Recent reviews by Vinifer

Are you, like me, a massive word nerd? Do you love crossword puzzles? Riddles, especially the kind that are a dad joke wearing a hat and fake moustache? Do you dream of the day when the skills you honed playing typing games as a kid will come in handy battling lizardmen and store-brand gelatinous cubes? Then look no further, because you, like me, have found your next favourite game.

Do you enjoy Duolingo, but feel that it just doesn't have enough stealth sections? Do you like simple lever-pulling puzzles, but wish they involved more linguistic analysis? Then Chants of Sennaar is the game for you!

Listen, I don't know what to tell you. I get to build a magic school and put wizards in it. This is all I want out of a video game. It's definitely rough around the edges right now in the usual early access ways, but the heart is there and it's my own dang heart. If you, like me, hear "architecture + wizards" and are like "thanks, that's all I need to know, I'm buying this immediately", you will be as happy with the result as I was.

I'm so excited to finally be able to comprehend this game well enough to play it. When I look at the screen I can understand what I am seeing! When I use menus I can figure out how they work! I can close the game and open it again and still remember the controls! I didn't know how to clear animal corpses out of rooms and then I figured it out and now my dwarves no longer wallow in miasma all day long! I am having a great time.

Tiny little beaver snores. Also, one of the best games of its kind I've played, with lovely water mechanics and fascinating layered construction. But most importantly: tiny little beaver snores.

I want to like this game. I want to love this game! I cannot deal with this game. Playing it feels bad. Half the time I don't know where I'm going, the other half I don't know how to get there. I keep missing the little sparkles and having to circle back around and try again. I played it the day of my grandmother's funeral and could not manage to have an emotion about it. The music and scenery are beautiful but the writing is clunky and so are the controls.

It's like a tower defense, only there's no path and the enemy is a liquid... and it's fantastic? I want more games like this.

This game is everything I wanted from Factorio and couldn't get because I didn't understand Factorio well enough to play it. Also it's incredibly pretty. Standing on a gas giant's moon and watching the double dawn as the sun comes into view over both horizons was a genuinely breathtaking experience.

It's goofy, it's fun, it's got the narrator from the Stanley Parable. Interesting combination of dungeonkeeping and more RTS-like play. I'm into it.

Are you, like me, a huge language nerd? If so, enjoy hours of sailing the magical space rivers looking for scribbles of ancient text to decipher. I hear there's also a plot or something.