I’m always telling anyone who will listen: “Chess is ok, but I think it should have lore!” Punkcake Delicieux, developers of Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate, heard my pleas around the middle of 2022 and launched their roguelike inspired by…
Is Gallowspire Survivors the Next Evolution of Vampire Survivors?
Paizo’s Pathfinder, once nakedly a Dungeons and Dragons clone and now fully fledged fantasy property of its own, has been featured in some of the sneakily best roleplaying games of the past few years. Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous…
The Duviri Paradox is a Dimension-Traveling Spiral of Buggy Shooter Splendor
One of the highest hurdles for a long running game is to onboard new players without scaring them with the sheer amount of stuff that exists in it. With The Duviri Paradox, the latest Warframe expansion from Digital Extremes, they…
Turnip Boy Learns the Wrong Lessons From The Legend of Zelda
If I never played a game with a ghostly maze forest in it again, I would never miss it. There’s nothing really fun about them. Even the more benign lost woods varieties, that are just straight up mazes, really just…
Boss Rush Souls-like Eldest Souls Shakes Up the Subgenre
A souls-like feels like a dime a dozen in 2021. Since 2011, the industry has been making games with deliberate, stamina-based combat with stern difficulty and vague lore elements in every form it can come in. Hearing that yet another…
My Mind is a Prison, My Cellmate is Loop Hero
I’ve probably spent more hours playing Loop Hero over the past few days than I have any game that I’ve played for leisure in a similar span of time. I’m seeing pixelated ratwolves in my nightmares. I hear one of…
Voidigo Mixes Ratchet and Clank and Monster Hunter to Break Away From the Roguelike Pack
It was around my third or fourth run, while I was trading fire with a strange flower with a hunting rifle while a pair of pig men with shotguns closed in, that I realized that Voidigo might be special. The…
I’ll Take One Nagoriyuki, Please
My relationship with Guilty Gear has always gone the same way for the past almost 20 years. A game gets announced and looks incredible. I consume every bit of media I can about it up to launch. I buy the…
Skul: The Hero Slayer’s Roguelike Mechanics are Terminally Old School
I’ve become quite infatuated with SouthPAW Game’s and Neowiz’s Skul: The Hero Slayer. As a roguelite, the die-till-you-win grind is front and center, but the simple side scrolling beat-em up gameplay makes hopping back into each run a breeze. It’s…
Mobius Front 83′ Reimagines the Cold War as a Grueling Sci-fi Civil War
Often hiding in the “tactical wargame” subgenre of strategy are games that are less likely to make you feel like a battlefield commander and more likely to make you feel like you’re solving a puzzle cube. Whereas XCOM is the…
Grindstone is Still Very Good in 2021
As games about blood-raging berserkers go, Grindstone is probably the most brain-tickling. Kratos never spent much time plotting his next move. Conan was never concerned about his killstreak. Jorg, with skin covered in ice and demeanor covered in gloom, is…
Mortal Shell’s Combat Proves It Isn’t a Souls-like Husk
Most “Souls-likes,” games that resemble 2011’s seminal action RPG Dark Souls, do their best not to resemble From Software’s runaway hit at all. The most notable ones add a lot of color and a sci-fi setting or make it 2D…