The horror-adventure genre has to be one of the hardest to create within. Unlike horror movies, which can be humongous cash cows thanks to low budgets and cheap thrills, horror-adventure games require a delicate balance between strong game design and immersion. Rely too heavily on gamification, and players get taken out of the experience just to find some hidden goodies. Instead of being terrified of walking down that hallway, players stare at the walls for secrets so that they can unlock all of the game art. That’s antithetical to the whole point of playing a scary game. REANIMAL straddles this line with expertise.

Travel through hell as a boy and a girl in search of lost friends. At least that’s what the press release says. REANIMAL says a lot with few words, though what it’s saying isn’t always clear. Instead of plot-delivery and characterization, we receive haunting, creepy vibes and tension. Being unclear for mystery’s sake isn’t necessarily art or clever storytelling. Thankfully, the incredible production value, combined with this opacity, leads us to believe that metaphors and analogies reign supreme. By the end, I urgently wanted to know what was going on and had a few theories. This is some good ol’ fashioned mind-chew.

What literally happens on the screen is that a boy and girl venture into an extremely gray, wartorn city in search of friends. In single- or two-player, the boy and girl navigate ruined buildings, eerie forests, and murky waters to find ways past gates, monsters, and an assortment of other obstacles. The words exchanged often relate to a desire to go home and an urgency for the way things were, but nothing is ever expressed concretely. Deranged humans and deformed animals chase the children down hallways, awkwardly arranged communal living spaces, and tunnels. The duo flit about to-and-fro until some unclear goal is achieved by the end of REANIMAL.

While only about four hours at a $40 price point, REANIMAL screams (or bleats) quality. Your physical time with the game may be brief—with promised DLC on the way—but REANIMAL will remain with you for at least a little while post-credits. The clincher with titles like these is that the developers need to give you just enough to want to theorize meaning and revisit the world during idle hours in bed or on the commute. If you’re looking for quantity for your dollar, steer clear, but if you want immersive storytelling that delivers a story like no other game, this may be what you need.

The beautiful quality of storytelling in video games is that players are thrust into the driver’s seat, and while we’re on rails in books or movies, we get to interact with the world in real-time as fast or as slow as we want in this medium, which transports us into worlds—no matter how linear. As the boy and girl, we navigate in third-person, pushing objects, pulling levers, and attaching wheels; REANIMAL does not revolutionize the adventure landscape whatsoever, and some of the gameplay tropes feel tired.

Despite these regurgitated mechanics, the physical world will set players at unease. In tandem with outstanding sound design in a mostly silent world, creepy tunes reminiscent of strings- and percussion-dependent horror movies, and chilling animations, this is a world where pressing forward has more oomph to it than other titles.

I’ve been playing games since the 80s, and you’d think by now I’d be done with holding a direction to run away from a giant enemy with a crumbling ceiling. You’d normally be right, but REANIMAL throws together such cinematic storytelling that these adrenaline-infused breaks from the quiet sprang me to life with urgency. Slithering flesh-folds and amorphous animals kept me from exhaustively exploring environments, and I instead took in the world with blurred periphery. The only real downside to navigating this world lies in fending off foes with a crowbar, which is an awkward and unsatisfying affair when sneaking or using the environment to survive may have served as creepier alternatives.

That’s all quibbling, though. I realized by REANIMAL‘s end that I could have more meticulously explored several environments, but in an uncharacteristic few hours of restraint, I pushed on with fleeting moments of exploration. The forced camera does most of the goodies-hiding, too. Pushing on the edges of the screen may reveal secrets hidden by the foreground, which feels like a cheap trick, but still offers that dopamine hit. Still, players may be better served taking the game in rapidly rather than slowing down to engage with the developer-driven hide-and-seek affair; save that for the second playthrough, because the unlocked concept art is some of the best I’ve seen in any game.

In an age when our culture admonishes developers for using AI to create art, REANIMAL displays just how important hand-crafted creation is. Again, after decades of playing video games, I’ve rarely cared about unlocking artwork; in truth, I’ve always found it to be a lazy way of giving something back to the player. Here, I found the artwork stunning and enjoyed seeing what inspired these macabre environments. Every time I found a flailing piece of parchment hanging from a wall, I almost wanted to close out to the main menu just to see what the artists had created. Other hidden collectibles include masks that the children can put on, though these add little to the drab, dark, and grim atmosphere.

Players will undoubtedly judge REANIMAL for its price versus gameplay hours, but the quality of storytelling, visuals, and sound design cannot be argued. The promise of DLC suggests to me that some degree of story clarity will be offered, which I’m not sure how I feel about, but I’m eager for more. Some will call this arthouse schlock, but I remain firm that there’s something here, and even if your last impressions of REANIMAL are slightly less enigmatic days and weeks later, the journey is worthwhile if you don’t fuss over the almighty Dollar.

Have you ever seen Gus Van Sant’s Psycho?

In the late ’90s, director Gus Van Sant embarked on a cinematic experiment: He would remake Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror masterpiece Psycho. However, unlike most remakes that reimagine the story, his Psycho would be a shot-for-shot copy, only in colour with new actors playing the main roles. A fascinating experiment, yes, but also a complete disaster. There was something missing from the remake, an undefinable quality that made Psycho so infinitely watchable and timeless.

The Psycho remake kept coming to mind while I was playing Yakuza Kiwami 3. Though it is technically a more polished and modern game than Yakuza 3, I walked away shocked at just how badly Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio fumbled this remake.

The Tojo Clan is in extreme crisis! The Dragon of Dojima, Kazuma Kiryu, has fully retired from the yakuza world to run an orphanage in Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan. Unfortunately, a billion-yen land deal has put his orphanage in the middle of a Tojo civil war. Fighting to protect the children in his care, Kiryu must return to Kamurocho to save his orphanage and, in doing so, reshape the future of the Tojo Clan forever.

For the most part, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio kept Yakuza 3‘s story intact. Kiryu is still everyone’s favourite Yakuza Dad, trying his best to raise the orphans in his care. And the Tojo Clan is, as ever, trying their best to pull him back into their yakuza bullshit.

In my Yakuza 3 Remastered review, I singled out the Morning Glory orphanage sections as easily my least favourite part of the game. Although the connection between Kiryu and his orphans was emotionally compelling, the gameplay and side stories featuring them were a massive grind. I wanted to head into Kamurocho and tiger drop some hoodlums, not spend a dozen hours raising children, growing potatoes, and training a low-poly puppy. In Kiwami 3, however, growing potatoes and hanging out with the kids (not to mention the puppy) are actually engaging and fun!

One of the smartest things RGG did was to recycle some of the best minigames from future titles and repackage them in ways that make sense for the story. For example, they reworked the Vocational School exams in Yakuza: Like a Dragon into a minigame where you help your kids with their homework. They also imported the delightful cooking minigame from Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, so you can learn to make the favourite dishes of all the orphans. Plus, there are some new minigames, including a fun, if super challenging, racing/sewing game and a bug-catching game where you challenge your kids to see who can capture the most insects. On the whole, the revamped gameplay at the orphanage improved the Yakuza Dad sections immeasurably.

Another way RGG significantly improved the overall experience is by removing the mind-numbing cabaret club minigame and replacing it with the much more entertaining management sim Bad Boy Dragon, where Kiryu becomes the chairman of an all-girls biker gang (because of course he does). While this minigame features some new gameplay, specifically riding motorcycles into battle, there really isn’t too much new overall for Yakuza fans. It’s fun and full of interesting characters, but it’s pretty typical Like a Dragon management sim fare.

Unfortunately, that is where most of the big improvements come to an end.

What should be the most obvious place to improve in a remake is the graphics. Though impressive for a PS3 game, Yakuza 3 suffered from many of the limitations of that console generation: low-resolution textures and low polygon counts for characters (especially NPCs’ faces). In Kiwami 3, they’ve rebuilt the game in the Dragon Engine, but something must have gone wrong, because this is easily the worst-looking modern Yakuza game ever made. There are still weird texture issues, blurry filters in the backgrounds, and bafflingly, low-poly NPC facial models, leaving half of the yakuza in Kamurocho looking like they’ve escaped from the PS3 era. Maybe these low-poly faces were an homage to Yakuza 3‘s visuals, but surely there are better ways to honour the source material.

Speaking of honouring, or more accurately dishonouring, what has come before, let’s talk about RGG Studio’s decision to recast some beloved characters with popular Japanese actors. The biggest controversy is recasting the character of Goh Hamazaki as Teruyuki Kagawa. For those who are unaware, Kagawa has admitted to repeated sexual assault and misconduct. And despite the justified outcry from Yakuza fans about the casting, RGG declined to recast the actor, as they did for Judgment when one of the actors was accused of using cocaine. I guess RGG feels that confirmed sexual assault isn’t nearly as serious a crime as alleged drug use.

To those who are understandably angry about a sexual predator being cast in Kiwami 3, let me put your mind at ease: He’s terrible in the role. Ignoring everything else (as difficult as that might be), the actor is horribly miscast. Goh Hamazaki in Yakuza 3 is a six-foot-four, violent brute of a man with a malevolent intelligence and ambition simmering just below the surface. Goh Hamazaki in Kiwami 3 is a five-foot-seven, generic, middle-aged yakuza slimeball who looks and acts more like a downtrodden salaryman than the patriarch of a prominent family in the Tojo Clan. At no point does he feel like a genuine threat to Kiryu, completely undercutting the character’s role in the story.

Hamazaki isn’t the only recast character in Kiwami 3. Beloved wingman Rikiya Shimabukuro and his gruff but affable boss Shigeru Nakahara also have new actors. Ryo Ishibashi takes the role of Nakahara, and while he doesn’t quite look the part of the over-the-hill, overweight, rural yakuza boss (in fact, he looks more like a super-fit yakuza dream daddy), he does a wonderful job in the part, imbuing the new Nakahara with as much heart as his predecessor.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Sho Kasamatsu’s interpretation of Rikiya. Gone is our lovable doofus, only to be replaced with a bland performance that lacks Rikiya’s signature charm and warmth. Everyone who has played Yakuza 3 remembers Rikiya, but I guarantee you’ll forget Kiwami 3’s Rikiya five minutes after his last scene. I wish that RGG Studio would stop with the stunt casting and instead rely on the talented voice actors who have brought these roles to life over the last 20 years.

The updated combat in Yakuza Kiwami 3 is typical of modern games in the series. Unlike the single combat style in Yakuza 3, you now have Kiryu’s Dragon of Dojima style and a weapon-based Ryukyu Style that utilizes a sword and shield to block enemy attacks. Though arguably, the last thing we needed in this game was more blocking. In the original, every enemy, from boss to generic street tough, would block incessantly. Fighting them was such a chore that some called the game Blockuza 3. Thankfully, the remake somewhat mitigates this issue, though enemies still block a lot more than in other Dragon Engine games. It’s better, but if you end up with a group of five block-happy punks on the streets of Kamurocho, you might be in for a tedious fight.

When RGG announced Kiwami 3, they also revealed the brand-new side game Dark Ties starring Yoshitaka Mine, easily one of the most compelling characters in Yakuza history. With his unmatched level of threat, malice, and complexity, it only made sense to give him his own DLC-style game, just like Majima got with the Majima Saga in Yakuza Kiwami 2.

Yoshitaka Mine is in crisis. During a drunken bender in the Champion District, Mine happens to stumble upon a yakuza gang war where he watches several Tojo foot soldiers sacrifice themselves to save the Tojo chairman, Daigo Dojima. Inspired by this sight, Mine sets out to join the Tojo Clan and discover if there is more to life than just earning money. But how? By allying himself with a low-level Tojo grunt and sex offender, Tsuyoshi Kanda. Together, they start to build the Nishikiyama Family into one of the most powerful factions in the Tojo Clan, making countless enemies along the way. The choices he makes and the allies he chooses will reshape his future forever.

Right from the start, Dark Ties instantly put me off by having one of the protagonists be an unapologetic rapist. In fact, Kanda’s very first scene involves him attempting to rape a random woman in an alleyway. Mine stops him, not to save the woman, but to bribe Kanda into letting him into the Nishikiyama Family. And as the game progresses, so does the friendship between Mine and Kanda. He genuinely becomes Kanda’s friend and brother, forming close bonds of affection and loyalty that are tested (and obviously broken) on their way to the events of Kiwami 3. He is the Majima to Mine’s Kiryu; you can even sing karaoke with him. But there is one big difference: Kanda is, and I realize I keep repeating this, a violent rapist!

This leads me into Dark Ties’ big management sim, where you set about to rehabilitate a rapist’s image. As Mine, you go out and perform good deeds to boost Kanda’s standing in Kamurocho, eventually raising him to be seen as a paragon of virtue. The second I realized I would spend the majority of my playtime doing public relations work for a sex offender, I stopped playing for a few days. I eventually finished it out of a sense of obligation, but this entire scenario made me feel angry and disgusted. Who at RGG Studio thought that a management minigame where you rehabilitate a rapist’s image would be an engaging and fun activity in 2026? It would have been a spectacularly bad idea at any point in time, but especially now for obvious reasons. Rehabilitating a rapist’s image so he can gain a position of power? No unintentional parallels there, I’m sure.

I suppose the underlying intent of Dark Ties is to make you feel criminally complicit with the yakuza in a way that the main games never have. Kiryu and his friends tend to be yakuza paragons of virtue, while in Dark Ties, you are with the grunts who are in it for money, power, and to inflict as much pain on others as possible. And yes, there can be something fun about playing as the bad guy and engaging in fictional violence, racketeering, and gang warfare. But being complicit in rape? In a game that has already cast a sex offender in a leading role? I left Dark Ties feeling disgusted with the game, with what has been revealed about the character of Mine, and most of all, with RGG Studio.

Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties left me deeply concerned about the future direction of the Like a Dragon franchise. Since the very first time I played Yakuza Kiwami, this series held a special place in my heart. But if there is one thing that Kiwami 3 lacks, it’s heart. If you’re craving some modern Yakuza action, play any of the recent Dragon Engine brawlers. But if you really want to play Yakuza 3, my suggestion is to go play Yakuza 3 and leave Yakuza Kiwami 3 alone.

Oh, and remember when I mentioned Psycho off the top? One of the only things Gus Van Sant did right was not mess with one of the most iconic endings in cinema history.

RGG Studio should have taken notes.

Edmund McMillen became a name synonymous with indie developers “making it” after he met overwhelming success with Super Meat Boy, originally a Flash game in 2008. Then along came The Binding of Isaac, which McMillen couldn’t seem to get away from for a time due to its popularity. Aside from outstanding game design and unique premises, he might be most known for his brand of humor, which is starkly irreverent and profane in as intelligent a way as possible. Mewgenics is no exception.

You are a cat hoarder. In the game, I mean. You meet a nice, crazy scientist who insists on experimenting on cats. He hooks you up with a house whose squalor serves as a glorified breeding ground for a criminally irresponsible number of cats. In addition to the mad scientist, you meet a few other loons who are just as depraved and offensive.

I find Mewgenics‘ writing and characters to be an edgier version of South Park with a similar attempt at knocking people off their high horses. Not everyone’s going to like the writing or commentary here, though I enjoy the poking and prodding at the most sanctimonious among us. This doesn’t matter, though, because like most roguelikes, the story takes a backseat to raw gameplay.

At its core, Mewgenics is a strategy RPG with roguelite elements. Four kitties will head into the wild to battle McMillen’s nightmare-fuel armed with a small set of special abilities. You get a move action, a basic attack action, and mana-dependent skills to scratch, claw, punch, headbutt, and laser whatever comes your way. Then, move in an isometric view on square tiles, interact with the environment to accrue money or equipment, and take turns with pustules (i.e., enemies).

Each of Mewgenics‘ kitties have five equipment slots that increase stats, offer new abilities, interact with a whole assortment of effects throughout the game, and sometimes produce unusual and unclear effects. Fun! The short battles, encountered in a highly predictable fashion on a clearly laid out trail, offer money, food, and equipment upon victory.

Between battles, players may find a treasure chest with a random item and encounter a random event thrust upon one of the party members. Each event requires a skill test in one of the stats, and the potential for winning is clearly marked with shades of green or red, right alongside the character’s stat sheet. After reaching the map’s boss, players can continue on to one or two more maps to meet the finale of that run or return home early to secure goods.

A character dying on the field doesn’t wipe them from the game, though. They accrue an injury, which is almost always a blow to a random stat. If the corpse is hit too many times on the field, the kitty will actually die and disappear from the party. This may not be the worst outcome, because that means more level-ups for the other party members. Unlike most RPGs, every battle in Mewgenics results in a guaranteed level-up for one of the kitties, typically keeping each one at around the same level. When a party member dies, that means more levels for the others.

After a run, prepare to embrace birth defects and disfiguring injuries as you squint at sheet after sheet of stats and try to decide who gets donated to one of the creeps begging for cats and who gets to stay to fight whatever monstrosities lurk in the depths of a junk yard, desert, graveyard, and so on. Cats who’ve completed a run get a retirement crown and can’t go back into the field. This means every run in Mewgenics starts with a fresh new set of cats, so don’t get too attached.

Worry not, these cats will likely be stronger than the last, because breeding happens at the end of most days, and that means passing stats and abilities along to the children. Maybe. In order to increase the likelihood of this occurring and to help players grind stats to tackle new challenges, furniture can be bought for your hovel that increases the house’s stats.

McMillen and his co-developer, Tyler Glaiel, have mastered the art of steadily introducing new side quests, challenges, and locations. This is critically important because, as fun and involved as the stats and abilities are in Mewgenics, the game can feel repetitive at around the fifteen-hour mark. Make no mistake, Mewgenics is a grind. A fun grind, but definitely a grind. What has kept me going is finding whatever bizarre new monster the developers have around the corner and what unique game effects a revealed area may thrust upon me.

The most grueling part of Mewgenics is the return home. Having to manage my cats is a bummer. Some folks who are a little more carefree may find this to be an easier, more joyful responsibility, but if you’re like me and compulsively min-max in games like this, you’re going to have a bad time. At first, picking who lives and who dies is fun, but meticulously trying to craft the strongest kittens quickly feels like a chore.

On the other hand, sending a new set of cats into the field and deciding what character class to give them is always exciting. Having to decide what items to take with them and what abilities they might unlock is a bit of a dopamine hit. The game can be “broken” with the right level-ups, but even then, death is only a critical misstep away on the field. I’ve had my fair share of nailbiters, but even in the most dire circumstances with over forty hours of gameplay, I have yet to party wipe.

Speaking of wiping, there’s a lot of poop in Mewgenics, but if you’re a Binding of Isaac fan, that’s just good news. Visually, McMillen certainly has a style. The Frankensteinian monsters are rarely direct ports from Isaac, but the resemblance is uncanny. What’s shocking to me is just how many new monsters the team came up with, as I already thought Isaac had a substantial amount of imaginative foes.

Musically, expect simple, sometimes creepy tunes for routine battles and gallivanting around. The standouts in Mewgenics are the boss themes, which are lyrically outstanding, such as with the lounge singer describing the boss and their lives. As impressive as these songs are, the repetition sets in at a certain point, as well. 

Unfortunately, the controls are not to the level they need to be, though pointing and clicking almost always works as intended. In more than a few situations, the game shifted my cursor to a new square, causing me to misstep on the field. I’m not sure where the hiccup is here, but in a game that requires precision and careful planning, one square to the left might be a cat-astrophe.

Mewgenics is best enjoyed as a marathon, not a sprint. Due to the sheer volume of content—with no clear end in sight aside from “collect all the achievements” and unlock all the stuff—Mewgenics can feel overwhelming right out of the gate. Despite how incredible the game design, balance, and mechanics are, the lack of any real story makes getting attached to a team or battle impossible. This is a “wow, that’s so weird and cool” sort of game that you move on from every once in a while until you want to hop back in so that it all feels fresh and new.

Make no mistake: I love this game, and I’m almost definitely going to 100% it, but there’s no telling when that’s going to happen.

Much of the joy I derive from playing indie RPGs comes from seeing how independent developers remix familiar mechanics and classic presentation towards a singular purpose that a larger studio or publisher would never touch. Many big productions are so focused on appealing to everyone that they lack a cohesive vision or clear thematic message supported by strong mechanics that reinforce that goal. Hermit and Pig is what I’ve searched for: an adorable, quirky RPG that takes mechanics popularized by Earthbound, Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi titles and intertwines them with a delightfully funny and incredibly insightful narrative. Hermit and Pig achieves what few games can, particularly in such a short run time. It made me laugh, it made me smile, and it made me consider its message.

Hermit and Pig follows the titular duo during yet another day in their sylvan, solitary existence. That is, except for the strange dreams plaguing Hermit’s nights, eerily glowing blue mushrooms haunting even his waking thoughts. Their mundane task of foraging for mushrooms is rudely interrupted by a young girl, Mary, who explains that she’s ventured deep into the woods in search of a mushroom big enough to feed everyone in town, the mythical Jumbo Fungo.

The local factory, run by weapons manufacturer DefenseTek, abruptly closed and left most of the residents out of work and unable to procure food. Meanwhile, the animals of the forest have gone rabid, aggressively attacking anyone who crosses their path. Hermit reasons he can’t let Mary return home on her own and sets out to get to the bottom of these strange happenings that have so rudely dislodged him from his solitude, using the duo’s foraging skills to find the fabled fungi. It’s a simple premise, but one that evolves significantly over the seven-hour journey as more of the mysteries behind Hermit’s dreams and the company that runs the factory become clear.

The gameplay borrows heavily from timing-and-input-based combat systems, but Hermit and Pig does not simply replicate its inspirations. After all, Hermit and Pig are just an average old man and his porcine pet, and their options in combat fall within the bounds of possibility for such an unlikely duo, at least initially. Hermit can slap, punch, kick, stomp, swat critters away with his cane, and let off a well-aimed projectile from his slingshot. Combat takes place in first-person, and choosing the best attack requires careful examination of enemy characteristics. A prickly caterpillar? Skin-to-skin contact is a no-go, so the cane or slingshot is your best option. Does the animal have a hard shell? Your weapons of choice might glance off, but a firm kick or stomp will do the trick. Enemies will often change position during combat, requiring Hermit to alter his approach. For example, a snake may retreat into the reeds to heal each turn, leaving it out of reach of melee attacks but vulnerable to a rock from your slingshot. 

Furthermore, actually pulling off the chosen attack requires a precise combination of face buttons. Hermit’s handy wilderness survival manual contains the correct combinations, yet each turn is limited by a timer that ticks down, even when referencing the manual or digging through the inventory. This elevates what might otherwise be a simple combat system into an engaging test of reflexes, memory, and time management. If these limitations prove too restrictive or cumbersome, there is a bevy of accessibility options to make combos easier, shift to selecting attacks from a menu, and modify or eliminate the timer. Such options go that extra step to ensure anyone can enjoy the game, but I enjoyed the challenge on offer.

Pig’s abilities, on the other hoof, are support-oriented. He can attack, but his strikes are relatively weak during the opening hours. His real strengths lie in his ability to sniff out enemy weaknesses and forage for mushrooms. Mushrooms are a way of life for Hermit and Pig, and serve as both combat items and currency in the game. Pig can dig up valuable truffles hidden in the environment outside battle, and even forage for fungi mid-battle to aid Hermit. These mushrooms can restore hit points, recover status effects, inflict status ailments or debuffs on enemies, and buff Hermit and Pig if used correctly. 

Giving the pair their own defined roles keeps battle strategic, as combat scenarios involve a careful balance of dealing and tanking damage with Hermit while Pig aids his buddy and hinders the opponent. As the game progresses, Hermit and Pig stumble upon additional glowing mushrooms that grant new special abilities for battle. Hermit’s focus on damage dealing, while Pig’s new skills buff the entire party and grant him the ability to speak and negotiate with enemies. They also grow more adept at combat and can take multiple turns, though they remain limited to the same time window for executing attacks or abilities. This keeps combat from growing stale and allows the battle system to layer complexity without getting bogged down by higher stat totals.

Progression is similarly simple yet clever, as leveling up does not grant raw stat increases like a typical RPG. Instead, Hermit gains a single trinket point every time he levels up. Trinkets function like badges in Paper Mario, granting stat upgrades or altering character parameters when equipped. These trinkets are the only way to improve Hermit’s base stats, but the passive upgrade trinkets stand alongside trinkets that add status effects to attacks, increase exp gain, or various other alterations to the game’s systems. This variety enables many different character builds, and trinkets provide a nice reward for exploration and sidequest completion. 

This careful consideration of mechanics applies equally to the game’s narrative. Hermit lives a life of isolation because he suffers from crippling social anxiety. The game represents this by sweat bubbles that radiate from his sprite whenever a human NPC is near. Conversations are presented like battles, with the typical moveset replaced by dialogue options. Selecting the wrong dialogue option during conversations makes Hermit visibly cringe and take damage; successfully making it through small talk with another person rewards Hermit with experience points. For Hermit, every social interaction with another person is as fraught and dangerous as his physical confrontations, and the way the game remixes the battle mechanics for dialogue to reinforce Hermit’s personal difficulties is incredibly clever and empathetic. 

These conversations with the cast of quirky, off-beat human characters are the foundation of the game’s humor, and some of the “wrong” dialogue options are so funny I couldn’t help but choose them just to see the other character’s reaction. Hermit and Pig’s journey takes them all across their forest home, into a fishing village poisoned by radiation from a crashed truck, and into the local town where economic strife has everyone at each other’s throats. Hermit and Pig are unlikely heroes, but they end up helping the locals deal with the fallout of the factory closure and resulting environmental damage to the ecosystem despite themselves.

Hermit is repeatedly forced into uncomfortable social situations, like giving a pep talk to a gruff fisherman or inspiring a group of unemployed factory workers, each interaction building his confidence and forming connections with others in the community. This pays off in Hermit and Pig’s penultimate chapter, as Pig is kidnapped by DefenseTek goons, leaving Hermit to continue on truly alone. However, the various people Hermit helped along the way (Mary, Big Zug the fisherman, Thilaxia the mycologist, and Wren the survival guide) come to his aid, tagging along behind Hermit out of battle and joining him in combat. It’s a heartwarming and powerful moment that illustrates just how far Hermit has come in conquering his social anxiety.

Hermit and Pig isn’t content to rest on this effective tale of personal growth, offering a surprisingly insightful and poignant societal critique through biting satire. The developers at Heavy Lunch Studios take aim at everything from the environmental impacts of industry and the pursuit of corporate profit at the expense of social cohesion, to calling out the boot-licking absurdity of pop country music and the power of collective solidarity over corporate greed. The game’s core message really comes across in the final climax. Without spoiling the final revelations, I’ll say that the mushroom theme is more than quirky set dressing, and the developers use the concept of a mycelial network as a metaphor for solidarity in the face of labor exploitation and the environmental impact of resource extraction and warmongering. Heavy topics, to be sure, but Hermit and Pig navigates these concepts deftly without sacrificing the humor and lighthearted tone that defines the game’s early hours.  

I came to Hermit and Pig expecting a cute, humorous take on timing-based combat, and I got that, but I also got so much more. It’s truly rare for a game to have such thematic cohesion in both storytelling and mechanics, but Hermit and Pig delivers on that promise without coming off as pretentious or preachy. Heavy Lunch has something deeply important to say about our current moment, but they say it with a smile and laugh, enough to make the herbal remedy for humanity’s worst excesses go down easy. It’s clear that the developers understand and love human beings, despite all our flaws, and believe in our potential to create a better world than the one we have now, if only we could focus less on the “I,” and more on the “We.”

One of my favorite things about smaller games is their willingness to embrace off-the-wall mechanics and take quirky concepts as far as they will go. While big and even mid-budget games are so focused on appealing to the largest number of players possible by iterating on proven ideas, small development teams embrace experimentation and creativity to stand out. One such game that caught my eye is Cassette Boy, made by developer Wonderland Kazakiri inc. Utilizing a decidedly retro, Game Boy-influenced aesthetic, Cassette Boy is all about playing with perspective. Taking inspiration from handheld classics like Link’s Awakening and indie darlings like Fez, Cassette Boy gives the player the keys to the third dimension in an otherwise 2D world.

The basic premise of Cassette Boy is simple: the moon has disappeared, and fragments of it have been spread across the game world. It’s your job to collect the fragments and reassemble the moon to prevent the world from collapsing, and to do this, you are given all the conventional action RPG tools (a sword, bow and arrow, bombs, etc.) alongside some decidedly unconventional ones I won’t spoil.

Early on, a small pixel fairy gives you a pair of headphones that transform your previously 2D world into 3D, allowing you to rotate the camera left or right. This core mechanic is the foundation of the game’s many devious puzzles. As Cassette Boy‘s tagline states, “What you can’t see… doesn’t exist.” In practice, this means you’ll need to rotate the camera to obscure obstacles blocking your path, shorten distances between yourself and platforms, or even hide enemies so you can slip by unharmed. 

It’s an ingenious concept that the game explores in some clever and unexpected ways. While at first you are only using the change in perspective to pass by spikes or barriers, the game quickly begins to layer on additional mechanics.

In a traditional Zelda title, you might need to push blocks onto pressure tiles to hold open a door; in Cassette Boy, you can step on the tile yourself, then swing the camera around to hide it, keeping it pressed and the door unlocked. Need to hit a switch with an arrow, but can’t get into position to aim and hold down a switch at the same time? Fire the arrow behind a wall to store your projectile in liminal space until you are in position on the pressure plate, then rotate the camera to free your loosed arrow in the cleared path.

None of the required puzzles for progression are too difficult, but the world is dotted with shrines that contain optional puzzle rooms that seek to put your understanding of the puzzle mechanics to the ultimate test. The most fun to be had in the game lies within these optional areas, though I was a little disappointed there weren’t more of them and that the main dungeons never reached the same level of complexity. 

About midway through your journey, you receive the titular Cassette of Truth. This device complements the perspective-shifting gameplay nicely, as playing the tape reveals hidden elements in the environment until the tape runs out. Suddenly, it’s not just about manipulating your perspective, but also paying close attention to environmental details to find puzzle solutions. Although the puzzle design never really reaches the peak of its potential, there are enough head-scratchers here to keep the game compelling throughout Cassette Boy‘s short, five-hour adventure.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from a lack of polish and refinement in its RPG elements and combat. The combat is akin to top-down Zelda titles, but with none of the responsiveness or tight control one would expect from a classic isometric action RPG. Swinging your sword feels sluggish, the hitboxes for both yourself and enemies are wonky, and character movement is so loose that it feels as though you are sliding around the surface of the ground.

Cassette Boy attempts to paper over these shortcomings with a simple progression system. Defeated enemies drop XP orbs, and leveling up raises a handful of character stats (Attack, Defense, HP) that increase endurance and damage-dealing. Getting a few levels enables you to easily walk over most enemies, which reduces frustration from fighting against stiff combat mechanics. However, enemy behavior is rarely interesting or varied enough to make encounters remotely engaging. 

This rather unrefined, simplistic design stings most in the boss fights that cap off each dungeon. Every boss in Cassette Boy serves as nothing more than a large damage sponge, and most are underdesigned. For example, an early flower boss can have its entire first phase thwarted simply by standing a few feet away and peppering it with arrows; it won’t even begin to attack until the second phase, where it becomes easily dispatched with a few sword slashes.

Some bosses attempt to use the perspective gimmick, though the results are generally lackluster. A robot boss dons a force field in its second phase, powered by pylons in each of the four corners of the arena. Thwarting the device is as simple as kiting the boss in front of one of the pylons to obscure it, then lazily swinging away with your sword until it falls defeated.

Such issues render even the final boss anticlimactic, inexplicably moving into bullet hell territory with its projectile spam that you must awkwardly weave between while slowly shooting arrows at its mouth. None of Cassette Boy‘s encounters are hard, but they fail to meaningfully engage with the puzzle mechanics and thus feel out of place with the rest of the game.

In fact, the combat is so ho-hum, the RPG progression mechanics so superfluous, that I would’ve much rather the game done away with combat entirely. Many of the most acclaimed indie puzzle games of the last few years (Animal Well, Blue Prince, and Isles of Sea and Sky come to mind) rejected combat mechanics entirely and were better for it. I wish Cassette Boy had done the same and focused that energy on expanding the inventive puzzle mechanics to their fullest potential.

There are flashes of brilliance in Cassette Boy; the perspective gimmick applied to a top-down Zelda framework is delightfully novel. The game has a cozy retro aesthetic and a breezy, lo-fi soundtrack. If only the game had not been so slavish to its inspirations, ditched the lackluster combat & levelling system, and leaned into the complexity the shrine puzzles hint at underneath the surface. Instead, I’m left with a game brimming with promise that goes frustratingly unrealized.

I love indies because they can do almost anything, any way. Triple-A titles can break from the pack, but most of their qualities are time-tested and safe; after all, there is investors’ money on the line. Indies come with dreams, vision, and minimal worries about risk. That’s how we get titles like Steel Century Groove, which, while rough around the edges, introduces some fascinating ideas about storytelling and attempts to build on the small rhythm RPG subgenre.

Steel Century Groove’s speechless protagonist grows up in a peaceful world obsessed with Tenzerk dance battles and official competitions. Tenzerk are giant, piloted mechs capable of sick dance moves. Our hero, joined by childhood friend Seny, goes from a hand-me-down, damaged Tenzerk to a world-class model early on with help from a neighborhood shut-in professor. Modest beginnings gradually escalate to high-stakes dancing as winning a tournament becomes more a matter of access to world-defining decisions rather than bragging rights.

Bragging rights still take center stage, though, as Rhymerie—this world’s social media app—demands our constant attention. After every single battle, our hero must post a picture and caption to earn cred from the masses—likes and comments. This is where Steel Century Groove’s narrative spiders out all over the place.

We navigate small maps and locations, running into opponents Pokémon-style as they run into us when we cross their paths. The dialogue ranges from shallow to existential. A few simultaneous yet distinct talking points and themes weave together. Comments about social media’s necessity despite its vapid qualities constantly draw our attention, yet we also get comments about capitalism, work-life balance, war, history, and the mega-rich, all while the script teeters between childish banter or deep, relatable notes about adulthood.

Steel Century Groove is all over the place. Several famous characters enter our circle as we gain prominence in the Tenzerk world, all with their own drama, history, and squabbles. I was repeatedly drawn into their issues while trying to save the world, gain fame, and learn about the millennia of human civilization’s history. The writing’s as wanton as the mechs, and while I appreciated several of the themes discussed, I wish it had been more focused, or at least had a more uniform tone. Is this meant for kids or adults?

For those concerned about social justice, Steel Century Groove prominently and constantly draws attention to who’s gay, bi, cisgender, or transgender. Characters change identity over time, and most of the core cast seem to be queer. What I appreciate about this aspect of the game is that it never overtly talks the need to accept people for who they are, but comments on the topic almost passively without coming off as preachy. Granted, several of the characters speak about who they’re attracted to or who they were in a relationship with so frequently that it can feel a little forced.

This is a rhythm game with level-ups, skills to learn, items to spec Tenzerk with, and surprisingly diverse playstyles across mechs. At Steel Century Groove‘s heart, we are timing button presses when the circle overlaps the other circle on the squiggly line. Nothing new there. What changes up the formula are the Tenzerk abilities.

When selecting one of three starting Tenzerks—and you’ll accrue about five throughout Steel Century Groove—the summary clearly indicates what players can expect, and the complexity levels, ranging from low to high, are accurate. Low complexity isn’t necessarily worse, but it may rely on more skillfully timed presses and careful customization to earn victory depending on the difficulty level. High-complexity Tenzerks boast immense power and leave more room for error, but you have to invest the time in learning the more involved design that borders on convoluted.

For example, a low-complexity Tenzerk might build up electricity over time with one key press, and then other key presses will expend the battery. Players will have to alternate button presses, but all you have to do is keep the battery up to use the powerful abilities allotted to the other three buttons. Conversely, a high-complexity Tenzerk spawns two floppy disks during each eight to twelve beat leg of the song (about eight to twelve beats), which are low-level to start.

Careful planning allows players to upgrade the disks over time, generate new ones, and decide which ones to delete from the deck for that song. In this way, the complex Tenzerk starts slow and allows the enemy to get a strong start, but careful planning will slingshot the player rapidly ahead of the opponent, making for some dramatic battles.

Each Tenzerk can be customized with unique mods. Initially, they have only one mod slot, but over time, they gain a mod slot after defeating each of the four gym leaders. The mods are genuinely interesting, and one is not necessarily better than another. Steel Century Groove once again proves that it can be taken more seriously with authentically difficult choices and high-demand gameplay if that’s what a player wants. This makes the uneven storytelling even harder to accept, because I felt like I was playing a children’s game at times. The visuals don’t help.

At first, I think most people will dismiss Steel Century Groove for the visuals alone. This is by no means a high-end title, but like most things, you get used to it eventually. Steel Century Groove looks like a kids’ game, and maybe that’s what they’re going for.

What I will say is that despite its blocky, plainly colored exterior, the style is unmistakable. If I weren’t so focused on winning battles and watching the circle move on the line on my screen, I’d probably love watching the robots battle. What I always get a kick out of is how when the battles start, the robots land, decimating the environment around them—trees, buildings, or whatever else is in the way.

What’s a rhythm game without a stellar soundtrack? Good question! Steel Century Groove doesn’t have bad music, but I’m in no way ever going to listen to any of these songs outside of this game. At first, I thought the soundtrack was vast and varied, but at a certain point it all runs together and nothing stands out. A couple tracks caught my attention, like a heavy metal song, but most of what’s here is poppy, saccharine nonsense that sounds like Top 40 stuff. Not my thing, maybe it’s yours, but even then—nothing stands out. Don’t expect Crypt of the NecroDancer or Metronomicon.

Steel Century Groove is classic indie game fare: new ideas all over the place. I applaud the unique storytelling and incredible design behind the Tenzerks in terms of the rhythm game, but there’s simply nothing here to make me fall in love.

I don’t think any of the themes really landed, because there were just too many to tackle in a twelve-hour jaunt, and the song selection made the best part of the game a chore to embrace. The Tenzerk have bold, imaginative design, but after learning a Tenzerk, timing notes and falling into a pattern happens too quickly. For its novelty, I can recommend Steel Century Groove, but as a lasting, packaged deal, I am not sure I would suggest anyone grab this.

“But how can a novel…be fake?” my friend astutely pointed out as I was trying to explain the premise behind inkle’s TR-49. Because the authors never existed? No, there are plenty of instances of pen names and disputed authorship. Because there were no records of these books outside one instance buried deep within an attic? That seems closer to accurate. Add that these titles were likely created by British Intelligence during World War II, and these questions and the books themselves become much more intriguing.

These real-life objects and events set up an incredibly effective frame for the game itself. In fact, most of the promotional material for TR-49 aside from the trailers center around this inspiration, with a detailed letter from the Narrative Director (who was also a mathematician consultant for the Imitation Game film) describing why he believes his relative worked at Bletchley Park specifically, and even an interactive pinboard connecting the novel covers with internal pages. Right away, I became curious how this would fit with inkle’s tendency to play with genre and willingness to experiment with different structures and gameplay mechanics. How do these two things mesh?

One common thread among inkle games is that they encourage you to explore, try different actions and responses and—especially in my experiences with Overboard! and Expelled!—fail in order to learn. They also strive for open-ended, interactive storytelling. Otherwise, their works differ widely in tone, narrative delivery and structure, and gameplay mechanics that intersect with the storytelling. My first impression from trailers and TR-49‘s opening was that it’s intentionally limited in some important ways, like a single setting at the machine and limited direct character interactions, in order to focus the narrative and balance the expansive, association-based puzzle solving. 

The act of playing TR-49 is another aspect that feels intentionally constrained. There’s a first-person view, seemingly from Abbi’s perspective, looking at the machine’s interface while operating it. The entirety of the game occurs at this interface, with an intercom as your only link to the external world. It’s also a tight loop of examining entries, reading notes, talking to your “handler” Liam every so often, and repeating. This could be very monotonous, but it does not feel that way because the game encourages you to freely imagine associations between entries and figure out codes for new books. A simple example: you read an entry and notice a reference to another work the author wrote “two years later.” You could try adding two to your existing code, as the numbers often reference years or dates. This process feels conducive to a flow state until you hit the next dead end, though I never was stuck for long and was able to quickly find new leads to follow, especially after leaving the game and coming back.

This flexibility in finding codes to identify the machine’s entries and command processes absolutely leads to trial and error, and sometimes even stumbling unintentionally into new information. There was even a time when a typo I made actually connected to an entry. I know some would see this as a flaw—lack of clear direction. I would argue that your direction is always very clear: Explore. Find connections between entries and identify book titles so you can find one specific book that influenced current events. It’s up to the player what that process looks like, and I understand that may not be enough direction for some players to enjoy the game. You’re making associations using every resource at your disposal, and that includes random good luck. I also felt this was good for immersion, because it’s an organic way to solve a problem or puzzle.

Several unique story threads accomplish the heavy narrative lifting in TR-49. It goes far beyond Abbi and Liam’s story, which has some truly effective tense moments. While they are working to understand how the machine works 50 years after its creation, they uncover the story of the family that created the machine and how it became capable of changing reality. It’s also the story of the authors and texts that were loaded into the machine and reactions to these works from publishers and academic journals. By the time I finished the game, the frame story of the developers uncovering mysterious, direct ties to the setting served as yet another thread to incorporate into the experience. I love how TR-49 incorporates inkle’s love of stories by emphasizing the critical role that feeding literature and important cultural texts has in the code-breaking machine’s amazing reality-bending abilities. (Side note: please forgive me for deleting the Bible entry. I only did it because it is so significant! I had to find the right thing to delete to save the world.)

And this is the perfect point to bring up just how atmospheric TR-49 is. The presentation is fantastic, from sketches of characters and symbols in your notes to the haunting glimpses of portraits you occasionally see in the background of the machine’s display. The muted, lived-in tones of TR-49‘s color palette cries out, “It’s nostalgic, but there’s something off,” while the machine itself instantly evokes photos of code-breaking apparatuses from the time, like the Bombe or Colossus machines used by the British in World War II. Many female cast members, especially the ones directly working with the machine, made TR-49 feel true to the historical role of women in intelligence, and specifically Bletchley Park.

The one mechanic that broke my immersion slightly was the intercom where Abbi and Liam can supposedly interact at any time. It looked like the game was prompting me to use it at times, yet there were also stretches where it was quiet when I tried to use it. I’ll also admit to flailing a bit when I saw the intercom button light up while I was in the middle of typing a code for an entry. The sound design and voice acting were consistently good and not part of this issue at all. Seeing Laurence Chapman (A Highland Song, Heaven’s Vault) return for music was also exciting news, and this time, he delivers a more sparse score with memorable stings at just the right moments, rather similar to Myst or Riven.

On the whole, I felt very invested and excited when I made progress, and that only increased as I reached the end of the story. I realized I had a very specific trajectory and sequence to my game that was most likely unique to me, which very few games accomplish. I wanted to confirm this, so I even had an RPGFan colleague sit down and trial the game so I could observe. Unsurprisingly, his experience was noticeably different from mine as he focused on entries and information that caught his notice. This variety makes for a unique and compelling experience. Still, I would hesitate to recommend TR-49 unilaterally. It demands a specific mood and mindset, but if there’s a match there, it’s like cracking a code and your reward for meeting these demands is thoughtful, flow-like immersion to reveal an engaging story. One that decidedly does not feel fake when you experience it.

As a longtime fan of the Ys series, I’ve often wondered what Ys would look like had it kept the archaic yet charming bump-combat system that defined Ys Books I&II. This bump combat arose when games were more minimal in their presentation and limited in scope; in adapting to the changing times and advances in action RPG design and technology, it’s possible something integral was lost. Angeline Era seeks to answer this question by adapting and evolving the bump-slash style combat into three-dimensional space with scope and presentation more akin to the golden age PC Ys titles (Ark of Napishtim, Oath in Felghana, Ys Origin, etc.) in a non-linear world that borrows heavily from The Legend of Zelda. The result is not always successful, with the non-linearity and vague world-building impeding the normally impeccable storytelling from developer Analgesic Productions, but the veteran indie duo’s work is nonetheless immensely compelling in its combat system and level design. 

Angeline Era follows Tets Kinoshta, a former soldier who comes to the land of Era by boat (not unlike a certain red-haired adventurer), coaxed on his journey by repeated visits from an Angel in his dreams. That angel is named Arkas, and after Tets conveniently rescues him from the minions of the Fae Queen Niamh, he instructs Tets to find the missing Bicones, artifacts of great power necessary to quell the storm surrounding the crashed angel mothership called Throne. Era is a land where Humans, Angels, and Fae creatures coexist and fight amongst one another, and relationships between them (such as the one between Tets and Arkas) provide the foundation for world-building and narrative in Angelina Era. 

This mix of magical creatures, biblical allusions, and ruminations on the nature of community and mortality is initially quite compelling, and many of the game’s side stories explore intriguing facets of each idea. Fae creatures steal a woman’s child and leave one of their own in its place, raising questions of nature vs. nurture when the human child finally returns home significantly changed. An angel becomes obsessed with his inability to procreate as humans do, leading to grotesque experiments in angel-human hybrids. Unfortunately, the game’s non-linear structure impedes the pacing and delivery of the narrative, leaving the player with many heady concepts to consider without a guiding narrative thread to weave them together in a satisfying way. 

I did become invested in the development of Tets and Arkas’s relationship throughout the journey. Still, the antagonists were so remote, and the stakes so unclear during much of my playtime, that reaching the end of the game and having unanswered questions felt unsatisfying. The freedom to go pretty much anywhere from the start and tackle each region and Bicone in whatever order you see fit benefits the gameplay experience, but the doubled-edged sword of that nonlinearity may cause key scenes to be missed or witnessed in an order that fails to benefit the pacing and narrative stakes. 

Thankfully, the moment-to-moment gameplay is engaging enough to carry the experience despite the lack of a strong narrative hook. In Angeline Era, you explore a world map similar to Hyrule in the first Legend of Zelda, complete with hidden areas and secrets to find. In fact, pretty much all the levels, dungeons, and towns are hidden from view, requiring Tets to use his “search” command liberally in any conspicuous spot. If you find a hidden area, Angeline Era thrusts you into short first-person segments that evoke early dungeon crawlers, where you have a limited amount of time to dodge obstacles and defeat enemies that bar your path. These segments heighten in complexity as the game progresses, sometimes containing traps, moving obstacles, and occasionally a quiz from an NPC. 

Once you get into one of the game’s many bite-sized levels, Angeline Era shines brilliantly. Equal parts action RPG and 3D platformer, each level sees you deftly navigating obstacles with your double jump and fighting off waves of enemies in confined arenas using the bump-slash system. While at its core, the combat consists of simply running into enemies and automatically slashing them with your sword, there is a great deal of strategy and depth to combat encounters. Positioning is critical, as the direction you approach from and the location you make contact with an enemy determine how much damage you do (if any at all) and whether or not you take damage in return.

You can dodge or parry enemy attacks, and the game approaches bullet-hell levels of projectiles on screen at times, expecting you to weave between enemies and projectiles deftly. The added third dimension is vital, as jumping avoids many attacks, and several enemy weak spots are elevated or constantly moving. The enemy and encounter design is particularly ingenious, with every enemy having its own attributes and behaviors to counter. Each combat arena has perfectly devilish enemy combinations that keep you on your toes without being insurmountable. The environment itself is equally important to combat, as moving to higher ground or kiting enemies around barriers is often necessary for survival. Hitting an enemy into a wall with your bump-slash causes a critical hit and stuns them, and many scenarios almost require making use of this tactic.

A wide array of artifacts lies tucked away in the dungeons of Era: mysterious items with combat and traversal applications. Some are conventional weaponry, like a gun, grenades, or landmines; others are esoteric and more useful for navigating the environment, like a device that can summon blocks to serve as platforms, or a bubble that limits your maneuverability but enables you to travel across bodies of water for a limited time. These items inject variety into the traversal, and the level design builds upon them well, ensuring there is always some new challenge or obstacle to navigate when you enter a new area.

Tets’ core equipment has a plethora of upgrades that significantly alter their attributes, although typically in a lateral fashion. Each relic or item is powerful, yet also has drawbacks. For example, the gun can hit enemies rapidly from a distance, but can only shoot in one direction (up towards the top of the screen) and must have its ammo replenished through melee attacks. This careful balance prevents Tets from feeling overpowered, while ensuring that victory is always within your grasp. The progression system is similarly balanced, as each level awards you with a scale to level up Tets. After reaching level 11, further character levels have diminishing returns, preventing you from grinding enough to brute force your way through the game. There are a variety of difficulty levels suited to every skill level, and I found normal to be a significant challenge. The higher difficulty levels come with additional modifiers, and a boss rush mode becomes available after completing the game for those who really want to master the combat system.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of Angeline Era is the boss design. Boss fights range from standard duels against an enemy with a similar skillset to massive beasts that require specialized tactics to defeat. Some bosses even make heavy use of the environment, such as a gun-wielding Fae whose arena doubles as a game of Pong. This fight sees you dodging attacks from the boss and returning fire, all while dealing with the minions he summons and bumping into a paddle to bounce bombs back and forth to ensure they explode on his end and not yours. There is immense creativity on display in the boss fights, and my excitement to see the next area and its boss kept me wanting to forge ahead even when the vague story, lack of direction, and occasional bug or glitch stymied my progress.

Overall, Angeline Era is a triumph for Analgesic Productions. It’s by far the biggest game they’ve made, and every inch is packed with secrets and good level design. The combat system reinvents the bump-slash combat of classic Ys for the third dimension expertly, illustrating just how much depth there still is to mine from that style of combat. The narrative is hampered by the non-linear structure and heady concepts that are not fully explored, yet the core gameplay loop of exploring the overworld and uncovering new levels full of inventive platforming and fun combat was enough to keep me forging on through the world of Era.

Disco Elysium took the gaming world by storm all the way back in 2019 with its unconventional storytelling, grim world, and unique gameplay that almost emphasizes failure over success to drive the narrative. Rue Valley has been endorsed by some of the team behind Disco Elysium, and has been frequently compared to it. Make no mistake, this is not Disco Elysium. Far from it.

Right out of the gate, we get to create our very own Eugene Harrow, the protagonist of this interactive novella. Similar to the character building in Disco Elysium, we get to decide just how neurotic Eugene is. Is he so extroverted that he’s a giant pain in the ass to everyone, or is he so calculated that he’s a paranoid mess? You get to decide! Unfortunately, these stats do little to shape the narrative or gameplay, but more on that later. At the very least, this primes the story and gets us settled in for what kind of game Rue Valley hopes to be.

Out in the desert at 8PM, we end our first therapy session with Dr. Finck. We get to our motel room, unpack our bag, wander around the motel, and eventually witness a space launch or some explosion off in the distance that blinds us. And then—wait, are we back in Dr. Finck’s office? Did we space out an entire day and start our second therapy session? No. Quite the opposite.

Rue Valley is a time loop game in which we relive the same 47 minutes in perpetuity, like a miniature version of Groundhog Day. What unfolds is a dive into Eugene’s psyche—and potentially every human being’s—as he battles his way out of the time loop. He gets to know the denizens of this remote area, discovers clues to what the hell’s going on, and enjoys a healthy dose of madness.

Part of Rue Valley’s charm is that it goes places, diving into the psychology of a hamster in a wheel. As you may have predicted, the fun lies in the storytelling. Some of the time. Parts of Rue Valley are absolutely captivating with rich language and vocabulary reminiscent of Disco Elysium, albeit with far less wild banter. Rue Valley plays it straight almost the entire time, aside from occasional dialogue options in which Eugene can speak as one of his neurotic characteristics.

Much of Rue Valley can feel like a walking simulator in isometric view. Initially, expectations lead us to believe we’ll be on a series of multiple quests occurring simultaneously as we explore a world full of intricate details that unfold based on our decision-making. Not so. Unfortunately, Rue Valley authentically feels this way only in the first few hours, then quickly becomes a linear jaunt through a small world that we must repeatedly explore over and over and over again.

Perhaps the goal was to make us feel like Eugene—the repetitive nature of it all driving us mad, just like him. His experience becomes our experience. I’ve dabbled in games like this that are less about “fun” and more about making a statement. If that’s your bag, then there may be something here, but I imagine most of us want to spend a 20-hour game enjoying ourselves, or at the very least have our time respected. Navigating the world becomes easier with time, but expect to see a lot of the same transition scenes (like walking or driving) as Eugene goes from point A to point B to hopefully unlock one more clue.

In this way, Rue Valley can feel cumbersome and clunky. Walking feels stiff, and Eugene trots around with little urgency, no matter what’s going on. In one particular area, I kept getting caught on the corners of objects in the field, which made an already laborious experience more excruciating. As this is a time loop in which examining differences across the 47-minute hell Eugene resides in is core to the experience, on more than one occasion I felt as if I were spinning my wheels for crumbs that ultimately went nowhere.

That isn’t to say all of Rue Valley is a chore. When new experiences arise, we make a significant discovery, or Eugene has some sort of psychological epiphany, Rue Valley is at its best. The writing is so descriptive and rich that I felt like a starved man sitting in front of a succulent meal about to dig in. Unfortunately, the pace and flow of this 20-hour game is one in which we feel like we’re dragging our feet rather than sprinting ahead, which makes those juicy bits feel less and less appealing as we anticipate the promise of another dry spell.

Which is a shame, because Rue Valley goes to some truly fascinating places. The writers have a lot to say about life, the human condition, and rural America. As eloquent as the writing can be throughout, prepare to learn a good deal about family histories and local politics that may (or may not) have substantive relevance to the plot. After getting a fact dump, I frequently wondered: why?

The art style can feel like watching an interactive painting, and if you look close enough, you may even notice some fascinating methods in the lining and coloring Rue Valley’s world. While not the most attractive art in a traditional sense, it is uniquely Rue Valley, and that’s worthy of praise. Unfortunately, the desolate world in Rue Valley won’t inspire awe, and much of the most noteworthy visual effects occur in the sky, which we never get to see on account of the isometric viewpoint. Here, I’m reminded of Final Fantasy VII Remake; Midgar’s detail is incredible, but the slums aren’t the most eye-catching environment.

Musically, much of Rue Valley’s light, ambient instrumentation recedes into the background, though the most somber moments are tastefully coupled with heart-rending tunes that opt for a softer touch over sorrowful horns and strings. Much of Rue Valley’s voice acting falls between capable and excellent. Expect rural accents, lines delivered straight with little emotion, and words that don’t match what’s printed on the screen. While Rue Valley has much to say about this and that, much of the script lacks drama. Most folks here are beaten down by monotony, a disappearing community overtaken and abused by corporations, and meeting an outsider they don’t really care to know (that’s you).

Rue Valley has something to say; in fact, it has some things to say. Unfortunately, philosophical intrigue is mired in inconsequential tongue wagging and book reading, as well as gameplay mechanics that feel left at the side of the road close at the start. While I love the vision and ideas, Rue Valley misfires on the launchpad and never makes it into the stratosphere.

As a 17-year-old, abandonware website-obsessed kid, I played X-Com: UFO Defense while HBO’s Band of Brothers was on the TV in the same room. X-Com‘s early game was all I made it through, since the base-building phase was impossible to wrap my head around, but as I leap-frogged and watched over my little guys across a stretch of farmland in search of aliens, I was mirroring the fix-and-move paratrooper tactics I saw on the TV. Later, XCOM: Enemy Unknown not only revived the dual strategy/turn-based tactics genre I learned to love through its predecessor, but it streamlined and introduced the concept to a wide range of players. Many such great games have been released since, but I can’t think of one as singularly inspiring as developer Trese Brothers’ Cyber Knights: Flashpoint.

In the 23rd century, under the rotting New Boston environmental dome, mega corporations, military security companies, and street gangs are the animating forces of society. A rare type of entrepreneur known as Cyber Knights are the most sought-after couriers, assassins, and saboteurs under the dome. Their unique spinal-implant supercomputers offer them unparalleled tactical advantages and flexibility in any violent situation. They’re also illegal, so their services fetch high prices.

You’re a street-level operator who’s managed to obtain a significant loan from a shadowy syndicate to go under the knife for the highly dangerous and potentially deadly Cyber Knight surgery. The first mission sees your colleagues posted up on the rooftop helipad of a hospital as the unethical surgeon wraps up the operation. The subsequent extraction shines a bright light on how strong the tactical systems are in Cyber Knights: Flashpoint.

First, stealth. The few guards on the rooftop are unaware of your squad’s activities. Therefore, you may command them to move out of sight, avoiding unwanted attention for as long as possible. The game’s missions usually offer this silent option. The stealth system and enemy behavior model mean that stealth takes on a much more granular and robust role in how you may choose to approach a mission in its entirety. Say you take out a guard while the poor soul’s co-workers are none the wiser. After a couple of turns, the in-game SecAI will alert all guards that one of their vitals handshakes didn’t check in. In this event, the level’s guards will gradually become suspicious and begin to look for their fallen comrade, even if they aren’t necessarily aware of your presence at this point.

On the other hand, an unsilenced weapon (or silenced weapon still within earshot of a guard) or a careless step will cause the guards to begin hunting in the area. In this event, a clever tactician can still silently dispatch all alert parties without other enemies knowing about it right away, though this would be a remarkable achievement. Even in the event of such a successful maneuver, if the tactician then doesn’t move fast to complete their objective, the rest of the guards will eventually notice the absence of their brothers-in-arms. This granularity at once rewards outstanding planning and improvisation, and the depth of features that play into the stealth aspect of Cyber Knights alone make it one of the most dynamic turn-based games I’ve ever encountered.

Second, combat. The first thing I noticed about moving my squad around the map is how scrupulous Cyber Knights: Flashpoint‘s movement and cover systems are. The map is gridless, so you can slide up to any pixel on the floor, with a surprising amount of clutter and environmental detail you can use for full or partial cover. The desk chair in an office? Crouch behind it for some truly pathetic cover. A piece of piping conduit running across the wall? Squeeze up to it and hope the plumbing stops a bullet or two. The downsides are that it lacks the fancy dynamism of the destructible environments in other contemporary (and even older) games of its type, and that finding the spot you want to move your unit to can be a little bit finicky. Still, it’s neat that one pixel could mean having a target in your line of sight or not.

The weapons, weapon mods, cyberware, and skills available to the various operative classes also greatly impact the combat. The class skill trees are vast, and each individual skill can be upgraded several times to reduce cooldown or increase effectiveness. Multiclassing offers some very impressive flexibility in how you build your squad. The skill trees and managing your mercenaries with all their aspects can be daunting, but playing the game is so fun and rewarding that you will eventually learn its intricacies and parse the mountain of information it throws at you.

Third, the objectives. In the middle of this hospital extraction, an enforcer squad touches down on the helipad and begins hunting for you. You then have to quickly run across the map, hack an elevator, and extract while an overwhelming force descends upon you. The stealth and combat systems provide a canvas upon which you paint your successes, but time is almost always of the essence, even as the missions feature a decent variety of objective types. Balancing speed and stealth is one of the most intriguing promises Cyber Knights: Flashpoint makes, and it completely pays off. What pressures you to move has more to do with the awareness of individual guards and the accompanying threat of reinforcements, and nearly never to do with hard “complete x objective in y number of turns” arbitrariness. This design choice alone goes a very long way to allowing the player to buy into the world and short-term stakes of your mission.

Naturally, as a cyberpunk-themed game, there are opportunities to hack terminals. The hacking minigame is like a turn-based version of those in the recent Deus Ex games, with nodes on a web representing different system components all with varying degrees of security you must defeat with programs bought on the marketplace. This hacking minigame could almost be its own game as it provides a tense, deep puzzle which can trap and impede you in surprising ways. When hacking a terminal in a mission, you may find security nodes giving access to locked doors or security systems, or you may find file sets of sensitive (and sellable!) information. Strategic thinkers will consider which of their contacts gets the most valuable data, increasing their influence.

The Wire Ghost character class can hack systems through cameras, laser systems, motion detectors and other such security items to disable other components on the security network. They cannot, however, render systems completely under your control, so this class can take on a wholly different role as a sort of surface-level hacker.

After extracting your newly-minted Cyber Knight, who serves as more or less the player character, the next phase of the game reveals itself: base building, business management, and personnel management. Like many other tactics games, you are tasked with building facilities that may be used for crafting equipment and items, manipulating aspects of your operation like hacking boosts or stress reduction, and other necessities. Here you can also train and outfit your squad members, all of whom have deep backstories and faction relationships you can read about, but rarely pay off in the game itself aside from some cool instances of rescuing a family member and allowing them to join your squad, or a squad member being blacklisted by a faction, blocking you from deploying them in jobs offered by said faction. However, at the time of writing this, Trese Brothers has announced that they will be implementing Mass Effect-style personal missions tied to individuals under your employ. Time will tell if these missions live up to their promise.

One very successful aspect of character building is how you network with various players in the many factions of the New Boston dome. For instance, the exorbitant loan given to your team for Cyber Knight surgery was offered by a syndicate looking to take more control of the dome. You are obligated to take jobs for the syndicate leader until you can pay off your ever-hanging loan. Eventually, a rival leader from within the same syndicate will contact you to offer a forgiveness of your loan if you kill the other leader, allowing him to take her place. You are free to choose to either abandon both of them, which invites hired assassins to potentially interrupt any mission you take, pay off the loan in good faith, or take the man up on his offer.

This is the tutorialized way Cyber Knights: Flashpoint introduces critical strategic considerations to the player. Though this first instance is scripted, much of your relationships to the various factions are actually procedural and systematic. As you take missions for individuals, they may rise in the ranks of their faction, be it a dealer of hacking drugs from a street gang, a corporate arms dealer, or a military security firm captain. Depending on the role of these characters, helping them rise in rank unlocks various perks for your team, including better items for sale or favors you can call in before or during a mission, such as cutting all the security cameras off. However, as faction characters rise in influence, they also gain exposure. Influence and exposure are opposing stats applied to characters in your rolodex that, when high enough, can impart positive or negative Limit Breaks. Managing these effects is one of the many considerations you may take into account, although you are not obligated to help anybody.

With so much depth to both phases of Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, the the result is a sprawling, dynamic set of factions and cast of characters that can interact with you and with each other in fascinating ways. This is a base building strategy game and a turn-based tactics game, but even as a role-playing game, there are few modern examples that showcase a similar depth and dynamism.

The cost, of course, is that it is at first a rather overwhelming experience, with lots of stats to consider and bits and bobs to manage, although I never found it as morose as managing the squads and bases in the MS-DOS X-Com games or the inventories of large parties in the most fiddly RPGs. The parts I did understand were so compelling that in time I learned to speak the language of the more mysterious parts, which opened my appreciation of them.

Trese Brothers is a small, boutique RPG studio that is known for their interconnected systems and for building worlds influence by its characters. They are also known as a studio that never seemed to have many resources for art. Most of their games are… charmingly rendered, so to speak. The predecessor to this game, the Android-only Cyber Knights RPG, is one of my favorite open-ended sandbox role playing games, but it is challenging to look at. Their previous game, Star Traders: Frontiers, showed some visual improvement, but Cyber Knights: Flashpoint marks a big jump in graphical quality and sophistication with fully 3D characters and environments that, while they won’t betray it as any AAA offering, are cohesive and attractive, even if some of the more colorful characters look silly. The music is ambient, synthy, and rock influenced. In a cool touch, it kicks up when stealth is broken, but it is little more than very serviceable background music.

Although there are many great examples of hybrid strategy/turn based tactical games out there, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint sets itself apart by offering both a uniquely dynamic and reactive strategic layer and a turn-based tactics layer with nail-bitingly satisfying stealth and great combat. This is one of the most rewarding games of its kind to come out in this generation. It is perhaps one of the best to come out since XCOM: Enemy Unknown revived the genre.

Indie games can be difficult to review because they can ignite the imagination, get your head bobbin’, and make you fall in love with characters, but may also have a host of jarring problems. Do I love this game or do I hate it? Well, that depends on what part of the in-game week I’m in and how many bugs I run into. On its better days, Demonschool is easy to swoon over because of its sheer style and unique storytelling.

Faye is our bold, sincere, and intensely charming college student protagonist bound for Hemsk Island to study for the year. She meets a friend on the boat over, Namako, who is her foil, but also her platonic soulmate. The game pulls no punches as we almost immediately witness demons blowing students up into mists of blood. Gruesome though it may be, Demonschool celebrates the cheer of Italian gore horror, almost singularly accomplished through its artwork and music.

Studying isn’t in the syllabus as Faye realizes she and her growing group of friends were brought here to fend off a demon invasion. All is not so grim, though, because they still have a school, which means bonding over karaoke, cooking together, and going on dates. Classmates disintegrating before their very eyes will have to wait.

One might say, “Well, that’s macabre and inappropriate.” And that’s right! But Demonschool balances the urgency of the demon invasion with levity. Faye fascinates me because she is bizarrely and comically excited about murdering demons—and the artwork conveys this—yet cares deeply about innocent lives and standing up to authority. Flirty and occasionally unaware, Faye has so many layers that work phenomenally well together throughout the entire narrative, even as the tone gets a bit serious by the endgame.

Demonschool’s narrative flow begins on Mondays with three phases during each day: morning, evening, and night. Faye’s crew get an assignment or sniff out a mission early in the week, investigate it throughout the week, and have to nail the assignment or achieve the weekly MacGuffin by Friday. Then the weekend happens, and nothing bad ever happens on weekends. Rinse and repeat. Players explore various locations across Hemsk Island, typically clicking on people with white speech bubbles above their heads that turn grey after a brief exchange.

Eventually, the locations spider out into fifteen or so places, which can really slow down the experience, but I sorta didn’t mind because the NPCs almost always have something funny to say, especially in the first half of the game. The NPCs change up every week and sometimes have something new to say during the week, so if you’re like me and compulsively want to experience all of the content, be prepared to visit every location multiple times during the week to avoid missing this fantastic writing. Some quality-of-life features here would have been a real time save, but I’ll complain more substantively later.

Key mission targets and side quest opportunities are clearly indicated on the location menu, so if you don’t care about the NPC dialogue, you can breezily get to the meat. I couldn’t help myself, though, because Demonschool’s quippy conversations are core to enjoying the game’s tone. Almost every time, the NPC will have some silly name like “Heights Enjoyer” on the roof and will have something witty to say about heights—and enjoying them. The whole affair is addicting because it’s so on-the-nose, yet cleverly written. I chuckled throughout.

In terms of the flow and pacing, Demonschool can be a bit of a slog as the mid-week can feel like filler; it’s as if the developers rigidly decided that all segments of the core storyline need to fit into this Monday-to-Friday mold, and had to find ways to fill in each of the three phases of the five weekdays. The result can feel sluggish and irrelevant at times, though the writing commendably obscures the wild goose chase. To make matters worse, the number of battles can feel just as much like filler.

Demonschool’s battles are simple yet excellent. When Faye and friends run into a demon, the screen will shake a little as Faye ravenously charges the team into battle, as if fighting demons is the most exciting act imaginable (I love her enthusiasm every time). Faye’s team is launched into a nether realm, somewhere between the human and demon world, and fights on a square-based grid. Players decide which allies will join the team, usually four out of several choices. Enemy positioning varies, which can feel gimmicky at times (e.g., all enemies lined up neatly in three columns).

This is where I interpret Demonschool more as a puzzle game than a strategy RPG. Players have finite action points with which to move the heroes, typically three spaces orthogonally or diagonally. If an enemy lies in wait, most characters will stop movement and hit the enemy, occasionally pushing demons into other demons for added damage. At other times, characters will have some other added effect, or even zip through the entire line of enemies. In this way, battles are almost singularly about positioning.

Expect damage numbers to range from 1 to 2, with special abilities potentially rising to an excessive 8, as almost all demons have four or less health. The mechanics of Demonschool are rich: some support characters can buff or heal allies, debuff enemies, move enemies around, place obstacles on the field, and so on. When characters earn enough mana points by acting on enemies or allies, they can activate a special ability, which is unique to each character. Fundamentally, these often involve elemental effects and unique attack formations, and can substantially change the course of battle.

Every battle has an expected turn limit—think of it like par in golf. If you meet this goal and no ally dies, you get bonus currency. The reason Demonschool can feel like a puzzle is that every battle can easily meet these conditions supposing you outfit your characters with the right abilities and choose a good composition for that battle. I was able to meet these conditions for nearly every battle, though I sometimes chose the “restart battle” option.

What’s more, every time players plan their turn, they can undo movement swiftly and choose a different option. This is especially helpful when learning how the mechanics work together in the beginning, and also towards the end of the game when battles and abilities can become complicated and multi-step. Pressing the confirm button triggers an extraordinarily satisfying visual as characters act out the planning phase in smooth, stylistic fashion. Enemies then take their turn and pounce on the good’uns.

Demonschool bleeds style. In this day and age, we expect bold animations when characters speak, not still images. Still, Demonschool absolutely excels in its character artwork. Almost every emotion matches the script well, and characters frequently change poses—coupled with a tasteful shake of the image. In fact, one of Demonschool’s many minigames to build relationship status with an ally involves guessing what emotion their silhouetted pose is. The artwork unquestionably breathes life and style into the large cast’s personalities and accentuates the dramatic story woven between them.

The landscapes are no slouch, either, as most locations boast incredible detail, yet have a blocky, polygonal simplicity to them. Demonschool’s rich style is so hard to describe because on its surface it appears basic and elementary by today’s standards, but the whole composition comes together with such vibrancy that I absolutely fell in love with it instantly and throughout the 45-hour trek. With a game like Demonschool that seems almost entirely about the vibes, a good soundtrack is a necessity.

Lucky for us, Kurt Feldman composed an outstanding soundtrack. Expect heavy reliance on synthy, bassy keyboard with frenetic percussion. Harmonicas, too! As is essential, the themes match every instance in the game, making no track feels jammed in inappropriately. Given Demonschool’s many hours of gameplay, some recurrence is noticeable, but it never feels repetitive, likely because of the sheer quality of almost every single work. “Weekend” is my personal favorite.

With so much to love about Demonschool, all is not immaculate. As referenced earlier, Demonschool has a significant pacing problem and can feel longer than it needs to be. Although I enjoy the battle system, the simplistic nature of combat—despite its various mechanics—doesn’t warrant as many needless battles as the developers throw at us. Since victory and failure can sometimes feel like they’re on a knife’s edge, precision reigns supreme, which can make each affair feel a bit daunting, especially when there’s little story relevance to several encounters.

Expect to do some mundane exploration on Tuesday to Thursday throughout each of the three phases, and expect the team to run into some demons in a bathroom, at the harbor, in the alley, and so on. Though Faye dramatically thrusts the team into combat, the demons appear randomly and without cause. While, yes, the demons are invading and the chance encounter makes sense conceptually, from a narrative perspective it all feels like filler. I want the good stuff, and the good stuff isn’t a random battle after the team encounters a dead end on a poor lead.

I started reviewing this game back in August, and it has met several delays since the start of its development. At the time in August, it was rough around the edges—crashes, quest markers never disappearing, visual issues, etc. The team delayed the game again, and I hopped back in a couple months later after several patches. While most of the pre-release issues have been hammered out, I continue to run into crashes and visual anomalies in the post-release, though far less frequently. Although Demonschool continues to receive patches, the technical issues are an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise stellar experience.

Demonschool’s hard to score, because most titles—including the AAA variety—don’t have the bold vision and intense style of Demonschool. We play indies to witness new ideas with a healthy degree of polish, though they also come with their issues. All in all a memorable and pleasurable experience, Demonschool is at times a slog, at others food for the soul. If you have the time to enjoy a novel jaunt through early adulthood, settle in for an otherworldly experience.