LA BAGARRE
Bloodless: GREAT
The 'black and white with color accents' style really makes the art pop in this one. Love the animated backgrounds full of effects: birds and fish, fireflies buzzing around the lanterns, the atmosphere is really good. You play an old ex-samurai lady who only fights unarmed, so the combat is entirely based on parrying and disarming opponents. It's challenging but quite satisfying! The demo is substantial and left me wanting to play the full game asap
Disco Samurai: heh
Seems like a cool rhythm fighter, the pixel art looks good, but, I'm terrible at rhythm games lol. Even in forgiving mode I was getting my ass kicked 15 minutes in. Not for me!
Fumes: Good
WOW the vibes of this game are incredible. It's just chaos, cars flipping out, lightning strikes and ammo flying everywhere. I love how it just throws you in immediately and lets you figure it out; it works because the controls are really straightforward (drive car, boost, shoot guns). An incredible kinetic experience, I'm just not sure how it stays entertaining for more than a couple of hours? This one may be more for the arcade score chasers, but absolutely give it a try
Blade Chimera: heh
It'a a Team Ladybug game, so it plays well and it's pretty. But where the Touhou game had time stopping powers, and their Lodoss game had the alternate wind and fire attacks, this one has... a magic sword? That lets you climb walls or make platforms appear? That's a little weak as gimmicks go.
Constance: Good
Really beautiful metroidvania, great feedback on the platforming and the combat, but... It looks a little too close to... you know. I don't want to become a "plays Hollow Knight once, calls every metroidvania a Hollow Knight" person, but still. I feel like this one needs another hook or idea to really find its own style. Also, looking at the Steam page, is this just all about her mental health struggles? I thought indie games were past their "this is a metaphor about depression" phase
Rose and Locket: Good
Stylish action platformer about hunting the seven deadly sins in a Far West/Underworld setting. Has a great look with levels all made of curved paths and giant splashes of color, so the "shape" of the level tends to fade in the backgroud of the overall effect. The shooting gets quite tricky on the controller, I couldn't beat the boss but I want to stick with it.
Angeline Era: heh
I dunno this one mostly made me feel bad for killing all the poor animals. Which I think is part of the idea, but I'm gonna need more than 'actually you're a bad person' to play a game (though the level where the trees fucking get you was pretty cool). I don't really have the nostalgia for PS1 bump combat either.
500 CALIBER CONTRACTZ: Good?
Edgy 3D platformer from the Armor Games/Kongregate era with a giant maze of a level and wild movement tech. This one is going for a really specific vibe, which isn't really for me, I spent my entire time with the demo completely lost and falling to my death. But it is absolutely Going For It, including a windows movie maker AMV of cool trickz you can do and the "subtle" anticapitalist themes spread troughout the level.
Skopje '83: heh
Sci-fi FPS with a cool cel-shaded comic book aesthetic, seems really neat and— goddammit it's a run-based roguelike. You have to scavenge the city for bandages, food and crafting materials; when you run out of ammo, you basically have no other option than to start over because enemies will chase you forever. Yeah no I'm out