Recent reviews by Lioncache

Provides a very bizarre world moreso than the gameplay (which is actually quite fun once you get the hang of it). Why were there flamingos in the arctic. Why do two guys synchronize everything they do? What is interpretive plumbing? Can you fry an egg on top of Mount Everest?

As far as exposition goes, you weave between two intertwining thread of one part weird and one part genuine philosophical dialogue at times. It's almost mystifying in how it pulled me in despite how simple the gameplay mechanics are and how off-kilter everything seems.

I really enjoyed this once I worked out how finicky controlling the pan was, which was quite short. Also the variety of things you need to fry or manage is really well done (and I liked tossing the meat cube around). Who knew that frying with bullets and cigarettes could enhance the cooking experience?

Definitely one of those games that I'll keep thinking about every so often, since its brand of weird is directly in my strike zone. It's genuinely a work of art.

[Note: This review contains spoilers and mild analysis. If that isn't your thing, please skip over this]

Neva is a game about the beauty of nature and the idea of parenthood all mixed into one stunning package. You play as Alba, a woman whose origins and affiliations aren't stated and through revelations in the game you come to assume is a child of nature itself. You also have a white wolf companion named, as you might expect, Neva.

Throughout the game and their adventure together, you witness Neva's growth and the growing inversion of her role with Alba. You see Neva as a curious but clumsy pup that's heavily reliant on Alba, sometimes needing to be coaxed by her to get the courage to make jumps over bigger gaps. When Neva succeeds, she does a little happy dance before moving on. Neva then grows into a young adult that starts helping out little by little in combat. By the time Neva has fully become an adult Alba has come to rely on Neva in combat and navigation, as Neva both bolsters your attack power and also allows you to ride her to move to locations faster. You get to witness this really beautiful bond and interplay develop between them.

However, as Neva matures, a 'plague' descends upon the forest and proceeds to grow ever stronger as we go through the seasons in the game. It's not exactly subtle as to what this plague is actually referring to. You can view it as climate change as a whole. You can also view it as deforestation if you'd like. Either way the message still rings clear. The plague infestation gives birth to these humanoid-looking creatures that only really seem to consume and attack Alba. When they aren't consuming parts of the forest they can be seen praying to statues and erected monuments of their superiors. Those with the power to continue effecting the progress of the plague. When they aren't doing any of the above mentioned things, they're usually found dead. A forgotten body in the hedonistic pursuit of extracting resources from the forest for their own interests.

The game concludes with this overall plague being defeated (for now), and while the game doesn't offer any overall solution with what should be done, it does provide a cautiously optimistic outlook on the ordeal that maybe things don't need to be this way.

Regardless of how you play this game: all at once, or through multiple sessions, you should expect a powerful and emotional experience that will move you to tears at several points. The entire construction of this game is exceptionally beautiful no matter what piece you look at. Be it the graphics, the soundtrack, or the narrative. It is, without a doubt, one of the prettiest games ever made.

Went into this on a whim, since I saw the demo posted about on Twitter, and I have to say that I was blown away by what I experienced.

The sound design in this game is genuinely unnerving at times, and I can't praise it highly enough. Guttural groans, metallic creaking and squeaking, low breathing positioned directly behind you, and visceral snapping and crunching noises -- it's generally pretty difficult for me get thrown 'Off' by horror games, I find, but this game did it. It went the whole nine yards and I couldn't be more thrilled. Unbelievable work that deserves a standing ovation.

The gameplay is this weird blend of typing that I haven't ever seen before in games, sometimes feeling almost voyeuristic in how you sift through some of the postcards of people recalling and relaying their memories of a thought they had, or a place they're vacationing to. Really puts into perspective just how personal manual data entry can become.

Narrative, I won't talk about. YOU (finger pointing emoji) should delve into that yourself. I'm not gonna spill all the beans here. Hop right in, there's multiple endings, so even if I talked about the ones I've gotten so far, it wouldn't be fully coherent anyway.

Overall DEAD LETTER DEPT. fully nails the horror atmosphere while bringing a really neat format spin to the table. Initially, I was uncertain about what it looked like the game was going for. But then I hopped into it and completely changed my perspective on it. So if you're on the fence, I'd urge you to try it out. You're missing out on a very unique experience otherwise. Time to dust off those typing skills.

One of the best sci-fi immersive sims ever made. The prologue of this game is one of the best moments I've ever had in gaming and really sets the tone for the rest of the game as you explore through the Art Deco laden space station trying to figure out how everything got to the current state.

Much like the genre suggests, the game is heavily tailored to means of exploration based on the player's customization path. There are almost always multiple ways to traverse to a particular place no matter your build. Going in on strength? Rip doors open or whip obstacles out of way. Hell, you can straight-up jump over the damn wall and do away with doors altogether. Spec into hacking? Then every door lock is at your beck and call. Don't have the necessary strength upgrades? Lob a recycler charge in there, but watch out!

Worldbuilding and narrative are fairly well executed. As you travel throughout the space-station, you'll run across e-mails, audio logs, post-it-notes, drawing and scribbles, and more. Some detailing the mundane day-to-day, some funny, some romantic, some just being a keypad number, and more. The world feels plausibly lived in, complete with silly office politics and rivalries to boot. I know, I know, audio logs, but, well, it's the immersive sim way. Whenever some idiot writes in an email "yeah, well lol, i know i'll be turned into a paste if i go to [x] and regroup, but i'm built different, so,", I'm like oooohh yeah, that's the stuff.

My only criticisms of the game would be that the end of the game seems to drag on for a little longer than I'd like, but even then it's a very minor complaint. My main Normal criticism is that there are a lot of parts of the game that extol the virtue of the human condition and connection and whatnot, but a lot of these cases seem to fall flat, or are effortless by means of the player already having to do some of the encumbering tasks anyway. For example, Mikhaila is someone the player character is shown to have been in a small relationship with, but she comes across, for the most part, as complete stranger with no expounding on that in an emotionally meaningful way on its own. Basically what I'm getting at, is that I would have appreciated more effort into characterization, rather than the raw throughline of the game leaning over and going, "btw, this is [x], you care about this one". I'm making it sound worse than it actually is, but yeah.

Anyway, If you enjoyed any of the Dishonored games, then this one should be a no-brainer. The gameplay loop may take a bit to stick, but once it does, boy is it good.

I... am.. t3h X slayer...!

Play as Zane, watch him swear to Revenge his mom. steffanie has to go to her job and so she could not be here. But ohhh no! she gets injected with WOLF DNA!? Also Mevin banged ur fricken mom??? Holy molyyyy

An excellent throwback to the pre-2000s. If you wanted a boomer shooter that absolutely Did Not take itself seriously and excelled on every front, look no further.

I loved the cutscenes in this game. Absolutely adored them. They nail that teenage angst while still being a riot the entire way through. I really, really love what this game does on the visual front.

But now, gameplay-wise, let's drop into it. You have some classic boomer shooter action. Varying levels with multiple secrets and a nice loadout spread to approach them with. All things considered this is a very solid experience through and through. If you're looking for a mechanically diverse boomer shooter, this may not be what you're looking for, but what I can guarantee you, though, is that you will not regret giving this one a shot. Trust me. It's very ridiculous, very charming, and very memorable.

Zane rocks, simple as!

Fragrance Point is a platformer and exploration game in a league of its own artistically. The closest I can comparatively describe it is if someone read Osamu Sato's The Art Of Computer Designing: A Black and White Approach, added their own stylistic approach to it, and ran with it. Everything looks unbelievably alien and bespoke from an architectural point of view and it's beautiful.

The main thrust of the game has you investigating the titular Fragrance Point to find out what happened to it. This involves exploring, talking to other bizarre denizens of the place, acquiring new abilities, and coming across the odd secret or two as well. Naturally, given this IS Fragrance Point, the abilities you acquire are equally bizarre looking and have their own tiny bit of exploratory depth to them to find out what scenarios they particularly work in.

Fragrance Point is a game where you need to find the beauty in being lost, taking in the atmosphere, and making progress bit by bit. Some of the inhabitants will have some hinting to point you in the right direction, but largely the game has a hands-off approach to telling you where to go, which I think works perfectly well and adds to the completely foreign backdrop. Being lost also gives you more time to listen to the absolutely killer-sounding OST. Seriously. It's extremely good.

This is a one-of-a-kind game all around: there's nothing else like it. *gun emoji* and you should play the game because I think it's really, really neat.

The moment this game dropped was an absolutely electric moment in speedrunning. Friends all gathered together in a voice call optimizing and beating each others' times, trailing over into amalgamating even more people into the mix.

On top of that social environment, you have unbelievable music, a solid art style, and some of the tightest controls ever seen in platformer games. The release of this game was lightning in a bottle and quintessentially an embodiment of circumstance. The likelihood of it ever happening again is the same as there ever being a Neon White 2.

Absolute masterclass game.

An absolute buzzer-beater of a game. I expected this to be longer than it actually turned out to be, crossing over into 2025. Though, on the way this turned out to be one of the funniest games in terms of dialog. Pavol is someone that sucks ass, he's a rampant drunk, he lost his wife, he's the most wifeless person in all of Slovakia. But! He still has conviction and some of the funniest sets Shakespearean dialog I've ever come across in video games.

Uncover a plot of monstrosities against humanity while bumbling around the kingdom and be a situational impromptu badass. Uncover a priest in a brothel and berate him! omg sacriligeous!? Find a guy ripping shisha and go "oh, chill, w/e". Roam around and come across 3D cutscenes. It's all good.

A very fun, short experience overall. I highly recommend it.

A very solid adventure game all around with a great sense of immersion.

The writing in the game coupled with the setting is this game's strong suit and, by the end of the game, becomes charming in its own right. The development of the relationship between Delilah and Henry is very grounded and genuinely comes off as plausible things people would actually talk about being isolated in the wilderness in the manner the game portrays--from just talking about everyday things, getting on each other's case in a joking manner and all-around shooting the ♥♥♥♥, to the occasional moment of emotional vulnerability. Each of the two clearly are not perfect people and have their own varying vices which are dealt with in different ways. It's very human and very, very well executed.

Environment wise, yuuuup, that looks like a forest, alright. But for real, the art style is very nice and lends itself to allowing you to stumble upon some truly beautiful scenes of canyons, vistas and forest clearings, they knew they popped off on the environmental design so much they even give you a camera to snap a few photos that are then shown back to you when the credits roll. My only criticism as far as the design goes, is that it sometimes feels very easy to get 'stuck' on a particular piece of geometry (rocks, mostly) and you need to wiggle yourself out of them, but even then, that's just a minor complaint. I don't think I have any real issues other than that.

The only thing I felt overall, outside of minor nitpicks, is that the conclusion and wrapping up of the narrative was a little unsatisfying. Not in an everything falls to bits sort of way, but just in a sense that it feels like it's missing a little something. Regardless though, I would say that if you're looking for a very emotionally human game, then this is one of the few that you cannot go wrong with.

NORCO is a game that came completely out of left field for me. I started this thinking a nice smaller game would be a good wind-down from a bunch of more action-oriented games that I've been playing recently, but ended up getting so engrossed in it that I finished it in a single sitting. I literally sat in silence as the credits were rolling thinking, "how the hell am I going to adequately talk about this?"

NORCO is a game that manages to hit everything I'm looking for narratively in a game. The writing in this game is so unbelievably solid at making you run the full gamut of emotions. It's funny and so are many of the characters that inhabit its world; it'll make you anxious with it's cleverly written developments and twists, it'll make you upset, it'll make you sad and make you feel miserable, and loop through a bunch of emotions within the middle of all of these--even recontextualizing certain events and getting some more out of you. Make no mistake though, despite all of the funny dialogue in the game, if you came to this game expecting a sense of persistent optimism, you may want to temper your expectations a little. NORCO deals with quite a few rough topics such as familial estrangement, the destruction of community cohesion, suicide, finding one's place and belonging and then subsequently losing all of it, and so on. Like a longing for somewhere or someone that's been on such a fundamental disconnect for so long that there's this non-descript festering feeling within.

Visually, the game is very unique in a manner that I haven't ever seen before. I think this is the first game that I've ever played where it's made a futuristic depiction of Louisiana (or really Louisiana in general) and it manages to do this with a very unique blend of rural/industrial amalgamating that I've never seen. It's very rare that you see swamplands merged into a futuristic setting like this, so it came off very striking from an atmospheric standpoint. Not to mention that the pixel art in the game is unbelievable with its detail in some areas of the game, particularly in the more directly populated areas of the game.

Top to bottom it becomes very evident that this game had a lot of thought and work put into it. It's easily one of the best point and click games I've ever played in my life.