Hunter’s Legacy is a new 2D platform-action game out on the block, and I can honestly say it’s one of the best of the genre I have played in years. Made in Unity by a small dev team, Lienzo, this title is full of personality, complexity and showcases a phenomenal understanding of level design reminiscent…
After discovering Project Discord, an upcoming indie Survival Horror title, while researching a piece on the future of the classic genre, I did a shout-out for them. Since, the 3D-Brothers team reached out to me and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking a look at a very early build of the game. They described this build as “pre-alpha”,…
Bard’s Gold is a rogue-like-platformer hybrid with some neat ideas, but one that unfortunately misses the mark by quite a wide margin. The idea of a two-dimensional platformer with combat mechanics, a medieval aesthetic, and crafty secrets would seem like a perfect concoction, but sadly it only leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. The…
After writing a feature on whether the upcoming CCG Fable Fortune could save the Fable series, I was contacted by Craig Oman of Flaming Fowl Studios and asked whether I wanted to play the alpha build of the game and find out a little more about it. I was surprised and humbled by the kind…
Blacksea Odyssey is a very different type of rogue-like combining the stage-based elements of The Binding of Isaac with the twisted inventiveness of Dark Souls‘ enemy design. Though there are some small problems in terms of sound design and balance, they are easily over-lookable and do not detract from a great journey into the primordial Blacksea. The game’s premise is…
Fable Fortune is being developed by Flaming Fowl, the new indie studio formed from the remnants of Lionhead. Microsoft have granted Flaming Fowl the license to continue making the CCG (collectable card game), which was proposed all the way back in the development of Fable II and has been worked on for 18 months. The team are…
Games are at their best, at least in my view, when they give you an open canvas full of mystery and secrets. No one wants to be led through stultifying tutorial after tutorial; they want to jump in at the deep end and uncover what rare gems the developers have secreted away. That, perhaps, is…
There seems to have been several attempts in recent years to revive what I would describe as the “Massacre” genre of video games. You know the type of game I’m talking about. The type where you get to suspend your moral existence for a magical couple of hours and experience catharsis as you hack, bludgeon,…
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep” There is an echo of the famous last stanza of Robert Frost’s legendary poem Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening in Deer Man; a sense of mystery and…
Party Hard is one of those games that’s a brilliant idea executed only passingly well. It has a lot of things going for it, including the pixel art and electro-soundtrack (almost guaranteed ways to win me over). However, the disappointing narrative and the clunky, repetitive gameplay mechanics ultimately make this title fall flat. Above any…
At first I was skeptical about Tetrobot & Co; not only was it a little outside of my generic comfort zone but it had the look, on the surface, of a game trying too hard to be modern. How wrong I was! This is a modern puzzle solver but one that retains the challenge and…
I first encountered City of the Shroud at EGX Rezzed 2016 in London. The poster art caught my eye: a looming, priestly figure with a hint of the plague-doctor about them. Overlaid with this medieval image was a sci-fi font that, within its lettering, hinted at a labyrinthine technological city. I was intrigued to say…
“That house,” Detective Castellanos whispers. “I’ve never been there, but it seems familiar.” These words from the protagonist of The Evil Within are both spine-tingling in their evocation of the original Resident Evil mansion, arguably the birthplace of survival horror, and bathetic; anti-climactic. We have heard it before. Perhaps too many times. Déjà vu no…
Thank You For Playing: Iconic Video Game Magazines describes a bygone era, an era in which magazines could take risks and ‘every game was new’. The insights in this documentary are not blinded with nostalgia or sentimentality, however, but give an honest warts and all account of the rise and fall of the foremost video game…
So, here we are. It has been a long road, but finally, we have a release date and the concrete knowledge that No Man’s Sky is coming to PS4 and PC on 24 June (UK). This game has attained something of a mythic status; you need only take the fact that it has over 50 awards…
“Time to remove some obstacles in my way…” the sly Sajotir remarks, watching a Devout on their way into the depths of the Living Dungeon. Perhaps there’s no better phrase to describe the gameplay of this indie dungeon-crawler board-game hybrid. Ger rid of the obstacle. Get around the obstacle. Or move the obstacle. Any way is the…
Bear with me for a little bit: I’m going to tell you about Defragmented, but in order to do so, I have to tell you about something else first. Have you ever seen the film Unforgiven? There’s this famous scene at the end where Clint Eastwood walks into a bar. The viewer experiences a moment of…
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” J. R. R. Tolkien’s moving words from The Two Towers seem, strangely, to epitomise the world…
A task has fallen to me. A terrible task. Like the Ancient Mariner from the old Coleridge poem I am duty bound to “stoppeth one in three”. I have a dire warning for those I stop. That dire message is… DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Yes. Down to One might not be the worst game…
Monstro: Battle Tactics is an unusual game to say the least. Developed by retrocade.net, it states on their website it is a “fully deterministic logic game which plays like a tactical RPG but without RP, character growth or randomness”. I think that description hits the nail on the head of how difficult its genre is to describe….
End of content
End of content