Review by Matt C. Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a game about stories and storytelling. Set amid the Great Depression, it looks at how stories grow and evolve over time: how a sweet but relatively mundane tale of long-lost siblings reuniting can morph into a myth about spirits…
Read MoreArticle by Matt S. Late last week, Preapp Partners released the Early Access version of Showmaker onto Steam. Not a game, but rather a bit of creation software, Showmaker allows you to create a digital concert performance. You take a digital idol, put her on a stage and choreograph her…
Read MorePreview by Matt C. Next Up Hero is a strange beast to describe. It’s fundamentally a twin-stick shooter, but with elements of hack-and-slash, hero shooter, roguelike, and asynchronous co-op, it’s unlike any any other twin-stick shooter I’ve played. The game takes place within a world of songs, hitch is under…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. Not all 2D shoot ‘em ups are created equal. If you’ve ever played Action 52 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, you’re no doubt familiar with that game’s penchant for taking quirky character sprites, slapping some enemies atop a generic space background, and labelling them as unique…
Read MoreReview by Matt C. From Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story to Pocahontas, forbidden love amid warring factions is one of those timeless stories. Maybe it’s because the ideas they explore – of love being, somehow, both a transcendental force and an effort in futility – are evergreen, maybe…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. Just four months after the release of Bullet Soul on Steam comes Bullet Soul Infinite Burst. While there was originally a gap of several years where the Xbox 360 version was concerned, electing to release an enhanced game in a subgenre as niche as the bullet…
Read MoreReview by Matt C. Thanks to publishers like Degica, Steam is quickly becoming a bastion of classic bullet hell shoot ‘em ups, and this a wonderful thing. It’s a niche genre, but also one with a long and storied history spanning many different consoles and generations. Having as much of…
Read MoreReview by Matt C. If you want your game to stand out, adding cats is a good way to go about it. Sure, cat games are fast approaching a level of saturation to rival zombies, but we’re not there yet – and a screenshot with a cute cat in it…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. Because bullet hell shooters are designed with a very specific demographic in mind, a game like Bullet Soul is able to articulate its appeal to that crowd in under thirty seconds. The title screen’s roaring 90s rock sent shockwaves of nostalgia through my body. The requisite…
Read MoreReview by Lindsay M. At first glance, Phoning Home promises a sweet story and a vast, unusual landscape. However, the promised scope of the game combined with several familiar narrative, visual, and gameplay elements were cause for concern before even beginning. Can an indie developer successfully create a game experience…
Read More