Recent reviews by NickelSandwich

This game knows where to take up space and time, and it's a good balance of boredom and distraction that fills up the space in my life that's too often taken up by game objectives and battlepass gacha fomo brainrot. I can tell the music and aesthetics will get old waaaay before I run out of new clothing options to buy, but it's not about that. Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is clearly designed with care and benevolence. All the use I've gotten out of this game was therapeutic, and this is a great vision for the future of this type of app/game.

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I've played a few basic productivity games and some "fun" word processors. I've also played casual and incremental games that eat up all my time and attention instead of being what I want: a game to play when I don't want to play a game, when I want to work on something else but with a game going on in the background. Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is a lot closer to what I need.

First off, The aesthetics are actually good. There's not a ton of variety, but too much could be distracting and counter-intuitive. What's here is good and doesn't force itself on you. There's a few different looping playlists of chill music, and the music player is always in the center of the screen so that it's easy to adjust the volume or add relaxing noise filters like rain sounds. There's a light character creator that exclusively puts out cute doughy LGBT+ anime characters - which is great, what else did you want from this - with some clothing you can unlock by mostly just spending time with the game open. There's also some simple exploration elements where you "discover" new critters around your house by playing with the visual options and tinkering with the ASMR track settings - once you set it up you just have to idle there for a while.

In the meantime there's tools like a checklist, a timer (Pomodoro method), a habit tracker that hasn't clicked with me yet, and a simple journal that I often use for writing when I don't want to look at a word processor. What's nice is that while a few functions award XP, these tools are entirely optional. Even so, they *invite* productivity in a way that's really very novel for a game like this. This game knows where to take up space and time, and it's a good balance of boredom and distraction that fills up the space in my life that's too often taken up by game objectives and battlepass gacha fomo brainrot. I can tell the music and aesthetics will get old waaaay before I run out of new clothing options to buy, but it's not about that. Spirit City: Lofi Sessions is clearly designed with care and benevolence. All the use I've gotten out of this game was therapeutic, and this is a great vision for the future of this type of app/game.

Fundamental single-player arcade card game. Appreciates the deck of cards intimately, as a possibility space, a sandbox, object and playground. The cards in this game are collectible, creative tools, and the randomness of the format and addictive hype represent the gambling roots of the medium without the exploitation. The game's actual design ethics are the same as any classic solitaire card game: discovering and exploring possibility space.

To be fair, if you're reading these reviews, it's probably because you're already playing Balatro. So if you are interested in exploring these themes more, check out Zachtronics Solitaire Collection.

Modern action-adventure game that hits *way* above its weight. Notes of Hollow Knight, Metroid, Celeste, and Umihara Kawase. Whets the imagination with a fresh setting, sweet characters, and a sophisticated balance of combat and acrobatics. Does a ton, and doesn't overdo it. I think this is one of the greats.

A unique incremental/idle/sandbox game that eschews huge numbers and currency accumulation for diversity and genetics. The conceit of raising weird little artificial dogs is perfect for this; dogs are an animal that humans both love and subject to exploitative eugenics. Wobbledogs are cheap, alien and a little insect-like, as if to evoke the experiments of fruit fly breeding. They're also quite cute, a little clever, and just long-lived enough to make you a little somber when it's time for one to go.

Early indie roguelite that attempts to translate the brutal physicality and procedure of games like Spelunky and Nuclear Throne to a pure FPS format, with a striking visual and aural identity. Has its limitations for sure, but considering the projects its designers would later be involved in, this is an interesting piece of game design.

Though Maddy later found significant recognition for the singleplayer platformer Celeste, the lesser-known Towerfall captures the chaos, customizability, and depth of the best Smash games without relying on a needlessly high input barrier or obnoxious tier list meta -- and remains one of the finest couch multiplayer games ever.

A stylish and approachable Japanese horror shmup! Similar mechanically to Danmaku Unlimited, this game boasts a flexible Graze Hyper system and two-phase bosses with creative and awe-inspiring designs and patterns. Easy achievements to 100%, but if you like these kinds of games the higher difficulty levels will be more than enough to make this a mainstay.

It's fine. The first game was a unique casual adventure game, combining a simple ecosystem simulation with a very well designed FPS/3D platformer/collectathon-y formula. This game has good intentions to deepen the sunny vibes of the original game, but the adventure component just isn't present at the moment.

Love the new visual style, some of the new slimes are good ideas. The new map is probably the biggest shortcoming, it just doesn't flow as a cohesive whole like the old one did. Additionally, it's just still very early access. It will probably take a while before it hits 1.0, and then a few *more* years before it might really feel like its own game.

Don't even think about buying this until you've mastered the first game, and then, maybe just pick this up as a show of good faith. I'm giving it a temporary negative but I'm looking forward to watching it grow, and you should too.

It's got all the hallmarks of a Souls-like game: levels with secret side paths and satisfying shortcut loops, a deliberate stamina-based combat system, and that cozy "tough but fair" corpse run mechanic. But Nioh 2's 11 weapons, random stat rolls and multitudinous spell and consumable options contain a depth of build crunching and combo spamming that runs abysmally deeper than Dark Souls or even Monster Hunter.

Accordingly, this is a game for freaks. Install at your own risk.

HIDEKI KAMIYA POSTS MOST DERANGED SHMUP EVER

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