Matt S. is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of DDNet. He's been writing about games for over 20 years, including a book, but is perhaps best-known for being the high priest of the Church of Hatsune Miku.
Nintendo’s decision to revive the Famicom Detective Club series seems to have kick-started a mild rush of new games that are, effectively, mystery visual novels, but have point-and-click elements and light puzzles to keep players interested and intrigued. That’s a good thing. This genre is excellent. And Aksys’ decision to localise Path of Mystery: A Brush with Death is a…
I am a firm believer that as many video games, be they popular, good, bad, and loathed, should be preserved as possible. All these retro collections that have been released by publishers to cash in on their classic properties (and undermine the value of emulation and the second-hand market) have…
Nintendo’s timing with its no-pressure comfort food games has been fortuitous. Animal…
For people who enjoyed the vibes of Monster Hunter, but found the…
It’s going to take some work to top Steelrising, which was one of the big surprises of 2022 with the way it handled an alternative universe French Revolution-with-automatons, but Polish developer, Superstatic is going to give it a red-hot go with Liberté, which is leaving Early Access for full release…
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Fun trivia fact about me: After Hatsune Miku figures, the most collectible plastic I have in my home is a collection of rubber ducks. I’ve always liked them as a kid (and have always liked ducks in general), and they come in such a wide variety these days that they’re…
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Did you know that you can’t produce your own alcohol in Japan? It’s illegal to brew your own beers and wines in Japan without a licence, even for personal consumption, so those little hobby breweries and home beer kits that are so popular in many parts of the world are…
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Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook could have been something special. The premise is really quite clever, but unfortunately, it ends up relying too heavily on the roguelike foundations for that premise to really take flight. Survival is meant to be the core of the thing, and in theory, it reaches…
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The high-end gaming handheld market is really heating up. The Steam Deck kicked the fad off, but it has since been joined by the likes of the Ayaneo series, the Anbernic W600 and, now, the Asus ROG Ally. Despite its ridiculous name, after getting hands-on time with the Ally, I…
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Mishima Yukio is a fascinating figure in Japanese literature. As an author, he is one of the nation’s greats. He was very nearly Japan’s first Nobel Prize for Literature recipient, being nominated three times, and was ultimately only overlooked because his mentor, Kawabata Yasunari, won the prize instead. He also…
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Very, very rarely does a game get made about the Tokugawa Shogunate. There are thousands of games about the Sengoku wars that came immediately before, and there are plenty made about the end of the Shogunate as well. The 250 years in the middle, however, are largely blank (at least,…
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It’s unclear to me what audience LEGO 2K Drive is intended for. It’s very capable at what it does, but it also seems to be an effort to shove a whole lot of best practice big game stuff into a package, and in doing so comes across as a little…
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Since AFL 23 launched a week ago, patches have been released nearly every day. The game was released in a poor state (note: as I noted in that article, I have in the past worked with Big Ant, the developer of the game, though I have not had any association…
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I joke frequently about how I’ve never made it off the tutorial plateau of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so it’s just as well that you don’t need to have played that game to get stuck into Tears of the Kingdom (though I’m sure it helps). Tears…
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