I love real-world escape room experiences. You’ve got an hour or so to sort out an extended puzzle, find your way through a couple of different challenges and, ultimately (and usually with the assistance of a group of friends), make your way out in time. Escape rooms prove that a lot can be done in an hour. That a game…
Is there a video game character that has been more exploited than Pac-Man? I’d argue – and I’m right – that Toru Iwatani’s famous pizza slice (or corruption of the Japanese kanji for mouth, depending on which interview he’s giving) – is the video game character that’s been most exploited…
Read MoreTouken Ranbu is a game about pretty boys. Who are swords. And travel around time, Quantum Leap-style. I’ve got to be honest with you, if you had told me that at some point in my life I’d be playing an anime boys game whose closest direct comparison is an ‘80s…
Read MoreBefore there was Bubble Bobble, there was Snow Bros., and the original remains the best. I should explain. Bubble Bobble did actually come first chronologically, but Snow Bros. (the “clone”) was the first single-screen platformer I personally played. Way back on the Game Boy, there was a shrunk-down version of…
Read MoreAnd today’s eShop nasty is… Beach Girls: Don’t Lie In Summer! Like Hentai Uni and Waifu Impact before it, Beach Girls landed on the Switch eShop with a minimum of fanfare and little but the promise of sexy fan service. Its goal? To flog it off to a few people…
Read MoreSeven Pirates H has hit my limit. I am more than happy to whip out Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, Gal*Gun, Hyperdimesnion Neptunia, Nekopara, or any other fanservicey Switch game that you can think of on the train or any other public space. I just don’t care if people look…
Read MoreNippon Ichi is at its best when it is at its most inscrutable and inaccessible. The more heavily a NIS game’s humour leans into a surrealistic anime-style over-the-top tone (whether for comic effect or otherwise), and the more numbers the game can throw at players, the more they tend to…
Read MoreBefore the film that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp had way too much fun with, and before even the Stephen Sondheim musical that more people should see a production of, Sweeny Todd was a Penny Dreadful. People don’t really know what these are anymore, but they were once wildly popular…
Read MoreIt took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that “Waifu Impact” was a play on Genshin Impact. That’s the most interesting thing about this game, though I must admit that in the hand of competent developers this concept could have been spun into something good. The basic concept is…
Read MoreSamurai Bringer is Samurai Warriors: The Roguelike. If that doesn’t have you rushing to the eShop to buy it right now, then you’re probably not a regular reader of DigitallyDownloaded.net. This game is an excellent, clever, interesting and entertaining take on the roguelike, and while I’m getting increasingly burned out…
Read MoreI knew what I was getting when I stepped into Legend of Ixtona. It is a Kemco game, after all, and that means Z-grade storytelling and the cheapest of presentational standards. However, as a life-long fan of tactics JRPGs, I wasn’t going to pass up on this one either. I…
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