I’ve always found hidden object games relaxing. There is something about allowing your brain to zoom in on a scene to find things that is just delightful. I cannot tell you how many of those old Big Fish Games titles I’ve played for stress relief. Hidden object games are currently in a renaissance because of titles like Hidden Folks and…
I’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…
Welcome to Digitally Downloaded’s weekly catch-up news feature, the catch-up coffee. I…
It’s hard for us in the West to fully appreciate just how…
A deluge of Harvest Moon/Rune Factory/Stardew Valley-likes have come out of nowhere, but there really has been a lot of them in recent months. Perhaps it is something cultural. Perhaps developers are observing an increasingly tired and agitated community around them as the ongoing terrors of climate change, pandemics and…
Read More
Here’s the happy, warm, fuzzy news I needed this week: the absolutely wonderful Bunhouse is making the move from PC to consoles next year. The game will come to PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series, and the Nintendo Switch, which will be the absolutely perfect platform for…
Read More
“Fire Emblem meets Baldur’s Gate” is certainly a five-word phrase that will get me to pay attention to something, and that’s exactly what DioField Chronicle is. With some incredibly gorgeous production values backing it up, this is a game that, almost by stealth, has come through to be one of…
Read More
It’s amazing to think that the Switch is as old as it is, and yet remains a haven for games new, old, and in-between, and a place for ports, remasters, and remakes. Part of it is because the console itself can’t stop selling, of course. And part of it is…
Read More
I am super into farm/life sims lately. I spend a shocking amount of time playing Disney Dreamlight Valley and Animal Crossing daily, and that’s before you even get into all the others I’ve had to enjoy. As such, I’ve been keeping an eye out for games that fall into that…
Read More
SongPop Party is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the finest party games in existence. It takes something that is fundamentally compelling – music trivia – and gives people a no-frills way of playing that and, importantly, doing so with the music that they actually like. Now the…
Read More
The Legend of Heroes series is famous for being impenetrable for newcomers and also having a fanbase that likes it that way. They’ll insist that you absolutely cannot play any game in this series without having magically played all the other games first. And if you like the wrong ones…
Read More
Penko Park is what happens when you take a Tim Burton nightmare, and mash it with Pokémon Snap. The game has become something of a cult hit “hidden gem” on Steam, where it released back in 2020, but now it’s coming to Nintendo Switch. I’ve got to say, the Switch…
Read More
“Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were…
Read More
Amnesia: Memories was first released over a decade ago, and it’s fair to say that the visual novel genre – and particularly the otome sub-genre – has moved at a rapid pace from that time. That’s not a criticism of Amnesia, by any means, but the experience of reading through…
Read More