Last year, a humble Ukranian developer released Light de Deux, a sweet little romance visual novel about ballet dancers that I absolutely loved. The dance theme got to me, of course, but it was also well-written, well-drawn, and the characters inspired me so much I arranged with the developer to have them guest in my own game (which is getting…
I love it when a lost project is dusted off and finished. It happens, rarely, and often it is attached to a project that was either so far ahead of its time that the money overlooked it, or was a real passion project of some artist who ran out of…
When it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And in the case of…
Of all the examples of comfort food gaming that are out there,…
Ever found yourself looking at the state of video games and going: “Why are so many things becoming so simplified and streamlined?” RPGs are melding into big action games with pacy combat, rather than stats crunchers, strategy and simulation games are often so simplified that it’s impossible to actually lose…
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“Oh, great,” your little guide through the minigames of 100 in 1 Game Collection tells you as you unlock the next one. “A terrible puzzle game.” At least our little Dante is aware that you might not be enjoying your trip through hell. Look, I knew exactly what I was…
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Yakuza 0 is in so many ways the finest game in a very fine series. The development team took full advantage of it as a prequel to not only tell the story of where series protagonist, Kiryu, and favourite frenemy/rival, Goro, got their start, but also capture a unique moment…
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The survival game genre has exploded in recent years, with countless options flooding the market. Most of these titles hyper-focus on crafting mechanics – a design trend that became ubiquitous after Minecraft’s success, shoehorned into games where it doesn’t always make sense. As someone who cherished the original Survival Kids…
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Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army was originally released before Persona 3. That was a very different time for Atlus as a company and this entire property. Before Persona 4 and, particularly Persona 5, took the broader Shin Megami Tensei name to the mainstream, SMT were these dark…
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There is arguably no bigger name in the world of interactive films and FMV games than Paul Raschid, who directed The Complex (2020) and wrote and directed Five Dates (2020), The Gallery (2022), and Ten Dates (2023). And his games always drop at the best times; for example, online dating…
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As I mentioned in my review of the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware, one of the most impressive features in the Switch 2 is the ability to use the right Joy-Con as a mouse pointer. I fully expected that to be a dinky, silly gimmick, but as it turns out, it’s…
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Mario Kart didn’t need to go open world. It was a much-vaunted feature of Mario Kart World leading up to its launch, and the moments where you’re dropped into the open world and left to just cruise around and complete little missions are, frankly, boring. Thankfully, everything else about the…
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I’m a huge fan of Boyfriend Dungeon, a dungeon-crawling action adventure simulation game where you don’t just use your weapons in battle — you also form deep, meaningful relationships with them. When Date Everything! was announced, my brain immediately jumped to the idea of it being similar to Boyfriend Dungeon,…
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It’s incredible to think that Bravely Default: Flying Fairy is 13 years old at this point. It feels like it was just yesterday that it was turning heads as a new spin on the JRPG genre and a brilliant homage to Final Fantasy in particular (Flying Fairy as the subtitle…
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