“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.

From Baldur’s Gate 3 to Critical Role to Stranger Things, the resurgence of fantasy-horror rooted in the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons zeitgeist continues to deliver a mix of standout hits and inevitable misfires. Drawing inspiration from the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix phenomenon, Kingdom of Night blends a touch of cosmic horror with a heavy dose of Hawkins-style storytelling, wrapped around an action RPG core that demands precise dodging, stamina management, and frequent reliance on random consumables. Kingdom of Night proudly embraces its retro ARPG identity. It doesn’t shy away from the visceral gore that defines the genre’s grimmer entries, nor from their occasional rough edges. It’s dark out on the edges of this town—exactly where the game wants you to be.

The narrative takes place across one night in 1987, when the quiet town of Miami, Arizona erupts into chaos, including the abduction of your neighbour. As John, you plunge into the night, carving your way through demons, hunting down cult members, and racing to save your friends before the darkness consumes the town. Kingdom of Night signals its televisual inspirations right from the splash screen, and the setting quickly confirms the parallels. High-school-adjacent character tropes? A mysterious cosmic evil possibly tied to a shady corporation? Shadow-soaked environments, thick mist, and copious shredded viscera? They’re all here.

To its credit, Kingdom of Night maintains this tone consistently, but unlike stronger entries in the genre, its characters and story rarely develop beyond what’s needed to move you to the next plot beat or boss fight. Most characters feel like quick sketches—a foul-mouthed bartender, a scatterbrained old woman, stock jocks and nerds—and their interactions unfold exactly as you’d expect. The dialogue reflects this simplicity, and several typos and a few dated situations don’t help matters, sometimes making the writing feel stuck in a bygone era rather than cleverly riffing on it.

Kingdom of Night’s art design is evocative, and its vibrant pixel art feels right at home alongside other Dangen-published titles. Wandering through dark streets lit by magenta ground fires or navigating neon green fungal blooms in the sewers creates a surreal atmosphere, even though the game is very darkly lit throughout. Character portraits take the form of simple 16-bit-style headshots—there are plenty of them, though few are memorable. Lonely stretches of plains and rocky scree gain tension from the minimal soundscape, where only footsteps, ambient effects, or the occasional thunderclap break the silence. A brooding musical layer ties everything together, leaning into synths, slow orchestral swells, and gentle plucks common to the genre, with a few standout exceptions.

You’ll spend most of your time in Kingdom of Night roaming the bleak, shadow-drenched streets of Miami, moving between abandoned supermarkets, small town libraries, and everything in between. The sense of carnage and supernatural dread seeps through environmental details, character encounters, and quick sketches scattered across the world. Many of these moments lead to quests—some push the central mystery forward, while others send you hunting for item sets or tracking down missing high school friends. The quest structure feels genuinely open. After the initial setup, you’re free to explore wherever you like and tackle whatever catches your interest, limited only by your character’s level, abilities, and the strength of the enemies occupying each area. The overworld map and area mini-maps do a solid job of showing your location and highlighting enemies or points of interest. Before long, you unlock a fast travel system, which is a huge relief given the size of some zones and how slowly your character moves at the start.

Real-time combat in Kingdom of Night revolves around locking onto the nearest enemy with the left gamepad trigger (frankly, playing with a keyboard and mouse isn’t pleasant). From there, you rely on melee attacks, dodges, and parries with the other face buttons. Stamina management becomes essential—dodging and using abilities drain it—so strafing, retreating strategically, and kiting enemies around terrain features all become core tactics. Magic users gain additional area attack options that demand careful positioning and an awareness of cast times. You select spells through different combinations of the face buttons, and combat will pause if you need to review them. These classes take more practice to play precisely, but their ability to damage large groups of enemies offers a satisfying payoff. Overall, combat in Kingdom of Night feels enjoyable, and the controls are tight, even if your character moves painfully slowly at first, and selecting spells is not immediately intuitive. Once you get comfortable with lock-on targeting, spell selection, and well-timed parries, most frustrations fade away.

Enemies usually attack in swarming mobs, starting with slow-moving zombies and introducing variants with new attack patterns. These shifts force you to adapt your strategy—projectile-firing shades demand sharp dodges, while poisonous fungi can split on death and quickly overwhelm you with sheer numbers and lingering damage. The combat design leans into these synergies: shambling zombies aren’t hard to corral on their own, but they become far more dangerous when you’re also trying to stay clear of a shadow’s homing, missile-like attack. In the more chaotic encounters, the screen practically turns into a bullet hell. Flaming projectiles fill your view while you dodge charging mastiffs and hordes of zombies all at once.

Most of Kingdom of Night’s drawbacks come from its inventory and equipment interfaces. The Notebook tracks your basic stats and is where you equip a weapon and up to three accessories, but with no way to sort the flood of loot you collect—especially accessories—it quickly becomes tedious to stay organized. It’s easy to overlook items that could actually help you. Quest tracking poses similar issues. Kingdom of Night displays quests as a horizontally scrolling strip of reminders, each tied to an NPC portrait. If you’re juggling a dozen quests, you’ll have to cycle through all of them to recall their requirements—there’s no prioritization system or quest markers.

This leads to a broader issue. Although the main thrust of Kingdom of Night is simple—and the “save the damsel” premise is classic—the sheer number of quests constantly distracts you from it. The game leans heavily into its sandbox structure, encouraging you to fight, loot, and explore without much narrative funneling. With combat so frequent, Kingdom of Night may work best when played in smaller sessions, where you complete quests days after you pick them up, thanks to stumbling across the right NPC or item on the far side of the map. If that’s your style, you’ll feel right at home. If not, you may find yourself less inclined to plod on through the dark streets.

Early in Kingdom of Night, your main character selects a class that shapes their ability list and influences how their Muscle, Guts, and Willpower grow. You first choose between melee and magic, then pick a more specific subclass. Class abilities link to a “keychain,” a visual system to represent how skills strengthen and evolve; as a result, progression stays fairly linear until the later levels. Each character level boosts your core stats and grants new abilities. You can raise health, increase critical hit chance and damage, or improve defensive resistances. These stats interact closely with the equipment and accessories scattered across the world, and it’s satisfying to steer your build toward heavy crit damage or stack Fear resistance in areas where enemies—and bosses—can panic you into wandering helplessly. Your primary stats also determine bonus damage for different weapon types and critical chance. Because lighter weapons attack faster, you’ll need to consider how to balance speed, damage, and your preferred playstyle to get the most out of your journey.

Individual abilities reinforce these stat synergies. For example, one melee class can reflect damage back at an enemy after a successful parry, and the reflected amount scales with your Guts stat—making Guts a crucial attribute to monitor. A later ability in the same skill tree negates all damage from the first hit you take (with a lengthy cooldown), which created moments where I could charge in, parry confidently, deal damage through the reflection effect, and rely on the passive damage negation to keep me somewhat safe in crowded encounters.

Kingdom of Night supports both local and remote co-op. While I couldn’t test the remote option, local co-op significantly expands your strategic choices. With a second player, a mage can focus entirely on crowd control and ranged spells while a melee partner draws aggro. Having another set of hands also softens the game’s difficulty curve—Normal mode is challenging enough that you’ll burn through consumable food items regularly, and even then, some bosses are tough without precise mastery of each class’s core mechanics. Enemies respawn in most areas, and because zones often feel level-gated, you can farm them for XP if you’re willing to put in the time during the fairly lengthy campaign. Alongside the large maps and various collectibles, Kingdom of Night also hides a surprising amount of lore in scattered books and documents found in houses and other buildings. These articles go a long way toward fleshing out the world and reinforcing the game’s themes.

Kingdom of Night is a dark tale, steeped in nostalgia for its setting and story inspirations, as well as its action-oriented combat. While it won’t earn accolades for originality or deep character stories, the combat remains satisfying, capturing that “git gud” feeling of progress and mastery—especially when you combine abilities or play a class in ways its progression encourages. Kingdom of Night can be frustrating at times, particularly with inventory management and quest tracking, as the UI struggles to keep up with growing loot piles and multiple active quests. If you enjoy wandering through nightmare-infested small-town Americana at night, this is a realm worth visiting. If not, there are certainly stranger things to explore elsewhere.

Harken back to yesteryear with the Secret of Evermore-like Shrine’s Legacy. We’ve got 2.5D action RPG swords, staves, and spells slung about for 15 to 20 hours for your millennial enjoyment. Games’ve moved past the 16-bit era? Get off my lawn! Puzzles, exploration, collectibles, one spell in an arsenal of four that is completely busted, hidden walls, talking cats, adolescent dialogue, awkwardly forced swearing—Shrine’s Legacy has it all!

Rio, a teenage boy from a small village, dreams of saving a princess. Puh-lease. You’re dreaming small, bud. How about the whole world? Well, someone’s gotta get this sleepy country bumpkin out of his hamlet, and that someone is Aklor: armored, archetypal villain extraordinaire. This guy shows up and he’s after the Sword of Shrine. Wouldn’t you know it? Rio’s got the sword in a fancy glass case. And his last name is Shrine!

Our acne’d hero meets Reima, a mysterious girl who wants to help him, as she isn’t a big fan of Aklor herself. The two gallivant all over Ardemia (the world) in search of gems to power up the Sword of Shrine. Aklor wants those, too, but he also wants to kill the two upstarts. So, he does what all good villains do and sends his least capable general to thwart the progeny of an ancestor who already defeated Aklor once before.

Each of the eight crystals is guarded by a massive beast (boss) in a dungeon. These crystals grant spells to Rio and Reima, who can expend mana to assist them in battle. Nothing earth-shattering here: enhance their sword to heal, ignite enemies, freeze foes, etc. To get mana back, they have to smack enemies with sword or staff as if powering up a battery. Combat flows simply, as well, with players running around timing hits when enemies leave themselves exposed. Or you could do what I did and pop the healing buff to mindlessly beat enemies through their attacks. Surprisingly fun.

Ardemia’s full of hidden goodies, and the open world map design is one of Shrine’s Legacy’s best features. The world forks and hides paths tastefully, making it eye-catching and engrossing to explore. Spells can sometimes impact the world, so Shrine’s Legacy bleeds into the Metroidvania genre, as returning to old locations can grant passage to a goodie or secret shop. The world map doesn’t articulate exactly where players are unless they enter a dungeon, which provides a grid-based map to help players navigate the sometimes labyrinthine catacombs leading to a gem.

Functionally, exploring dungeons is the same as walking around the open world, but getting to the boss has a distinct feel to it. Most dungeons have a puzzle theme that uses a previous spell and can feel boxy in its design. Save points generously dot the map, which is consistent in tone with Shrine’s Legacy’s general difficulty. Aside from a couple bosses, the game’s fairly easy, but challenging enough to maintain one’s attention, and I played single-player.

For those flying solo, the inactive character follows the active one, and switching takes a single button press. I often did this when mana reserves got low or I needed to heal the ally because they were taking too much damage. As referenced earlier, the healing spell is kinda busted, but potions give players the opportunity to heal in a more traditional style for this kind of game. Crafting potions requires money and resources, which are somewhat challenging to accrue. Potions can also permanently grow stats with specific types of collectibles, though don’t expect any surprises here.

Sidequests keep the world feeling uniform as NPCs task Rio and Reima to lead them somewhere, meet them in a location, or hunt for a trinket. This gave me an excuse to revisit old locations with new powers, so while I was satisfying the quest, I also found new paths to tread; I imagine this is part of the intention of the sidequests: providing players purpose for backtracking and giving them plenty to do.

While the side quests are enjoyable from a gameplay perspective, the overall dialogue in Shrine’s Legacy is fine. Stylistically, I found conversations reminiscent of days of olde, but because the atmosphere matches a bygone era doesn’t necessarily make it good. Still, not every game needs sophistry or vocabulary-rich exchanges in an attempt at maturity. For a game that looks like Shrine’s Legacy, the young adult approach maintains consistency.

Distinctly 16-bit in appearance, Shrine’s Legacy was clearly crafted with care. Pixel art doesn’t have to be basic, and Shrine’s Legacy is evidence of that. Spells commit flair, locations are detailed in layout and unique imagery, hubs win the eye’s attention with varied decor, and enemies animate uniquely with no copycat foes. If this era is your thing, the visuals will win you over easily.

Similarly, the music capably carries the SNES (not Genesis) banner with playful, earnest beeps and boops. Ruins have a mysterious, eerie tone to them, while towns have the upbeat cheer one expects. Although the soundtrack doesn’t boast any standout hits or surprises, the music is expertly composed and complements the era’s feel with the use of modern hardware (again, not Genesis).

Unfortunately, Shrine’s Legacy isn’t a hidden gem or a sleeper hit for a few reasons. The chief reason is that games that lean heavily on nostalgia—like this one—have to be careful not to feel too much like old games. Old games aren’t made anymore for a reason. Most successful titles like this add elements that may not have even been possible thirty years ago; they feel retro while having modern sensibilities. If you’re a purist, Shrine’s Legacy’s going to scratch that itch just fine.

I also ran into a host of bugs and awkward graphical issues, such as walking into what should have been dense objects as my characters went completely under them. This has a cheap feel to it, and happened often enough to irk me a bit. I also occasionally got stuck in walls, the game crashed or froze, and quest progression was sometimes unclear. These happened infrequently enough for me to put them at the end of my review—and I have made grievances about this stuff at the start of some reviews—but still impacted my experience. We also hope developers will patch this stuff out, but not all devs will do that, sadly.

The other issue I have with Shrine’s Legacy is that the characters and world lack power. This part’s hard because making a truly impactful story that is worth people’s time and money is core to an RPG experience. I enjoyed the characters and world, but I know some will find these aspects largely forgettable. Rio and Reima grow together over the course of the journey and noticeable changes occur, but their personalities lack depth and unique voice.

Of the retro titles out there, Shrine’s Legacy is a cut above. Several games like this may feel like cheap-to-develop cash grabs, or like someone made them just to relive the old days but doesn’t know how to make a good game. I’m critical of this style of game. Despite its failings and mediocrity, I enjoyed my time with Shrine’s Legacy. A bit simple, a bit weak, a bit buggy, but full of outstanding map design, charm, and great ideas. I hope the developers find some success and make an even better game in the future. I’ll be waiting.

Once viewed as nothing more than a disposable pawn, a young man becomes a powerful force for inspiration in a fantasy realm that is quickly losing its hope. Can he and his comrades secure lasting peace, or will their sacrifices prove too much to bear? Indie-developed The Tale of Relm is an opening salvo into an engaging traditional RPG plot, albeit with a few bumps along the way.

The beginning of The Tale of Relm serves as an introduction to a faction of soldiers known as the Crudo. These specialized soldiers, created at a very young age through mysterious and arguably nefarious means, are known for their emotionless obedience. However, the latest batch of Crudo trainees isn’t living up to the kingdom’s standards, so it’s decided to sacrifice them instead. Things don’t go as planned when one Crudo trainee survives the ordeal, spared from that fate only for a planned execution later for showing emotion and conscious thought.

Known initially as Red Eyes, his deliverance from jail and the executioner’s blade soon becomes a sprawling epic, throwing the very fate of all three of the land’s governing nations into chaos as they try to survive a looming darkness arguably of their own making. Toss in otherworldly beings with their own agendas and things get immensely heated, with Red Eyes’ quest to find himself becoming so much more.

I won’t say much more about The Tale of Relm’s plot, given that the story takes some interesting narrative twists and directions. However, I will say that many of the central characters who officially join Red Eyes’ party are likable and interesting enough in their own right, though they unfortunately don’t often get the story exposure and narrative insight I would have loved to see. Red Eyes and the offensive magic-casting princess Celes are definitely the most plot-focused characters, given their later developments and overall central importance, with Celes’ journey and outlook in particular going in shocking and memorable directions later on.

Yet, there are several standout ally characters whom I’d have appreciated seeing featured more prominently due to their distinctive designs and the few scenes they appear in. The game offers an intriguing perspective on the moral complexities in political and war narratives. However, I wish the game had explored these observations in a more nuanced and detailed manner than was sometimes presented in the game itself.

The Tale of Relm is very much a traditional RPG in terms of gameplay, with players taking on the role of either Red Eyes or Celes, depending on what’s going on in the story. You control a party of up to four characters at a time, partaking in turn-based battles against up to four enemies once you encounter an enemy sprite on the field. Each party member has a specialized job class and skillset with unique weaponry and equipment sets available to them. As you gain experience and level up through combat, you also acquire job points, which you can use to learn new class skills for a specific character.

Both combat and equipment usage in The Tale of Relm are relatively easy to figure out if you’re at all familiar with other traditional RPG setups; however, there are a few unique notes regarding battle that can take some getting used to. For starters, each piece of armor you acquire in-game has an inherent weakness attached to it, such as an elemental weakness like fire or a weapon weakness like a dagger. These weaknesses mean that the damage inflicted upon a character with said specific attacks or spells breaks through a character’s shield points. Once their shield is effectively “broken,” the character is temporarily stunned and left open to double the damage.

Enemies also have inherent weaknesses and shield points to strategize around, meaning you’ll want to equip armor that won’t make you so susceptible to their offensive abilities. You also accumulate boost points every round that allow you to strengthen skills exponentially or even attack multiple times. Figuring out an enemy’s weaknesses and planning how to strike them multiple times to whittle down their shield points is vital to victory.

There are some cases where, depending on your party makeup, what gear you have equipped, and what skills you’ve yet learned, you might have a difficult time with fights until you discover an effective strategy, even if you use respawning enemies on maps to level grind. All of these factors combine to create a tactically engaging turn-based battle system.

While you can save anywhere when out on the world map, you have to utilize save points in dungeons, meaning that you should carefully plan your field traversing more. I found some of the dungeon and field maps to be confusing or tedious to navigate, but that often turned out in my favor, as it gave me an excuse to level up more while getting my bearings. Be prepared for a lot of backtracking, though, as there’s no fast travel component at play.

Graphically, The Tale of Relm features visually appealing, comic book-inspired CG illustrations for the more significant cutscenes. The pixel sprite work, backgrounds, and character art used during important dialogues are also quite eye-catching and pleasing to look at. The music, particularly the main theme, is quite atmospheric and fitting for the game’s fantastical setting. I also enjoyed the addition of partial voice acting, as the voiceover narrations for the beginning of chapters and one particular speech before a pivotal battle are both exceptionally well done. From a script-stance, the story’s presented well enough. However, while it’s easy to parse what’s said throughout, there are several noticeable typos and grammar issues to contend with.

The Tale of Relm is roughly twenty or so hours in length, but I feel I should note that it does carry the subtitle “The Awakening” in its save files. The reason for that becomes apparent when you reach the game’s “To Be Continued” ending. The cliffhanger is particularly upsetting since the story really begins to develop in interesting ways by that point, and I was eager to continue and find out what happens next, only to be met by the credits rolling. So, for those who want a self-contained tale, it’s worth taking note. I can only hope that whatever form the narrative continuation takes, it won’t be too long a wait.

The Tale of Relm is an enjoyable indie traditional RPG experience, provided you can get past its foibles and are okay with an ending that’s not yet conclusive. Developer EG Games consistently updates and patches the game, ensuring it plays smoothly. By the end of my playtime, I simply wanted to play more of The Tale of Relm, and I think that speaks to the title’s inherent strength of heart more than anything else. It’s a tale I wouldn’t mind diving into again.

The democratization of game development tools over the last decade has ushered in a wave of single-developer titles that have influenced the industry, offering a uniquely cohesive perspective of a single artist in contrast to enormous AAA games made by teams of hundreds or thousands. There are advantages to this, as evidenced by landmark solo-dev triumphs like Stardew Valley and ASTLIBRA, games where a dedicated artist nurtured a clear creative spark without interference. I was initially hopeful Artis Impact was the same; after all, developer Mas has lovingly crafted an incredible audiovisual experience with dramatic flair and creativity to rival any big-budget, full-team project. Unfortunately, there is a significant downside to the lone-wolf creative process: no one else can step in to steer the ship when it drifts off course. Artis Impact begins as a visual tour-de-force with an intriguing setup and world, but translation issues, strange tonal inconsistencies in the narrative, and overly simplistic gameplay mechanics mar what could have been the next solo-dev masterpiece.

Artis Impact is the story of Akane, a young woman newly recruited into an organization called Lith. Lith is a paramilitary group tasked with protecting the remnants of humanity from the threat of rogue AI in a postapocalyptic society. Their operatives are cloaked in black and wield massive swords known as R-blades, and Akane is accompanied by a friendly AI named Bot. If this sounds familiar to you, then you may have already drawn some comparisons between Artis Impact and NieR: Automata, an inspiration Artis Impact wears proudly on its sleeve. Yet, the games differ conceptually and in execution in terms of structure and presentation. Artis Impact has a traditional turn-based battle system and borrows from life-simulation titles like Rune Factory, offering a more slice-of-life take on the concept. This does enough to set the game apart from its inspiration, and it’s a unique blend of genres that left me intrigued and eager to see more. 

The most striking aspect of Artis Impact is the visual design. The game uses a nice mix of hand-drawn background elements with pixelated character sprites to create a cozy, lived-in world unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Many visual techniques are implemented to great effect, such as blurring and smearing the edges of environments to evoke a watercolor effect. Ccutscenes play out in a mix of manga-style panels and cutaways layered over filtered real-world photographs and concept sketches. This choice to blend conventional visual art techniques against tech-influenced details like the operating system window frame in battle sequences gives the game a truly unique visual identity.

In tense action scenes, the game often adopts a side-view silhouette effect, with characters composed of only a few of their brightest pixels (Akane’s long white hair, for example) against a sea of black, a clever way to suggest impressive animation flourishes without needing to painstakingly animate every detail of each sprite. Some of these animation flourishes and visual tricks are unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a game, and Artis Impact surprised and delighted me visually throughout its relatively short eight-hour journey. The screenshots in this review, as inspired as they are, do not do the game’s visual design justice; you must see it in motion to get the full effect of what Mas was able to pull off here, and the effects are stunning.

Completing the impeccable aesthetic is the excellent music. The auditory experience is just as fluid and enjoyable as the visual one. The tracks that play in towns, dungeons, and the world map are suitably ambient and comforting or ominous, depending upon the environment, and the battle tracks are heart-pounding and full of intensity, befitting the impossible odds often stacked against Akane. It’s quite impressive how many unique tracks there are, and each one feels appropriate in context and could stand on its own as a composition outside of the game.

Unfortunately, the game falters in its storytelling and mechanics. There are moments when Artis Impact wants to tell an epic, bombastic tale, but the life-sim structure and strange tonal shifts impede this goal. Initially, it seems as though Lith spends its time doing odd jobs and mopping up rogue AIs that are more of a nuisance than a threat. The stakes ramp up without warning after the first few hours, with entire towns and villages being destroyed and humanity’s future at stake. Despite this, the game gives you frequent days off from Lith-duty to engage with NPCs, part-time jobs, and menial sidequests, even when massive threats loom large. 

This tonal inconsistency extends to the dialogue and characterization of the cast as well. Akane has a handful of compatriots in Lith who accompany her on missions and constitute most of the possible character interactions, but companions like Raven, Leni, and Billy are woefully underdeveloped by the time the credits roll. The game also has a habit of souring serious moments with attempts at humor that fall flat, often centered around various characters’ infatuation with Akane. I lost count of how many times a male character expressed romantic or sexual interest in Akane that went completely unreciprocated or unnoticed, and these moments are more jarring than they are humorous. Billy is a particularly frustrating character, as his defining characteristic is that he is a raging misogynist. While most of the game’s primarily female cast tend to brush him off or ignore him, his constant sexist remarks become incredibly grating, and there is little payoff or pathos by the end of the game for his character. 

Compounding the game’s strange plotting and ill-advised attempts at humor is the rough English translation. While the overall plot details are straightforward, the nuances of character personalities become lost in the strange diction and halting dialogue. Many scenes feel like the characters are just blabbing in non-sequiturs at one another rather than having a natural conversation, and their personality traits are wildly inconsistent. Akane’s robot companion, Bot, speaks in a typical robotic tone of rational analysis for most of the game, but then occasionally swears or drops colorful innuendos out of nowhere. This uneven translation also impeded sidequest completion, as it was difficult to follow who or what was necessary for progression from the stilted and confusing dialogue. 

The most disappointing aspect of Artis Impact by far is the gameplay. The game employs a traditional turn-based system akin to the early Final Fantasy titles, but offers nothing interesting or engaging outside of admittedly impressive battle animations. There are no party members other than Akane and Bot, and Bot’s actions are entirely automated; Bot defaults to healing Akane every turn unless you equip him with items that mildly influence his behavior towards the occasional attack or buff. Plenty of turn-based RPGs navigate the challenge of a single-party member battle system well (like Tsugunai Atonement or Parasite Eve), but Artis Impact feels exceedingly primitive, offering less complexity and fewer options than even the first Dragon Quest.

Akane herself begins the game with only a single skill, with other skills found through out-of-the-way exploration in dungeons. Finding new techniques could be a compelling and worthwhile diversion, adding variety to the barebones combat. However, Akane’s initial skill is one of the most powerful in the entire game, attacking multiple enemies at the cost of 50% of her current MP total. Since the damage output doesn’t fluctuate depending upon the amount of MP consumed, you can essentially spam this skill in every combat encounter and come away victorious without any thought or strategy, even in boss encounters. This lack of mechanical depth undercuts the otherwise stellar presentation and narrative stakes in most of Artis Impact’s intense moments with a battle system that is insultingly simple and perfunctory. I came away feeling as though Mas only included the battle system out of a sense of obligation to genre trappings. However, the game is primarily comprised of dungeons and combat encounters, so the entire experience ends up feeling like a chore by the end.

To add insult to injury, the game rushes to a ham-fisted and unsatisfying narrative conclusion that raises more questions than answers. The game attempts to encourage replays through optional sidequests that reveal more about the world, but I don’t think it would be worth trudging through the shoddy translation and mind-numbingly boring combat in the hopes of finding a more satisfying answer. I came away from Artis Impact with the distinct impression that the game could’ve used additional perspectives to address some of its most glaring inconsistencies. As it stands, Artis Impact is an audiovisual masterpiece that fails to convey a cohesive narrative or engage the player beyond its spectacular presentation.