworld, but when you've upgraded your character enough to properly fly, they sort of hum this calm little tune as they do so. Combining this with the surrounding scenery of mostly empty grayish rolling hills and foggy indigo skies gave me a sort of unexpected serenity akin to viewing an impressionist painting. The whole game even, seems to want to evoke some kind of impressionist feeling, but it's also not afraid to punctuate the viewings with dumb humor and pop references. The idiocy of the game's humor and its exploding creativity somehow kind of end up working pretty well together, though. I'll admit, aside from these personal takeaways, I don't really know what the "point" of the game is so far, but it's a definitely a vibe.

Amplitude Studios' Endless series of 4X games, to me, have always been characterized by visually striking, high concept civilizations and incredibly evocative lore writing. Big picture world building has always been the series' strength, but I've always found the smaller details and character writing to be just a bit lacking. This is, of course, completely fine in a 4X game, where you're managing entire armies and building massive superstructures. But in a more intimate setting like a dungeon crawler, where individuals are the focus, I couldn't help but want a bit more out of the heroes' colorful personalities. While the between-level elevator conversations are fantastic and give a tiny glimpse into who these people actually are, the more interesting ones are unfortunately relatively sparse as unique dialogues aren't even guaranteed to happen unless you happen to have a specific combination of characters. Even then there's only so many elevator rides before a run's over.

I understand if the focus is on the gameplay, but to be honest, while the series' games do fulfill a niche of providing fun, unique spins on 4X archetypes, they never quite reach the same level of depth and replayability that classics in the genre, such as the Civilization games, are known for. I find the same problem to be true for this particular foray into the tower defense/dungeon crawler genres. And while there's definitely a lot of polish and some pretty interesting interpretations of the mainline games' 4X mechanics, for some reason I just never found Dungeon of the Endless to be as addictive as the many other roguelike dungeon crawlers on the market. A lot of cool ideas here though, so hopefully they'll improve upon them in Endless Dungeon, the slightly confusingly-named spiritual sequel.

Chinese porn game. It's fine. Gameplay is just simplified QTE punch-out. Not much going on there, really. Story's marginally funny. Thankfully it leans more towards slapstick rather than male vindictiveness, as I assumed it would from the description. You play as incel Ryu, fighting off against five fighting game girl parodies (just five, it's pretty short). Throughout the fights, their clothes get torn off, as you would expect. There's a couple of CG sex scenes each; full mandarin voice acting too, which is nice. Art's actually pretty good. It's probably the best thing about the game honestly, and I'd love to see more of it, perhaps in an actual video game next time.

Currently imagining a world in which all mobile games were like this - simple, elegant fun prioritizing the player’s enjoyment instead of their wallets. Games that seek to provide a new, unique experience to players on the mobile platform instead of cynically trying to deceive them with skinner box monetization tricks. Take me back to the dawn of smartphones, when touch screens were seen as a visionary input innovation brimming with countless game design possibilities and not just a place to put an ugly, unresponsive virtual gamepad to the utter displeasure of handheld gamers everywhere. Why are there so few mobile games where moving around actually feels good and has a genuine tactileness to it, rather than just being a constant annoying battle with your fat thumbs for visibility? Was gosh-darn Fruit Ninja really the apex of mobile games that actually feel good to play?

...Mobile game diatribes aside, the central idea of this mobile game, Ordia, is pretty simple - you take a ball-like character that has to be flicked around like an Angry Bird to move but put it into an upwards scaling precision platformer like Celeste. The result is a short, polished 30+ level experience that feels absolutely smooth and buttery to the touch, thanks in no small part to the LocoRoco-esque minimalist art style and similarly bouncy, responsive animations. The level design in particular feels meticulously crafted. Every tunnel, peg, and wall bounce lands your little green dude pretty much exactly where it needs to go a lot of the time, owing probably to several level iterations and playtesting to ensure a smooth and guided user experience free of any major annoyances, much like an iphone’s UX philosophy. The game mechanics themselves are introduced gradually and deliberately, and build upon each other in fun ways. I wasn’t kidding with the Celeste comparison. There are even multiple mechanics that I swear are directly lifted from the dang thing such as: collectibles that only count after you land, midair nodes that give you an extra dash (or flick, rather) and are often chained together, differently colored evil clones of the protagonist that follow your movements to add time pressure, the list goes on. And while the game can be a bit frustrating at times, especially in the bonus levels, the wonderfully soothing electronic soundtrack and ambient Pikmin-esque nature-inspired sound design keeps the head relatively cool and the overall vibes chill.

I do wish there was a bit more to it though. Precision platformers like Mario, Celeste, and Meatboy thrive due to the sheer amount of ideas the developers cram into their games. 30 or so levels is just not quite enough time to layer and develop all of its mechanics to the same extent. And while the game certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome, it also doesn’t give itself enough room to reach its full potential, in my opinion. That being said, this little game was certainly a nice surprise that wanted nothing more than to provide a fun, pleasant experience, and I honestly wish more mobile games followed this design philosophy.

Very cool single player mobile card game with a surprising amount of depth and some really fun risk/reward mechanics. The game seems to be heavily inspired by the Thief series, with a similar aesthetic and time period, and familiar thief tools like a variety of arrows, potions, the trusty blackjack, etc. Much more interesting, however, is the way these stealth mechanics are translated into a card game.

The game is played on a 3x3 card grid in which you, the player, must move around your thief card, dealing with obstacles until eventually reaching the end of the deck, pilfering the chest card and making a swift exit. The two main mechanics that provide the majority of interesting interplay are managing your stealth points, which decrease after dispatching enemies and are restored after gathering sneak cards, and dealing with light, which are provided by torches and make sneaking past obstacles much more difficult. This rather simple conflict is made more interesting via a pretty solid variety of enemies, obstacles, and thieving tools at your disposal. The tools are unlocked and upgraded by performing specific tasks, some of which actually do force you to play much more differently than usual, which I always really appreciate especially in card games, where it can be really easy to just meta-deck your way through 90% of the time.

The game has a variety of risk-reward mechanics which allows the player to naturally take a gradient of risky actions for a much larger score. Perhaps my favorite example of this is the path difficulty mechanic. Every so often, certain cards will randomly gain a path difficulty modifier, which will basically multiply the numbers of every subsequent card in the current path, i.e. the current 3x3 card grid. Bigger numbers mean tougher enemies, but it also means larger stealth restoration and more jewels. Managing the multiplier to maximize reward and minimize loss becomes a supremely interesting game of careful forward planning and clever tool use to craft the perfect path through, which can feel genuinely satisfying.

As fun as the game is, there's unfortunately not that much content. There's only like three areas and after completing the second area I honestly felt like I "got" the game. This honestly isn't the worst thing, as the design pretty much feels about as tight and focused as it could be for a game like this.

Overall though, it’s a well-designed, smallish card game perfect for your 10-15 minute breaks when you just want to feel like a smart little thief for a bit. Pretty good!