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The first thing that struck me about this game is the colourful cast of characters. Among the members of RIFT’s dimension-hopping cops are not one, not two, but three girls with horns - all with different aesthetics from different worlds. One of them’s even called Freya! That’s not all, though: there’s also a stern mer-lady in a hoverchair, a protein lovin’ plant man, a nerd bigfoot.... I hope the character designer had fun.

Gameplay-wise, you can see some of the mechanical concepts here are borrowed from other games, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Platformer design space is limited, and sometimes a mechanic comes along that deserves more exploration. Also, some innovations just improve the general gameplay experience - in which case, it’s a good thing if they become a standard design component of the genre.

Specifically, this game has Hollow Knight’s “find a safe spot and channel your energy to heal” mechanic, which honestly it doesn’t really need because the combat is very simple. More importantly, it leans heavily on a tether-slinging mechanic that’s very similar to Ori and the Blind Forest’s ultra-generically-named Bash ability.

You quickly learn how you can remain aloft indefinitely using repeated tether-launches, and how to use your brief airtime to manipulate the angle of your next launch. Some of the game’s best segments string together sequences of tethers, hazards, and wall jumps and it’s only here that you glimpse that perfect platformer focus flow state.

The levels are generally quite well designed, and usually follow the classic Mario formula of introducing a gimmick and then ramping up the complexity and combining it with what you already know. It’s nice to see genre fundamentals applied competently.

I’m most of the way through the game now, and nothing’s been exceptionally challenging. Some sections were a bit frustrating - but at least there’s a snappy respawn with only a nominal health tax (which you can eliminate entirely with one of the upgrades). I feel some stages also overstayed their welcome, with too much of the same basic content.

It’s got a megaman-esque setup where you can do the nine main missions in any order, which lets you hop around a bit if you want something slightly different. The levels have star ratings for difficulty, but I didn’t feel much of a curve between them.

I found each of the three main worlds a bit one-dimensional (ha!) in terms of setting and theme, which is a shame. You’ve got an entire multiverse of possible worlds available, and yet you spend four missions each in A: goo caves, B: dinosaur wasteland, and C: neo(n) tokyo. 

There’s also only a handful of enemy types, mostly just reskinned to each world, which also sticks out in contrast to the variety in the cast back at RIFT HQ. In fairness, tilesets and assets are expensive and it’s an indie game. But still.

The game could also do with a little more oomph to its sound design. I’d like to see more adventurous and varied level music - I recall one timed escape section that lost all its urgency because the soundtrack stayed on the stage’s usual distantly pensive theme. Some of the fighting and movement would also feel weightier if there were a bit more feedback, though I know that’s an art that’s exceptionally hard to perfect.

There’s XP items hidden on every stage - up to a dozen or more. They’re the only persistent pickup you have to worry about, which is nice, and they’re usually either rewards for exploring or for bonus challenges. It can get a little annoying checking every possible hiding place to make sure you don’t miss one, but at least the menu shows you the order they’re found in the stage so you can tell how you’re doing. 

None of the upgrades so far seem world-shattering, and you’ve only got a couple of slots to equip them anyway. So I’ve been doing my best to be clever and skillful and grab what upgrade points I can, while not stressing about them too much. Having said the game is quite easy anyway, I think following only the critical path and ignoring all extras would be quite - literally - straightforward.

The combat doesn’t have much depth, so it’s a shame that the dinosaur world in particular has a lot of compulsory, multi-wave combat encounters. I generally just found myself equipping the upgrade that improves heavy attacks and spamming that, especially since most of the unlockable combat moves are basically more versatile and mobile heavy attacks anyway.

There’s also a mystery-solving meta-plot which is a bit bare-bones in terms of gameplay, though there is a cute dossier with bullet points chronicling the information you know about each of the suspects. At its best, there’s a little bit of deduction in figuring out who needs to be shown which evidence. At its worst, it’s just a chore. And at its middlest, it’s an excuse to occasionally take a break to wander around the base and check in with those colourful characters.

The final thing I want to mention is, for some reason whenever I launch this game it automatically sets itself to a different language that I then have to switch back to English. I don’t know if this is an easter egg or a bug or what, but at this point it’s kind of endearing.

At first I thought this game just didn't have enough design space in its core mechanics to be interesting. Having persevered a bit... I think that's still mostly true.

The game does gradually reveal a handful of new ideas and card effects - but only gradually. I don't think it's so complex that you need that much rationing of information, unless you've never played anything like it before.

And when the reward after a bunch of levels is the opportunity to buy a new sword with +3% crit chance - if you've also got enough of the two currencies - it's not very motivating.

Most upsettingly, I got to a point where (mostly) making the "right" tactical decisions - even though there weren't many to make at that stage - still led to me failing the same level several times due to face-down cards and bad rolls. So I stopped.

Now, I really do like task-sequencing puzzles: it's one of the best things about Hearthstone, for example. Maybe the later levels of this satisfy that tactical optimisation itch a little better, but it seems that lies behind a lot of randomness and grind that I don't have the time for. 

The comments on the shop page show that there definitely are people out there who got sufficiently into that zone, and good for them!

And the touch-and-sometimes-drag gameplay, and the simple grinding loop, is probably well-suited to mobile, if that's what you're here for.

Though there isn't much variety to the weapons, you could argue that forces you to think more carefully about the times where there is an advantage to using one over the other. Though perhaps I'm trying too hard to give credit here.

For example, 1d4, 1d6-1, and 1d8-2 all have the same expected value (2.5), but when fighting an enemy with exactly 2 health, you're better off using the smallest weapon (3 in 4 rolls succeed) than the largest one (4 in 8 rolls succeed). 

Meanwhile, the larger weapon has a higher crit chance so it's better suited to fighting damage sponges where triggering one actually matters without turning into overkill.

I didn't like the mechanic with bonuses for rolling the same number three times in a row. Intriguingly, it adds some value to using smaller dice, but the low probability and variety of effects makes it impossible to utilise strategically.

There's also a (perhaps well-meaning, but) weird mechanic where if you don't like the three achievement goals it's offering you, you can reroll them... but it's free to keep doing it, so I ended up spending a long time refreshing the list until I got something remotely interesting. Which wasn't much fun.

Finally, he writing and aesthetic didn't do much for me. At least it's not straight-up clichéd fantasy, but the brand of tongue-in-cheek is so worn there's barely any cheek left. And the admonition of "are you sure you really wanna quit the best game eva?!?" (seriously) when you close the game is... really something.

A brief, charming, pastel-y blast of affirmation. That's also about a wizard kid..zard. Who's also a skateboarder. If I listed the small handful of cute interactions I had on the way down the hill to my home, I'd spoil basically all the content. Suffice to say there was much sharing of lesbian lasagna.

The skating controls are fine, and ending combos with Literal Magic to achieve impossible effects is cute. I had some trouble with the camera, and also it's been a loooooong time since I played Mr. Hawk's Pro Skatings so I didn't do great at the actual skating part. But that's okay, because there's no points. Because that's not the point.

I say it was a brief experience, but there's heights of the town to explore that I just didn't because I was merely visiting. I'm sure it'd take you a little bit longer than my 20-minute jaunt if you wanted to find all the magic cards and earn all the sprays. It's still short and sweet, though. And that's okay!

I wasn't expecting to get along with this one, but after a couple of runs I did manage to get into that Sweet Focus Zone. Of course, I'm still very bad at this genre and I don't have the patience or inclination to become competent. But maybe that makes the praise even higher.

Firstly, though, the name. You've got dogfights, so that's fine. But you're very definitely not in hyperspace: most (all?) of the stages take place in atmosphere, with gravity. It's one of the main game mechanics! That's petty of me, of course. After all, videogame namespace is a dwindling resource, and "Atmospheric Dogfights" probably wouldn't sound as cool.

I found myself thinking a lot about feedback and player information sources while playing this one, since it's really important in a fast-paced game. I think it did some good things and some bad things, though it's not the only game I've ever seen to do most of these.

Once I got the hang of it, the general feeling of moving and shooting felt pleasantly weighty, contributing to the focus state. And chasing the little green "X" confirming a kill became as satisfying as Overwatch's skulls.

Having shield damage display as a coloured zone that closes in on you as you reach breaking point is good - it means you never have to take your eyes off your immediate situation to see just how screwed you are. I was still occasionally blindsided by sudden heart-hull damage when I thought I was safe, but that might just have been me misreading the wider mess of incoming fire.

And yet there's radio chatter (some of which is moderately useful combat information) which displays only in tiny text in the bottom left of the screen. I just can't afford to read that, because as previously mentioned, I am a terrible pilot.

Your phase jump dodge roll ability is really important, and there's lots of loot mods that affect its parameters. But if there's an indication of its cooldown, I never noticed it - and never had time to check. And its duration could be clearer, since the blinking-fade-out effect isn't very eye-catching.

Speaking of eye-catching, I was a little dismayed in the tutorial when it seemed like my ship was red, on red clouds, fighting red enemies. Fortunately, I think this was just a hologram-training vibe they were going for, and the actual levels aren't nearly as bad. The colour palette is pretty styish, though I do think they could still prioritise contrast a little more.

Picking up money drops from enemies is really important, but I found it hard to actually spot and grab them because they're very nondescript (and I didn't entirely understand the rules of their spawning and collection). Because it's possible to disable a jet without it counting as fully defeated until it crashes into the ground, I ended up finishing most levels with an awkward ground-strafing run looking for space coins that I'd missed, which was a bit of a chore.

The screen tracking of the player jet seemed slightly off sometimes, which was... dangerous. Coupled with the fact that you can (and probably should?) fly behind clouds, I did manage to lose myself a couple of times which is. Not great. Especially when I emerge, spinning wildly, before I realise I'm trying to shoot myself.

The sound design is... okay? I never found myself consciously wishing that I were receiving more auditory information. Which is good, because sound should be one of the least conscious information channels. What I did wish was for some kind of pumping soundtrack to match the action, because the main theme in battle is a very muted tune that wouldn't be out of place on a menu.

As for the roguelike elements: it's a pretty enjoyable take. The game's blurb suggests you're meant to be able to angle for specific builds: it seems to be going for Slay the Spire style combos of passive artifacts (it even calls them "artifacts"). And that seems genuinely achievable thanks to the relatively large number of shop options typically available to you. 

I like the touch that capturing cargo-shops to buy from between levels is one of the mission types, and they stay with you until the end of a world but burn up when you move to the next act.

That said, maybe it was luck of the draw, but I never really found a weapon thatfelt better to use than the starting weapon - the ones I encountered were all very close range with low projectile velocity and high spread, making them really hard to use. Maybe long-range and high-accuracy weapons just don't encourage the kind of gameplay they're aiming for.

The game also has some rather uninspiring mods - 5% bonus damage? Woo. Great. Maybe chaff helps the wheat taste better (is that how the idiom works?). In general, attack-boosting mods seemed to have pretty low returns, even if they came at the cost of defence. I counted myself lucky in my most successful run, when I got two great shield boosting mods to save my precious hull-hearts.

I like that you seem to unlock new kit through related achievements. Sometimes persistence in roguelites can feel really blind and grindy, whereas here at least there's a nominal connection.

I really liked the variety of missions in each level. strafing ground targets, capturing and maneuvering through zones, or even just survivng missile barrages for long enough all keep the action fresh and less of a meat grinder. I found myself looking forward to seeing my next mission written in the sky. (The green Crazy Taxi -style objective pointers deserve their credit here).

On the other hand, the missions where you don't need (or want) to fire much in order to succeed mean you get less space money, which hurts. It's nice that you can stick around on a stage after completing the objective to mop up for extra cash (or just revenge), which mitigates this a little and offers a greed-vs-risk element. And the triple-tap to hyperjump to the next level gives each mission a satisfying bookend - especially if you've got dozens of missiles on your tail as you zoom away to the next challenge.

I don't think I can bring myself to say "hidden gem" in any context, but this was a really interesting experience.

I can gush forever about the interplay of story and mechanics, and this is a great example of how a quite constrained and abstract experience actually gives the player space to imagine the wider context and narrative elements.

In this case, all you've got is a bunch of nouns flowing through your headspace, and a bunch of nodes representing simple verb phrases that produce, convert, and combine them. 

But by stringing them together in a SpaceChem style pipeline, you construct a resonant narrative such as "I'm taking the negativity of my [Frustration] and turning it into motivating [Energy] so that I can [Travel] and achieve my goal of [Meeting new people]."

The developing stories were actually so evocative that I'm going to declare (minor thematic / experiential) spoilers for the rest of this review as I talk about them in a bit more detail.

So: I played two of the three scenarios, and I actually 'lost' both times. And it was great!

In scenario #1, you're a new immigrant to a big city, and after getting a job and summoning up some motivation, you find yourself torn between your allegiance to your homeland and hopes for a new independent life. I spent so long torn between my obligation and my dreams - and the mundane necessities of paying rent, dealing with xenophobia, and processing my anxieties - that I found myself on the cusp of "success" in both storylines but ultimately undone by my own intransigence.

I think that made a better story than breezing my way through one or the other, and it's a credit to the way the narrative and mechanical tension builds over the course of the scenario.

In scenario #2, the resonance of the mechanics really shines as you play a struggling musician in a struggling relationship. Do you use your relationship as fuel for your songwriting? Can you attend to your partner's emotional needs and foster your relationship, while also dealing with your own demons and staying true to your creative drive? Is there value in embracing, expressing, and exploiting negative emotions, too?

Each section of your psyche has a different title and theme, and supports different types of thought-processing nodes. The actions you take and struggles you encounter can cause new zones to blossom or fade: either by dealing with the root cause of pathological thoughts, or by losing touch with the original source of a happy memory.

In scenario #1, part of how I painted myself in a corner was by "successfully" disavowing my homeland - which caused that entire segment of my pysche to disappear. And then I realised that my industrious work ethic had been derived from thoughts of home and my upbringing, and suddenly I was unable to succeed at my day job and earn the cash I needed for my freedom.

Similarly, in scenario #2 you start with a sector for "The Music". And I realised after some time of playing that almost nothing actually happened there - my thoughts and challenges were never really about the pure concept of the music itself, but about how the rest of my life related to my craft.

As I suggested at the start, I actually really appreciate the ambiguity and neutrality in a lot of the framing because that's where a lot of the story and even gameplay lies. 

That means little things like leaving your Lover unnamed, ungendered, and undefined other than how they relate to you emotionally.

But it's also things like the simple "foreshadowing" achieved by introducing a concept-noun well in advance of when you can actually generate it. 

As the migrant, it's indicated early on that you can grow beyond your past, but it's not until much later - and some dramatic revelations - that you realise just what it takes to light that spark. 

As the musician, you know your end goal is "success", and you can see that there's some clearly desirable traits in your relationship sphere like "understanding" and "finding the right words to say". But it's up to you to figure out and experiment with how to actually achieve them. Maybe if you can't see how to develop your psyche right now, you need to go through some deeper experiences first.

Admittedly, in the more complicated scenario #2, I did find myself a little frustrated constantly flicking through all the nodes I could build. I spent a lot of time desperately trying to develop a mental map of which thoughts and emotions I could combine to get what I needed - but in fairness, that's part of the challenge and part of the experience.

I really recommend giving this one a go to see if it resonates with you, too... or if I'm just reading too much into it.

This is probably the least developed game I've played so far, and that's not necessarily bad in itself. I was amused by the honesty in the blurb advising you to play yourself some relaxing music, because the game has no sound. I think that's wonderful!

Gamplay-wise, though, there's just not much to it with this one. The mechanic where tiles with railways are the only ones that you can "rotate"  based on places that already have tracks was interesting, but it took me a while to realise that's what was going on and until I did it was weirdly frustrating.

I think for the next iteration, it would be useful to have some clearer overlays for things like what counts as a separate village, and how many houses, trees etc. are contained in that space. There's a basic zone indicator right now but it wasn't much help in achieving the objectives. 

This would help it lean into some of the advantages of being a digital game. Also, the fields and villages I built didn't really look coherent, so maybe the aesthetic and "blending" of tiles could be improved. Admittedly it's hard to achieve with modular tiles, but is easier digitally than on paper!

Did I partially choose to try this game because of the cute German title? Yes. Am I ashamed of that? Nein.

I appreciate this game! I was also very bad at it, which is the only reason I decided to stop after 3 of 8 chapters.

By a weird twist of fate, I then ended up playing the last chunks of Lenna's Inception immediately after this - which also relies on manipulating screen-wrapping as a major gamplay element. 

So, playing this probably helped prepare me for that by teaching me the principles of the shared mechanic better than Lenna did. Which was a nice bonus.

Lenna also didn't explore the mechanic anywhere near as thoroughly as this game no doubt does, given that it's the entire focus.

I didn't really play enough of this to see where the narrative themes were going. I think sometimes games can oversell claims of being deep and meaningful, but maybe I'm wrong. From what I saw of the static / surveillance schtick and how you swap between the guy and the girl sprite every time you use your power, I'm happy to just assume this is about being trans.

I set out with a bunch of friends to try this one, and by the end of the session we joked that we forgot to play the game.

What you get in the PDF is a set of scene-types, and a set of back-and-forth questions that hit the tropes of those scenes. It's essentially a set of prompts to help you tell a certain genre of story.

And that's great! But in my case, it turned out that Princess Boxanne of the Parcel Kingdom, Conductra of the Railway Kingdom, and their various allies and enemies very rarely interrupted their nonsense to actually refer to the structure they were meant to be following.

I think if we were either less confident roleplayers, or if we'd all had the time and inclination to read through the whole thing thoroughly in advance to get the prompts and structure pre-loaded in our brains, the materials in the book would have been really useful.

But it's hard to skim the prompts on the fly, and 80% of the time the scene was playing out perfectly fine freeform and we didn't want to interrupt the flow to check what we were "meant" to be doing.

I'm still thankful to this game for giving us the idea for (or even somehow ""legitimising""??) our silly freeform princess fiasco.

And I think the experience has honed my opinion about the nature of TTRPG mechanics: you don't actually need them at all. What's most important is enthusiasm, shared expectations, and an appreciation for genre.

And if you don't have those things already, a book like this can certainly help deliver them to you!

This game got into my brain in the vey best way. I have spent the past three evenings in a feverish blur of designing and deploying and redesigning my ships: from my first sloppy, budget attempt to make a handful of cannons remain aloft long enough to actually win an engagement, I've plumbed the depths and heights of what this game has to offer.

And it offers a lot! I built turret-laden battlecruisers, barely aloft from the weight of their huge onboard difference engines, grinding out firing solutions for their artillery. I built high-flying troop carriers with a hold full of jetpack-equipped marines. I built an assault ship with nothing but a face full of flamethrowers and rockets. By combining the technologies of landships and fixed-wing flight, I even built a walking aircraft carrier - just an airstrip with legs. Was it an effective design? Of course not. But I built it!

I admit I am very much the target audience for games like this. Back in the day, I wasted many hours sending fleets back and forth with my brother in Gratuitous Space Battles. And I always loved the ship designers in 4X games, and I was always disappointed when all that effort never actually mattered very much.

For a game like this to work, you need a design puzzle that's complicated enough that the decisions matter, so that players can express themselves and come up with interesting solutions. But you also need the design tool itself to be accessible and easy to use, so that they can actually engage with that puzzle.

I really, really enjoyed the mechanical balancing act here - everything matters, and everything has a clear, evocative, understandable function. Your weapons need ammo and your suspendium engines need coal, but they're dangerously flammable so you'll need a water supply close to hand. And when things do go wrong, you'll need a repair bay nearby, too. And then of course you'll need crew quarters for all those sailors. It reminds me of city-building games, where ideally you want everything to be nearby, but you have to compromise because it all takes up space.

There's a couple of pretty interesting mini-mechanics in there, too. Your ship's lift score determines its service ceiling: its maximum height. That literally gives you more room to maneouver, and being able to get above your opponent is really important for bombing and boarding strategies.

Meanwhile, if your ship has a high officer-to-crew ratio from building extra bridges, you'll be able to issue special orders more often - which is essential for more complicated tactics. Also, if all the command centres aboard a ship get destroyed, you won't be able to issue orders or even see what's going on inside.

(In practice, I did find myself mostly relying on simple artillery ships that didn't need much micro-management, but I challenged myself to try some more challenging designs.)

The persistent conquest mode is pretty bare-bones, but functional: it lets you focus on designing and deploying your airships, rather than resource management or, say, agricultural policy. And that's fine!

Having played even more of this game than I intended to, I could certainly name some improvements I'd like to see. It would be nice if there were clearer, more detailed information during battles. Say, hovertext reminding you what each visible module aboard the enemy ships (or indeed, your ships!) actually is.

I got pretty good at reading the spritework - which is all pretty decent - but squinting at the enemy fleet trying to count how many cannons they have, and what type they are, gets a bit tiring.

There's a pretty useful ingame tutorial, but it would be nice if there were one or two more steps explaining grappling and ramming - they were conspicuous by their absence.

And then we get down to some really petty things - like how one of the most common commands you deliver in battle is "M"+"F" ("move here and rotate facing"), but if you accidentally press just "F" it tells your ship to "focus on extinguishing fires" and then triggers your command cooldown so you can't correct your mistake. 

Or how it'd be nice if the design tool had a "paint" button for armour, so that you don't have to manually smear it over each square of the ship. 

Or how the highlighting for which technologies you have and haven't researched could be much clearer.

You know what, I might just go ahead and leave this stuff as actual feedback because I'd love to see this game get even better.

Overall, it's very impressive and a for what seems to be a one-person show.

I have a special place in my heart for RPGMaker. Its tantalising accessibility has enabled plenty of people to realise their dreams (and others - including my school-age self - to just explore them, even if nothing much came of it).

I loved Skyborn, for example, because it hit those retro notes and didn't overstay its welcome, and RPGMaker gave it the toolset to do that.

Lost Art shows that hyper-traditional JRPGs aren't the only thing you can use it for, and offers a fantasy that I don't think I've seen before - which is worth the price of admission.

It's got a lot in common with fantasy shop sims Recettear and Bargain Quest. Like those games, it's got a clear gameplay loop: remind yourself which regulars you're expecting today; set up your rooms in anticipation; check in and check out.

Of course, the challenge can be completely defeated by reloading your save once you know who's arriving tonight.

There's also an evolving series of items to acquire and tasks to complete to improve your inn, and I admit I got in the habit of zooming around town talking to every NPC every couple of days in case I missed something new.

Both of these behaviours undermine the causal quaintness the game is aiming for, so I'm making an effort to try not to do them so much.

Speaking of thematic disconnects, it did strike me as a little weird that the main daily decisions invoke ordering your butler to haul four single beds back up into your attic and bring two double beds down. And firing your chef for the day because none of your guests strictly need breakfast.

Maybe that's how it works. I'm not a real innkeeper.

Some of the other decisions didn't really feel like decisions, either. You're meant to toggle which amenities you can afford on a regular, tactical basis, but I found myself trying to say yes to everything, all the time. The game punishes you for not running your newspaper ad, or for not hiring your staff often enough to prevent pests returning.

I'm probably going to lose at the strategic level because of this - there's a mountain of debt that needs repaying in a month's time - but humans are bad at conceptualising Big Numbers when they spend their days working with small numbers...

It's like how in real life I don't feel bad about buying nice snacks because I know I shouldn't bother thinking about buying a house because I'm a millennial.

The premise of the game allows for some very economical design decisions: the entire game area is only a few dozen screens. I can't fault that, since it also helps the place feel cozy and quaint. Your empty mansion and the tiny town also feel alive thanks to the guests who come and go, wandering around their favourite spots.

There's a couple of perky, plinky tunes that were stuck in my head when I started writing this, but have since vanished.

There's a "main plot" of sorts about a gold-digging cousin and some kind of secret or treasure hidden in the mansion, but it's clearly more about the characters and the moments.

Like that first night, sleeping on the couch in the hall so that our one and only guest could stay in my room.

Or when the visiting young adventurer offered to user the tools of his trade to solve my rat problem, and get some experience while he was at it.

Or when my loyal butler explained that the reason he's always standing ready in the corner of each room from the moment I enter it is simply that he's a really good butler who anticipates my needs.

Stringing these moments together and achieving each step towards the goal of fixing up the mansion is primal videogame progression fare, and there's a reason it's so appealing.

I admit that I spent a lot of time fiddling with room layouts and stuff, but it took me four (or was it five) sessions to finish this one. And it was a lovely experience.

Weirdly harrowing. I didn't think it was going to work, but then it kind of did? My partner and I gradually discovered that the fellow travellers we'd been envisioning were actually kind of unhealthy for each other, which was interesting.

From the rules as written, we didn't really know whether or not we're meant to let the other player know the facts we decided about ourselves as we went along. We ended up doing a sort of debrief at the end, talking about what we picked up about the other character from our interactions and what we thought was going on with their identity. I have no idea if this is the design intention.

(It turned out one was pursuing a reckless dream but frustrated at her failures, and externalised this by dragging others down and surrounding herself with people she could feel superior to. The other allowed herself to be pulled along in this wake because she lacked the resolve and bravery to take the plunge and follow her own goals.)

I think some of the scene descriptions could be a bit tighter in terms of what they're trying to evoke and how the facts, decisions, and setting are meant to relate to each other.

Some of the links to the song titles & lyrics were either tenuous or low hanging fruit or both, but I can't really complain about that. Even though our experience turned out to be compellingly uncomfortable, the game's ultimately just a strange bit of fun built to an amusing constraint.

I'm probably not qualified to talk about Nuclear Throne - it's been out for ages, it's Acclaimed, and it's not my favourite genre.

I agree that it's a good game: the core gameplay is solid and compelling, and there's a whole bunch of weapons and mutations to keep things fresh. Is it better than Enter the Gungeon? I don't know - probably? They both play fast, obviously, but Gungeon maybe had a bit more downtime in its exploration and also maybe a bit more of a grind before you unlock anything meaningful.

I guess I'll take the rest of this space to make a general point. We've made a lot of videogames about shooting things by now, right? And I know there's only so many ways you can make guns feel different and you've got to make use of that space. Buuuut:

I'm really sick of semiautomatic weapons. I didn't come here to play a clicker game, dammit! Click click click. And then when these games inevitably introduce reload & rate of fire boosts, I have to feel that out for myself and try to adjust my click frequency to be 4% faster to maximize that boost!

Oh, and explosions. I get that it adds gameplay and design space (look, there's a mutation that makes you immune to explosions!) but I'm sick of suddenly dying from massive damage. Especially if it's technically my own fault. Grr.

There's... a lot going on here. It starts off a bit too "dark & edgy deconstruction" for me, with the sword-dispensing old man's famous warning written in his own blood and the ~ chosen hero ~ dying right in front of you in the first dungeon. I'm not really sure where it's going with this, since the rest of the game from that point is horror lite at worst. As far as I can tell, at least. Maybe I'm missing something.

On top of its glitch / self-aware / fairytale derailed schtick, there's also a weirdly laboured critique of the finance industry packed in there, with pun-spewing banker skeletons and even a stock tracking slot machine minigame. I don't know how well these fit in with the main premise. I genuinely do appreciate the puns, though.

Meanwhile, there's a side quest where you gather lost books for your local lesbian librarian, ranging from ~ deep lore ~ to skeleton themed filks of popular music to a monster girl romance novel of her own creation. (I actually ended up impressing her so much with my book-finding skills that she joined me as my companion and the rest of the game has become a weird dungeon-crawling date.)

Some of these books, NPC dialogue, and other writing are pretty amusing - I really prefer this light stuff to the attempted glitch horror content. For example, there's flashbacks to the big bad (?) exasperatedly trying to teach their crew of dungeon bosses not to make fatal tropey mistakes. Like opening up their incredibly vulnerable mouth to "eat the mean arrows" when the hero attacks them. It's very reminiscent of the Nightmare Knight in Cucumber Quest.

I even found myself writing down the number for a pizza delivery company based on a jingle sung by a boss in one of these scenes, so that I could call them on the in-game mobile.

Speaking of bosses, their designs are interesting enough, though most fights are a bit short. I'd say all too short, but the most recent boss did at least surprise me with an amusing second phase of sorts, where I had to input the Konami Code on a teleporting joystick while evading minions.

I can't end my review without talking about randomisation. I get why roguelikes are popular, and I know there's even a niche but popular cottage community out there of Link to the Past randomisers. But for a small "couple of hours" indie experience like this, I'd really prefer hand-crafted, curated content. I'd much prefer a solid, short experience than a disjointed one designed to justify itself through ~ infinite replayability ~.

I covered the first four dungeons and exactly half of the world map in my session first session.

The second session was a bit disappointing: the middle bunch of dungeons were an uninspiring slog, because "randomised, but more" is actually even worse than just "randomised".

I then finished it on the third session. The last two dungeons introduce a genuinely interesting glitch mechanic, which I think would have been better off appearing earlier and serving as a greater focus of the gameplay.

A lovely little puzzle-platformer, especially considering how thoroughly trod the mechanics of "moving blocks" and "redirecting lasers" are. I shouldn't have been as amused as I was when I realised the solution to an early puzzle was to stand myself on a switch so that I could focus on telekinetically moving the blocks around me. Maybe this role reversal can teach me a thing or two about what it's like to be an under-appreciated block in the sliding block puzzle of life. Or something.

The pixel graphics and animations are really cute, and just moving around feels nice - which is always important in this genre. I was never frustrated by floatiness or imprecision. There's a little weight to the blocks when you're telekinesis-ing them, and the way the blocks hop when you make them "jump" is kind of adorable.

It's short, which isn't a bad thing - I actually "finished" this one, though I scored terribly on the bonus secrets. Where even is that red key??

(This one did crash in right near the end of the very last room, which was annoying but funny. Fortunately it didn't lose my progress.)

I liked the electro-swing style level theme, and the key art of the main character. In principle, I guess the idea of speeding up to attack enemies in front of you and slowing down to dodge hazards approaching from behind creates an interesting strategic juxtaposition. Oh, and if you fail enough it offers you a mario-style super powerup, which is a nice addition.

But honestly, I just couldn't really get into the focus flow with this one, which is clearly what it needs. The movement is very jittery - you're always locked into one of a handful of distinct lanes, and moving between them is a bit too jarring.

It looks like there's some interesting unlockable cosmetics and bonus-with-a-cost gameplay modifiers, which I'm sure anyone who *can* get the hang of this one will appreciate.

Finally, it's petty, but the pixel font is also really hard to read.

Actually I couldn't get this to load past the opening screen, which is a shame.

Hopefully it's just a bug in the latest version or something - I see someone else on the forum had the same trouble!

Is this even a game? Maybe I should write a long-winded analysis article about it.

Uh, I guess it's not the best "playable commentary on the state of Modern Gaming" that I've ever seen. Is it meaningful to make that comparison? Maybe losing that contest just proves its point?

Perhaps overthinking triggers the trap?

I... liked the way that each new ~gameplay element~ made me totally lose interest in the previous ones? And then itself? Until I wondered if maybe the game *was* secretly tracking certain things. And then I realised that I had literally no agency or ability to interact with the game itself, so probably not. Hmm. Very clever.

The aesthetic put me off when I was first browsing the list, but then I watched the trailer and I had to hear more of the scottish teapot robot hologram. His delivery of the "mission briefing" got me way more engaged in the game than it had any right to. The one other voice performance in the game so far is also lovely to listen to.

Gameplay-wise, you're assembling a set of cards... but it's definitely not a deckbuilder, because there's no shuffling and drawing. I guess the items you're putting in your slots could be, like, potatoes or something for all it matters. I enjoyed the puzzle of satisfying all my cards' constraints to get their full value (place in an even-numbered slot, card to the left gets -1, etc).

The core gameplay still felt a bit shallow, though - you move into enemies and then you just trade blows based on your attack and defence. There's a "day & night" cycle which determines who attacks first, which is important for survival but also kind of fiddly.

Since most cards basically just affect one of your two stats, I didn't find the "loot" part of the game especially exciting. I did find a rare special card that basically read "screw it, this game is real time now, good luck", so clearly there's some interesting design space that they do explore, even if I didn't see most of it in my half dozen runs.

I found the controls a bit clunky. Moving on a hex grid with WASD is not a great experience, even though it does helpfully highlight where you're angling towards. I swapped to a controller, then swapped back because the card management and ability targeting are actually better with a mouse. You can't really win.

Also, as a side note: I'm really glad that there's an option to play as a girl rather than the grubby looking man-lump in most of the promo material.

Another side note: I forgot the third most notable voice performance in the game, which is the "bolas lady" enemy who says "bolas bolas bolas" constantly. She will be haunting my dreams

It's got a strong "pastel-pixel-leet-hacker" aesthetic and theme that extends to all the menus and interfaces. That's backed up by the writing, fantasy slang, and puns.

I'm hoping that the "witch" part of "glitch witch" gets to shine a little more at some point, though. I'm not really sure if it's just a metaphor.

I realise I've just been assuming the creators and/or characters are trans because this whole schtick is a distinctly trans subculture tbh.

Gameplay wise, the "combat" is match 3 puzzling... except every tile type helps you locate the enemy hacker in a different way, and blowing them up with bomb tiles is your ultimate goal.

Because that hacker is hiding somewhere on the board, and sometimes they move around and mess with your stuff too.

The fact that you're not just trying to match things adds a whole lot of strategy - it's often unhelpful to just myopically and reflexively trawl for the next set like you do in many matching games.

On the other hand, it sometimes feels weird when you realise that you've got enough of the two different types of action points (!) banked that you can just drag a bomb across the board without making any matches and detonate it to win the round.

Overall, it's pretty innovative and fun! I worry that later levels might get too fiddly with the partial information to the point that I have to jot down notes to keep it all straight. Which doesn't feel very cyberpunk...

Also, some of the persistence mechanics aren't really appealing to me - like stocking up and relying on items, or intentionally stacking the board in easy fights to set yourself up for the boss.

Speaking of which, the overworld is if the hacking minigame from Deus Ex were minesweeper. It's.... certainly more fun than the hacking minigame from Deus Ex.

Update following my second session: I appreciate the level gimmicks I've seen so far, even if some of them were a bit frustrating. Between escorting precious cat photos and drowning in spam, it's nice to see them exploring the design space. 

Also, much as I love chiptunes, I do wish there were more variety of music during the battle sections.

A sweet little visual novel about a human girl and an alien bee-crab woman who immediately fall into chaste lesbian love. It's very short - unless I've managed to miss a secret route or something, there's only four decision points that change the dialogue (and one of those is "kiss her" / "KISS HER" / "KISS HER ON HER NONEXISTENT MOUTH").

In fact, it's so short that the mild peril, falling out, and making up in the final chapter happens in the blink of an eye.

But I loved this brief experience, and I'll admit that I'm kind of the perfect audience. The characters and narration have a soft and gently funny voice, the art is charming and expressive, and there's some music to back it all up, too.

I also recommend checking out the artbook, because it's endearingly honest and there's some cute bonus comics.

(Incidentally, this game taught me that 'serre' is a french term for a greenhouse but has a literal meaning of 'holding tightly'. Which is terribly clever, ohohoho.)

I didn't get on with this one.

Partly that's because my controller input was getting scrombled, but swapping to keyboard didn't cause me to start enjoying it. 

The green and black "gameboy classic" pixel art was nice, if that's your thing.

 But the gameplay was frustrating with a lot of backtracking, either after reaching a chest or retrying the boring areas between save points and the wavefront of my exploration.

A game about dogs who are also space-filling curves. It's cute! I like the way their butts wiggle once they've found their bowls.

Unfortunately, the two main gimmicks (holes and conveyor belts) are both kind of annoying. I wish the holes were labelled so you didn't have to waste time probing around to see which are paired with each other.

The levels where you realise you have to intentionally move one dog out of position in order to block a conveyor belt for another are interesting, but the concept doesn't develop much.

The difficulty curve is also all over the place, just like the stretchy doggos themselves.

The standout winner of its night's session.

A great, thematic, stylish puzzle game whose core rules all make real-world sense: water flows downwards and fills available volumes; plants need irrigation to grow.

In a world full of abstract puzzlers, it's really nice to see something so fresh and flavourful.

It also teaches you its mechanics and basic strategies wordlessly as part of a pretty smooth difficulty curve, which is always a sign of a good puzzle game.

I'm not a massive fan of puzzle games but I happily played through the first 30 levels of this.

(Apparently there's only 60, but you don't want good mechanics to overstay their welcome anyway).

I definitely recommend this one.

A totally fine game that I enjoyed for a short while.

It's got some perfectly okay chiptunes, a simple and clear art style, and a tiny bit of theming I guess if you squint.

The weapon and boss names were endearingly keyforgesque.

There's a little bit of variety in weapon types, but I found myself just equipping a burst type in both primary and secondary shots and firing broadsides then dodging for a bit.

I actually thought it was quite easy for a bullet hell, especially since I'm generally not very good at them.

It's just... Fine? It's fine.

"Enemies learn the behaviour of their fallen allies by crossing their trails" - a clever concept that sounds great on paper but didn't really affect the gameplay much, except visually.

It felt more like "at the start of the game, each of the three enemy types just does its thing" and "at the end of the game, each enemy is (probably) doing all three things".

I don't know if the concept would work better fleshed out in a larger game, or if that world just highlight its lack of depth.

Which is often the case for these gimmick jam games.

Incidentally, this is probably the closest experience to being a besieged, doomed ovum I'll ever experience. I mean, just look at it.

In contrast to Out the Window (which I played in the same session), this totally failed to achieve its high-minded premise of ~ challenging the relationships between sign and signified ~.

Because its core gameplay is slow and fiddly and totally unrelated to the theme.

I get the idea that engaging your word-comprehension side of your brain while also playing a tile path game could be an interesting juxtaposition, but in practice all the difficulty came from the tiny tile selection.

It's a minigame made in a short time so I can't be too harsh to this (or any itchio game really) but it wasn't fun or engaging.

I listened to an essay on the "radio" about how the railroad both codified and eroded the concepts of time and space by breaking the relationship between traveller and terrain.

Meanwhile, I busied myself with a single button autorunner and let my eyes unfocus.

It only lasted five minutes but the stated mood and experience of the game was achieved.

A game about teaching little spider robots to play capture the flag (and other game modes) by programming and refining their AI trees.

I started playing this late one evening, then after work the next day I eagerly returned to it to try to implement some of the clever behaviour types I'd thought up during the day.

My first pass didn't perform amazingly, and I decided that it was too much like work. 

I still appreciate the game and I'm glad it exists - though I'm not sure how much variety and challenge the campaign can really offer once you've refined an effective team AI set. I don't know, because I didn't get to that point!

A roguelike isometric shooter where the schtick is that you splice your next clone with the genes of the things you killed in the previous run to make you stronger.

With the handful of robo-genes from the tutorial, I immediately turned into a body horror cyborg girl, complete with some nice painful bone-cracking flavour text for the mutations. Nice!

The visuals and gameplay were solid enough, though there's a lot of verticality and warp points in the level design that aren't represented nearly well enough in the 2d map.

I was also a bit upset that my first run lasted over an hour and I only found one gun other than the basic semiauto pistol and it was... An alien semiauto pistol.

I beat the first big boss, but then halfway through the next level I died instantly to a single crushing trap while backpedaling away from some basic enemies.

This was a massive anticlimax, but I was at least excited to mutate into a bug girl or something this time. But the interface on the splicing screen didn't seem to work properly so instead I just... Lost everything.

So I gave up.