Did you know that, while mazes are designed to confuse and confound you by messing with your sense of direction and location, there’s actually a very simple way to escape from any of them? Put your hand on the left side wall and don’t take it off. Eventually, you’re going…
Read MoreI suppose it was inevitable that at some stage, some indie developer would look at Scrabble and think to themselves “Roguelike!” After all, that r-word seems to be perennially glued into the indie developer mindset these days. Despite my growing hesitancy to touch anything with said r-word in the feature…
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 MoreGeorge A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is considered one of the finest horror films of all time for the clever way that it blends B-grade cinema tradition with some sharp themes – most notably, a criticism of consumerism and capitalism. Now I’m not going to sit here and argue…
Read MoreMado Monogatari is the JPRG property that gave the world the Puyos – the cute little blobs that form the basis of the Puyo Puyo series. We don’t get many of the Mado Monogatari titles out west, though (as far as I know the only one is actually Sorcery Saga…
Read MoreScar-Lead Salvation is very close to being a very good game. The creative energy is good, the aesthetics are appealing, and the action is tight. Unfortunately, while it was clearly inspired by Returnal, it misses the mark in several critical areas. You play as Willow, who is either a woman…
Read MoreWe’re being spoiled for Musou right now! A month after Koei Tecmo released the exceptional Dynasty Warriors Origins, the company went and stealth-dropped Warriors: Abyss as part of a Sony State of Play show. This is an action roguelike heavily inspired by Vampire Survivors and similar “horde” games, and while…
Read MoreI’m about to really age myself, but when I was young, the idea of (legitimately) free video games was very different to what it is today. There were no microtransactions, and no Fortnites, Genshin Impacts, or MMOs. If you were playing free, you were either playing shareware demos or very…
Read MoreOne of the things that I find continually surprising about video games is the idea that, on the one hand, we consider them to be inherently an art form, but on the other, we just never talk about games in the same frameworks that we talk about every other art…
Read MoreI guess was inevitable that at some point someone would look at bringing the Slay The Spire-style roguelike formula to Puzzle Quest. In fact, I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened yet (or, at least, I haven’t heard of one before now). But that’s okay. Good Shepherd’s Demon’s Mirror has come…
Read More