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I doubt this will be a popular topic but this game is excellent and I think more people should play it. You're playing as a little girl who got separated from her grandmother and have to find your way back to the airship they use to fly across the world. The girl (Carto) is a cartographer and can rearrange the world as she traverses it, which is the game's central mechanic and the key instrument for every puzzle you're going to encounter. At a button press the view switches to a map of your current area in which you can move and rotate different pieces of the map as you want. There's only one rule and that is that the borders of a piece must be compatible to the border of an adjacent piece (grass to grass, water to water, rock to rock and so on) but other than that you're free to do as you please and you can even move and turn the specific map piece you're currently standing on. It starts off slow but quickly adds some extra layers to the mix. When an NPC asks you to find a "dense forest" early on but the only pieces you have are grasslands with some trees on one border, you can arrange those four pieces in a way to leave the middle of it blank while having the tree-borders pointing towards it, which then in turn spawns the requested forest piece in the middle. It sounds convoluted when typed out but completely makes sense in the game's logic when you play it. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. At 7 hours or so it has the perfect length to make as much as possible out of this idea without overstaying its welcome. The way it is focused on this singular mechanic and pushing it to its limits feels a bit similar to the equally tightly focused Portal. The overall presentation is almost unbearably cute, with tons of adorable little NPCs and animals asking for Carto's aid on her travels. I put it on my top list for 2020 and I stand by it, the reason I've only managed to finish the last three chapters now have nothing to do with its quality, but rather a bunch of real-life nonsense coming in the way. PC players can try a demo on Steam btw.

Picked this up last week after reading lots of glowing impressions and very positive reviews. It definitely hasn’t disappointed that’s for sure, I’ve had an absolute blast with it for sure and it’s definitely one of the best platformers I’ve played in recent years. The game takes on two dimensions. The 2D side-scrolling platforming takes up the majority of your time with it and I think the easiest way to describe how it looks, feels and plays is heavily inspired by Retro’s DKC series and Rare’s original DKC series, seeing the game at a glance in motion you’d be mistaken for thinking it’s one of Retro’s games. From the roll Yooka-Laylee do to the hidden coins dotted around the map, the similar way Laylee takes a hit through a level, the hidden doors into puzzle rooms, even the iconic barrels that rocket you around certain platforms. There is an awful lot of crossover here. Some may worry it’s a poor imitation or an uninspired clone but I assure you, to play, it’s every bit as good as it’s DKC counterparts. Worth noting there’s no rocket or mine-cart levels yet though. The second dimension to it and the biggest difference is the world map. With this the World Map is incredibly interactive and inviting, almost a game unto itself. It features a rather large Zelda-esque map filled with charmingly different locales, Pagie challenges, little puzzles to find tonics and new areas, little caves and mysterious little nooks and crannies. By changing the landscape in some way by doing the Pagie challenges you often reshape the landscape to unlock new areas to explore and alter the makeup of a previously unlocked level. A level variation is then created whereby a level can become frozen, overgrown, invaded by new enemies etc. Essentially creating an almost entirely new level to explore based on the outside environment of the world map and where the level marker is placed. The way it feels to play is incredibly reminiscent of the DKC games during the 2D levels, it just feels so incredibly tight to play and definitely has that same difficulty curve. But I think the Interactive World Map is almost just as compelling, you can completely lose yourself in the map just wandering around trying to figure where things fit together and where certain paths will take you. These two dimensions create an incredibly cohesive whole. If you’re getting bored of doing the levels then you can just wander off and explore to your hearts content, if you’re bored of exploring you can enter a level of platforming bliss in seconds. My only real criticism with it would be the level design really. The actual platforming is sublime but some of the level designs themselves are a little generic and nowhere near as joyful, varied, distinct and charming as the likes of DKC. I highly recommend it though, to anyone that’s into tough 2D platformer’s this is nirvana.

Gato Roboto is a kind of miniature monochrome Metroidvania where you play as a cat who can hop in and out of a robot (and other machines). The cat itself is powerless and defenseless but can get to places where the robot can’t. Movement is very fast and compared to other games of the genre you’ll explore large areas of the map very quickly. I’m at 15% completion after one hour. So far it’s exactly what it looks like, plays very well and seems like excellent value for money.

Steamworld Heist is a game that’s out on everything. It was initially released on 3DS in 2015, and I’ve played it for a couple of hours on Switch. It’s a fun turn-based space faring rpg with an eye-catching visual style. Battles take place inside ships and the ship layouts are randomised. Missions are selected from a node-based map. I’ve been playing on the default “Experienced” difficulty and it seems like a reasonable challenge. I’ve had a couple of characters die during missions. When a character dies they don’t receive experience for that mission but they are resurrected when the mission is over. The game has all the features that you would expect from the genre - special abilities, equipment, loot, new characters to recruit - but it’s the visual style and the ricocheting of bullets (as you can see in the picture) that makes it unique and fun.

Was the thread for this deleted? I feel like there was one... Anyway I played a good chunk of this before I went home last Christmas. I booted it up today and continued where I left off, which led to me restoring the colour yellow to the world. And then I played on a bit more after that. According to my Switch profile I’ve played it for “more than three hours” so I’m probably near the end. The selling point of the game is the beautiful art and music but I’d forgotten how enjoyable the game’s gentle puzzles are to solve. You could describe the game as being style over substance, which it probably is, but I feel like the gameplay foundations of the game are pretty solid.

Started this earlier on the Switch. Played the opening 20 minutes or so. The game reviewed well when it came out last year and the comparisons to Studio Ghibli were enough to convince me to buy it. The game is basically a side-scrolling adventure in a Ghibli-esque world, or something out of an Enid Blyton story. The setting seems to be a world where forgotten things go, most of the characters in the game seem to be objects and household items, things like that, but you play as a girl. There’s also an older man who is trying to develop a way to get back to the real world. From what I gathered. The game looks beautiful and the opening is very cinematic.

Moonlighter is a game about running a shop by day, and adventuring at night. That is the most basic way of explaining it without getting too complicated. You want to know more about it than that, so here goes, Moonlighter is viewed top down and is split into a few parts. There's a bit where you manage a shop and a bit where you go out adventuring to stock the shop with items to sell.. Lets get the fighting bit out the way first. There are 4 (maybe 5) dungeons in the game that work off tile sets and are randomly generated each time you enter them. You know the deal. The fighting is not complicated, there's a few weapons that you can equip, 2 at a time, and then go hit or shoot stuff. You can heal yourself if you have potions, as well as use and evasive roll which has a very large invincibility period. Killing enemies or opening chests in the dungeon has loot in them, or artefacts as the game calls them. It's these artefacts you sell in your shop. Except it's not as easy as that, because of course it never is. Item inventory plays a big part in this. Remember all those times you spent moving stuff about in Resi 4 trying to get everything packed in? Well, it's the same here, except it's got a different spin. Items from chests sometimes have requirements on them. They either have to be kept in the left or right of your bag, or the top or bottom. Now this doesn't sound too bad, but there's other items with arrows on them. You have to read the banner on these items, because it all comes into how you pack your bag. Some of them immediately destroy items if the arrow is facing towards and item, some items break an item they're pointing to when you teleport back to town, other can break if you take too many hits, there's an item that changes whatever is pointed at to the item it is so you can transmog a bit of junk into something nice and finally one where the arrowed item sends something home to your box back in the shop. Dungeons are split into 4 floors, with a boss on the fourth floor. They gradually get harder as you plunge the depths. You have a pendant that can teleport you back to the shop, however the deeper you go the more gold it costs to send you home. If you are caught short on gold you can also sell items to a mirror which you find when you go down a floor. You get a percentage of whatever the item you put ins worth. There's also another item called the catalyst which allows you to put a gate down and return to the point you're at for 2000 gold each time, although I'm sure this will go up as you get further into the game. This is a one use only, you have to pay each time, but I can imagine once you're rolling in it plopping it outside the boss door will be the smart thing to do. I think the biggest pain in the arse here is selling stuff to the mirror, instead of assigning it a button so you can send shit right to the mirror you have to directly drop the item in and it sort of feels like it was done with a mouse in mind and not a controller. It's easily patchable, whether they'll do that is another question entirely. If you do not survive the dungeon and your HP reaches zero, it spits you out. Any items in your bag are lost for good. However, items on the top line of the inventory are kept, so if there's something really important you need you can bring it out with you no matter what. When you're in town you have a shop where you can put the items on a table and open the doors. People come in and depending on how you've priced stuff will take of leave it. Occasionally you'll get a rich person come in that will buy inflated prices. More likely you'll get shoplifters who you have to apprehend once they've picked something up and tried to do a runner. If they get out the door your items are lost. What to do with the gold you earn from all this? There's a blacksmith, a enchanter, a trader, a decorator and a banker you can spend gold on to bring into your town. These all use gold and items found in the dungeons to craft and upgrade weapons and armour, as well as enchanting them. The trader can get you items at an inflated price if you can't find them yourself, and the decorator allows you to put RPG like buffs on your shop, such and making people move faster or tip more. The shop itself is also upgradable. You start off with a chest and a table with a bed to sleep in. As you progress you get more storage, bargain bins as well as more places to put decorative items that later the way your customers act. The bed gives you a set amount of HP above your standard health, I think it's bugged because it specifically says you get the buff after sleeping in the bed but you get it whenever you return from a dive. There's also cash registers that add tips to the base cost of an item which help mark up those items you cannot sell for a lot. There's other stuff in here as well, stuff like supply and demand also rear their heads, if you flood the market with a certain item people will refuse to buy it at a regular price. I think that's about it. In a way it reminds me of Rogue Legacy or The Swindle in that although you can die and lose your stuff, there's a part of the game where everything is still set in stone and is safe as long as you've banked it. Although I've not actually seen the boss of the first world I'm not that far off it, depending on how hard it is I'll have probably beaten it the next time I play. I'm wearing the thickest armour I can, I'm wielding the toughest weapons I can craft, it's just a case of getting to the fourth floor and giving it a hiding so I can get to the next dungeon and repeat until the end. This game isn't for everyone, but there's a select few here that would be all over it. It's also the type of game I reckon would play well on Switch.

Battle Brothers is a turn-based strategy-rpg that spent a while in Early Access and was released on PC last year. I've been playing on the default easy difficulty, which is an enjoyable enough challenge that I don't feel like immediately starting over on Normal. Essentially in the game there are the combat parts and the non-combat parts (a bit like Total War...the overworld map also reminds me of Total War, although the similarities probably end there). Combat is tile based, turn based, and plays fairly similarly to any number of srpgs, with different weapon types, abilities and other factors like height advantage etc. Characters that die are permanently dead. Characters can also be injured, which depending on the injury will have various negative effects. You take (and deal) two types of damage, armour damage and health damage. The overworld map, considerably zoomed out, looks like this: Zoomed in a bit more it looks like this: So essentially you hire mercenaries to fight. Mercenaries have food and gold requirements. Food can be bought at towns and gold can be obtained by completing quests or selling items. The game has a day night cycle and this affects a lot of things (i.e. your mercenaries wages are deducted once a day, injuries take so many days to heal, equipment takes a certain amount of time to be repaired etc). There are scenarios in the game that I assume have a story but I'm just playing a general campaign. Quests so far have been either of the combat or non-combat variety. Quest that involve battles are usually nearby the towns that give them, whereas quests that involve accompanying trade caravans can mean travelling long distances. The game has a quite nice graphical style. The music is pretty forgettable and low key so it's one to listen to your cd collection while playing, which I don't mind. There's more to the game than I've mentioned, but that's the basic gist of it.

VA-11 Hall-A (a.k.a. Valhalla) is a cyberpunk visual novel/lite bartender simulator, released in June 2016. The bartending element is fun and simple. Characters will occasionally ask for drinks, sometimes they will tell you directly what they want, sometimes just what kind of drink they want, and you have to choose the right drink and prepare it correctly. It's not complicated and in the two hours I've played I've yet to make a mistake. If only another game I've been playing was as sensibly designed as this... I thought the game had been kickstarted but googling it shows I was wrong. The wikipedia page has a lot of background information on the game. I can see references to things like Policenauts and Blade Runner and Valhalla is definitely in that vein. The characters that come to the bar have been interesting and it seems like the game is going to have a lot of recurring characters which is cool. Aesthetically, the game looks lovely, not least the title screen which has a kind of PS1-era feeling. In fact it might just be me but the game kind of screams PS1-era Final Fantasy... Before each day of work you can set the music in the jukebox, and once you are playing you can just sit back and listen, or switch between songs as you like. The game has other neat small touches like the fact that you can change the channel on the tv. Also, I liked the reference to Stein's Gate.

Where The Water Tastes Like Wine is a game where (the water tastes like wine) you wander around America during the Great Depression. You literally walk around a 3D map of America, from state to state and city to city. The actual walking is the weakest element of the game, with this bizarre mechanic where if you hold down the left control button and tap musical notes as they pop up on screen using the four directional buttons, while continuing to use WASD to move, your character will walk faster. It's as clunky as it sounds and I can't imagine why they chose to implement it this way, but anyway... I've played enough indie games to forgive some minor clunkiness. Your character can also hitch a ride from cars that are travelling along the roads. But that's not what the game is about. The game is about collecting stories and sharing stories. By interacting with various places as you walk around the map you will collect new stories or enhance stories you have already collected. The highlight of the game is the characters you meet at various campsites, who ask you to tell them various stories (i.e. a happy story, an exciting story, a sad story). These characters are beautifully illustrated and voice acted, and have stories of their own that they will share with you. After you talk to them they will show you the next location where they are headed. So far I've found it very enjoyable, and it's a game that can easily be played in short bursts.

Into the Breach is a game that came from the FTL; Faster than Light guys. Instead of being a grid based real time strategy you can pause and plan out your course of attack, here we're in 3D isometric land where everything is turn based. Also I don't think this is a rogue like, or from what little I've experienced it's not show that hand yet, if it does happen to have some randomness to it. The game plays a little bit like the old turn based war games, if you've played Advance Wars or Fire Emblem you'll feel right at home here. However there are a few differences that sort of make this game unique. The first one is that you only get 3 units. You get a big walking tank that can punch things. You get a standard tank that can fire on anything as long as it has line of sight on the target and you get an artillery that can do indirect fire, helping it arc shots over terrain, but also making it so that it can't attack things directly next to it. So far, so vanilla. The biggest difference is that the way these pieces move and interact with the bad guys that pop up on the map. For instance all the units you have at your disposal can push back enemies a square. This comes in very useful, because if something happens to be in the tile where they would be knocked into, that tiles occupant takes damage as well. Remember this. Another difference is that after each turn the enemies show you directly what they're going to attack. This is where the pushing mobs about the tile set comes important. Sure you could use a tank shell to hit that big enemy up the arse, but that's going to push him right onto the city and give him what he wants anyway. The idea is you read what attack are coming and use this pushing system to save objectives and your own armour. Placing your guys in positions that leads the enemies into grouping up so that you can push them into each other and mountains to hurt them or even get them to attack each other is part of the strategy here. You can also instakill any ground based enemies by pushing them into the water. The final big difference is that the fight you are taking place in only lasts a set number of turns, usually enemies burst from the ground each turn, you are thoroughly outnumbered and the general gist of the game is to survive. You have limited resources and it looks like you're just meant to cling onto the objective before moving onto the next mission. There are sub objectives, some of which say you can kill all of the enemies, but for the most it looks like you'll be keeping the wolves from the door before being whisked off to deal with the next insect eruption. Because of the nature of the skirmishes taking a few minutes before you're moved on it makes an ideal game to play when you've not got much time, I can imagine this being a really good phone game for that reason. Not to say it's without depth because of that, there's going to be plenty of head scratching trying to work out how to smash the fuck out of the attackers without them destroying your buildings and setting everything on fire. It's going to be one of those games that's deceptively simple to grasp but really difficult to master. It's left a good first impressions, maybe not quite as captivating as FTL was when that originally hit, but I think most people will really enjoy it if they're into turn based strategy.

Crossing Souls is an indie adventure game made in Spain that was kickstarted way back in December 2014. I’ve played about an hour of it so far. The game has a heavy 80s kids-on-an-adventure film feeling, so I think a lot of you would like it. In fact so far it has felt like I’m playing through a film, which is cool. The lovely music helps. You play as a gang of five kids on their summer holidays (in 1986 to be precise). Each kid has unique abilities and you can switch between them on the fly. You start off with just one member of the gang but quickly round up rest as you move through town on your way to meet the final fifth member in the gang’s secret treehouse, which is as far as I’ve played.

I don't think anyone has started a thread about Doki Doki Literature Club, but I've a feeling that's not quite how it's spelt and the search can be a bit shit @spatular put me on to this but apparently its doing the rounds on some of the bigger forums. It's a visual novel with a slight dating element to it. Basically once you join the club you all start sharing your poems with each other, you get to pick 20 words the night before to impress whichever of the girls you like (there's 3 very distinct girls you can impress) So far that's probably enough for you to judge the people playing this, especially Spatular, but without going in to things and spoiling what the game is, it's very much not that It's free on Steam, seems to have taken everyone else on my friends list 4 hours, I went out and left it running so it's going to take me about 10. Its an interesting thing so far though

Super hard indie platformer? Count me in and watch as I never complete it. This is made by the people who made Towerfall and although it is 2D and retro styled, it’s a completely different thing as it’s a single player game, more like Super Meat Boy. There’s optional collectibles (strawberries) but the thing I find concerning is part of it is gated by other collectibles. Featured in this video by Dunkey: I’m on the third chapter and it hasn’t been too difficult so far but I can see where it’s headed.

As i kinda explained in the new purchases thread this is rogue-like RPG dungeon crawl/deck builder mash up that is currently in early access. (it's about 12 quid) When start the game you choose from 1 of 3 characters all of which have different perks and attributes, then another perk/gift much like in rogue-likes/Dark Souls/Hearthstone etc. Your aim is to get to the end of the game without dying as it's perma-death. Game over. I think there currently 3 Acts at the moment and in each map you're given a map and have to chose one of 4 starting points at the bottom, with the boss at the top finishing the act. Once you've chosen you get to pick the next step to move along that path... like this.. - Unknown is Unknown . It's a story event. I could end well (with a new passive perk or something) or badly. - Merchant is a shop where you can buy new cards or items. He usually has some sales too. - Treasure is a treasure chest - Rest you have the option to gain some of your heal back or upgrade a card. - Enemy is a enemy. - Elite is like a mini boss. You see this map even before you set off so you can plan a bit. Do i go after that treasure or have a rest on the other path?.. etc Risk/reward, it's cool. Ok, now the turn-based combat. It's all card/item based. Looks like this.. Like Hearthstone/most card based board games, at the start of each turn the player has a certain about points that they can spend to lay cards. This can be modified with other cards/relics as you progress tho. And like Dominion/rogue likes you start off with very basic cards but after every fight you get to choose 1 of 3 cards to add to your 'deck'. So as you are progress and building your deck, your character is getting better. Enemies/bosses drop loot like money which can be spend at the shop or relics which give you a passive ability. Once you've spent you're points, you end the turn and the remaining cards are put into the discard pile. When your draw pile is empty, the discard pile is shuffled and you start again. That's it basically. It's simple but fuck, it's reeeally good. It merges the deck building with the rogue like stuff really nicely. I wish every turn-based RPG had the same combat/deck building loop this has. It's much more approachable and pick up and play than any card-based video game i've played too. Even more so than Hearthstone. But it still does a lot of the things i like about deck builders. So, yeah if you've ever thought of giving a card game a go but were scared off how impenetrable they can be. Then this maybe the gateway drug. Very addictive. Great game, still in early access too so it should only get better.

Gorogoa is a hand drown indie puzzle game that has been in development for years and years and was finally released today. It's gotten some very good reviews. Basically the game involves you interacting with pictures and moving them around in order to cause something to happen or open a way forward etc. It starts off easily enough but soon gets devilish. I've played it for an hour but am well stumped on Chapter 3 so I've taken a break, but I won't give up... Lovely game so far.

I've almost put five hours into this weird and wonderful indie game, so it's about time I made a thread. LISA was kickstarted way back in December 2013, and released on Steam in December 2014. I've just seen that there is a conclusion DLC to the story called LISA The Joyful which was released in August 2015. LISA is a very dark game, full of blood, corpses and depravity. Essentially, you are travelling through a post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of your daughter. The game is a side-scrolling 2D rpg, with some light platforming elements. The game has a Mario type colour palette and presentation, although the similarities end there! Progress is mostly linear but there are times where there is more than one area that you can explore at once, it's definitely a game that rewards exploration. And it would appear to be a very big game. It costs €10 at full price, I paid €3 and like I said I've already played for five hours and I suspect the full length is at least three times that. The strength of the game is that it's just so interesting and engaging. Exploration, combat, everything is snappy and smooth so you are always moving forward and there's always something interesting around the corner. Combat follows the Dragon Quest/Mother style of you pick your party members' moves first and then watch the turn play out. There are a lot of characters in the game world that you can recruit to join your party. The graphical style may be simple but it looks lovely, and yet again it's another indie game with a wonderful soundtrack.

I've played over an hour of this now in about three 20 minute bursts. I like it but it is very different to Transistor (and the early parts of Bastion that I played). The game is part visual novel, part rpg. It's not as text heavy as a game like Sunless Sea (nor remotely as free-form), but the story is told through text like in the second picture above. Pyre is not remotely an action game. It's been described as a sports game in some reviews, but I think that's a bit laughably over the top. The "combat", known as Rites, does resemble a sport in that you have to take a ball and carry it into your opponents "pyre"...but I think this is the one element of the game that does resemble Transistor to some extent. Actually now that I'm typing this maybe it is closer to basketball than Transistor but anyway, I'm not going to call it a "sports" game just yet. During the basketball match (I've given up) you can perform actions like sprinting, jumping, passing and even throwing the ball into the enemy's pyre (oh my god it's basketball). If you don't have the ball you can cast your aura, i.e. attack an enemy. Each team has three characters and you can only control one character at a time. If a character is attacked they are banished for a certain period of time. Each individual character has stats that govern how much damage they do to an enemy pyre, how long they are banished for etc. Each character also has a skill tree and you can pick new abilities when they level up, and each character can also equip one "talisman" that has some kind of stat boosting effect. Those are the rpg elements. The visual novel elements are basically everything else. You move from point to point on the map (so far the game has been almost entirely linear) and this will usually trigger some kind of story event or conversation among your party that is told through text. In one hour I haven't experience much of the story but basically your characters are exiled in some kind of wasteland, and completing this rites ceremony seems to be some way to obtain freedom for them. There is no full voice acting (the characters make a few squables when they speak a la Zelda) except for the character who seems to control the rites, I don't know what it is but his voice seems to remind me of movies like Tron and Logan's Run. So far, it's an intriguing game, and you definitely can't accuse Supergiant of retreading old ground. Artistically, in terms of visuals and music, it's too early to comment but the signs are that this will match their earlier games.

Continuing my Indie binge with Hollow Knight. Heard lots of good things about this game earlier this year and saw a Let's Play from Easy Allies of the first two-ish hours of it, has been on my Steam wishlist ever since. For those that don't know, it's an Indie Metroidvania game set in an eerie melancholic bug-world. I've enjoyed it quite a lot, being new to the Metroidvania genre I didn't really know what to expect, I've seen an awful lot of great indie Metroidvania games and kind of got turned off them in the past as there's just so many, I'm glad I gave this a go though because it's now a genre I'd like to explore more. For starters it doesn't hold your hand at all, you get a very brief control tutorial and are then left to explore the world. It doesn't explain anything at all, and if I hadn't of watched the EZA Let's Play I would've been a bit lost on where to go and what to do, luckily that gave me a brief idea. It was still a bit disconcerting exploring areas and not knowing where the fuck you are in the slightest, no map, no idea where the next Rest point is, no idea where the entrance to the next area is or anything though. Luckily you realise how the map system works pretty early on and then discover a vendor to add new areas to it, mark your location on the map etc. All incredibly useful. The gameplay loop is pretty similar to Souls I guess, if you die you loose all your 'Geo', you get Geo by killing enemies. The most innovative mechanic is that when you kill enemies you get souls that you then use to replenish your health, which adds to the whole risk/reward system of the game as it makes you want to attack more in combat in order to get more Souls to heal in the heat of a battle, it is a balance at times as your Soul supply can be used for other things too. You use a small sword for the combat (called a 'nail') which enabled you to hit enemies in any 360 degree direction, there's a lot of enemy variety on offer, when you go into a new area you have to learn their mannerisms all over again, there's a few areas with traps for you to fall into (similar to Souls) too, it always feels fresh and involving. It has that Souls feeling about it to about worrying where the next save point is, knowing you've got 1000+ Geo on you and whether to venture into the next area where a boss may be waiting or head back to a previous area and save. I won't give too much away but new mechanics are introduced as you go along that unlock new locales, one changes the platforming significantly and one changes the combat to a significant degree as well, the game never points you to these so presumably you could go the entire game without discovering them. There's also a system similar to the rings in Souls where you can get slightly more Souls when you defeat an enemy, a bit more health etc. but the slots are incredibly limited at this time meaning you have to choose very wisely which you want to equip. The game looks absolutely stunning, it has a really unique art-design about it, it's cartoonish but the backgrounds and levels managed to look realistic and give a very lived-in, ancient kind of vibe. By far and away the best thing about the game is the music though, it is just absolutely incredible and makes the each area feel special and meaningful, when you go to your first town and a certain song plays it's just so melancholic and haunting at the same time, it really is very special. The noises the characters you meet along the way make are fantastic too, they put so much personality in them just from gibberish and grunts. A few pics:

Played and finished this over the weekend, absolutely loved it. I don't want to give too much away about it so I'll just say it's a Text Adventure game with some twists and turns along the way, it sometimes feels like one of those educational games too as it gets you to input Morse code and do some algebra at some points. It's Published by the Hotline Miami folks (Devolver Digital) too. It's split up into 4 short-stories, each around 30-45 minutes in length, no tutorials at all, all very much gets you to learn on the job and provides the materials in-game to keep you immersed in the scenario presented. Got a cool Stranger Things/80s vibe going on too. £3.50 on Steam at the moment and I cannot recommend it enough for that price, it really is a fantastic little game. Pics:

Way back in January 2013 this game raised £1.5 million on kickstarter, was released in 2015, followed by a Horizons "season pass" which looks like it is receiving its final major update this year. I bought the base game at some stage during the last two years and have finally gotten around to playing it. I've played it for over four hours so far. The game has a number of tutorial missions (and videos) which explain some of the fundamentals of the game, piloting and landing your ship, combat, travelling between planets. There's certainly a learning curve but I think I have the basic piloting, landing and navigation parts down now. I can't really speak for combat, I completed the basic combat tutorial but I haven't yet encountered any combat in the main "open" game, which I've played around 90 minutes of. You start off with a ship, 1000 credits and a mission to deliver data to another port. I completed that mission and you are then told which places to visit if you wish to learn about various aspects of the game. Each port has a mission board where you can take on a variety of missions, but you can't take on missions of a higher rank than your current rank. I'm still at the starting rank "Penniless". So far I've completed one extra mission, to supply copper. I haven't even scratched the surface of the surface of the game but just playing this most basic part of the game has been fun so far. I've been playing on PC, with a controller. Aesthetically, the game looks and sounds beautiful. The hyper space jumps or whatever they are called are amazingly eerie.

Rakuen is a lovely new adventure game that first caught my eye when I was trawling through Steam's upcoming list months if not a year or two ago. It didn't seemed to have any hype whatsoever but it has just been released to some excellent reviews. I've played two hours and it's excellent. You play as a hospitalised boy who can also travel to the fanastical world of "Rakuen". The two worlds are of course connected. From what I've played it's an rpg maker adventure game that actually reminds me a little in tone of Zelda Breath of the Wild, and also Undertale. I don't want to spoil anything about the game but so far it's easily been worth the €9.99.

I can't decide whether to play Mass Effect, Yakuza 0 or Zelda at the minute so I decided to distract myself with one of this months PS+ offerings, and to be honest, I've kind of fell in love with it. The concept is that you play as a colon (one of these ':', not the place where poo travels through) platforming through the history of writing, from the first known cave paintings back in 30,000 BC up until today. You collect asterisks as you go, and each one gives you more information on how the written word has evolved. For example, I've just completed the Garamond era which led me through the first printing presses and the way they improved to make it easier and more accessible for people to get hold of books. Part of this area also has burning books, so I assume it's around this time that actually happened. You also collect the letters of the alphabet and ampersands along the way too. As far as I can tell these aren't essential, but you do have to stray off the beaten path (barely) to collect everything. It's such a simple idea, but it's one they seem to have balanced beautifully. The music is nice and relaxed, and the actual levels seem pretty simple up to now, so it all just culminates to feel like a super-chilled out game. I'm liking it a lot, although barring the possibility that the levels become much more difficult, I can see me finishing it tonight.

I picked up Owlboy when it came out before Christmas and even started it, but I never went back to it a second time. Today I booted it up again and started over from the beginning. I've played the opening 40 minutes or so. In many ways Owlboy reminds me of Child of Light - the music and colourful graphics create a similar kind of atmosphere and in this game you also fly around the map. The opening portion of the game is a mixture of flying around the beautiful home village and then playing through a more confined cave area which involves a small amount of combat (the owl himself is not very combat adept but he can pick up and carry his companion who can shoot a gun). I played as far as leaving the home village.

Way back in April 2013 Tides of Numenera was pitched as a sequel to Planescape Torment and managed to raise over $4 million on Kickstarter.. It was released this year to excellent reviews but in the bastion of good taste that is Steam its user rating is "mixed". I've played three hours and it's a very interesting game. Personally, I liked Planescape Torment but I can't say that it changed my life when I played it five or so years ago. I'm not really carrying any expectations into Numenera other than hoping it lives up to the reviews. First things first: it is way more of a text adventure (or straight up fantasy/science fiction novel) than a combat heavy traditional rpg in the vein of the old Infinity Engine games. In the opening three hours the game has consisted almost entirely of reading dialogue and making dialogue choices. I was ready for that from reading the reviews though. This has a big influence on the gameplay mechanics. InXile have replaced the tradiditonal D&D stats with Might, Intellect and Willpower. These stats are used in conversation to "win" challenges. In addition to your base levels of might, intellect and willpower (which you can raise), there's also "effort" and "edge". Effort involves you spending one or more points (e.g. might in a might challenge) to increase your chance of success, up to whatever your effort limit is (the effort limit can also be raised). These points you spend are lost until you rest. Edge means that you can use effort without losing points, so if you have one point of edge in might you can use one point of effort without losing a point in might (edge can also be raised). That's just your stats. You also have skills. There are certain skill specific challenges in the game that you can improve your changes of success by training that skill. I guess obviously the trick is to spread these skills out among your party. So far I have picked up three companions, I'm guessing that the limit is five. I haven't talked about combat because I've barely experience it in the game. But you can even talk your way out of combat. All in all, this is a very different game to some of the other recent kickstarter rpgs that have been released - Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2 etc. But, so far, it's been very interesting. And it looks beautiful. The environments are really nice. I'll post more opinions as I get deeper into it.