I’ve been trying to give visual novels a place in my catalog. It’s a fun game style that is conducive to some good storytelling. Incidentally, I keep finding more and more edgy but good-natured humor in them. Pick a theme and go, that’s where I’d like to see these go. Most of these games are also tagged as dating sims. But that is pretty much secondary to my interest in them, however, it…
The Pizza Situation is an indie game project found on ItchIO about a freshman college student named Roni. He has a dream about seeing a girl with pink hair at a party and her stealing a slice of pizza from him. His goal is to use social networking to solve the problem and prevent this girl in his dream from doing so in real life. It’s totally bonkers and irrational, but some games…
Thank the heavens, or at least the upper atmosphere, because Rain On Your Parade gave me just the right meta-medicine I needed to make it through this day. Have you ever seen something on the internet and thought, well there goes my day. That’s really unhealthy I know, but as soon as I saw a demo for Rain on Your Parade, I immediately chippered up. There’s a bit more depth to this anecdote,…
I’ve been getting really interested in games like The Hayseed Knight and I don’t really know why I haven’t explored them further. I reviewed a game last week called Brok: The Investigator, similar mostly in the ways of it is an anthropomorphic visual novel. The Hayseed Knight is through and through an anthro/whatever you want to call it, a visual novel. The themes are probably around Teen+, only in the PG-13 range though.…
So here’s a brief compilation of some cool indie demo reviews of games I played recently, which deserve a little cred. (Please note: some of these games have been released since I tried them, so they might be associated with a price in the Steam Store links.) Indie Demo Reviews 1: Jennifer Wilde: Unlikely Revolutionaries This demo is super short, but it lets you try out the mechanics and the art style. It’s…
Scoured Steam for ages looking for anything that caught my eye. My shortwave is all fuzz today. It must be a solar storm and a celestial body in retrograde. But it’s not, the dishwashers running and it’s just a slow week. So, I took forward to Itch.IO in the hopes of some nice dev gems out there and sweet demos. I hit the motherlode. Thank you GameDevites. A Long Journey is such an…
UPDATE: Loco Motive is headed for full release on Switch & PC in 2023 (sorry if I don’t update this right away.) I absolutely adore it, and if you want to watch the awesome trailer for it, check out this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFahJJOdMzII’ve spent a good amount of time my life on trains or watching, learning, and reading about trains. For my own context, it’s always been a novel way to travel, and some…
Beasts of Maravilla Island is a mindful and progressive concept revolving around the science, hobby, and storytelling of isolated ecosystems and their sometimes astonishing, in this case even magical, discoveries. It’s a game about collecting documentation and exploring the flora and fauna of an environment, where combat or violent interaction is non-existent. I wish I could say non-violence in games is more common, but games are still in the formative years of non-violence,…
Princess Farmer is essentially a complex row-matching game, mixed with some RPG and storytelling elements. With some pixel graphics and a cozy story about bunnies, it’s a lot of fun. The style is pink and indie in the best way, and it is fun just to look at. Whatever your first impressions are, the bunny protagonist and characters in the story are quite the departure from your typical adventure. The indie soundtrack is…
Phoenotopia is more than a cozy pixel-art game about a hero with pink hair. There are some pretty deep theme but also pleasant gameplay. For a sample, a group in Phoenotopia known as the last councils decide the fate of humanity. This game has emotional and philosophical depth. But once again, it’s buffered with some enjoyable run and jump platforming. In my playtest of the demo, I enjoyed the open world environment and…
I recently, officially delved into a world which is mysterious yet intriguing on the game review front to me. That world is Itch.io. If you are unfamiliar with this website, it is an all inclusive community of solo-dev and indie dev game projects. It’s got everything from free games to digital game building resources. It’s also host to some pretty weird stuff, and I’m okay with that, because there is so much creative…
