If imitation is a form of flattery, Esoteric Ebb is to Disco Elysium what Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels was to Pulp Fiction. Simply put, Guy Ritchie’s directorial debut wouldn’t exist in its final form had Tarantino not carved such a strong stylistic claim on the film industry at the time, yet Ritchie managed to run with the inspiration without letting it overrule his own creativity—which is more than you can say about a lot of other movies that tried to do the same. Nevertheless, if you try to replicate a monumental work’s style too eagerly, the best recognition you can hope for rests at the tip of its shadow.

While I’ve seen the term “Disco-like” pop up lately to categorize games that mimic Disco Elysium’s presentation or generally choose the pen over the sword in their design, Esoteric Ebb is the first that I’ve seen openly market itself as such. Even if it hadn’t, it’s clear within minutes that this game is trying the hardest to be the most Disco disco-like. Internal monologue “Chimes” based on your character’s stat distributions? Check. A bunch of ideologically charged dialogue choices with a strong basis in our current political moment? Oh yeah. A psychological mess of a protagonist who bonds with an endearing sidekick? That goblin’s name is Snell, and he’s pretty swell.

At its best, Esoteric Ebb is a revelatory iteration on what made Disco Elysium work, applied to an intriguing Discworld-esque homebrewed DnD setting. At its worst, it overwhelms you with text while retreading its core inspiration’s structure and themes. Though let’s not forget that, as much of an artistic achievement as Disco Elysium was, it was also firmly rooted in the tradition of text-heavy, tabletop-inspired isometric CRPGs. Its spiritual indebtedness to Planescape: Torment in particular shows for anyone familiar with the genre’s history. Esoteric Ebb looks to connect the two classics in an undeniably clever, mostly successful way: taking the presentation format and inventive roleplaying of Disco Elysium and applying it back to the DnD-style adventures that paved the way for it.

Esoteric Ebb’s world is one where DnD 5^th edition systems and conventions are playfully rationalized in the context of its events and laws as well as creature roles and relations. The delightfully imaginative worldbuilding thus explains the social customs that keep spells like “Charm Person” and “Speak with Dead” in check. Esoteric Ebb’s writing is most engaging and amusing when it’s dissertating about the metaphysics of the alignment system, has you conversing with a legal assistant who is a literal devil, or showing your Strength and Wisdom stats arguing about the lonely, sacrificial nature of chivalrous manhood versus the plea to just be an empathetic person.

Character creation lets you choose your stat distribution across the standard six DnD stats. You are a cleric named Ragn, who somehow wakes up alive in a morgue after drowning in the river that runs through the city of Norvik. “Cleric” is your job title as a magically endowed official of Norvik’s fading Nationalist government, although you can start to internalize an aspirational character class through conversation. The circumstances of Ragn’s history, death, and apparent resurrection are a mystery, as is an exploded tea shop that he is responsible for investigating.

On top of that, the story also builds towards Norvik’s first-ever election! Politics is in the air, and radical change is (potentially) on the way. Expect your roleplaying experience (including Ragn’s ideological proclivities) to be heavily shaped by your initial stat distribution. This makes the game beg for experimentation with specific proficiencies and deficiencies across multiple playthroughs. I tried out two builds: one focused on Strength/Wisdom and another on Dexterity/Charisma, both of which felt like playing significantly different clerics plagued by their own internal turmoil.

The former build was torn between traditionalist values and revolutionary ideals. The latter was an obnoxious rogue-ish sociopath. Ragn doesn’t have the strongest identity on his own, especially early on, but that allows you to shape him into whatever flavor of adventurer you’re looking for. While he does have a fixed, personal backstory to uncover, the game locks many of these details behind skill checks, so you generally learn about the ones relevant to your build. For a more chaotically entertaining roleplaying experience, I recommend going all-in on a few stats while neglecting the others entirely. Failing checks is often as fun as succeeding on them.

Adding to the character building, completing certain questlines opens the opportunity to take on a Feat after reflecting on what took place. Here, at least two of your stats engage in a debate about what the ideological takeaway behind the quest could be. I saw one such debate revolving around the conflict between idealistic leftist activists and some young men disillusioned with all manner of authority, demonstrating the game’s interest in explicitly mirroring contemporary political issues. After entertaining the multiple perspectives, you must choose one to internalize—with each potential Feat also offering a different gameplay bonus.

Like Disco, the ideologically infused dialogue successfully balances progressive leanings with doses of satirical irony and sincere empathy alike for different perspectives and the life experiences that shape them. My biggest gripe here is that it can feel overly derivative of Disco’s core narrative and thematic function, which occasionally pulls me out of appreciating the ways that the game successfully differentiates itself.

If Esoteric Ebb’s gameplay only revolved around walking through Norvik and navigating external and internal conversations through dialogue choices, it would be a tad tacky. Fortunately, this is not the case. Many of the game’s quests push you to dungeoneer through the area below Norvik, into an expansive ruin of the setting’s past. Exploring this City Below impressively captures the eventful, dramatic feel of tabletop DnD adventuring.

There are secrets to discover, puzzles to work through, and even combat encounters to conquer. It takes a while for the game to push you deep into these dungeons as stats (and equipment that boosts them) become essential to boost your odds for crucial dice rolls. When I felt confident enough to dive deep, I started appreciating Esoteric Ebb in a new light.

The way the game integrates combat is a highlight, if unfortunately underused. Each encounter is a curated piece of the larger story or worldbuilding. In these moments especially, the narration sucked me into the situation and effectively amped up the dramatic stakes. Choices on how to navigate the encounter are tied to whatever stats fit the situation—which you may or may not have invested in. Spells that you’ve memorized can offer increased survivability or create advantages on offense. Any companions with you also have turns that can shift the tide in combat, though I wish their actions also worked through dice rolls for more mechanical variability.

I enjoyed my time in the City Below so much that I wish more of the game leaned towards this sense of adventure over the dense, extensive discoursing that makes up a significantly larger portion of the overall playtime. I would love a sequel that spreads out the density of the NPC dialogues to provide a more eventful journey through this charming fantasy world. More companion interactivity. More locations to explore. More potential in the spell mechanics. This would help leverage what makes Esoteric Ebb unique and disperse what makes it redundant.

The game features over a million words of text by a single writer—and most of it is enjoyable and pleasantly reactive. That’s an incredible achievement. At the same time, it’s hard not to see the potential here for a more dynamic game and wish some of that Herculean effort went into seeing it through. Across all the quests and exploration I invested myself in, I amassed a huge stash of cool equipment and trinkets that I anticipated an opportunity to make use of, only for it never to come.

Disco Elysium’s gameplay was only as engaging as it was because of the quality of the writing. Esoteric Ebb’s sole writer/designer, Chrisoffer Bodegård, is clearly a captivating GM, but his brand of zany writing started to wear thin on me in the later portions of the game simply due to its sheer quantity. There’s no shame in not living up to the Best Writing that’s Appeared in a Videogame, but placing the same emphasis on reading with several of the same thematic concerns (and without the extra advantage of impeccable voice acting) is a gamble with some negative modifiers.

Despite my nitpicks, the writing supports the overall tone the game goes for quite well, as do the other stylistic elements handled by Bodegård’s collaborators. The distinct art style paints Norvik and the City Below with eye-catching color that could pop out of the pages of a comic book. The game space isn’t huge, yet what’s there is rich in detail. The character models look better than most isometric CRPGs, and the art that appears when you’re chatting with an NPC is always charming and made me want to get to know the diverse cast. What’s more, many small spaces and characters have unique songs as background, which keeps things consistently fresh for your eyes and ears.

I hope this review doesn’t sound overly critical because I am genuinely pleased with most of what Esoteric Ebb achieves. I just think the game could have been significantly improved, had it the confidence to shed its most conspicuous Disco-isms and dance to its own tune. Given everything that happened at ZA/UM and its creative core’s dissolution, we will likely never get a true successor to Disco Elysium. I am at peace with that. But if developers like Bodegård can iterate on its systemic expressiveness with the type of passion and intelligence that Esoteric Ebb manages, its legacy is in good hands.

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo graced our computer screens in 2023. Visual novel and mystery enthusiasts clamored for more after this surprise hit. Three years later, here’s Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse, and I couldn’t be happier. Thank you, Square Enix, for continuing this universe. Can we have a third game in less than three years, please?

A video game series is largely defined by at least a few core characteristics continuing across entries. Here, expect more dark, grim occult; setting in the ’80s with blurry, washed-out colors to match (that’s a good thing) and alternating character perspectives across a central plot. Other factors, like the first-person camera, match the first game, but the aforementioned elements might be the focal point.

Like the first game, The Storyteller greets us with a charming introduction, this time regarding the legendary history of mermaids. Before you scoff, please know that Ariel doesn’t make a debut. Yuza’s the core protagonist and the first character you meet, but you wouldn’t know it after the first couple hours. We heavily take on the perspective of three other characters. No complaints, though, because this cast is incredible. A strong story often requires equally strong characters, and players can expect unique voices (not to be confused with voice acting), motives, and personalities that make for one enchanting crew.

Curses take center stage as we realize the sleepy, isolated life of ama divers in rural Japan isn’t as calm as the waters that surround Kameshima, our primary location in The Mermaid’s Curse. Yuza was the only survivor in a tragic accident at sea that sank three ships, which included his parents. With no memory of the incident or how he survived, Yuza set off to Kyushu—mainland Japan—until he returned years later to take care of his grandmother. In desperate search of a mermaid for reasons unknown to us, Yuza realizes that the citizens of Kameshima have no love for his late mother, as they blame her for the tragedy that occurred five years prior.

These initial mysteries—what happened five years ago and why Yuza’s mother is to blame—are but the beginning. We meet a slew of other characters—primary, secondary, and tertiary—who enhance the storytelling with vibrancy and depth not seen in most other games. We get to take on the perspective of a mysterious teenager who showed up out of nowhere a few months ago and doesn’t attend school, yet sits at home watching TV all day. Once again, we get to take the role of the Paranormal Affairs Bureau, this time as Yumeko Shiki, a housewife-turned-psychic whose stark, confident demeanor belies her modest background. Finally, we take on the role of American fantasy author Avi, whose bold, cartoonish approach to life serves as his primary weapon in his search for a mermaid.

What’s with the mermaid obsession, anyway? Well, get ready to don a school uniform because this might be a singular example of edutainment done right. That’s right, I said “edutainment.” In a positive way, even! The Mermaid’s Curse is an unreserved course in Japanese history, literature, and occult topics. The developers spared no effort in fluidly communicating volumes of text about the region, mermaids, and generals in the most accessible way possible. Not only is the writing and localization smooth as butter, but the infusion into this magical realistic world enhances the narrative. Throughout the entire game, I kept asking myself, “What if this were true?” and “What other parts of history might be explained by the supernatural?”

All that said, The Mermaid’s Curse clumps its more academic tendencies behind certain characters, which I have no problem with, but the pattern is uncanny. Although I personally loved each protagonist and their paths, some others may groan as they prepare for a veritable deluge of history lessons. I’ve always been a history buff and drawn to Asian folklore, so I’m clearly biased; my fawning over this aspect of The Mermaid’s Curse may not apply to you, dear reader.

Zooming out a bit, the pacing and flow throughout the 20-or-so-hour journey will leave your sails idle as the currents carry you along at a snail’s pace, yet I didn’t mind the slow burn whatsoever. Others may take issue with this, but I found the slow trickle of new information and mystique quite appealing. In large part, this is due to the likable cast and unique premise. Eventually, players experience some horror and bad endings, but even then, this takes some time.

The Mermaid’s Curse may initially appear as a horror game, but I’d certainly describe it as a mystery adventure game, first and foremost. This iteration of Paranormasight has fewer scares, but the outstanding music and unique art style keep the tension floating along. Like most mystery games, expect subtle foreshadowing out of the gate until the hints start hitting you in the face like flotsam before big reveals. Some puzzles exist, but nothing that gatekeeps players. At times, The Mermaid’s Curse will quiz you about history or the plot, so be prepared to go back into the history books the developers so generously plopped into the main menu.

One last note is the linearity. Folks might imagine this is an open-ended game with choices that matter based on the timeline and variety of character perspectives we take, but don’t expect vastly diverging paths. Some choices exist, but they’re either binary choices with a “but thou must” option, or they lead to one short, quickly stunted path. Linear storytelling doesn’t matter much to me—hell, I may even prefer it because I think it’s easier for developers to craft a well-constructed narrative that way, but I know some players crave open-ended storytelling, so I want to temper expectations.

Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse encourages me because it confidently plants a flag for the Paranormasight series, firmly establishing it as a quality new IP from Square Enix. Consistent in mechanics, storytelling, visuals, sound, music, and vibes, The Mermaid’s Curse is virtually guaranteed to elate fans of The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. If you’re a newcomer with even the slightest interest in Japanese history, the occult, or mysteries, you owe it to yourself to dive right into these murky depths.

In the pantheon of high fantasy strategy RPGs, few series have clung to their roots with as much persistence as the Disciples range. Ever since Disciples: Sacred Lands launched in 1999, Nevendaar has felt like a setting perpetually stuck in the final five minutes of an apocalypse. Disciples II: Dark Prophecy arguably remains the high-water mark, while later entries, including the recent Disciples: Liberation, have struggled to add much new to the blueprint. With Disciples: Domination, it’s clear that new developer Artefacts Studio isn’t looking to reinvent the wheel so much as they are intent on ensuring it keeps grinding over the same jagged, blood-soaked stones. It is, in many respects, a continuation of the series’ classic sensibilities, maintaining life in a character that hasn’t changed its wardrobe much over two decades.

As in the previous games, Disciples: Domination draws on the major factions and deities of Nevendaar and continues the story of Avyanna, the heroic Queen who fought and reunited (to some extent) the disparate peoples at the end of Liberation. Now, a new evil threatens her past victories, even as she grapples with disillusionment about leadership. If you didn’t play Liberation, the story loses some of its impact, as it assumes familiarity with earlier events and relies on that knowledge to give certain conversations more weight. Before long, though, you fall back into the familiar rhythm: meeting factions, recruiting troops, and venturing into maps filled with enemy armies, treasure, lore fragments, and collectible resources. One additional draw this time is the return of the Dwarves as a recruitable faction, and the plot writes them (and Avyanna’s first companion) into the story early, which is nice. The story spans a wide range of settings, and while the voice acting leans toward the hammy and the musical score isn’t memorable, the script is generally evocative, barring a few odd turns of phrase.

The environments in Disciples: Domination range from ruined medieval farmland to shattered mountain hellscapes. Fine details—like weathered structures and lingering magical effects—help draw you into each location. Still, the art direction can’t fully hide how familiar the setting or character design feels. The core factions—Dwarves, Elves, Undead, Demons, and Imperials—remain largely unchanged, and their tactics and playstyles unfold as you’d expect from similar fantasy games. Real-time exploration feels smooth, and the clean overview UI keeps your attention on scanning the environment for hidden treasures or spots to use companion abilities and unlock new routes.

There are four distinct classes for Avyanna—Warmaster, Primordial Ruler, Holy Regent, or Witch Queen—as the main character. The choice feeds into a large, multi-tiered skill tree where you spend points across different disciplines within each build. Each class supports a distinct playstyle. The Warmaster, for example, can lean into tank-style abilities that strengthen Avyanna when she’s surrounded, or shift toward a more aggressive setup that inflicts Bleed damage. Despite the range of spells you can research and equip, progression often feels slow. Many upgrades offer only small percentage boosts or minor passive effects, which can feel underwhelming when you earn a single skill point per level. This sense of stagnation deepens because Avyanna and her chosen party only ever gain access to two core combat skills per build. Outside of spells, you don’t unlock many new active abilities.

To be fair, this is where the wider cast of Disciples: Domination fills the void. Avyanna’s passive Leadership stat enables her to build a squad of story companions, unique heroes, and standard mercenaries. She can balance her tactical approach through these choices. Elves tend towards strong ranged attacks mixed with nifty stealth tricks. The Imperial troops offer a good balance, with tank-like Paladins matching well with the healing and Divine-damage dealing Disciples and Priestesses.

Units fight in turn-based combat on small, hex-based maps. While the maps themselves aren’t large, they feature a wide range of positive and negative status effects, such as Regeneration buffs or Blinding effects that reduce accuracy. Each unit operates with different types of action points: some govern movement, while others combine to trigger limited abilities or Avyanna’s spells. Abilities vary in range, cooldown, and area of effect, and Disciples: Domination places strong emphasis on skills that reposition units around the battlefield.

Because units can’t pass through one another and the maps stay compact, positioning becomes crucial. Lining up effects, bottlenecking enemies, and delaying key actions often matter more than raw damage output. With each unit limited to a small set of tactical options, you can also start predicting their behavior in a chess-like manner. Support units tend to cluster around allies to buff them before moving into combat, while sneakier rogues rush in, strike, and then vanish into invisibility. Excess movement usually goes toward avoiding straight lines or adjacency to your own units. At first, this simplicity feels restrictive, but as new map effects, unit types, and abilities begin to overlap and interact, combat reveals itself as a real tactical puzzle.

Character progression fuels the emphasis on preparation and roster management in Disciples: Domination. Levelling primarily increases basic stats and doesn’t unlock new abilities in most cases, although it does increase Avyanna’s ability to recruit stronger units or field larger numbers of weaker ones. Keeping pace with the difficulty curve can feel demanding, since each map offers only a limited number of encounters tied to specific level ranges. You can take on higher-level enemies for bonus experience, but more often the game becomes a search for the next suitably matched fight within what appears to be an open world.

Side quests and companion stories add variety, but you’ll often need to abandon them temporarily until your party grows strong enough. While level gating doesn’t inherently bother me, its implementation here sometimes undercuts the impact of individual story beats and lore drops. In doing so, it reinforces the game’s core identity: Disciples: Domination expects you to enjoy combat above all else, along with the constant cycle of planning, optimizing, and refining your unit strategies.

Battlefield decisions exist alongside light strategizing in Avyanna’s hub world, the mythical castle of Yllian, your personal pocket-dimension hub that has grown into a sprawling seat of power by the events of Disciples: Domination. It’s a satisfying, if somewhat rigid, loop: you spend your hard-earned resources—Gold, Iron, Wood, and the rarer Essences—to upgrade buildings that unlock higher-tier units or items. The catch? You’re bound by the level of your castle, meaning your military ambitions are often held static by your progression through the main narrative. It’s less about creative layout and more about the strategic bottlenecking of power, forcing you to choose what to prioritize as resources permit.

You buy, upgrade, and manage equipment and Shards in Yllian. Avyanna can equip a wide range of weapons, armor, and items depending on her class. For example, the magic-focused Witch Queen only uses wand or staff-type weapons. You find gear out in the world or at Yllian’s marketplace, with rarity tiers making it easier to judge possible upgrades on current loadouts. Each item also offers an optional upgrade path that can unlock extra effects, such as adding Burn damage to attacks or healing Avyanna when she defeats an enemy. Unfortunately, item management often feels clumsy, and this system in particular would have benefited from a more thorough interface overhaul. Shards, magical crystals that all units can equip, further boost stats and abilities, increasing things like health or critical chance. As Yllian develops, you can merge these into stronger versions. Both systems draw from the same limited pool of resources, so progression becomes a constant exercise in prioritization—or a waiting game while real-time resource nodes slowly generate what you need.

Finally, you need to manage your standing with the various factions of Nevendaar. Previously, favour usually shifted through side quests and occasional character interactions, but Disciples: Domination introduces a new system: Grievances. These take the form of short narrative scenarios that play out in Avyanna’s animated throne room, where you choose from multiple responses. Some grievances appear naturally as the story progresses, while others unlock after meeting specific characters or triggering certain events. Each choice adjusts faction favour, with the option to spend resources to increase it further. In practice, faction benefits often felt less urgent than upgrading equipment or managing Shards, and I rarely prioritized them, but it’s a system with poignant links to Avyanna’s absent rulership and how she tries to address this.

The breadth of quests, companion combinations, and high-level gear in Disciples: Domination can easily keep you busy for dozens of hours, and the standard difficulty offers a genuine challenge. Without learning enemy weaknesses and mastering how to chain and maximize status effects, you may end up adjusting the generous difficulty options. By the late game, individual storylines begin to blur together, but there’s always something to do on any given map, whether it’s a roaming horde you ignored earlier, a mine you never cleared, or a grievance you still need to resolve. Secondary battle objectives, such as winning without companions or managing environmental hazards like rockfalls, keep progression feeling fresh. On a technical level, Disciples: Domination runs smoothly and never demands much from your system. I only encountered the occasional frustrating freeze (oddly, most often during Ice Storm maps). Although it’s not currently rated, the game feels well-suited to the Steam Deck thanks to its bite-sized encounters and modular structure. Gamepad support works well enough, too.

It’s difficult to fault Disciples: Domination for what it does well. The game delivers a tight tactical experience, supports a wide range of distinct factions, and offers plenty to explore. Its visuals are detailed, and the UI holds up well across long play sessions. Where the game stumbles, it does so in familiar ways: a disjointed narrative, forgettable voice acting, and the risk of loot overload. The game doesn’t push far beyond its predecessor, nor does it significantly shift expectations within the genre; its systems, story, and presentation all feel largely familiar. Like a friend whose dress sense hasn’t changed in twenty years, Disciples: Domination struggles to be truly relevant or fresh, but if you’re willing to dance to her older tunes, this is a queen who will happily conquer your doubts.

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.