I feel like we're really testing the limits of how many survivors clones the economy can sustain. But anyway I didn't play any of those. Here are some that I played and liked:


Mars Tactics

Inscrutable Xcom-adjacent strategy game that actually seems like it'll be pretty fun once the overworld map campaign part of it exists. It's one of those things that's mechanically deep (or fiddly) enough that you could put a lot of time into figuring out how it all works and then annoy all your friends by talking about how good it is from your perspective on the other side of the learning curve. If you think I'm targeting you here: no, it's me. I do this.

Anode Heart

Monster collector RPG that I wasn't sure I'd be into, but I like it quite a bit. All the maps are in part low-res/pixel art illustrations, which (in my experience) is more of an ordeal vs. constructing them entirely from tilesets, but it pays off in giving the game a lot of personality. Like, if you wanted to walk around on the Johto Redrawn map, that's pretty much what you're getting here. It seems like building up the starting town might be a whole thing, and there's a TCG minigame, and while I probably wouldn't spend much time on the latter, it goes to show that there's a lot going on. My one fear is that the premise could lead into irritating fourth-wall-breaking stuff, but I dunno, maybe that moment in indie games has passed.

Pluto's Island

It's like a PS1 platformer about a Nickelodeon show from hell. Probably the most distinctive aesthetic of any game I tried. I don't know that you get a full picture of the gameplay loop from the demo, unless I did something wrong, but you can see the outline of something satisfying here.

Little Goody Two Shoes

Has a very strong look, and while that probably isn't enough to make me play a horror game, I wanted to mention it anyway because you should check it out if you like things like this. The heroine is a charming little jerk and you can make her date a bunch of weird women, which is all good stuff, and I'd be excited to play this one if it were any other kind of game.

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

Snufkin says fuck the police. I mean, we'd be right to question to what degree the current incarnation of Moomin can say fuck the police, even if Tove Jansson definitely would've said fuck the police. We should ask this about anything treated like an IP. To the game's credit, though, the theme is reflected in the mechanics--you level up by doing vandalism, and forward progress requires clearing areas of cops (or like, militant park rangers, I guess? But they look like cops). It's otherwise meant to be taken slowly, with a lot of incidental dialogue that you'll miss if you rush from one puzzle to the next. This seems like as good an excuse as any to say you should check out the Moomin novels, which, while oriented toward the youngest kids likely to be reading novels at all, are as willing to be wistful and melancholic as cozy.

A Date with Death

What it says on the box. As someone who isn't really a fan of unironic smugness in my BL love interests or, like, characters generally, I was pleased at how goofy the dudes in this game are. Actually I guess it doesn't have to be a BL game, you customize your character, but it felt right for this one. The animated intro is very cool, and honestly I wish the whole game was illustrated in that way, but I mean this as praise for the intro and not criticism of the rest of it. The fake ads in the chat client being real ads for other games is very funny to me.

Exhausted Man

Very weird physics puzzle game that I barely understand. You have to make wiggly people do tasks in rooms full of objects, but the interesting thing is the objects in the rooms are customizable. A game I'd think about getting just to see if I could wrap my head around it.

Octopus City Blues

Adventure game that looks like the result of tossing several thousand VHS copies of the movie Cool World into a trash compactor (complementary). Besides picking up an item somewhere and using it somewhere else, there's also a dialogue challenge component involving managing stress, a fun alternative to the RPG-style speech check.

Little Odyssey

You're a courier who rides around on a giant turtle while listening to lofi beats. The turtle walks a little faster if you pet it. It's deliberately slow-paced, which isn't a bad thing, but I think I'll be more interested when there are more NPCs with their own stuff going on, something that, according to the store page, is planned for the finished game. I definitely don't want a robust commerce simulation or anything, but the more dynamic the little villages and other places, the more there'll be to latch onto.


You must log in to comment.