FC is a slow burn that takes its time building its world by keeping the setting localized and the conflicts small-scale, giving the wonderful characters ample room to develop. The result is a game that feels incredibly cozy, with great music and that 2D-sprites-in-a-3D-world diorama style that's pretty uncommon but still great-looking.

I picked the gorilla character with a gold chain and leather jacket (the only character who wasn't a questionably legal v-tuber idol) to hide the second-hand embarrassment from tapping a 5 foot touchscreen along to the most chintzy of J-pop schlock. What I did not realize was that the gorilla not only animated like the girls, but also spoke all the voice lines, visible to every mall passerby at the entrance of the arcade.

This raw PC-88 aesthetic makes everything 100% scarier. There's a lot of really neat things about the progression system or the story or whatever, but the game's free and you won't be disappointed if something about the well piques your curiosity...

While Downwell is great, Poinpy succeeds more strongly in being a "phone action" game by shortening the runs and using less intensive controls, while keeping the gradually increasing difficulty and snap-decision making that made the former so good. It's a blast seeing how far you can keep blender-dude's combo going, and the puzzle mode is a fantastic addition for teaching the player about how your moveset interacts with the stage hazards/enemies.
(-1 for Netflix exclusivity)

Purely amateur the entire runtime (whether that's good or bad for you is entirely personal preference). I like how all the Russian swears are censored, like, how the hell am I supposed to know which one of the 84 Russian words for "fuck" is being used here?

Bluey absolutely CLEARS Peppa and anybody who hasn't babysat preschoolers before wouldn't know. Side note: one time the creators of Bluey hid the names of Dimitri, Edelgard and Claude from Fire Emblem in one of the episodes, which gets a "pretty based" in my book.

How a Game Boy game manages to feel extravagant idk, but Mario Land 2 has the series brand of tight platforming, secrets and imaginativeness in spades. Unfortunately, I had the Brentalfloss "with lyrics" cover stuck in the recesses of my brain the entire time I played this.

A darling of the RPG-maker adventure genre, OneShot does an outstanding job building its somber tone through its setting and art direction, while exploring some unique concepts you don't see in many other games. I recommend playing this one in complete darkness on a CRT monitor, the vibes are just sublime.

WELL DONE! HUEHAHAHAHEHAHA!

Hyper Princess Pitch may be the greatest of all time Christmas game (although its competition isn't exactly stiff). The goofy humor, gratuitous explosions, easy-to-play hard-to-master gameplay, highly replayable format, hidden mechanics/cheats/easter eggs, surprising polish and the potem...princess buster make this freeware a wonderful romp that still holds up 11 years later. LET'S ROCK!

Think casual 1v1 Angry Birds action with Touhou characters (feat. Speen Queen Hina) with some goofy items/stages, and you got a hilarious game to queue up and drink to. My favorite part of the game was using Takane's item copy ability to put Hina's ugly mug all over the screen like so.

Slugcat from Rain World kicks everybody in his way in order to stop flower king rabbit guy from sitting in his castle, being all evil or something. The game is drop-dead gorgeous for the original Gameboy, and also a technical marvel for all the unique physics stuff they pulled off, although its easy as pie and a little short.

I feel like I bought a used game at Gamestop and loaded into somebody else's file at the part of the game where the s/o dumps you. Might've been better if it were framed like an actual buzzfeed quiz up until q9 or 10, and used your responses to create a "personalized" story about the relationship instead of going gung-ho into the messy bitterness at the start.

Although it does embody the spirit of Touhou fangames fairly well, there's just not enough here that's solid enough to justify spending money on. Sigyaad Team's self-help short story disguised as anime (imo their strongest conceit) takes a backseat to talking with a couple characters in a wholesome but unsubstantial way, the writing is eh, the art is........and in a game with this budget, the VA could reasonably be dropped.

Everything you'd ever want out of a "cozyge", who's rough edges can be forgiven with awesome music, charming characters, and fun (albeit shallow (to its benefit)) moment-to-moment gameplay. Like, the enemy mooks have these goofy little comedy skits before you encounter them! (That's adorable!)