Stuff I rec. Open collection to see my review blurbs.
Holy shit.
At time of writing, the kickstarter campaign for the full game is fully funded and still going!
Short interactive VN with a handful of different endings about being a newly turned vampire who doesn't actually like the taste of blood.
Gorgeous visual and writing style. This is one of the first times something got me really <i>into</i> the whole vampire thing; intense, thick atmosphere, super hot and tense... with no actual sexual content, and an unflinching metaphor about asexuality/aromanticism and alienation from society that will tear your heart out. Literally, if you let it.
Incredibly chill (hah) atmospheric game, with a slow meditative pace and zero threats or time pressure.
It's a LOT more in every sense than I expected from the super low price and barebones look. In a few hours of play, I've already found a couple dozen useful or completion-stats items, yet have only explored a fraction of the map, which seems to be HUGE. Anywhere my character is standing I can see at least two other points of interest in line of sight, and every one of those spots is unique and beautiful, touching and/or awe-inspiring in its own way. The graphics and animations are indeed very simple, but the minimalism participates in the serene vibe and the intense feeling of utter loneliness -- and does not prevent the scenery from being absolutely gorgeous.
A truly lovely unique little gem, bursting with humanity and heart-wrenching melancholy.
FROGS GAME FROGS GAME
By the creators of APICO, this time with frogs, more genetics, and more esoteric lore and aesthetics. Charming as frog. 100%'d the demo in one sitting and immediately restarted a new game. I cannot frogging wait for the full game.
7KPP IS BAC KFROM THE WAR AAAAAAAA
Short (~10 min) and sweet, quite simple but a lovely dive into a peaceful, heartwarming atmosphere and world, with beautiful art and music.
A short, strange and poetic little experience about using and replacing violence with fragile beauty. Beautiful look and just lovely ~5 minutes of peace.
Absolutely delightful text CYOA in which you do some science-fantasy-solarpunk swashbuckling and as much or little Extremely NSFW And Extremely Hot gallivanting as you want.
The 3 banging options have fully customisable pronouns & parts, but very different and detailed individual personalities and dynamic & history with the protagonist: a mystical kinky stranger with horns, your swordfighting ~Nemesis~ who wants to top you in all ways, and an old friend who's been *trying* to get your easy banter from Idiots to Lovers.
Great prose, fun setting, excellent (very graphic) smut, lots of player agency, just a great and memorable experience I'll definitely be reexploring to see alternative choices.
A short Twine story about assembling an angel. Absolutely lovely, full of warmth and character in such few words.
Super NSFW, very cute fun and wholesome.
A short branching text adventure about being a gothic novel heroine with two problems: there's a ball coming up soon, and also you're a werewolf.
Short & fun to replay to get different endings, delightful options, lovely atmospheric writing.
Very pretty, unique and charming short little puzzle game with a morbid and strange witchy-woodsy-cryptid aesthetic, with a hilarious ending.
[I played on mobile]
Has charming graphics and noises, relaxing soundtrack, smooth and pleasing gameplay movement, regular fresh and new mechanics, satisfying lil animations to watch when you got it. Is INFURIATING every time you get stuck. Which will happen. So much. A great puzzle game that is genuinely deceptively hard and maddening; hits all the right brain-scratching dopamine-giving buttons for me.
Unique and surprisingly complex gameplay, but simple and intuitive to grasp (even though i got stuck on a level Forever a few years ago). Zen, meditative, very pretty on the eyes and ears, just lovely.
Pretty much anyone should play this game if they haven't yet, but also prepare for the fucking heart punch. A delight and a gem, so fun and full of heart, but also very heavy and emotional.
A short, to-the-point game that makes you prepare corpses for their funeral and think about the business of death. Educational, thought-provoking, and lovely.
A deck-building video game about travelling around the country to collect products for selling at your village store. A simple but incredibly rich card system and story about communication and culture; I absolutely did not expect the amount of variations in how your story can go depending on your decisions, successes or failures, and random encounters.
I discovered this game from someone describing it as "changing how [they] thought about communication forever", and that remains true years after I've last touched this game. Quietly brilliant.
(also lots of matter-of-fact LGBTQ+ rep)
Hypnotic
Great concept, very simple but tense gameplay with very real failure chance, eviscerating prompts. Had a grand time playing solo and really hoping to sit down for a game with friends for extra screaming.
Made me sit down to play again for the first time in months, and I had a wonderful time. Simple and instant to pick up, lovely concept, evocative writing and both vague and specific enough worldbuilding and prompts... and I really like the mechanic for the messages that mixes chance and player choice. Planning to replay and see how this world develops through time!
Very simple, very short, very addictive, very educational and thought-provoking. First time I played this years ago, I replayed it obsessively for the next few days; I've seen and achieved everything possible to do multiple times and I still sometimes feel like playing it again out of nowhere (and then I do).
I considered myself a leftist, humanitarian, equal rights supporter, etc before playing, but this game made me really *understand* so many things and has strengthened my beliefs and values.
The need-funds-to-spend/delayed-reward system and the random chance element to what happens when are a stroke of genius. A great part of the gameplay and replays value, AND so effective at driving home that the political and government systems make it hard to be *able* to do the right thing, even when you want to, even when it would be beneficial to literally everyone in the long run.
And it just makes you want to try again, because you know there's a way, you know it could happen, you know better things are possible.
Just an excellent game -- and also super funny.
it's been in a museum and it deserves it
Stared at this for 30 minutes, entranced, filled with a gaping hole. Really drove home the science and also the scale of time as a distance and the existential horror of how lonely we are despite not actually being alone. 10/10
Stardew Valley but just bees and no time pressure. Chill, charming, simple yet addictive and engaging, very good at sparking base but bones-deep delight.
Features:
- Gameplay that is little more than walking around and clicking through inventories, but a unique and absolutely fantastic UI system and made me fall in love with menus;
- Surprisingly deep genetics system, but not too complicated, and also some fun little puzzles to unlock some of the rarer species;
- Educationally based on real-life beekeeping and beeology, but with a whimsical, casually fantastical twist so you can get sparkling dust from your special purple glowing bees that appear to you in dreams;
- All this with lovely pixel graphics and an entrancing soundtrack I listened to so much I ended up buying it on bandcamp;
- And if you're still not satisfied with an aspect of the game as-is, modding is not only easy but encouraged.
Also genuinely gave me a super emotional spiritual experience with the ending sequence. About bees.
And just to sweeten the deal, most NPCs use they/them as at least one of their pronouns sets, one of them is non-verbal, at least one but possibly Literally All Of Them is autistic, one of them is a fox, and all of them except the fox make adorable cheesy bees-themed puns.
One of my GOTY and among my GOAT for sure!
Basically a little short film that requires you click to progress through scenes. Adorable.
An absolute must-check-out.
Been replaying this addictively for the past week trying to get all the trophies -- the game writing is really cleverly done so that I can guess at what's possible and how to achieve it, and it's just complex enough to make it very satisfying when I achieve it but not so much as to be frustrating. All this in a lovingly rendered and expanded Alice in Wonderland setting, with fun writing, cartoonishly-in-a-good-and-fitting-way all-voiced dialogue, and a vibrant art style full of fun details.
Just a lovely game all around, provided exactly what it promised and what I wanted but exceeded my expectations by far (although one playthrough is quite short, I've definitely got a good dozen hours of play and I'm not done!).
An experience.
I hesitated to remove a star because of how much I remember struggling with the gameplay, but... that's part of the entire experience, and not an issue to fix. Trying to play this game "optimally" and "well" will make you feel too slow and frustrated and inadequate and struggling to keep up with too little time and not enough resources to "succeed", and that's the point.
Part of the point.
One of the many, many points.
At the moment of writing, I played this game, and its predecessor Where The Goats Are (or perhaps simply the previous update?), more than 2 years ago; as I remember it, the biggest differences were in the amount of storytelling and worldbuilding, through writing or cutscenes. Both aimed to accomplish the same thing, one very simply and one with lush detail; both succeeded, I loved both versions, and both struck me so much that I still remember that feeling. Simple but great concept, with an original, haunting execution, memorable details, gorgeous words.
I should play these again. And so should you!
