Review by Matt S. It’s easy to understand the appeal of Dark Souls, both as a game to play and a creative target for developers. Dark Souls is densely creative, intricate, beautiful and compelling, and largely liberates developers of the need to tell nice, neat linear stories. Because of the…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Mittelborg wants you to think that it’s a blend of resource management, roguelike adventure, and esoteric storytelling about a doomed city that exists in the ether between planes. That sounds great, right? It did to me when I started playing this, and while I would very…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. It’s not a proud segment of my life, but in the early to mid-2000’s I was a kid with a computer and Internet access, but no money to feasibly buy games for myself. It’s farfetched to consider based on the relative unpopularity of the genre today,…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. You may not have heard of Spiders Studio before. You should have, but the studio is infamous for making games that have a B-tier level of jank and clumsiness to the gameplay, so a lot of people have dismissed them for a long time on that…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Matt S. These days, indie developers fall over themselves to implement “roguelike” elements into their games. Indeed, the “roguelike” to indies is what “open world” is to the big publishers – a safe and commercially-proven way of throwing a lot of content at players… and it is…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. I’m a firm believer that video games should only be as long as they need to be to convey their key themes and experience to the player. If a game’s narrative is only worth an hour’s play, then make it an hour-long game. That’s preferable to…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Softstar Entertainment has released a new gameplay trailer for its upcoming Xuan-Yuan VII. It’s due for release this year, and while this action-RPG does look a little clumsy in places, I am really digging the aesthetics and premise of the thing. As the game’s description goes:…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. I know I’m late to the party with this one, but The Elder Scrolls: Blades has just released on Nintendo Switch, and as I had not played the mobile release previously, this is all new to me. Usually, I avoid reviewing free-to-play games, as the “purchase…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. You know you’re getting closer to the release of a game when the developer diaries start popping up. They’re basically extended trailers, though with little tidbits of “behind the scenes” showing players how the game was developed, and mini-“interviews” with the creators. Wasteland 3 is a…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. PQube is one of the most eclectic publishers out there, taking on everything from super-fanservicey Gal*Gun through to a range of lovely visual novels, and on to daughter-raising simulator Ciel Fledge. Its next one is VEWO Interactive-developed Nexomon: Extinction, and this is a very Pokemon simulator.…
Read More