NickelSandwich 最近的評論

Eggs are a common element of video games, so common as to transcend the easy punch lines. They're an origin of life, a resource, a fuel. They conceal something valuable, like a treasure chest. Also somehow disposable. Both durable and fragile, renewable and precious.

Culinarily, eggs also exhibit gamelike qualities. They require dexterity, timing, creativity, strategy. There's success and failure states, but also, strangely, build variety, emergent gameplay, customization. The story goes that the chef's cap has 100 pleats to represent the 100 ways to cook an egg. All this to say, eggs are an excellent video game.

Arctic Eggs' bleak world-on-the-brink enforces a spartan simplicity on this possibility space: you are frying eggs over-easy in increasingly difficult dexterity challenges. The challenges are one-and-done, and finishing them unlocks new areas and progresses the story. The goofy physics engine game as a tactile gauntlet, one which ultimately the player needs to feel their way through. It presents the frozen slum society as a place where you can see more of the world by getting to know people and putting your heart into feeding them.

Blackjack as a deckbuilding, dueling RPG. I don't think the title or the framing really does this justice. On the surface we're occupying the same space as Balatro (classic card game mechanics mixed with roguelike deckbuilding) but the nature of Blackjack leads us down a very different path into a more pugilistic venture full of idiosyncratic characters and special cards that can potentially break the game in *either* direction.

Compared to Balatro, it's true, something about this game is undeniably scuffed. It's a more thematic, grungy, even at times a poorly balanced experience. Despite that, the things this game does to Blackjack are just as interesting as what Balatro does to Big Two. Smoke a good one and see where it takes you.

Orthodox action roguelite with understated RNG effects and strong emphasis on action game fundamentals. Most of the RNG here comes in the form of spell and stat customization, while moveset variation is mostly character dependent. Gorgeous pixel art and an inspired but not very serious fantasy setting. It's a solid game!

A fantasy game console full of brand new retro games from every genre imaginable.

The games are experimental, clever, and feature-complete, each quite good in their own right, and a few could be worth the price of admission by themselves. I'm only halfway through the catalog because I keep coming back just for more Party House, Mooncat, Campanella and Grimstone!

That said, they truly show their colors in conversation with each other, as both a dream of a prodigy game studio from the 80s and as a commemoration of the actual Indie Game Zinester era of the late 2000s.

This game got the worst break, and it makes me sad. Forsaken by the fans, who embroiled in a culture war hallucination at launch, engaged more meaningfully with a JP only Gacha spinoff. Forgotten by designers who left us with nought but a sparse library of costumes (obviously just for the girls) that either cost way too much in-game currency or way too much out-of-game honest-to-god real currency. The game's monetization and unlock pacing is frankly predatory and should be avoided and circumvented by any means necessary. While forward-thinking in some ways, its attempt to lower the cost of entry with a by-character model was half-baked and did not succeed. Dead Or Alive perished with Soul Calibur in the Late 2010s 3D Fighter Incident.

Blatant sexualization is pretty awkward, (Marie Rose especially, do not @ me) and even more so due to the recency and high definition of the game. Likewise, the halfhearted attempts to clean up the game's image left some obvious omissions, like the stupid cut-out hole that appears after heavy attacks on some costumes as a non-committal pass at clothing destruction.

What's funny is, they didn't need it. All the characters look gorgeous (better than ever, even!) and the animations, costumes, and even the goofy cinematics frequently endear me to them in surprising ways. There's plenty of potential here - While DOA6 has some involved combos, the core mechanics are simple without being braindead and uniquely grapple-focused and grounded, standing out against its flashy contemporary lunch-eater Tekken. The characters and story are... vapid yes, but expressive, charming and above all, glamorous.

Though they attempted to "tone it down", I think a better approach would have been to focus on broadening and universalizing the horniness and camp, especially since what's here is generally really good. Although underdeveloped, even the guys have a softness to them that deserved to be explored further, but is harshly limited by the overwhelming conservative male-gaziness of the game. If they ever bring this franchise back they should just make it full bimbo. Give all the dudes sexy costumes too, and add a mode where we can organize sleepovers and play board games with the characters or something. Gamers are still down bad, you just have to humanize it a little.

Despite it all, I still stan this bimbo fighter. Despite the poor timing and muddled intentions, what's here is undeniably high quality and it truly deserved better.

Professionally viable pixel art software. That's the review.

Experimental arcade platformer game with messy physics, abilities, and level design, somewhat reminiscent of *squints eyes at notes* Starseed Pilgrim and Blueberry Garden, I guess? A challenging, luck-dependent, and yet somehow breezy way to spend a gaming session deep down the conceptual games iceberg.

Dope casual game. Bit of that incremental game vibe, that sick of your office assistant job in hell type aesthetic, it's a card-based roguelite survivor clone tower defense type thing. A little abstract, but your first completion won't take long at all. Lovely game to have up on the shelf.

For a low price you get a complete game design exploration that fits in a single gaming session, and enough depth for many more. This is essential gaming: a stylish mini-anthology of mechanics-based arcade horror experiments, and a fresh take on the Pac-Man formula.

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.