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**Spoiler free**

Quick Review: Beautiful. Sweet. Special. A must play. I might summarize it as a tonic for the soul. Even though the pacing can be a bit dragged out at times, I still say that the theme and artistic quality outshines any shortcomings. I cannot recommend Spiritfarer enough.

Once in a while you play a game that is more than just a game. Spiritfarer is that life experience. It has a profound and powerful message to tell. I have never played a game like it. Easily the best game I played in 2022. It’s a shining example of a game transcending it’s medium to speak to you as a human being.


Gameplay: Spiritfarer is a much more robust game than I anticipated. Due to the art style and topic of focus, I thought it would be a short but poignant story. I was maybe expecting a few hours of gameplay. Turns out I was very wrong.

It’s much more of a cozy management game than I anticipated. It’s also got an open world element with exploration, base customization, upgrades, side quests, and mini games. I completed the main story in about 30 hours, but put in about 44 hours to see all the content. You get all the DLC in the Farewell Edition.

The gameplay revolves around taking care of spirits on your boat as you help them tie up their loose ends in their life. You’ll have to monitor their mood, feed them food they enjoy, improve their houses, and complete their requests. This will lead you around an open map as you uncover new islands to explore and find resources. You’ll need resources to construct new buildings and improvements.

The management side of things comes from keeping all of your workstations producing the required items. It could be cooking food, fishing, growing plants, smelting, etc. A lot of these workstations use mini games to produce anything, turning these into activities rather than just a collecting spree. If you complete the mini games perfectly, you get more efficient resources. But if you can’t get the timing right, don’t worry -- You still get a base amount of resources. I think this is a very accessible and friendly gameplay solution to keep the spirit of this game wholesome.

While the depth of content was a welcome surprise, I do think it comes at a slight cost. Due to the open nature of the gameplay, the focus of the story loses a bit of steam. It also doesn’t help that, often, the story progression is halted by a missing resource you don’t know where to find. My advise is to look up where to find missing items on the forums. Usually, I stay away from that so as not to spoil anything, but I think it’s worth it in this case to keep the experience moving forward.


User Interface: The User Interface was a standard and useful experience that blended with the art style well. Menus stuck to the Everlight color scheme, and interactive objects light up with a helpful silhouette. Key bindings are all configurable. When I first stared the game, there were some visual bugs with the UI; for some reason the game thought I had an Xbox controller plugged in. It eventually sorted itself out.


Atmosphere: Masterful! The theme, art, music, sound, animation, all of it! Inspiring quality!

The colorful 2D art style is very charming. But what really sells the quality is the animation. The game looks more like a 2D animated cartoon or anime rather than a video game. There is real care for the frames of movement that are a joy to behold. The posing is also very strong. Every character has a unique design and personality, and they are all punctuated by strong poses. Beautiful work!

The sound design is pretty good too. Even though the game is a 2D experience, the sounds seem to really support the game as an expressive world. From seagulls chirping, to the boat cutting through water, to plucking vegetables, everything feels appropriately expressive. Strong sound design!

The music is on another level! I already bought the soundtrack. I cannot convey enough how much the music adds to the beauty of this game. The moving and atmospheric pieces really add to the theme. But the quirkier pieces also add an individuality, not only to each character, but to the game as a whole. Fantastic music!

Theme: The theme is about palliative care, and if my review has not made it clear already, it is handled with a quality and sensitivity that is inspiring.

Inevitably, the spirits you care for will eventually be ready to pass on. And this can be sad, because each spirit feels like a true individual.

The first time someone in my care passed away, I felt the loss. It really felt like this spirit had left. I felt like someone I knew was gone. If you’ve ever experienced loss in your life, you may be reminded of that time. I thought of my grandmother who passed away, and experienced a little bit of that loss anew. And I’m grateful for that reminder because it’s a healthy sadness. It’s a sadness that comes from love. This game handles this topic beautifully, and I think could even be used to help process this rarely discussed topic.

And perhaps that’s this game’s greatest strength of all: its theme about letting go of those you love, and giving you a space to explore those feelings with such care. At least in America, death and loss are not things we really process as a community. It’s almost a taboo subject no one wants to hear about. This game is an invitation to think about it a little, and to gain a little more comfort in dealing with those issues.

I can only speak as someone who has experienced loss, but I imagine having gone through some deepens the experience the game offers.

This is the kind of game you’ll take with you after you’ve finished it because it leaves an impact. I’ll remember it as that reserved space that so eloquently nurtures that pang in your heart as you let someone go, and the meaningful privilege of helping them pass on from this life.


Conclusion: Beautiful. Sweet. Masterful. And deeply Human. A must play. The best game I played in 2022. It’s a privilege to recommend Spiritfarer.

**Spoiler Free**


Quick Review: Defend the Rook is a fun turn-based strategy roguelike that has you defending a kingdom from waves of enemies with mere tokens on a game board. With tons of options at your disposal, your strategy can lean in the direction you choose. However, with its structure focused on replaying the same campaign repeatedly to unlock the harder challenges, be prepared to sail through your first 7 of 10 play-throughs before the challenge really begins.


Gameplay: The game takes place on a chess board with some procedurally generated elements, with the task of defeating waves of enemies while protecting the Rook. At your disposal you have heroes, turrets, contraptions, and spells to utilize in your strategy. Everything but your spells are upgraded in between waves and battles. There are 5 biomes per run, each with 5 waves of enemies. A choice of hero upgrade is presented after each wave. Between biomes, you can spend XP and gold (earned by defeating enemies) to further upgrade your units. Upgrading provides you with many choices throughout the game to shape your strategy.

I was impressed by the number of directions you could go with your strategy. But this did make me feel a little overwhelmed at first. Once you play through it a few times and try out different units and traps you unlock, you start to figure out what works best for your play style. Choosing what upgrades to prioritize, where to place your turrets, when to use your powers, how to move your units, and what order to attack makes for a robust system of decision making. You can even set which targets your turrets should prioritize (though I never utilized this feature). The bottom line is there are a lot of strategies to choose from.

The campaign is played over 10 Ascensions (0-10). Each one basically adds extra rules that make your runs more difficult. A run has you play through 5 biomes (which are somewhat randomized) in order to unlock the next ascension. When you complete your first run in under 2 hours, you might feel disappointed at the short game length. But technically, the campaign consists of replaying the game 10 more time at harder ascension levels. I found the game wasn’t very challenging until ascension 7 or so. So the game becomes more challenging and more rewarding later on. You might not enjoy the idea of essentially replaying a game many times, even with the procedural-level elements. But if you’re okay with this genre, it adds many more hours of gameplay that gradually becomes more fun. I beat the 1st run in maybe 1.5 hours, but put in over 20 hours to 100% it.


User Interface: Overall I found the User Interface to be a helpful tool in enjoying the game. While the menus and HUD are simple enough to navigate, it’s the dynamic in-game UI that is the most impactful. This game has a lot of rule augmentations to keep track of. With each run including 5 biomes, and 5 waves per biome, that’s 25 upgrades plus 4 boss upgrades to keep track of (not to mention XP and gold purchases). If you had to keep track of each attribute yourself, it would be too complicated to enjoy. But the UI dynamically helps you with about half of this information.

Selecting a hero will show you their move potential and attack range. Hovering their movement over an enemy will show you the result of your attack. It will show you how much damage you’ll do to the enemy, what collateral damage will be applied to the board, and icons will briefly pop up to let you know what other effects will activate. This is a huge help, and I would say does about half the heavy lifting for you. Although the large amount of upgrades can be overwhelming at first, the helpful UI means that you only really need to pay attention to some of the bigger or more important effects. For example, the UI won’t tell you that you’d be better off hurting an enemy with one unit AND THEN finishing them off with another unit that gets a killing buff. Stuff like that you need to keep track of. But the UI will allow you to hover your attack over each enemy until it shows you which kill will produce the most extra kills if you have those stacked-fallout-damage outputs. It makes the game much more manageable to understand and engage with.

The controls are very simple. Left click to select and confirm, right click to cancel (There are keyboard shortcuts, but I found it easier to just use the mouse.) Movement and attack in this game count as one cohesive action, as opposed to movement and attack being two separate phases. In terms of gameplay, this means you cannot move a character out of the way and wait to attack with them later — both have to be done at once. However, it does mean that if you select a movement space to test damage output from that range, you can simply right click to cancel the movement, since you never actually committed to an action. This makes it easy to test out options before locking one in.

One thing I found unclear was the persistent unlocks you get from gems. When it came to the hero upgrades, I wasn’t sure what I was unlocking exactly. It says something like “unlock a common ability for rogue”, but what ability was I unlocking? I found out from a dev in the forums that you are adding an ability to the pool of abilities you might be presented with during your play-through, and it purposefully doesn’t tell you what that specific ability is. I wish this was better explained.

Overall the UI made for a helpful experience.


Atmosphere: The basic premise is that as the magister, you have command over actual summoned heroes and the Rook out in the world via proxy of chess-like pieces on a game board. The Queen hires you to fight off invading hordes threatening her kingdom. It’s a quick and simple story that adds some fun fantasy context to a strategic board game. I enjoyed the idea of participating in epic fights via the comfort of a chess board. I found the story effective, but not immersive. You’re not going to play this game for the story. The story serves the gameplay, and I think it’s does so well.

The art style is a combination of 2D and 3D elements, with the world and story presentation largely in 2D, and the board and gameplay largely in static-camera 3D.

The hits sound very impactful, which I really appreciate. The animation is minimal, yet the SFX give your attacks a weighty feel. It makes the experience more satisfying.

The music is more epic than I was expecting. Often with tactical games you get “thinking pieces” which can have a chill and calm vibe. Defend the Rook strikes a really nice balance between "thinking music" and "orchestral pieces". Although it’s not a soundtrack I would listen to outside of the game, it does a really good job at immersing you in the world, where the stakes are high and the outcome uncertain. Good in-game music.

Even though I might not have felt immersed in the world of Defend the Rook, I was immersed in the gameplay. The sound and visuals work well together to make a static board game environment interesting to sink some time into.


Conclusion: Defend the Rook is a fun turn-based strategy roguelike that is full of options and choices to create your own tactical approach. The user interface is very helpful and the atmosphere adds a nice touch to the static-camera gameplay. The required repetitive play-throughs to unlock more challenging runs might be a turn off for those who don’t have the patience for slow ramping difficulty. But I think the overall experience is worth your time. I got it on sale for $9, but I personally think the full asking price of $18 is fair. Recommend.

**Spoiler Free**

Quick Review: Sword Legacy Omen falls into that “Mixed” category. So I struggled on which way to rate it since Steam doesn’t have a “Mixed” option. But ultimately, I fell into the “Not Recommend” camp because I think there were enough frustrating elements to negatively impact the overall experience. It’s not a horrible game, and by the end I was starting to have fun. But I had to wade through confusing and frustrating experiences to get there, and had to accept it as a flawed game first. I would only consider buying this on a sale, if at all.

Summary of Criticism: The overall experience is really hampered by a common theme: A lack of information available to the player.

• Primary Frustration: Lack of Information about combat mechanic -> lack of ability to asses risk -> frustrating experience
  
• Secondary Frustration: lack of Information easily presented to you -> debuffs not calculated into available AP -> leads to mistakes during turns with no undo action -> bad positioning -> frustrating experience
  
• UI frustrations: clunky camera during exploring, camera always snapping back to player on moves -> annoying experience

The lack of explanation about how the combat calculations work is the main reason why I gave this game a “Not Recommend”. Everything else, even if annoying, is forgivable to me. But the first offender excludes any information to even work with.

Primary Criticism Explained: The lack of explanation about how combat works is more than simply not holding your hand enough during a tutorial (Though there really isn’t much of a tutorial, so you need to read everything in the help section.) The game never tells you how combat is calculated. This seems like critical information. Is the outcome calculatable from the stats? (ex: 5 attack - 3 defense = 2 damage). Or is it based on die rolls? Is it based on chance? If so, what is the % chance of different outcomes?

There’s no information on how damage will be calculated. It doesn’t tell you how much damage you’ll do or receive. Sometimes you do 1 damage. Sometimes you overkill them. Sometimes your members block every attack, sometimes they’re practically one-shot into oblivion. This unknown, and seemingly random damage output, forced me to restart a few levels where I didn’t feel I deserved to. I played levels where I would get wrecked, and then try again with a similar tactic and win easily. Damage does not seem consistent or predictable.

(FYI: Berserk mode can come from depleted willpower, in case you’re confused why an enemy will suddenly destroy you.)


Secondary Criticism Explained: There were plenty of times where after I had moved, I realized my AP was depleted before expected. I later realized I was debuffed, or I walked over a debuff-space that wasn’t pre-calculated into my movement (ex: I technically had 10 AP, but 3 AP was going to be depleted when moving over a space, and that was not indicated in the 10 AP seemingly available).

I wish the move system calculated AP-drain and obstacle impairments. I really wish there was an undo button. I felt frustrated by battles where I performed far less optimally than I feel I should have.

UI Criticism Explained: The game overall feels clunky. Left click doesn’t always work, and a different input is needed to “wake up” detection. Usually moving the camera will solve this.

The camera is quite sluggish. It is limited to your immediate vicinity, almost like it constantly hits an invisible wall. The camera also snaps back to your character when they move, which can be jarring. Plus, this camera-snapping action affects your movement since the left click only finishes while the camera is in mid-movement. Honestly, you’re better off not free-moving the camera at all and staying locked onto your character.

The lack of information in Sword Legacy Omen means that you need to err on the side of caution, forcing you to play in a more defensive strategy. I don’t like being forced into using a strategy because I don’t understand how the game works.

Once I gave up trying to understand it, I became more at peace with what the game actually is. But before I got to that acceptance, the game made me feel stupid. I felt like I was stumbling through for about half the game...which wasn’t a very pleasing feeling.

This feels like a game I would have enjoyed more on a second play-through, while treating the first play-through as a tutorial on how to play and what to expect. But this is a linear experience, with no replay value. Something is off if it takes an entire game to finally get how the game works.

Gameplay: Apart from the frustrations I mentioned above, the gameplay does have it’s enjoyable moments. The world map is basic and linear. Each level is split between exploring (which is very linear) and combat. With your party of four selected heroes, you battle on a turn-based grid. All your characters move before your opponents. Movement and abilities have AP costs, and you get a set amount of AP for each member’s turn. So you have to balance your movement and abilities.

Positioning is very important. You always want to attack from behind or the flank. Right clicking in a direction will set your character to look in a direction. I found the most predictable success with attacking and defending from advantageous positions. If I couldn’t effectively position my members for an attack, I would turtle mode into a defensive position.

Characters are only upgraded by better equipment (no XP). You can also unlock new abilities, but they are not upgradable. Since you can only use 4, once you have them, you feel like your characters hit a power cap. I wish you could upgrade abilities.

Atmosphere: The story takes place in a broken Brittania, seemingly a sort of prequel to King Arthur. The mood is grim and dire, but the art style brightens up the overall vibe. Animations are serviceable, but the kills can be gruesome, which I think works well with the style.

The story is told through narrated segments, and then through text between characters. It’s serviceable. It’s no bad, just minimal. I felt it was only there to give context, rather than to immerse you.

The narrator has a great performance, with a lot of gravitas. Outside of grunts in battle, there is no other voice over.

Most of the tone is set by the music, and unfortunately, I found the music to be rather annoying. The music uses sampled instruments, so you can tell it’s not a live orchestra. This can work if done well, but there aren’t many tracks, and so the music gets very repetitive. The worst part is the battle music is used over the world map, when you’re trying to look through shops and inventory. It’s super annoying to hear these hyper-driving strings when you’re just trying to read and think about something. Funny enough, the final level and the credits had a couple of new tracks that the rest of the game desperately needed.

Though the atmosphere is a mix of highs and lows, I’m afraid the immersion was always doomed due to the frustrating criticisms I described earlier. Even if the sound, visuals, and story were all top notch, the experience would really suffer from the frustrating lack of information in the combat and UI.

Conclusion: Though I have described way more in depth the negatives rather then the positives, I wouldn’t consider this a horrible game. By the end, I was finally starting to get some enjoyment out of it. But I really cannot rate this as a positive experience due to all the shortcomings that got in the way. Maybe consider it on a sale. But there’s an argument to skip it altogether. It’s a Not Recommend from me.

**Spoiler Free**

Quick Review: Costume Quest is a cute and simple turn-based RPG that celebrates the spirit of Halloween and captures the childhood joy of trick-or-treating. What it lacks in depth or strategy, it makes up for with charm and atmosphere. I recommend playing this around Halloween, or if you’re new to the genre or gaming in general.


Gameplay: A review here on Steam described Costume Quest as “baby’s first RPG,” and I think that’s an apt summary. The gameplay is basic and straight forward. You explore little neighborhoods searching for candy by trick-or-treating at houses or smashing objects around the environment. Every house must be visited to progress the story. It’s a linear story, so there are no branching storylines, and no decisions to make in conversations.

The candy can be used to purchase Battle Stamps, which are equipped to your characters to add an ability or effect in battle. One stamp can be assigned per party member.

Of course, Costume Quest is all about the costumes. Costumes must be crafted by finding the materials needed around the world. Most costumes will give you an ability you can use while exploring the world, allowing you to reach new destinations that would otherwise be blocked. Each costume will also give you a different ability in battle. I thought the costumes were handled well given how simple the game is.

Speaking of battles, the turn-based system is very simple. On your turn, you can either attack with your basic attack, use your special if you’ve charged your meter, or flee the encopunter. You charge your meter every three turns. If you have a battle stamp ability, you can use that too. The limited combat options give you very little room to experiment or strategize. It’s just very straightforward. I actually lost a couple of battles, so there’s “some" skill involved, but it’s minimal. (Basically, you just need to make sure you're succeeding on the quicktime events.) And if you lose, you spawn right before the battle, so it’s no big deal.

The one thing about combat that makes it feel more engaging is the quicktime events. Every attack (and defense) you make requires a quicktime event to maximize its effectiveness. These are not combo heavy events. You either have to time a button press at a certain point, or react fast enough to press a button in a limited time window. While I felt this feature dramatically helped the gameplay feel more interesting, I actually think this could be frustrating for a new or younger gamer because the windows are pretty small. And if you’re not familiar with gaming button layouts, there isn’t enough time to look down and check what button you need to click. Obviously for any experienced gamer this isn’t an issue.

Character stats are minimal: Health and Attack Power. That’s it. No dodging, defense, critical chance, etc. It’s very simple. Characters heal to full health after each encounter.

There is also a mini game about bobbing for apples. You simply eat enough ripe apples before the timer ends. If you complete all three tiers you’ll get a card to add to your collection. Cards are collected throughout the game. I don’t believe they impact the game at all. They’re just collectibles.

The game takes around 5 hours to complete. Outside of going back to gather collectibles you missed, there's not really any reply value. There is also an included DLC called Grubbins on Ice, which is probably 2+ hours of extra game and story.

Overall the gameplay is basic and simple. It’s at a level a new or younger gamer would find appropriate (assuming they know their way around a controller for the quick time events).


User Interface: The UI is artistically consistent with the rest of the game with its hand-drawn aesthetic. The text uses a hand-drawn font, and action prompts are colorful and squiggly. The inventory menu is presented as a notebook, so the whole game looks like it was designed by a kid (in a good way).

The speech bubbles auto-continue conversations. I found the speed of the text to be fine, but it would have been nice to have an option to slow them down in case you wanted to read a little slower.

The key bindings are also remappable, which is good.

Atmosphere: Let’s face it, this is probably why you want to play the game, and it’s why I recommend it. When have you ever seen a game literally about trick-or-treating? It’s a cute, wholesome experience of Halloween that celebrates this fun holiday of childhood. The whole game is presented from a kid’s point of view. From the hand-drawn artstyle, to the conversations, to the battles.

The premise is: Your sibling is stolen by a candy-stealing goblin, and in order to advance your rescue mission quest, you need to collect candy by trick-or-treating to unlock the goblin gates and fight an evil witch...because if you come home without your sibling, you’ll be grounded by your parents. This totally sounds like a story some little kids would come up with! All of these monster encounters take place right in the middle of civilization, and none of the adults believe you when you tell them these monsters are out and about. The casual dismissal of the adults is the kind of humor and thematic consistency that plays throughout the game.

The battles are also pretty cute. Depending on your costume, when you enter battle you will transform into an epic version of that costume. When you’re a kid and you dress up for Halloween, part of the fun is make-believing that you really are this awesome robot, or you really are a powerful knight. The translation of this young mindset to a video game works really well here, and reminds me of the fun times I had growing up with Halloween!

The music is very Cartoony. I believe there is a term in music composition called “Mickey Mousing” -- when you write music very on-the-nose to line up with hits and beats in the cartoon. The soundtrack has that kind of vibe. There is a foreboding jolting character with a light-hearted instrumentation. And the battle music has kind of a huffing-and-puffing fast pace to it. I guess it all sounds like a B-Horror film. It’s nothing memorable, and on its own I would find it annoying. But it works well with the game.

Conclusion: Costume Quest is able to pull off a worthwhile experience despite its simple gameplay because of its strong atmospheric foundation. It’s commitment to presenting Halloween from that of a kid whose having fun going on an epic quest to get candy succeeds throughout its design. This is not a complicated game to play. A younger player may find this appropriate, and older gamers could find this boring. But I think if you go into it knowing what to expect, you’ll enjoy your time being a kid again, trick-or-treating on Halloween. Recommend.

**Spoiler free**

Quick Review: Even though it looks like a troll game, Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate is actually quite a fun and challenging experience. It’s roguelike elements and absurd but satisfying shotgun mechanic will keep you coming back for more. The concept is a joke, the “story” is a joke, but the game is a good one.

Gameplay: Using the rules of chess for the basic movement and attack behaviors of the pieces, your goal as the black king is to kill the white king with your trusty shotgun. There’s a chess board, the pieces move like chess pieces, the pawns promote once they get to the other side of the board, and it’s turn-based. That’s about the extent of its chess familiarity. From there, it’s all about the video game rules.

Your black king has a shotgun with some basic stats (firepower, range, spread angle, ammo, and cartridge slots), all of which can be upgraded (or downgraded). Your black king can move one space in any direction. On your turn, you can either shoot, reload, or move and reload. You gain ammo while moving instead if your cartridge slots are full.

You also have a slot for a soul card. You get a soul card when you kill a Knight, Bishop, Rook, or Queen. The soul card allows you to substitute your normal movement for that of the movement of the piece on the soul card.

After your action, the white pieces will move in chess fashion. Each piece has a waiting period before they can move. They will shake indicating they will move next. Unlike chess, it’s pretty hard to predict where the pieces might move because multiple pieces can move at once.

There are two game modes: Throne and Endless. Throne has 5 difficulties, and sees you progressing through 12 levels in a run and fighting a final boss. As you progress, more pieces will inevitably be added to the board. The difficulty you choose will determine how strong your shotgun starts, and how many pieces start on the board, health levels of the white pieces, etc. The difficulty setting makes a huge difference. (Endless is pretty self explanatory). Your king has one health, with two warnings that flare off if you are trying to move into the cross-hairs of another piece. If you get hit, you have to restart your run from scratch.

The real meat of the game comes from the scenarios you get challenged with from the roguelike card system. After every floor, you will be granted a choice between 2 pairs of cards: one card of the pair giving you an upgrade, and the other giving the white side an upgrade. It’s a simple mechanic, but extremely effective, as your choices compound on one another to create some chaotic and difficult challenges. Each choice feels impactful, and really affects your run. Do you choose the pair that upgrades your shotgun firepower by two if it makes queens immune to death? Do you skip taking a wand upgrade because you don’t want to give the white bishops you’ve already reinforced on the board the ability to fly? There are a ton of cards and combinations that create some very fun play-throughs.

A word of warning, King difficulty is very hard (Add 2 pawns, Add 1 Knight, Add 1 Bishop, Boss has 200% health, Minus 1 shotgun shell slot, Minus 1 soul card slot). I must have played that mode for over 7 hours total, constantly getting killed and shut down. I died even on level 1 many many times. But I was determined. It became a conviction of spite. I was finally able to find a strategy that worked for me because of the luck of the card draw, and I felt so accomplished for beating it. It will be up to you if the reward is worth the grind. There is no achievement attached to winning on higher difficulties, so it’s purely a personal choice.

User Interface: The UI is really simple. Everything is done with point-and-click mouse actions. The board and pieces are laid out in a 2D view, with the different cards on either side. Hovering over cards brings up a description of their effect. Hovering over pieces gives you handy information on the left side of the board: Health, movement/attack patterns, and turns before their next move. Soul cards are on the right side. The menu options are simple. You can adjust the CRT overlay effect to be more warped or off completely. Everything in the game is presented clearly and legibly.

Atmosphere: So, this is where the absurdity comes in. There is technically a story, but it’s like a few sentences long and really just seems tacked on to add a silliness to the game. Without “spoiling” anything, basically you're just a jerk trying to reclaim your kingdom. It adds a ridiculousness that I guess complements the idea of a chess piece with a shotgun blowing other chess pieces to bits. And I will say that the feedback of the shotgun is actually quite satisfying. Seeing the chess pieces explode into little scattered bits adds a pleasing amount of destruction for the premise.

The CRT overlay effect is pretty random. But I guess it adds to the silliness.

The soundscape is very synthesized. There’s lots of synthesizer in the music, but actually adds some electric guitar on the final boss. The sound effects are very electronic and typically in the higher register, though the shotgun has a gravelly sound in more of a mid-tier. The whole thing has an arcade-like sound design.

Overall, the atmosphere is an absurd and silly one. The game is more abstract, like chess, so it's not meant to engage you in a world. But these silly additions around the gameplay are a welcome bit of flare. And once you’re really in the game, you can feel like a little evil badass.

Conclusion: Despite a presentation that looks like it’s not a very serious game, it’s actually quite a fun and challenging roguelike. There are some fun and simple mechanics that highlight the choices you make in an impactful way. If you’re looking for more of a chess experience, this isn’t it -- It’s more of a roguelike with a chess skin. Personally, I’ve been finding it quite enjoyable. And I would recommend it to roguelike fans, especially for the low price point.

**Spoiler Free**

Quick Review: Earthlock is an enjoyable JRPG with classic turn-based combat and a nostalgic dated charm harkening back to the PS2 generation. Despite its simple story and frustratingly clunky user interface, it’s a fun adventure that’s worth a playthrough.

Gameplay: In classic JRPG fashion, Earthlock had you running around an overworld, exploring small locations, and fighting in turn-based combat.

Combat is fairly straight forward. There is a speed stat that determines turn order, and your characters can choose between attacking, using an item, resting, or enter their special bond mode. Attacks can be physical or elemental (or both), and enemies will have types of attacks their strong and weak against. Experimenting with different attacks adds some engagement to each fight. You can also buff your allies and de-buff the enemy. Every attack requires amri, which recharges one every turn.

An interesting mechanic is that your characters each have 2 stances they can enter, which determines what abilities they have available. Changing stances uses a turn, and I often found it unnecessary to changes stances once I found my playstyle. Sometimes it was useful to change stances against certain bosses.

Unlike most JRPGs, your stats don’t increase and you don’t learn new abilities by leveling up. Even your equipment isn’t very impactful in the game (even though there is a crafting). Instead, most of your power and abilities come from assigning Talent Points to characters. You gain talent points by leveling up your character or bond levels. It’s a bit confusing at first, since there are blue slots, red slots, and yellow slots. Blue slots are for stat upgrades, yellow slots are for unique abilities for each character, and red slots are often filled from bonuses you get from bosses. Once you assign a talent point, even though the slot is permanently used, you can swap out the talent points anytime. This method of upgrading does open up potential for different character builds and specialties.

Bond levels are also impactful. Each character haws a bond level with every other character, and it is leveled up by paring them together in battle. Once your bond meter is leveled up, you can use special abilities. Depending on how high your bond level is will determine how powerful and how many times you can use abilities in your special bond mode. Bonds between character give unique bonuses to each pair, so you can mix and match your characters based on your preference.

The small towns and locations you explore is where the story progresses, and sometimes where small puzzles emerge. The puzzles and obstacles you come across are not very challenging, but they add some gameplay value to running around. Eventually you gain access to a home base where you can craft ammo, upgrades, talents, etc. You can also warp to other locations on the overworld map, for quick travel.

The overworld is simple but also a little interesting. Your character run from location to location, encountering battles along the way. You can see the monsters in the overworld, so you can avoid combat if you can and want to. The annoying thing is that monsters have terrible pop-in from poor draw distance. This might be by design, as in a sight radius. But it comes across as a technical limitation.

One interesting thing is you can switch between which characters on the overworld map, and they each have a different special ability or interaction capability. So you will need to switch between your characters often for gameplay purposes, and I appreciated that effort. You might need to collect things, or dig for treasure, or move a little faster, etc. It made the overworld seem less abstract and a little more alive.

User Interface: Unfortunately, the UI is kind of a mess, at least on keyboard. First off, the menus are very clunky to maneuver. I found some of the default key bindings to be unintuitive. Thankfully you can customize these. But even still, there were annoyances, both big and small, throughout my playtime. You can’t hold up or sown to move quickly through menus; you have to click for each one. When you are in battle, you cannot access the main menu (your “escape button” menu). This means you can’t check your bestiary during combat to look up strengths and weaknesses, or check your inventory for stats or bonus information. There are other times in the game when the main menu isn’t accessible because of a cutscene or whatever.

But the main offender is the menu while in battle. You would think it would be organized like a folder structure, where you select a heading and then scroll down options for attacks or items or whatever. Instead, each ability has the 1-4 keys associated with it. And each menu heading has a second page of 1-4 abilities. And once you select an ability, you have to click that number key again to confirm it, instead of selecting enter or something. It’s annoying and cumbersome.

It should also be noted that Earthlock uses a manual save system just like the old JRPGs, where you have to locate a save point to save. It’s a dated mechanic that I didn’t mind because I grew up with games like this, and it’s part of the style. But this might be a real problem for a modern audience.

The UI isn’t game breaking or anything. Once you get used to it, you learn to live with it. But it’s certainly not intuitive.

Atmosphere: I thought Earthlock did a good job at creating a world I could spend time in. The story is simple, hitting the different tropes you’d see in an old JRPG. It’s nothing too impressive, but I thought it was fine. Nothing crazy or special.

The art style is certainly dated, with low poly characters, reused animations, and blurry textures. There is no voice acting apart from grunts, and there are lots of text boxes to read through. So there’s not a lot in terms of acting to sell you on the characters. I would describe the characters and storyline as innocent. But I think it’s this dated art style and presentation that plays to Earthlock’s strong points. It’s a game meant to evoke nostalgia for classic JRPGs. Just like how pixel art is very popular these days, there’s an audience and a place for this kind of callback. The color pallets are vibrant and welcoming, and every location has a personality that fits into this fantasy world.

I also thought the music was pretty catchy. I like that there are different instrumentations of the main theme song that transition seamlessly into each other between overworld exploration and combat. Some tracks can get annoying, but they are largely evocative of that adventure spirit. Funny enough, I found the operatic voice of the main theme to be too aggressive for my tastes, but you never hear that instrumentation in the game.

Overall, I felt like I entered a simple fantasy world that I could enjoy. Some of the music tracks will stay with me, and it was fun to revisit those old-style JRPGs from when I was a kid. I thought the atmosphere fit nicely together overall.

Conclusion: If you don’t mind the dated style and presentation, and you want a nostalgic JRPG, then Earthlock is worth your while. It has a simple story and an awkward UI. But it draws you into this world of amri and hogbunnies, and I think you’ll enjoy your time there. Is it the best or most innovative JRPG out there? No. Is it an enjoyable experience? Yes. Recommend.

Note: The sequel, Earthlock 2, that’s in development is not going to be turn-based, but an action game with exploration. I don’t even think it’s a true sequel. So if you only want to play this game for the backstory, it might not be necessary.

Quick Review: Sky Force Anniversary is a tame vertical scroller shooter that offsets it’s slim level count by enticing you with harder "replayability challenges" you can’t help but want to conquer. The genre is a straight homage to those classic arcade booths you’d feed quarters into behind the pizza counter, but with an updated graphical palette and soundtrack. If you’re looking for that retro fix with a slight Bullet Hell feature, you’ll feel right at home.

Gameplay: The gameplay is straightforward, simple, and effective: navigate your starship through a gauntlet of enemy planes, tanks, turrets, lasers, and missiles. Your fighter shoots automatically, leaving your fingers to move orthogonally (WASD / Arrows) as you scroll over a battlefield. Controls are responsive and precise. As you collect stars, you’ll level up your fighter. Eventually you’ll unlock special abilities. Once you do, special power ammo can be collected from the level. Or you can spend stars to load out your fighter from the get go.

There are 8 levels and a bonus level. This doesn’t seem like a lot, but you’ll have to replay them...A LOT. In order to unlock future levels, you need to collect medals from previous levels. Medals are granted by finishing the mission with a special goal in mind (ex: kill all enemies). Once you complete all 4 badges on a level, the next difficulty unlocks for that level, with those same medals to be completed again. There are 3 difficulties per level = 12 medals per level. You do not need to complete all 4 medals in one run-through; they accumulate.

This repetition might be boring for you. Or you might like the challenge, because each difficulty will require you to learn the pattern of each level. Where do the enemies spawn? Where do I need to place my starfighter? Can I get through this level without powers? Where do I need powers? You start to figure out a beta, a series of actions you’ll want to do each time to complete these challenges. Harder difficulties move the map faster, with higher-health enemies. What worked on Normal won’t work on Insane. So, you need to enjoy the fine-tuning process of repetition if you want to enjoy this game.

Achievement Hunting: 100% achievement will require a lot of repetition. But be warned, if you want to 100% this game, you’ll need to have a friend that owns the game as well. Kind of a bummer.

Controls: My only major beef with this game is the inability to remap controls. WASD/Arrows are fine. The problem is the special powers, mapped to number keys 1, 2, and 3. That is irritatingly inconvenient! Unless you have great muscle memory to jump from WASD to the number row, you can’t play one handed.

I highly suggest you use an external program to remap these powers if you’re playing on keyboard. I used VoiceAttack to remap the powers from 1,2,3 to Q,E,F respectively. AutoHotKey would be a free alternative. I found this mandatory to have an enjoyable experience. With a game so focused on movement and quick reactions, you need be comfortable with your layout. While there are third program solutions, I found the inability to remap very disappointing, so much so that I wouldn’t recommend this game if there weren’t alternative solutions. It’s a big criticism of the game, but not too bad in practice.

Atmosphere: Sky Force does a great job bridging the gap between the retro genre and modern aesthetic. I remember playing this kind of shooter at arcades as a kid, which is what drew me to this in the first place. I’m happy to say that playing it gave me that nostalgic rush without it feeling dated. That’s because it also manages to update the look to a good-looking standard. The models are low poly, and some of the texturing is clearly on a budget (mainly trees looking muddy). But the grassy fields and reflective oceans look very pleasing, while not obscuring the shapes of the flying ships you’re dealing with. It hits a nice balance between pretty and not-too-busy.

The soundtrack complements the game well too. With its electronic vibe, it bridges what was probably an 8-bit sound in the past with a modern punch of club music.

Overall, Sky Force does a great job updating a classic genre for a modern audience without losing the nostalgia of its source material. Great atmosphere that makes the repetition more enjoyable.

Conclusion: As long as you use a third party software to remap the special powers, Sky Force is definitely a game I recommend. With fun, simple, and challenging gameplay that updates a retro game to a modern visual standard, it’s definitely worth your time.

**Spoiler Free**

Although I think Archaica is a good puzzle game, I did not enjoy my time playing it. It was just too hard for my tastes and ability. Very early on I was required to use all the hints I could, often just starting the level off using hints without bothering to try and solve them on my own first. But I did not want to rate this game negatively just for my own shortcomings. And I was originally going to rate it positively, even though I found it frustrating, because I thought the puzzles were interesting.

However, there is an achievement that requires you to complete an entire realm of levels without using hints. And the game remembers your progress permanently. This means if you beat the game using hints the whole way through, you would not be able to go back and acquire this trophy without deleting data from the game files in the root folder to force a reset. And since the levels are so hard that you’re all but forced to use hints, it seemed like a dirty trick to include an achievement that gets locked by their difficulty design. To me, this warranted a negative rating. Thankfully, I checked the achievements before it was too late. I ended up looking up the answers for an entire realm online since I knew I couldn’t solve them without hints, and just didn’t find the idea of suffering through a grueling experience to be worth it. This means I didn’t really get to experience an entire realm because of an achievement they included that I wanted to get for a 100% completion.

I think it’s a good puzzle game objectively, and think the atmosphere is really enticing. But my personally enjoyment was marred by the difficulty. It’s just too hard. The last straw was the poor implementation of an achievement that punishes you for trying to play on your own. If there was a way to go back and unlock the achievement after you’d gone through the game, or if they had omitted this achievement altogether, I would have rated it positively, with the caveat that it’s a really hard game. But with this achievement in its current state, I decided I couldn’t give this game a positive rating.

I’d recommend this game if you don’t care about achievements and if you’re also a puzzle enthusiast with a masochistic complex. Otherwise, I’d pass.

**Spoiler Free**

Quick Review: SteamWorld Heist is a solid turn-based 2D game that has an incredibly satisfying combat mechanic. With every shot based on your aiming skill, you’ll be blasting your way through deep space in this white-hat pirate fantasy. Even after beating the game, the combat mechanics kept packing a pleasing punch as I chased the remaining achievements. Definitely a game you should pick up and play.


Gameplay: SteamWorld Heist has a winning combination of gameplay mechanics: turn-based combat with skill-based shooting. Raiding and looting ships filled with bad guy robots is the name of the game, and it’s a lot of fun! It’s always great to play a game that nails its primary activity, and SteamWorld Heist does just that.

In a battle, you’ll move your squad of Steambots (that you choose before the level) through an enemy ship to complete some kind of objective. Usually it’s to collect loot, destroy a certain number of enemies, beat a boss, or get to a location. A few levels have turn limits before the mission fails. There’s a fun variety that keeps the game fresh. Levels are also mostly procedurally generated, which keeps each level a little different every time you play it.

You’ll move in turns. Your steambots can either move and shoot, or just move twice as far. After you move all of your crew, the enemy gets their turn. You’ll be searching for cover and trying to place your steambots in optimal positions as you open doors blindly, or try to storm a room from different entrances to get the advantage on hard-to-reach enemies.

While the turn-based movement is good enough, the actual aiming and shooting is where the game really shines. The aiming mechanic is simple yet engaging. Since it’s a 2D game, you simply aim up or down, kind of like Angry Birds. Except, unless your lobbing grenades, your bullets go straight (there’s no drop off). But the real fun is firing that weapon and watching it impact a robot as their body parts explode out into a hail of physics-based debris. The impact of the skill shot you make really connects you to the hits and the misses you make each turn. It’s much more engaging than if it were a typical turn-based strategy scenario, where you command someone to attack, and watch as a spectator, hoping the RND percentage lands in your favor. It was a great design choice to incorporate a skill-based gameplay loop in a turn-based genre, and they pull it off with great robot-exploding satisfaction.

Before each level, you’ll get to pick your team (between 1-4 steambots) and then assign their load out with one weapon, two items, and a hat (cosmetic only). There are a variety of weapons that each correspond to a compatible character class. You can use things from handguns, to grenade launchers. Items can boost your stats (health or movement) or can even provide you with extra abilities.

Each character also has unique abilities they unlock as they level up (characters only level up if you use them and they survive the level). The combination of weapons, items, and abilities really allows for a nice spectrum of play styles and crew combinations.

(FYI, Sally is a damage machine)

Characters fully revive and heal after every mission. If you lose a mission outright, it’ll cost you a percentage of your resources.

You’ll choose your mission on the world map. These can either be skirmishes or bars/shops you visit to buy new weapons or get new missions. There really isn’t much in the way of side quests. It’s all fairly straight forward, and you basically have to complete each mission to move on to the next one.

You’ll also spend some time on your ship. But it’s the nothing to write home about. You don’t upgrade it or anything. It’s just a hub to talk to your crew and get little story moments.

The one feature I wish was included was a "movement undo" feature. Sometimes you accidentally move your character one space too close or too far, and it can ruin your entire turn, especially on elite difficulty. The work around is to quit the game before the enemy turn is over and reload (it autosaves after a full cycle of turns). So even though there’s a work around, it would have been nice to have this incorporated into the UI.

I’n the end, the combat is where SteamWorld Heist really shines. And that’s great, because you do a lot of it.

(Note: getting 100% achievements is definitely a tedious and possibly frustrating experience. I recommend using the guides and using the “exit game” loophole to redo turns)


Atmosphere: SteamWorld Heist has a distinct 2D art style which compliments the combat mechanics very well. But the 2D universe is also a fun and engaging one on its own. The game has some humor in the dialogue, and the hats definitely don’t take themselves very seriously. But I still found myself adequately engaged and transported into deep space. The game largely has one space backdrop the entire time. But its purple and orange color pallets, along with slightly-moving space clouds, is very pleasant to behold. The ships and characters have fun and charming designs with almost a comic-book aesthetic. The animation is also solid and helps to sell the universe’s personality.

There are also some funny cutscenes that use the style of an old newsreel. You know, with a narrator and some old orchestral music from a cheesy B horror flick back when cinemas were a new sensation. I thought they did a great job pulling them off, and I thought it added to the humorous charm.

The music supports the game well overall. Some of the tracks can get repetitive, especially the combat music. Yet, I did not find it obnoxious or annoying. It does a good job of sitting in the background while supplying a level of intensity. I don’t think I’d buy the soundtrack, but it works well in-game.

That is, except for the indie robot band tracks. Those are hit and miss. They’re quite quirky, and can seem a little jarring. You may or may not vibe with them. They play in bars and after boss battles.

The SFX were pretty good. They do a good job selling the sci-fi genre, and really help to give kill shots that extra oomph. Hearing robot pieces clank along the floor after a gun shot and bullet punch is really satisfying.

All of these elements combined made me feel like I was a space pirate, leading my crew into hit-and-run battles, raiding and looting enemy ships, and then escaping to fight another day. I really got that space pirate fantasy, and I was not expecting that from this title. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

Conclusion: I was not expecting to play this game over 70 hours, yet here we are. SteamWorld Heist is a really fun turn-based game, specifically because of its skill-based combat and supporting atmosphere. The gameplay loop is satisfying and engaging, and makes every shot a fun experience. Outside of some quirky soundtrack moments, and maybe it’s lack of side quests, there’s very little to criticize about this game. I highly recommend you pick this up. Good luck steambots!

**Spoiler Free**

Quick Review: Path of Giants is a simple and short puzzle game (mobile port). Clocking in at just under 4 hours, it’s a light experience that left me underwhelmed. The puzzles are not very difficult, so I would consider this a very casual experience. I had a very middling response, and struggled between a thumbs up or a thumbs down rating. It’s not a bad game…but it’s so bare-bones that I wouldn’t actually recommend it.

Gameplay: You control 3 explorers trying to find a lost treasure at the end of an ice cavern, and the only way through is past some logic puzzles. Each explorer is a different color, and each corresponds to different switches and end-tiles they can interact with. This makes up the core gameplay loop. At the end of each level is a door that must be opened with a different kind of puzzle. Instead of moving characters across tiles, you must rotate tiles to line up a path for your light gems to pass through. The door puzzle was a nice touch that changed up the experience a bit, but doesn’t do enough to make the game super interesting.

There are also little vases to click open to find collectable coins, just like in Lara Croft Go.

Controls: I was not expecting the characters to be controlled with only mouse clicks. With Keyboard & Mouse, you move your characters by clicking on the one you want to control, or on the tile you want them to go to. If there is an unobstructed path, they’ll get there. I was expecting a control scheme where you might toggle your character with the TAB key and then move them around with WASD or ARROWS or something. Instead, it’s all done with the mouse. Not necessarily a bad thing, just unexpected. But it does make it feel more like a mobile port. It’s a little awkward, I guess.

You are able to toggle your character with the “A” and “D”, or left/right arrow keys. But when you use the keyboard, the game stops detecting the mouse input, forcing you to “wake up” the mouse again. Basically, this is a mouse only game.

Atmosphere: The art style is low-poly, the 3 explorers are cute, and the music is serene, leading to a very relaxed vibe. Overall, it’s nothing to write home about though. I did enjoy the little 2D scrolling cutscenes. Artistically, this game looks almost exactly like Lara Croft Go. In fact, it looks like the snake asset in the background was pulled right out of Lara Croft Go. I’m not saying it is, because I don’t know. But the game sure doubles down on the same exact art style. (Maybe Path of Giants is made from ex-developers? I don’t know).

Conclusion: Path of Giants left me feeling…Meh. Honestly, I don’t think it’s really worth your time. The puzzles are too easy and not diverse enough to make it a challenging or memorable experience. If you want a light relaxing puzzle game that you can complete in a short amount of time, then maybe you’ll enjoy it. I just think there are better games to spend your time on. So, in the end, it’s ok…it’s just not worth recommending.