Shiokawa, much like Kurôzu-cho, is a cursed town. Every night, you take a bath, look through the peephole and prepare to investigate. Will you ever get used to that... thing staring at your apartment's door from the shadows? No matter.

Every run of World of Horror is taken straight out of a horror manga or one of Lovecraft's stories. Long forgotten gods, bizarre people and Japanese urban legends monsters plague the liminal spaces that act as scenarios to this game. Every frame contributes to creating a chilling and foul atmosphere, and every time the screen flickers you know you're in for a sight.

There are some games that are clearly more than a sum of its parts, but World of Horror kind of feels like the opposite for me. Its parts are fantastic: the soundtrack and sound design, the writing, the random events, the character and environment design, and the art style, which is where the game shines. However, the combat feels so weird and disconnected from the rest of the game that I can't seem to wrap my head around it. It's simple enough, sure, but I can't help but feeling its mechanics don't work well with the flow of the game. Switching the combat system for a card-based combat as seen in Slay the Spire would've been an interesting design choice, but alas, we wouldn't have this game as it is, paying homage to early text-based RPGs. In the end, you get used to the combat system and it never really becomes an obstacle to enjoying the game at all.

All in all, World of Horror is a game that MUST be experienced by manga horror fans and just about anyone interested in horror really. The storytelling, the writing and the visuals are fantastic... I just wished the gameplay would be more down my alley. Nevertheless, it's a very fitting game for Halloween and one that will leave durable imagery in my mind.

Chants of Sennaar is a great little game that could've been way way better had it delved deeper into the language puzzles. I would've loved for the languages to have more glyphs and more complex grammar, even if it meant sacrificing the other type of get-this-use-there puzzles. That would've probably been for the better, but how can you sin a game that looks straight out of a Moebius comic?

The solutions to the puzzles are fairly simple; they're not necessarily easy (I didn't consider them hard anyway) but they're not obtuse like in other puzzle games, where a combination of unlikely reasonings was sometimes the correct answer. All the pieces are put in front of you, and it's your job to put the puzzle together. The only gripe I had with the game were the stealth sections and the fact that I sometimes would miss on some things that were just out of focus: like the helmet for the disguise in the Fortress being on the left side, or the stairs that lead to one of the terminals in the Laboratories being barely visible on the right side of the screen.

Overall it was a great game to complete in under 7 hours. It has a lovely art style, a fantastic soundtrack and it's honestly just a treat to play for any language enthusiast. Would it have been better with less regular puzzles and more complex languages? I think so, but it wouldn't have been as accessible. In the end, nothing really beats the feeling of coming across a Rosetta Stone and working out the glyphs by yourself. I'll probably revisit the game playing it in a different language and see how it compares.

Great music, interesting and cool artstyle, weird controls (playing with a controller isn't precise with the joysticks movements) and an overall stressing experience. Blasting through levels is not as fun as I'd expected, on the contrary, it makes me feel anxious to think I've missed something or just disappointed to bump into a wall and slow the flow of the game. I knew it wasn't going to be my type of game but I had to try it anyway.

Edit: Okay so I kept playing and the controls and the levels get better. It's also useful to switch your mentality and just play the game without worrying too much about missing stuff.

A haunted forest where countless shades roam; a series of pool-filled chambers with bronze pipes, steam tanks and fish-shaped faucets; a never-ending landscape of wheat and golden trees; then, back to a familiar place. But nothing is as it was.

Hades II's atmosphere does the impossible by surpassing its predecessor: a game with so much charm that it posed the question of whether a possible sequel could come close to the house of Hades' familiarity and comfort, the intense heat of Asphodelus or the heroic dignity of Elysium. Roaming through the desolated streets of Ephyra, getting into the buildings and seeing carts of corpses and baskets of rotting fish, sailing in phantom boats and docking in the shores of Mount Olympus has the impact of something big: a war is raging, and you can feel it in each step you take.

The artistic aspect of Hades and Hades II has been one of the key elements in their success. The cast of characters is diverse and colourful, and brings new, fresh ideas to the table when it comes to a story that has been told time and again throughout the centuries. But the level design is where everything comes together for me. In the first game, the scenarios were really pretty and detailed, but the sequel takes it up a notch. I can't help but finding myself excited when I get to Oceanus. Being in those chambers seems to transport me to another age and place, and the humming of the sirens draws me in deeper each time.

The new mechanics are still being worked on, of course: the combat feels both familiar and fresh, and the new implementations like the tools, the crafting and the familiars are all fun to use and bring a new sense of progression to not only the story but also the gameplay. Progression is a big word in Hades II. Even if the game is a roguelite at its core, the progression in the story feels impactful, and every run brings out new dialogue and new unlocks. It doesn't even feel like you're just playing for a run, you're actually progressing, getting better and thus getting closer to your objectives both below and above.

We'll see how the game keeps changing through the early access, but even as I'm writing this review in version 0.90912 , with many changes to come, it really feels like the evolution of its predecessor in all aspects. There's no doubt in my mind that the areas to come will be filled with details and really fit into the narrative. Much like the Odyssey, Hades II is shaping up to be an epic poem full of exotic locations rooted in mythology and both warm and sharp characters that FEEL real. So, Time will tell.

Citizen Sleeper has a dense, sometimes even suffocating atmosphere: one full of textures (the Sleeper's synthetic skin, the ink-black color and consistency of space), sensations (the cold floor and the annoying flickering of the lights), colors (in the outlandish outfits of the characters), smells and tastes (the spiciness and rich flavour of Emphir's fungus), sounds (the mechanical whirring and the beeps)...

The world in which these sensations immerse the players is built around the typical cyberpunk premise in which a robot, neglected by the corporation that created them, is forced to live in the edges of an interplanetary society run by capitalism while being chased by bounty hunters. It's a story we've seen before in works such as Blade Runner (adaptation of the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick), but that at least I won't ever get tired of seeing. The writing itself is not bad (it reminds me too much of fanfictions for some reason), sufficient to make the player advance the story and want to experience its development.

Where this game really shines is in the artistic design department, with a beautiful environment design and an even prettier character design that will make you want to hang a poster of the characters high up in your unit where everyone can see it.

The soundtrack is full of ambient music that does its job at providing accompaniment to the story without it being too memorable itself, which is one of its low points for me. I kept expecting for the music to get a little bit more lively, with catchy, drum and bass cyberpunk songs, but maybe VA-11 HALL-A spoiled me too much. Oh well.

Even if the gameplay, addicting at first but stagnant once you get used to it towards the second part of the game, is simple, the writing of the story and the characters along with the atmosphere and the art design make this game a treat to the fans of the cyberpunk genre and a very immersive experience to spend a few days on: either playing or reflecting on the dichotomy between body and mind and the plethora of themes Citizen Sleeper deals with.

Your body isn't yours and it will always betray you

The amount of unique situations in Rainbow Six Siege makes it stand out among tactical shooters. Attacking can be fun sometimes but defending involves checking cameras, holding angles, rotating and patroling, and I seem to always come back to this game over Counter Strike, for example. The shooting experience is also fair and satisfying. I don't know, it does some things great and then the community and the matchmaking system are quick to ruin the experience in the end. The game is almost 10 years old and there's still a lot of potential.

"Henry, Henry wake up. Get out of bed and pìck up the radio"

When you first play Firewatch you are immediately destroyed by the introduction: there's just no way around it. After that, the vibrant colors and the sound of the birds among the trees warm you up like you've never been before. And then the game goes and puts you in a trash can again.

The narrative of Firewatch is what other game studios wish they could achieve. The characters feel so real, likeable and relatable that you almost feel like a voyeur, watching as Henry and Delilah's relationship develops. The voice acting is superb and the dialogues are so well written that by the time you finish the game you KNOW you love these two silly characters.

The whole vibe of the game is mysterious and tense, which contrasts in an interesting way with the calming music and the beautiful sunsets in the forest. Each day contributes greatly to making the game move forward by developing the characters, their motives and their fears. But they also provide enough moments of calm and appreciation that your mind can fill up the gaps between the weird occurrences. I can almost see Henry enjoying a nice cup of coffe or Delilah solving a crossword, sitting in her lookout tower with the headset on and the windows wide open.

Ultimately for me, the experience was extremely personal. A mystery waiting to be solved, a relationship between two people which hits way too close home, and a setting that feels organic, even with its obvious (spatial) limitations. I just replay it every year to get lost in the Shoshone National Forest and experience a story that manages to both warm and break my heart.

Alan Wake is a fantastic use of the medium and a not-great game. There are obviously both great and horrible things about the game, but it is a cult classic for a reason. Let me explain.

The experience of going through the story is dragged once and time again by the repetitive gameplay. The fact that you're CONSTANTLY faced with the same type of enemies is exasperating, and things get even worse when you take into account the limited stamina system. You can cheese most of the combat secuences by dropping flares and running towards the light, which can be both a good and a bad thing. The resources you can loot are ubiquitous, so at least there's that. But not all of the gameplay is bad. I found the gunplay to be decent and the flashlight mechanics are honestly quite fun to use.

The story, more precisely, the narrative, is where the game really shines. I feel like I've seen the plot before, but the combination of media Alan Wake uses sets it apart. The game itself is fine, but the way the pages you keep finding complement the narrative (one of the few cases where I didn't mind reading notes in a game), the way the radio broadcast adds background information in an organic and fairly entertaining manner, and the way the TV shows and programs add to the uncanny vibe (mixing real people with video game characters, stuff looks weird) make the game more than the sum of its parts.

On top of that, we can't forget about the characters. For some people they are annoying, me (partly) included. But by the end of the runtime, which is not that long really, you learn to love those goofy little guys. The whole cast feels like a mix between Twin Peaks and some really edgy TV show about a snob writer. Whatever.

Alan Wake is a product of its time. The gameplay feels slow and slightly out of fashion, but the way the story is told alternating between different types of media really adds to the experience and elevates what could've been a fairly boring game. I'd say it's worth it to play the game (even with its shortcomings) and immerse yourself in a timeless Pacific Northwest experience.