Lached Up Games serves a very specific niche with its quirky and colourful visual novels. Is there much of an audience for fanservicey visual novels filled with Australian humour about genderswapping (and now, with Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid!, species swapping)? Probably not. But for the people who do…
Read MorePeople who play board games are familiar with Dominion. It is considered the “gateway drug” to deckbuilding card games (and was indeed the first example of one), being both light and accessible and very good at showcasing the basic mechanics of this particular genre. It has sold millions and millions…
Read MoreTemirana: The Lucky Princess and the Tragic Knights is a little bonkers, and that makes it delightful. The very concept of the thing is silly, funny, and charming: Cecilia is the third princess in a family that, generally, hates her. She’s also meant to be “unlucky” but has a mysterious…
Read MoreSugoroku is, as far as the mechanics go, not the most exciting board game. In fact, it’s not far removed from Snakes & Ladders, and no one really plays it for the tactics or challenge. But it is a piece of Japanese culture that anyone with an interest in the…
Read MoreI’d never heard of Rammy’s Great Adventure until its remake landed on the Switch eShop. So I went and researched it, and here’s a brief history lesson. Okay, so Rammy’s Great Adventure was originally a Japan-only release, and it was released on GAMEPACK, back in 1995. Now, GAMEPACK was a…
Read MoreThe movie tie-in game is something of a dying art, but in many ways you would have to rule it death by way of suicide. The very model for movie games ensured that they would die out. This was never terribly surprising; classically speaking, lots of money got spent getting…
Read MoreI’ve been making my way through the surprise-dropped Tomb Raider Definitive Edition that landed on the Switch a few weeks ago, and with two new Tomb Raider games just announced (albeit with a new publisher), that turns out to have been good timing to remind myself of the direction that…
Read MoreOctopath Traveler 0 isn’t really Octopath Traveler. It’s good. It’s even excellent, frequently and for long stretches of time. But it’s not Octopath Traveler for this very simple reason: Both the original Octopath Traveler and its sequel told the stories of eight (“Octo”) different people, who would eventually come together…
Read MoreBubble Bobble is one of the greatest games ever made, and it’s also my go-to game when I’ve been asked about my favourite game of all time. Taito’s certainly done some interesting things with the Bubble Bobble IP over the years, and while a lot of the spinoff games have…
Read MoreI first heard of Demonschool about three and a half years ago, during the PC Gaming Show in June 2022. At that time, it was meant to launch in 2023. I’ve followed news about the school-life tactics RPG ever since, through multiple delays (2023 to 2024 to September 2025 to…
Read More