As the name suggests, each run of 9 Kings starts with the choice of one of nine kings (at least it will eventually - two are on their way in a later update). 🧸Your choice of king will influence your city, and by extension your playstyle. The King of Greed, for instance, is focused around a strong economy, with units that become more effective as your coffers swell. The King of Stone is all about hard-hitting siege weaponry, while the King of Spells marches with an army full of spellcasters augmented by powerful magic.

But at the start of each run you'll also be presented with your enemies. A rebellious form of your own kingdom will be among them, but you'll also be fighting invaders from t👍wo or three other kings at any one time. Each in-game year will see a new invasion, and with each invasion you'll claim spoils - troops, constructions, or spells from your opponents' tech tree that you can use to build up your own city.

We built this city

That city-building is surprisingly intricate. Starting on a map of just nine tiles, there's not much room to start setting up your strategy, and optimizing what space you do have is key. Different buildings layer their effects on top of each other, stacking buffs on the units you place between them - if you get everything ꦆin the right spot. Certain spells can be used to free up tiles by destroying what's already there - but since they increase the power of adjacent tiles, you want to make sure 🎐you're getting the most out of each cast.

When everything does line up, the ranks and stats of your army can quickly be increasing exponentially. But kickiꦛng off that stacking improvement can mean being incredibly precise in the early game. And if the right cards don't show up, it's up to you𒈔 to adapt on the fly - I spent one run desperately hoarding gold because I'd accidentally found myself stealing scaling units from the King of Greed, and I needed as much cash on hand as I could get.

Ashes and Dust

That can make 9 Kings' roguelike elements heartbreaking. Each year for 33 years will bring a new army to your door before a final showdown. In that time, you'll exp♔and the borders of your kingdom, hear prophecies, and declare war or peace against enemy kings. All of these different decisions can weigh heavily on yo♏ur chances of success; where's the best spot to unlock a new tile?; how do I take full advantage of this upcoming prophecy?; which king can I comfortably defeat, and which is likely to storm my castle?

With each year o🍌nly offering one or two ways to exert your kingly influence, and only three successful invasions between a kingdom that thrives or perishes, every decision is made to count, often far more than you might originally expect. Often, an otherwise successful army can simply run out of steam if the cocktail of buffs you've been stacking up still can't cut it against late-game armies.

I've lost track of the number of times I've been sitting pretty approaching the final showdown, only for my frontline troops to suddenly fold in front of an onslaught of spells or siege engines. That is, admittedly, partly my fault, because my favorite strategy is an aggro-heavy approach ꧟that relies on putting as much cannon fodder in front of my opponents as possible. The King of Blood thrives on massive armies of expendable units that overwhelm enemy troops.

When any one of those units💟 dies, Blood's cemeteries summon an impish replacement to take their spot on the field, while its Demon Altars gain strength from the life energy of the departed. It's an aggressive, entertaining twist on 9 Kings' otherwise slower, more gradual approach to gaining strength - simply overwhelm your enemies, and you'll often find yourself halfway through a successful run before you even notice.

Unfortunately, it's at that halfway stage that thi𝕴ngs start to get tricky for my imps, who tend to evaporate in the face of larger armies. That's good news for my Altars, which summon increasingly powerful Demons every turn, but if 90% of your army is killed in the first few seconds of battle, there's very little that the remaining 10% can do, no matter how many essences they've absorbed.

That's brought me to the real joy of 9 Kings. It requires such intricacy, such exact placement and planning in its late-game battles, that a single wasted turn feels like it can ruin a run. As it stands, I'm gradually pushing my way up through its endgame difficulty levels, attempting to master every different King and their varying playstyles, desperately trying♊ to push each build just a touch beyond the record I set last time. It's an all-consuming, and often thankless task, but it's a testament to the city-builder's roguelike setup that I'm prepared to keep coming back to try again.

9 Kings is out now in Early Access on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

That's because the perfect hole isn't one that's been made✨ specifically for me. In this instance, the journey really does beat the destination – the perfect hole is the one you dig yourself. Or, in my case, the one I speꦓnd every day resisting the urge to create. When my two-year-old husky digs in the garden, a possessed look in his eye, part of me bellows for him to stop and another, secret part of me craves to join him in the dirt. Digging rules. Holes rule. A Game About Digging A Hole, which is a short indie game about digging a hole, rules.

Celebrity Skin

A Game About Digging A Hole begins with the player buying a pu🌳ny, surface-level home. The home doesn't really matter. What matters are the rumors of buried treasure in its garden, and wouldn't you know it, you've brought a shovel! Somewhere down there is a wealth of riches (supposedly), and that's all you know – and frankly, need to know – before getting to work.

There's a mischievous joy, like eating someone else's chocolate, in taking your first scoop of dirt out of the pristine lawn. Unearthed soil handily disappears – sorry, Realism Mode Diggers – but you do have to manage your battery, used up byꦏ digging, and your health, which tends to go down by f🍨alling into the product of said digging.

Learning nothing from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Minecraft, I opted to dig directly down before realizing that I had no way of climbing back out. In this instance I had enough battery left to corkscrew-dig my way bac🎃k up, but if you run out, you're teleported back to the garden without any of the stone or precious metals you may have found. These natural treasures can be sold in your garage, while the profit is used to heal, recharge your battery, and upgrade gear. That includes fairly grounded things like a larger battery size, extra inventory slots, and a wide꧒r digging radius for your shovel. But it can also be used to buy a jetpack – crucial for getting out of deeper holes despite it greedily sucking up your battery – along with single-use lamps and dynamite.

As the materials y♋ou find become steadily more valuable (and upgrades predictably pricier), A Game About Digging A Hole settles into a fairly straightforward formula. Dig as far down as you can, leaving just enough of your battery to jetpack back to the surface, then sell your goodies and spend ca♚sh before delving into the ground once more.

I'm a goblin in human flesh, so this is all I need to feel alive. My only hang-up is having to buy lamps, which make sure I can see what I'm doing when my hole spirals so deep I can no longer see the sky. I couldn't tell you why spending money on light irritates me so much – perhaps it's because gloom feels like an essential part of the subterranean experience – but even my 🍒long-professed love of the underground isn't enough to work in total darkness. Curse you, sun-spoiled eyes.

At this point, you know all there is to know about A Game About Digging A Hole aside from one little thing – the small matter of treasure – and that's not for me to spoil. If you're anything like me, you'll find minute satisfaction in every plunge of✃ your shovel, the mere thought of turning a minor pothole into a cavern of Moria-esque pr👍oportions will feel like biting into forbidden fruit. is filled with positive reviews from people who Just Get It, with praise varying from "a religious experience" to those grappling with an awakened "primal instinct" to dig.

The game itself is short – don't expect more than an hour or two of play – but as the internet has become fond of saying, at $3.99 it costs less than a cup of coffee (how much are you all paying for coffee?) and delivers everything it promises. Having recently dug the foundations for a patio, I can also promise that it's much easier than the real thing. More importantly, it captures the same sense of playing god, of making the very 𝓰ground we walk upon your own, and carving out your own domain beneath the dirt, and… look, maybe my dog is onto something, alright?

A Game About Digging A Hole is out now on PC. Here are the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games of 2025 we're most excited for.

Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping sees titular sleuth Eugene McQuacklin still in the middle of a messy divorce with his swan wife, now living with roommate Freddy Frede🏅rson – an overly enthusiastic crocodile – after falling behind on the rent on his apartment. Down on his luck as he is, perhaps the only thing stopping him from wallowing in the shallows of his own heart is the potential to lose himself to another case.

Quacking the case

Falling back into his bread addiction, and struggling with the age-old rule don't text your ex, Freddy invites Eugene to forget it all for a weekend and join him on a relaxing vacation: a spooky glamp♛ing trip outside a haunted sanatorium. (This would work on me, to be fair). To make matters worse, Freddy is meeting up with his new girlfriend who's attending the spot for work – yes, Eugene is third-wheeling here, which ruffles🐈 his feathers.

Where The Secret Salami revelled in its office🔥 setting, having Eugene peck apart the lo💎ng and complex relationships between long-time coworkers, The Ghost of Glamping is the opposite – all about a group of strangers thrown together by circumstance. The campsite caters to those in raggedy tents all the way to influencers staying in their VIP accommodation (which is more like a penthouse apartment) – meaning characters from all walks of life collide when criminal conspiracy rears its long, bendy neck. It's a compelling hook that sets it apart from its predecessor.

I also want to emphasize that you don't need to have played The Secret Salami to enjoy The Ghost of Glamping. While characters return, and Eugene's circumstances have evolved, for the most part this really is a standalone mystery that just plays in the same world. Just as one episode of Columbo exists nex𒀰t to another, but has its own tricksy plot for Peter Falk's character to pick apart, so too is this just another case for the Duck Detective.

The only times that standalone nature feels more questionable are a handful of spots where Duck Detective once again incorporates some very lightweight geopolitics into its plot. The mystery and characters themselves don't completely hinge around the tense relationship between this world's East and West – but they do return, and I found myself struggling to follow these parts just as ꦿI struggled in The Secret Salami. It's so in the background it's largely a non-issue, and it's perhaps testament to the strong character writing that underpins the mystery here that the larger picture just doesn't go into my brain right – but it's an element Duck Detective still hasn't quite landed yet and that I have trouble engaging with.

For the most part, anyone who played Duck Detective: The Secret Salami will know what they're in for, as the mystery mechanics are largely the same. You'll be collecting details on new characters (and matching names to their portraits), presenting evidence to learn more about them, using your magnifying glass to highlight clues across the likes of bags and open laptops, and filling out mysteries. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:A little like The Rise o꧅f the Golden Idol, these take the form of slotting collected evidence keywords into statements with missing gaps. The game nudges you if your solution is close (and a Story Mode makes this even easier). After coming up with the correct statements, the plot moves forward🍸 for you to do it again.

Duck soup

Yet, though the mechanics are largely the same, The Ghost of Glamping does bring so💜me ♐great improvements in terms of presentation and pacing. A clearer UI that's still pleasingly snappy makes it easy to tell at a glance what clues are new and what you've already investigated. As before, a map highlights where new interactables are located, but with tighter areas and fewer loading screens it feels like there's a lot less back and forth and trawling for clues.

The Ghost of Glamping also has some more variety with its puzzles, adding some lightweight decrypting and handwriting analysis to the mix in addition to its keyword-filling foundations. This works well, and both unlocking new areas and making deductions feels compelling. It does mean, however, this mystery feels a bit shorter and simpler than The Secret Salami, but my playtime is only 90 minutes here versus 110 minutes🍸 there so it's much of a muchness. (I have to mention I do read pretty fast, I'd guess on average most people will get around 2 hours out of this).

I did feel at points The Secret Salami could get a bit bogged down – especially when it came to waddling back and forth in the offices – and while The Ghost of Glamping maybe goes too far the other way in being overly breezy it's nice to see some dials being adjusted for this followup. Some puzzles in The Secret Salami are cleverer than The Ghost of Glamping's, nothing here reaches the devious heights of some of that game's final brainteasers. But, likewise, The Ghost of Glamping has some sequences that are more fun than The Secret Salami's slower bits. There's ups and downs. You know, like… the fea🏅thers. Oh god, am I the Freddy Frederso🅺n of GamesRadar+ Towers?!

Is Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping one of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best mystery games out there? Not really – but it does feature some of the slickest detective mechanics and a bread-bite-size nature that's irresistible to duck-dive back into. A finger sandwich's worth of adventuring. I had a fun evening, and while this particular mystery won't stick with me, the characters of Eugene McQuacklin and Freddy 🍌Frederson will, as well as the new faces they encounter here. There's no mallardy to Duck D൩etective's refined and brilliantly simple mechanics that continue to evolve, and there's a real chance that, collectively, the case files of the Duck Detective could become a real standout.

D♋uck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping was played on PC, with a code provided by the publisher

, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

The bea🌠st puts me in shadow, eclipsing the sun, moving at such a speed despite its size that it'll be a distant speck in moments, and in my bewildered panic I have no idea what this thing is or what I'm supposed to do about it. But some ideas are to𝔍o bad to resist, and I doubt I'll get another chance soon. I snatch up the hookshot I found earlier, slap it to my wrist, take careful aim at the creature's gargantuan tail and fireeeeaaaaaaaAAAAAAAGHH!

A second later I'm gone, dragged behind Rayquaza through open sky like a tin can behind a speeding wedding car, trying to reel myself in even as I swing to avoid being splattered across the asteroid belt we're rocketi🐟ng through. I can't say I've mastered life at high altitude yet, but sometimes a learning curve ends up taking you ove෴r the horizon – and beyond it.

Mr Blue Sky

Lost Skies, which entered Early Access a few weeks back, is an expansive survival game set on a network of floating islands a la Skyward Sword, with the idea being that to live players will have to master that most perilous of elements: the Y-axis. You start off clambering around on every single cliff, wall and vertical surface like you're in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, then the hookshot and glider come into play, and before long then you're building huge airships for long-distance flight that wouldn't have been out of place in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Tears of the Kingdom.

So we're three-for-three on modern Zelda homages, to say not♊hing of the ancient tech left from prior civilizations, but in reality I think Lost Skies is closer in spirit to Subnautica. This is a game about navigating an element unfamiliar to you – in this case, open sky rather than deep sea – and harvesting resources to better navigate and research the remains of what came before. Sometimes that means kicking through grass to find 🅰dry reeds you can weave into cloth, sometimes that means shooting at robots from the deck of your flying pirate ship before doing a HALO jump onto the back of a flying whale.

It's a game where long🎃 periods of peace are punctuated by sudden, startling action and stress, but while I'm always excited to commandeer flying vehicles in any game, it was the grappling hook that turned out to be the unsung hero. I don't use hyperbole when I say it may arguably be better at web-💞swinging than even the most recent Spider-Man games, downplaying the instant gratification and emphasizing better understanding of momentum and where to anchor yourself.

Sometimes I'd swing ineptly and flatten my nose against a tree trunk, other times I'd cut a perfect arc through open air, curling acrobatically before firing a fresh grapple at the peak of my ascent to swing again. You can even use🙈 it to retrieve distant objects or throw around enemies: slamming them into the ground or attaching yꩲourself to flying foes for a free ride, wildly firing a pistol with your off-hand at the same time.

These are the kind of experiences that make Lost Skies worth it, those organic yet cinematic moments where your own wit finds purchase on the game world and somethi🗹ng magnificent emerges. That being said, I did find a few gripes: the survival elements can be a little dreary when you're in the aforementioned reed-scrounging stage, and it's definitely a game that could afford to go deeper, not just wider.

Once you're fully set up and reliving The Edge Chronicles (who♛ gets that reference these days?) the game loses momentum a little, but that's what Early Access is for, isn't it? Right now there's a phenomenal foundation for further development, and I'm excited to see where Lost Skies gets to in the future. If nothing else, I'm excited to have another go riding the leviathan's tail – hopefully this time without eventually braining myself on an errant flipper.

Lost Skies is out in Early Access on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Once I've cleared some boxes off the track at this rather rundown-looking station where McGruff lives, I'm shown the ropes of how to run the rail vehicle, from fillin♓g the engine with coal, to boarding my passenger (and partner in crime) Finley by carrying their luggage to a vacant seat inside. Then, all that's left to do is use a map in the front carriage to set my destination and pull a lever to get going. Before I know it, we're headed to the first train stop of many I'll eventually journey to during my time in developer Green Tile Digital's delightful train management life sim. In fact, what was originally meant to be a short play session turns into a three hour-long stint as I get swept up in various quest objectives and spend a lot of time customizing my conductor and my train.

With its adorable anthropomorphic characters that bring to mind the villagers in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and a grid-based crafting system that's reminiscent of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Minecraft, Locomoto offers up just the kind of laidback experience I need right now, and there's so much to do that I know I'm goi⛄ng to lose hours of🐠 my time to it.

All aboard

In Locomoto, you get to make your own adorable custom character from the outset that you can style after lots of different animals. I'm a big fan of character creators, and this one has an extensive suite of options to choose from that makes my heart sing as a longtime player of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like The Sims. I spend too much time checking out the different looks and styles I can give my conductor, from a wealth of ear variatꦓions, to fur markings, eye shapes, and tails. Not to mention different clothing items.

I eventually settle on bringing to life a little bear called Herbert, who rocks a yellow cardigan𒈔 and round glasses, complete with a middle hair parting that brings his look together. Happily, you can change the look of your character at any time in the game, with photobooths dotted around the station stops that will let you make change adjustments you want.

Customization is a huge part of Locomoto's appeal, and it of course extends not only to the outfits you can wear, but the look of your train both inside and out. The more you progress in the first few hours, the more options you'll unlock, such as paints and wallpaper for your carriages, to new blueprints that you can find in the world that add to the items you can craft. The crafting system is also very easy to get to grips with thanks to its grid-based nature – where you🌱 place down resources in squares in a particular layout to make a chair, or a hot cocoa machine (which ﷺevery train needs).

The bulk of the experience of playing Locomoto sees you putting coal in your engine and venturing from station to station to complete various tasks for the fellow animal characters you meet. As a laidback experience, nothing is ever too demanding, with fairly straightforward quests to complete – such as taking a passenger to a particular des🎐tination, or locating a certain object for someone. Occasio꧑nally, though, I did wish the quests provided clearer instructions, because it's not always obvious to know what to do, which can lead to some confusion at times – but it never becomes too frustrating.

In actual fact, there are so many objective and side activities to do early on that I frequently find myself falling down the rabbit hole of, "I'll just do one more task, or go to one more station before I call it night". Then, the next thing I know, hours have simply vanished as I've gotten lost in customizing my train's interior, or crafting new furniture items to deck out my carriages with. I used to call this the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Stardew Valley pa𒀰radox, whereby time seems to disappear as I lose myself in the pixelated farm🦩ing sim's daily routine, and that same feeling is present here as I sink into many train journeys.

One of my favorite things to do so far is collect parcels from station stoꦫps that need to be delivered elsewhere. At this point, I feel like I've become a little bear postman, with parcels stacked up in my carriage that I've been dutifully delivering from place to place.

I'm only a handful of h🐠ours in so far, but Locomoto has plenty to offer right off the bat, and it's just downright adorable. If you're looking for a cute little life sim, or the words train management calls to you, you'll want to get on board with this one.

Locomoto is out now on PC. For more recommendations, be sure to head check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Knights in Tight Spaces is a deckbuilding tactics game, and if the idea of a turn-based strategy title where your cards determine what hand-to-hand moves you can use sounds familiar, you might've played the previous game from developer Ground Shelter, Fights in Tight Spaces. The follow-up, appropriately ti🌄tled Knights in Tight Spaces, trades the slick action film aesthetics for a fantasy vibe, while keeping the deckbuilder-meets-tactics game basics intact. In fact, if you play purely as a brawler like Emma, Knights in Tight Spaces might feel like little more than a medieval reskin of its predecessor.

But Knights in Tight Spaces ups the ante with aspects you can't help but compare 𝓀to Dungeons & Dragons. Most importantly, there's now a whole playable party of heroes, split between classes like brawlers, mages, and rangers. Controlling a whole group of heroes at once makes the battles exponentially more complex, but equally it's that much more satisfying when you put together a massive, party-wide combo that absolutely wrecks the enemy.

Dungeons & draw cards

Each battle in Knights in Tight Spaces takes place on a single-screen, tile-based board representing a location like a tavern or a stable. With each turn, you draw a hand of cards that let you move and attack, and you can spend momentum – a resource that refreshes every turn – or combo points – which build up as you attack 🧸– to deploy these cards in the fight.

Some cards have straightforward effects like "deal X damage" or "move X spaces," but most create more unique outcomes. A sweeping kick will deal less damage than most attacks, but it'll leave the enemy prone and unable to attack next round. You can use the shift card to move in a straight line, but you can also use it to slip to the far side of an enemy, and it makes for a very useful escape when you're cornered. Similarly, theꦜ grapple♉ card can let you strong-arm an enemy into a useful position, but you can also use it on an ally to quickly yank them out of harm's way.

The positional game here especially is an absolute delight. Shuffling enemies to advantageous spots, kicking them into each other, and dodging their attacks to the degree that they start beating up each other is incredibly satisfying. The levels are built such that they keep widening the list of possibilities, giving you tables to slam heads onꦦ, rock formations to hide behind, and enticing windows to kick the bad guys through.

It ൩gets even more satisfying once you start lining up combos for your whole party to take part in. An attack on a bad guy will trigger follow-up combo moves from relevant allies, whether that's a nearby brawler who'll take a free melee attack or a💃n arrow shot from a distant archer who can take a straight-line shot halfway across the room.

The key limitation on your party isಌ that you move every member with the same limited hand of cards each turn. Did you burn a movement card to move your brawler into position ⛄to drop kick that opposing mage into oblivion? Now that card is no longer an option to get your own spellcaster out of imminent danger.

Never reaching the end

All these layered systems help keep the battles engaging, but it also makes them really complex. There are plenty of difficulty option🍎s to help mitigate the pure challenge if you want that, but the game demands a cognitive investment from you that's going to keep e꧟xpanding.

I like tactics games and I'm generally decent at recognizing﷽ the consequences of my actions, but Knights in Tight Spaces has so much to keep track of that I've regularly found myself committing to a move and immediately regretting it because of some reactive effect I've coඣmpletely forgotten about.

That's why, for as much fun as I've been having with Knights in Tight Spaces, I'm finding myself thinking its predecessor – which focꦗuses on just a single playable combatant with a singlꦡe loadout of moves – might ultimately be more my speed. Yet, far from finding Knights' complexity frustrating, I'm fascinated by how its systems fit together.

Knights in Tight Spaces has kept orbiting in my brain even when I'm not playing it. Was I right to build a varied party of balanced classes the first time around? Or should I centralize around an all-brawler party so that I can prune my deck down to just the cards that best suit them? How would I best p🅠osition my party to get a full, boss-destroying chain reaction going?

The fact that these questions are lingering in m🌊y head is probably the best indicator of a great deckbuilder, and even if I might need the training wheels of its simpler predecessor for now, you better believe I'm coming back to Knights in Tight Spaces so I can answer these questions once I've fully grokked the essentials. Emma deserves to reach glory, after all.

Knights in Tight Spaces is out now on PC. For more, check out our澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: Indie Spotlight series.

I'm about 10 years too late for Candy Crush, but Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is finally the match-three game for me. Indie developer Strange Scaffold has a proven knack for weirdness, as as seen in last year's 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:viral bizarro-fest Clickholding, but its wacky latest is a new beast entirely. The Steam page describes it as a "survival horror comedy RPG metroidvania," which is quite a lot of words for somethinᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚg this simple yet undoubtedly complex.

Checkpoint mate

It's also surprisingly heartfelt. As a game set within another game – specifically, t✅he buggy recesses of an abandoned third entry in a series that 🌱does not exist – Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3's meta elements both satirize the craft of game development and pay homage to it.

It's a celebration of genres and subgenres, as proven by the alarmingly long title. Playing as freshly-minted police recruit J.J. Hardwell (which is totally not a reference to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Resident Evil 2's 𓆏own rookie cop, Leon S. Kennedy), I find myself at the gates of a spooky mansion (which is also totally not a reference to Resident Evil 1's Spencer Mansion). I'm told this is the domain of rogue superscientist Huncan Dockright III, and it's J.J.'s job to bring him down. But before I storm in to seek out the homeowner, the first of many obstacles crosses my path: a tall 🍌gate.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur 3 plays out as a point-and-click RPG with onscreen text, winding choice-based pathways, and intermittent turn-based combat encounters against various kooky enemies - or in this case, situations to conquer. The story unfolds as you navigate the mansion's branching hallways and choose your path through it, gaining alternative ways to tackle each branch once J.J. acquires Traits from making other choic🍌es. Think "C𝔉owardly," "Developing Calf Injury," and "Hacker Blood" to name a few.

Pathways are grouped in sets of about three to five opportunities, broken up every so often by pit stops to allow J.J. time to re-stock items, purchase inventory expansions, or travel between different parts of the mansion to re-explore them and possibly unc🍸over new branches – and fight new enemies.

But Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3♕ is not your regular♍ combat encounter, because combat here is always a game of connect-three.

A typical match has two stages: selecting two adjacent symbols to swap around, and using some act🃏ions beforehand. Some of these actions end your turn after use, but I'm relieved to find that inventory items like single-use bandages can be used in addition to your turn – as long as you take the action first. Each time you line up a set of at least three adjacent symbols, J.J. banks them. Collect a specific number of specific symbols, and he'll be able to take special actions, ranging from damaging your enemy to resetting their symbol count ꦺto ending the encounter immediately. Following so far? Good.

J.J. immediately knows something is off about this mansion. There's dinosaurs roaming it, for one, but it's only when he meets the enigmatic Huncan for himself, polishing glasses in a quaint home tavern, that he understands why. J.J. is in a video game – surprise! Not only that, but it's been long aba🐈ndoned by the developers and left ridden with bugs, causing coding errors that have rendered the mansion even more dangerous of a prison to be trapped in than intended. Guess who has a new mission as Chief Debugging Officer? You do!

The devs in the detail

I could wax lyrical about the wonderful weirdness of Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 for another 500 words, spoiling it for you in the process, and that truth is that I want to.

I want to tell you all about the zombie T-rex and the chainsaw clown. I want to tell you what happens with the librarian octopus, and how to handle Evil J.🦂J., and where to unlock the best items to purchase from Huncan's tavern shop each time you end up there after clearing new pathway through the mansion (hint: the Cosmic Hourglass and Minigun are my favorites). But part of the joy of playing this game is to encounter its myriad oddities for yourself. Instead, I want to highlight why this game matters.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 taught me more about game development than any other game I've played before. It delves into the stages of creation, from abandoned out-of-bounds corridors where unfinished🍸 assets sit in perpetual limbo to scrapped concepts, failed mechanics, and the hardships of sustaining a franchise.

Even the curious lack🐭 of actual rednecks is explained cleverly, scrawled on a discarded dev note I find partially flushed in a giant toilet buried deep in the slipstream. Strange Scaffold here builds a meta world framed by its own experiences, and for a comedy game, I find myself feeling more teary💙 eyed than tickled by some of J.J.'s realizations.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is more than a goofy connect-3 game. Its message is something deeply personal yet identifiable, razor-sharp specific yet applicable anywhere. It's as hard to define as the myriad genres it ꦕpulls from, and that's what makes it such a joy to devote 10 hours of your lif🔯e to. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some clones to set free.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is out now on Steam. Check out all the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games of 2025 set to follow it!

One of the most intriguing (and horrifying) 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025, Look Outside is an eerie point & click adventure that has 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:grabbed indi🎐e horror fans by the molars and refuses to let go. The solodev project from Francis Coulombe is equal measures scary and funny, riffing off the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best survival horror games and pixel role-playing 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like Stardew Valley 🙈to deﷺliver an off-kilter scare-'em-up you won't soon forget.

Hell in the hallways

Your task is simple in Look Outside: don't look out the window (unless you want to see🍌 the game over screen), and try and♓ stay alive for 15 days.

This should be enough time for the danger to pass, according to Sybil the wall eyeball. Yes she has a name, and yes she seems friendly. With limited food supplies and a scant൲ array of leisurely items to pass the time, though, trying not to Look 🦋Outside over these 15 days sounds hard in itself. But that is why our intrepid hero must venture forth into the rest of the building to check on his neighbors, learn more about the phenomenon outside, and see just how strange things have gotten in this once-normal apartment block...

The thing that impresses me most about Look Outside is how clever it is. As a pixel RPG with a survival horror framework, my time is split between personal maintenance (not unlike 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Sims 4)ﷺ, exploration, puzzles, and turn-based combat encounters. Digi-synth beats accompany me every step of the way, amping up the 80s sci-fi vibe as Look Outside's cramped world of 🔥nightmares grows more claustrophobic by the minute.

When I'm not facing the warped entities shuffling about the apa꧂rtment building, I'm fighting to simply keep my body going. Eating, sleeping, showering, even brushing one's teeth are core aspects of the game's RPG systems; some actions boost health and stamina, earning a little XP while I'm at it, while others are about simply making time tick by and getting some nice status buffs. P🙈laying a couple hours of video games is fun despite the more humble time sink, though it bestows a sense of Calm in the process. On the other hand, embarking upon four hours of crossword puzzles is "soul-crushingly boring" even if it does pass a good chunk of time.

If all these things help you maintain your stats, it makes sense that others can throw them into chaos. Especially when, ultimately, the best way to make time go faster in Look Outside is to muster up some courage and venture out of your apﷺartment... if you dare.

Gnawing shadows

Dare, you should. Look Outside's savvy survival horror flair makes every dangerous trip outside your safe room more than worth the risk. Think grotesque enemies with uncomfortable names like Toothling, Teratoma, Observer, and Onl🍨ooker, as well as limited ammo, new weapons to find while exploring, and plenty of locked doors with hidden keys to hunt down as you investigate the curious happenings around you.

Unless playing on Easy mode, the only way to save is to go back to your apartment and chat to Sybil, much like collecting ink ribbons for typewriter saves in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Resident Evil games. Thanks to the RPG elements, there's also a clothing equip😼ment mechanic on top of your weapons loadout. So far, I've stumbled across a set of rags, a hoodie, and a tank top on my journey, each with requisite attackℱ or defense buffs to give you an edge in combat.

The combat encounters themselves borrow elements from the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Pokemon games, but with insidious, horrific twists. Instead of a ✱wild Clefairy appearing in tall grass, enemies lurk in the darkness all around. A circlet of dim yellow light surrounding your player ch𒈔aracter is often all that illuminates the space, whether running from an enemy down a never-ending hallway or creeping through a neighbor's apartment. You can click on a wandering enemy to start a battle yourself, but don't worry – they'll make a beeline straight for you if you don't. Look Outside's turn-based combat is simple but effective, with both regular and special attacks at your disposal.

Special attacks cost a little Stamina, and also pose a marginal risk. From a weapon being damaged to inflicting some damage upon yourself in the process, these risks do often pay off for the high reward output. I eventually get my hands on a pistol and some ammo, perfect for encounters with more powerful enemies, though upon encountering such foes, the game points out in a barefaced hint that "you feel the urge to run away". Since most health items cannot be used mid-combat, aside from tonics, sometimes it's best🦩 to hedge your bets and make a beeline f🌱or your safe room – unless you fancy committing the cardinal survival horror sin and wasting bullets on the small fry.

I've only experienced a few hours of Look Outside's quirky yet haunting universe, and I'm already charmed by it. Each in-game day that ticks by could be rife with boredom – it may well be possible to sit out the whole 15 day period with video games and pizza bites, for example – but the intrigue of it all keeps you exploring. What happened here? What are these extra-terrestrial beings that "burn away liv💧ing essence" with a mere glance? What do I do with all this cash I've amassed? You never know what you'll find behind a locked door in Look Ou๊tside, from an overly friendly NPC who asks for a kiss in exchange for some photo film to a young man with teeth erupting across his entire face. I kissed the NPC. I killed the young man. I went home and ate some pizza bites. Life could definitely be worse, but hey – at least I didn't look outside (again).

Check out the very 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best horror games of all time for more chills and thrills

Mechanically, Of the Devil takes a lot of inspiration from both Ace Attorney and Danganronpa, combining the clue-based puzzles of the f𝓡ormer with the stylish presentation of the latter. But it's not just an imitation, Of the Devil has plenty of its own style too. From Morgan's frequent vibe-shifting cutaways as she recalls moments of her past mid-squabble, to the gambling-theming of her face-offs with the police and DA. It's familiar but fresh.

Micro casino chips

Specifically, when in an argument and a thread of assumptions needs to be disproved, each point is laid down and attached to evidence like cards, giving Morgan space to consider a selection of her own evidence cards (not unlike Danganronpa's argument bullets) to overlay on the incorrect part of a statement. Yಌou'll also reach points where you can choose to Raise or Stay an argument, or to Call a bluff – essentially deciding on if you have the evidence to push an argument or need to let it sail by.

Getting things wrong isn't hyper punishing either (unless you play on high roller difficulty which, conversely, is a little much). But it does make disproving arguments feel good, while presenting each step in a way that's easy to follow along. Even in these early cases – episodically released, only Episode 0 (which is free!) and Episode 1 are out – there are times informati🎀on can get a bit dense. But, as your selections are pared down when needing to present evidence, it's easy to dig through in the moment. At these points, additional information is bullet-pointed next to the evidence too which can be handy – though I do sometimes wish all these details were also indicated on the full clue's information.

Between playing out arguments♏ like a game of poker, there's plenty of great writing. That's partially why info can feel so dense – like many visual novels, there's also things like a glossary of terms that unlocks as you poke around the world. The cyberpunk setting here brings together lots of genre elements and manages to find a fresh perspective into them through Morgan and her friends. Even if the individual building blocks may be things you've seen elsewhere, Of the Devil's way of experiencing them makes them novel again.

The♚ writing is pithy and funny, but is also able to swing into some devastating territory as it makes you engage 🐭with a lot of the ideas on display – from androids taking jobs, to worker's rights, and lots and lots of surveillance. There's always a nice throughline on how even with all the surveillance there's still doubt on the cases to pick at, and hopefully the episodes to come continue to pull it off in interesting ways.

With great character designs and stylish presentation – there's lots of cut-ins or sometimes phone transitionsౠ – it's a joy to read through what happens next. A bopping soundtrack helps too, with plenty of moments to heighten🅺 the feeling that you've got one over on someone in an argument.

Of the Devil will also stop to allow Morgan to poke around some 3D-rendered rooms, either in real life or through augmented reality crime scenes. It's🎐 a nice change of pace even if they're fairly static, and can provide as much opportunity to think about the world through reading data logs as it does letting you sit with the implications of the evidence you're looking at. Again, it's still early in Of the Devil, but there have been some very clever deductions that turn each mystery on its head in each case so far.

Each mystery Morgan takes on seems to tie back into some central issues at the center of this world, and especially in re🌺gards to Morgan's own background. I'm holding my cards close here, and don't want to spoil anything, but there are some bold storytelling decisions early on that have me hooked… even if I'm wondering how they'll land by the full story's end once the cards are flipped over. Okay, one more hand – hit me.

.

For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. Or if you're just looking for the best game stories, give that a read as well!

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, from developer Panik Arcade, shares a similar philosophy to some of the 3D platforming greats. As a player, you're in control of your movement, and able to feel like you're taking advantage of ♏the space to power through on your own terms to meet tricky challenges. But by having you smash headlong into solving those problems, even from the ไearliest stages, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is upfront about its tongue-in-cheek, joyous brashness.

Pedal to the metal

Playing early levels for the first time, you feel a little unsure about ℱhow to best make it through. Your taxi's moveset is, for the most part, quite stripped ♏back and simple. You accelerate forwards, able to drift a little as you turn corners, and complete jumps by hitting a boost – which has you pause for a moment as a clockwork engine twists – shooting you forwards and into the air.

Quickly, you learn that you don't just need to fling yourself off simple ramps. Pretty much any angled surface, once you hit at speed, will send you soaring relative to its steepness like you're blasting into a pinball bumper. And, you learn, you can stal🌱l out your own boost to flip your car over, trading forward momentum for an extra hop into the air and improved maneuverability. It can almost feel game breaking at first until you realize later devious challenges are often built around having you exploit this in mind.

At the same time, though, there's the sense as you explore each vibrant level – everything is super colorful like a cross between Super Mario 64 and Katamari Damcy – that the dev💜elopers aren't quite sure how far players wi✱ll be able to break the movement, yet are extremely okay with letting you loose to try your best. Each level has you tracking down cogs to progress in an overworld – traditional collectathon stuff – and on my first go around initial stages there were quite a few that felt impossible to reach. It's not until going back to them, having learnt to master some of the almost game-breaking-feeling controls, that I learn just how much power you have to really toss the taxi all over the maps.

As you unravel the unique platforming mechanics, the world also feels increasingly off-kilter. Nothing about Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is serious in the least, whether it's your mechanic creator Morio who shows you the ropes, to your quest to take down Alien Mosk with his evil extraterrestrial, hyper-corpo approach to automobiles. Levels range from strange arcades made up of twisting pipes, to Crazy Taxi-style time🌌d challenges through somewhat more urban-style levels such as a whole town that revolves around pizza. Before you know it you're jumping around skyscrapers and castles, infiltrating secret bases, an🥂d dodging laser beams from dreamlike entities.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is obviously made with a lot of love for 3D platforming classics, but it's in knowing all the expectations that Panik Arcade is able to set about breaking them apart one by one. With its hybrid of driving mechanics and willingness to allow 👍you to use level geometry to rip through jumping challenges, and its bizarre off-kilter tone, there's really no other game like it, let alone another platformer. If you love platformers, and especially ones willing to get playful and inventive with their movement mechanics, this is one game you need to hail immediately. .

For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. Or if you're just looking for the best game stories, give that a read as well!

Just moments before I was looking at my own grave, and hearing relatives speak of my life. The funeral ceremony actually acts as a clever way of introducing the different skil꧋l points I can invest in, since I'm immediately presented with choices that let me decide Liza's passions in life. Whatever I choose feeds into the four different areas of knowledge she has – such as science or logic, or writing and literature. These knowledge skills help to shape Liza as a character, but they also unlock special dialogue responses that can open up the way to unique resolutions and story directions, or increase my relationship with someone who has similar interests.

But none of my skills can help me right now, because I'm completely alone in this unsettling place, and the only way out is a door that's firmly locked. Thankfully, a mysterious mute figure on the other side agrees to help me through some communicative knocking on the door, and after making my way through a dank corridor, I soon emerge out into a gothic manor, slap bang in the middle of a grand hall where a soiree is taking place. The whole room is full of well-dressed guests that are all quick to take notice of my att🐽ire and unexpected visit. I certainly know how to make an entrance.

From here, I'm thrust into 🧜a world of fanged aristocracy as I learn the ropes of being a fresh bloodsucker in a fictionalized Eastern European town in the 19th century. And by Dracula have I absolutely loved sinking my teeth into the story and supernatural world so far. In fact, within just 30 minutes of developer Part𝐆y for Introvert's vampire RPG, I was completely entranced by all of the role-playing ingredients it has to offer.

I (don't) want to suck your blood

Ever since I played Vampire The Masquerade – Bloodlines many years ago, I've been searching for another RPG like it. I loved the way it let me become different kinds of fanged fiends with vampiric powers, and decide if I wanted to try to retain my humanity or give into my bloodsucking ways and become a true creature of the night. In Cabernet, a lot of tho𝓰se ideas are present, with choices ♏that constantly feed into Liza's humility or nihilism, which is this RPG's take on morality.

Being compassionate, u⭕nderstanding, and averse to harming others of course increases my humility, while using my vampiric powers for my own selfish benefit or for unhanded deeds will add to my nihilism meter. Interestingly, though, unlike some other morality systems, you can actually feed into both sides equally to make Liza a little more complex, which is something I'm very keen to play around with.

I also have four🌠 powers to use that really put me into my fanged role. With a wheel dial that lets me activate them at will once they're unlocked (provided no mortal is nearby to witness me doing it), I can shift into a bat to fly quickly from place to place around the town, sing a lullaby to enchant people ౠ– which allows me influence those I have a high enough affinity with in different ways (or just ready them for a spot of bloodsucking) – turn invisible, or change into my vampire form to bite willing necks. All of these powers come in handy in different scenarios, with a variety of side quests and main story objectives to complete that will often present me with the chance to put them into practice if I so choose.

I'm also entirely free to decide if I want to use my powers to take blood from others, or try to abstain and sup from a beverage (which is the game's namesake, Cabernet) that gives me the substance I need. No necks required. With a cup icon on the left side of the screen showing how much blood I have in my system, letting it run out wꦇill mean my eventual death. Should it get too low, I'll also move slower, and with a day and nightജ cycle and the threat of the sunrise always looming, there's a survival element to the game.

If things get desperate in the blood department – like say, I run out of money for more vials of Cabernet,ꩲ or I have no one nearby to enchant – there is another way around it. You can always take blood from unsuspecting bunnies in a nearby forest (somet🍸hing I haven't been able to bring myself to do just yet).

High stakes

As a new vampire, my sire is a doctor in the town, who I take up residence with and help out since Liza had a background in medicine when she was alive. With the story broken up into chapters, each taking place over the course 🉐of several days, I have a calendar to keep track of how much time I have to complete side quests or objectives before a pivotal event shifts the story into the next chapter.

Each ♑night that I awaken, I'm free to go about the town as I wish, getting to know residents, completing tasks, and exploring, but I only have a certain amount of action points I can use. Whenever I do an action, a chunk of time will be taken up on the clock, and I have to be mindful of when the sun will rise so I can go back to the safety of my room and settle down in my coffin for the morning.

There are so many stories to explore and characters to get to know as I go about my business, and the fact that I can 🍎develop romantic relationships if I so wish is a big bonus. The core questline is one that's filled with mystery and intrigue, too, a𒐪nd I can't wait to discover where it will lead me next. Above all, it's great to find a new RPG that has choices with meaningful consequences, and I've already been able to prevent bloodshed, help someone realize their dream, and circumvent what seemed like certain tragedy through my actions and decisions.

It's been a long time since I've been able to delve into such an engrossing vampire RPG, with the last being Don't Nod's deliciously dark Vampyr back in 2018. But Cabernet has been giving me my fill of fangs and blood, complete with lots of nods to classic vampire lore that I absolutely love –♍ such as having to be invited into a place to enter. I have six hours of playtime under my Victorian dress, but it's already safe to say there's definitely going to be a re-play in my future. If you're looking for a rich vampire RPG to take a bite out of, I can't recommend Cabernet enough.

Cabernet is out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch. For more, check out our澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: Indie Spotlight series.

Yes, even in Cat Detective Albert Wilde, the titular feline has his flaws. But when you've got the added pressure of an empty wallet and an angry moose demanding reimbursement, you have all the more incentive to solve a case you come across to score yourself the reward money. The point-and-click-style adventure from developer b𓃲eyondthosehills clocks in at around six hours, and it's absolutely dripping with humor, weird antics, and an aesthetic look and feel that's heavily inspired by 1930's noir. The case it takes me on really lives up to Albert's name by going to some wild(e) places, and I'm curious to see how it'll come to a close. But if you're in need of a good laugh and some investigative goodness, it's well worth checking out.

Feline findings

The '30s noire inspirations are obvious right away, with Cat Detective Albert Wilde greeting me into the story with credits that play in an old-timey frame you'd normally see in movies of that decade. There's also a constant grainy film visual that lends it that gritty gumshoe feel and brings to mind the likes of and the Adventure🔯s of Sherlock Holmes. I'm immediately taken with Albert's monologuing, which is constantly filled with lines that wouldn't be out of place in any noir detective romp, if only for the fact that he often says humorous cat-related versions. "I'm always on the prowl… for the truth, for criminal scum, for a nice bowlful of milk when I get the chance" is just one line of many that comes to mind.

Pretty much right away you learn that Albert is down-on-his-luck, with no money to his name after a spot of gambling. With no coin andꦜ no case, my first objective is simple: find a job. After failing to smooth talk my way to a copy of a newspaper from a salesman who has a bird's head (every character has an animal head imposed onto a human body which gives it a weird uncanny look), I have to ♒talk to a moose called Rudy who it turns out I owe money to. Fortunately against his better judgement, he loans me just one more dollar so I can snap up a paper and search for job listings.. aka any news about local crimes to enquire about.

When I'm in control, it switches to a first person view in an entirely black and white setting. Anytime I can interact with something, it's highlighted by a little yellow dot, such a can lying in the street. When I go over a⛄nd click on the discarded can near the newsstand as I search for work, Albert questions why he's even bothering to look at it, and I'm reminded of the many times I've picked up a piece of garbage in LA Noire and inspect it, which would lead protagonist Cole to say aloud "it's just junk". But you never know what a clue might be, and I'm nothing if not a thorough investigator.

Once I find a newspaper clipping about a mysterious dead body, I'm on the phone to the police chief to ask about the investigation, but as is ever the case for Albert, I've apparently wronged them in some way, too. Practically everyone I meet is either pretty reluctant to help, or not especially pleased to see me, but such is the life of a flawed feline PI who has to do a lot of snooping. Once the chief eventually g🅰▨ives up the information I need and lets me in on the case– thanks to my incessant calling from an old fashioned boxed telephone hanging in my office – I can open up a map and travel to the crime scene.

Each time I change location on the map, be it to a point of interest, or my office, it will switch to a brief cutscene of Albert driving his era appropriate car, and I love the way he'll continue narrating throughout the journey. It really is so very noir. At th﷽e scene, I get stuck into classic investigative work, which is quite simple: talk to people (or in this instance a flamingo) of interest nearby, and look at objects that might serve as clues. First off, though, I need to look at the body, which is where things start getting weird… because the body has Albert's face, but the cat on the ground appears to have been walking on four legs instead of two… what is the world coming to?

The flamingo witness is the next port of call, but the pink feathered fellow refuses to give up any pertinent information unless I agree to impress them by dancing. I may have seven lives, but I don't have the moves I need, so it's off to the dance studio to learn a new routine. At this point I fully accept that you'll never be able to predict what will happen next in this particular criဣme caper, but it's all the better for it.

Because of that, I don't want to spoil any more – it's the kind of experience worth going into without too much knowledge. All I'll say is that from my foray into the world of dance, you can venture into some sewers, meet a praying mantis, and maybe even come across some quantum physics-based escapades. Yes, really. If that doesn't piqu🌳e your interest, I don't know what will. If you're in need of a good ꧑chuckle and something silly, surprising, and a bit strange, here's a clue: don't miss this one.

is out now on PC. For more recommendations, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series or see what's ahead with our roundup of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games.

But the path to her chamber is fraught with all manner of dangers. As a "patient" in the asylum, locked up for trying to expose the horrors behind its walls, Alfredo needs to use stealth to his advantage as well as holding tight to his sanity, banishing spirits (imaginary or real?) known as ànima, and leading his small group of renegade inmates to freedom – or die trying. The mechanics of this RTT adventure will be familiar to any fan of Desperados 3, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Shadow Gambit, or similar Mimimi Games' titles – but Blasphemous developer The Game Kitchen goes the extra mile when it comes to incorporating some seriously spooky themes into the mix. All of these elements work together to create a brilliantly tense narrative experience, hewn together with clever stealth tactics that reflect its unique world and transform the scenario into something even more high stakes – and that's just the first hour.

Style and substance

The smooth blending of theme and function is one of the things I'm enjoy꧃ing most about The Stone of Madness. As a stealth strategy experience set in a very well-articulated world, the developer reshapes genre staples to abide by a new set of rules that constantly remind the player of where and what they're playing. An♈ example of this? The ever-present vision cone.

To spot the enemy vision cones, it's a matter of swivelling the right Nintendo Switch joystick. A small arrow appears at the base of my character, and pointing it in a given direction reveals not only any nearby enemy (in the early game's case, usually an asylum warden) but a green cone indicating their field-of-vision. Usually, getting caught in one of these is the worst thing you can do in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best stealth games – but here's where The Stone of Madness starts doing things a little differently. Wardens, tasked with monitoring inmates throughout the monastery, don't react to Alfredo's presence all of the time. In certain areas where he is meant to be, like the gardens or other communal areas, passing through th🌜eir vision cones is totally acceptable – unless he is trying to steal something or sneak off to a restricted zone. But of course, to reach that crying woman from earlier, I have to send Alfredo into one of these restricted zones – and right past one of his greatest fears.

The Stone of Madness's fear and sanity system is tied to the "negative disorders" each protagonist suffers from, corresponding to their personal traumas. As a holy man, Alfredo fears corpses and violent situations, while gentle giant Eduardo🍸's fear of the dark is a res🐈ult of his many years spent in solitary confinement. The longer a character spends exposed to their fears, the further they chip away at their precious sanity, which adds even greater friction to the already tense stealth systems at play. Still, with Eduardo now in tow, Alfredo's mission to rescue the crying woman is that much closer to completion, all thanks to the mute man's set of Revelations.

These🅠 special skills, held by individual protagonists respectively, vastly increase your chances of success when used in tandem with others. Alfredo's lamplight is useful for finding hidden clues around the monastery, for example, exposing hidden passageways. Meanwhile, Eduardo's brawn allows him to push crates and clear said passageways for the group to progress. It's thanks to this strength that I see the duo distract a guard to sneak past them unnoticed, and all it took was chucking some rubble down tꦍhe stairs.

Narrative and historical context clues start piling up as I unlock more protagonists, shading in each character's personality, backstory, and suggesting their differing experiences of life in 18⭕th century Spain.

After stepping into a rec room as Eduardo, for example, searching for said rubble to throw as a distraction tactic, I position him in front of a nearby sign and discover that he can't read. He's still vastly more respected than newcomer Alfredo in the eyes of the other inmates, who are much friendlier to Eduardo and will readily turn a blind eye to his sneaky acts. Meanwhile, feisty Leonora has no qualms about knocking out a guard or two with her trusty plank of wood, vengeance for the ill treatment of women being held in the facility, though she doe𝓰s feel a twinge of guilt when she must assassinate them. It all speaks to how thoughtfully each character has been integrated with the story and its context, this characterization further established in short animated cutscenes peppered throughout the adventure in refreshing, cinematic bursts.

The more I uncover about The Stone of Madness, the more the intrigue eats away at me. It's a slow and steady mystery to uncover, your patience rewarded with each layer peeled back and each new character recruited. It's my favorite kind of Nintendo Switch experience, perfect to pick up and play between the litany of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games yet to come in 2025, and I can't wait to see how the story plays out – and where exactly this crying woman is hiding...

Here's all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PC games coming in 2025 and beyond.

From roguelike city builders to eldritch doctor simulations, there are loads of exciting 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games to try out. The Next Fest started on Monday, February 25th, and will run until Monday, March 3rd. As previously mentioned, a lot of these demos are time-limited, and will be unavailable when Next Fest ends. While this list can't include every great demo, we've done our best to make sure that this list c🥃overs a variety of genres, so there's bound to be something for you.

Scroll🧔 down and check out our picks for the very best demos in the latest Steam Next Fest!

10. The King is Watching

Developer: Hynohead
Release date: TBC


A game quite unlike anything I've ever played, The King is Watching meshes city builder, roguelike, and almost idle game mecha🅘nics to create a unique experience. You have a grid-based city to build different resource-generat🍌ing buildings on, such as a wheat field or a market, each of which relies on other resources to build or operate. Here's the thing: your subjects are a bunch of lazy sods who will only work when you're watching them, and to start off with, you can only watch three tiles at once, so you'll need to think carefully💧 about where you place each building to ensure maximum productivity, lest ye perish.

9. Monster Train 2

Developer: Shiny Shoe
Release date: TBC


Monster Train was, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:until Balatro released, my favourite deckbuilder, and I'm happy to say that Monster Train 2 looks set to build on the original. The demo has new clans to play with, as well as new cards. It also seems a touch harder than the original to me, but that may just be where I'm out of practice. If you love deckbuilders and want to sample what is likely to be one of the best this year, play the demo and sཧee if it tickles your fancy. Be warned though, the demo is hard to put down, and I had to pry myself away from it.

8. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown

Developer: Strange Scaffold
Release date: TBC

If you grew up on TMNT, this turn-based tactics game is a real t🐎reat. Brought to us by Strange Scaffold, which seems an odd choice given the often-transgressive nature of their previous games like Life Eater and I Am Your Beast, TMNT: Tactical Takedown is an XCOM-alike with an emphasis on a very radical 90s approach to visual design, with strong mobility mechanics, morphing maps, and stage events; like a car running down you𝄹r turtle as you fight Foot Clan through the streets. This may have happened to me more than once. It's fun, engaging, and totally tubular, dude!

7. Dagger Directive

Developer: Arcane Alpacas
Release date: TBC


This title, which might as well be called Felta Dorce, is an incredible throwback to the Delta Force series of yore. The demo throws you into a large map with an array of weaponry (after so꧅me compulsory training) and just, wow, frankly. You can pick any loadout that you want – I went in with a sniper rifle and an assault rifle, expecting a fairly easy mission, and I was entirely mistaken. I got made crossing a hillside, and after taking down two enemies with my sidearm, the entire nearby base was on my back. The AI is good enough to be a real challenge, using smoke grenades to cover their advances and the like, but also not smart enough to make you feel powerless. I'm extremely excited to see where this game goes.

6. Is This Seat Taken?

Developer: Poti Poti Studio
Release date: TBC

A really fabulous and novel puzzle game, Is This Seat Taken? is all about keeping people comfortable. The people, in this case, little blobs in various shapes, each have their own preferences and it's up to you, as the ജhand of God, to decide where 💧they sit or stand. You do this across a range of different vehicles and venues, ranging from taxis to buses, cinemas to concerts. The character traits are varied and interesting, including people who want to talk to another person, people who want to sleep, partners, parents and child💙ren, and many more. The demo isn't too difficult but it can be tricky to, for example, give someone a window seat and allow them to sit next to their child, who wants to sit next to another kid, when the buses only have two seats per side. Cute, fun, and unique, I can ask only one thing: Is Your SSD Taken?

5. Do No Harm

Developer: Darts Games
Release date: March 6, 2025

Have you ever had aspirations of being a doctor? How about living in Innsmouth? Okay, that second one is less common, but in Do No Harm, you can't have one without the other. You take on the role of the town's new doctor and need to work out what's wrong with everyone, beside the Lovecraftian gribblies that you keep seeing during your work day. Forget evidence-based medicine, too – we're going back to bodily humours, baby! A really neat title that 🅺meshes Papers,🐽 Please-style observational gameplay with insanity effects and quite gross medical problems, including parasites, everyone's favorite, Do No Harm is well worth a look.

4. Wheel World

Developer: Messhof
Release date: TBC 2025

Enter a world that is so bike-obsessed, it makes the Netherlands look like it's not even trying. This game from Messhof, the team behind Nidhogg, Nidhogg 2 and Flywrench, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:puts you into a beautifully cel-🦋ꩵshaded world, gives you a rusty bike and a smart aleck skull companion and tasks you with becoming a bike master. The demo hints at a story involving legendary bike parts and a tumultuous and essential event called the Great Shift (like a gear, you see). The demo's pretty short, but the racing is great fun and the world seems to have a really great sense of humour. Pro-tip: my GTA-pilled brain was tapping the right trigger to pedal, but you can just hold it down. Oh, and to make it ev൩en more razor-focused to my specific interests, it has a soundtrack from Italians Do It Better, the record label behind bands like Chromatics and Desire.

3. Wanderstop

Developer: Ivy Road
Release date: March 11, 2025

If you love cozy games, look no further than Wanderstop. A new game from the creator of The Stanley Parable, this is a ga😼me about knowing when to stop and take a breath🅠er. In this demo, you'll stagger through woods and collapse, exhausted, before being rescued by a very friendly man called Boro, who makes terrible jokes that I still love. The demo effectively gives you a tutorial for the full game, showing you how to sow seeds and make tea, and it's a delight. We all need a reminder now and then to take a break, and Wanderstop's demo is a joyous little slice of life that does just that, with some wonder🎉ful dialogue between the grumpy Alta, our protagonist, and the cheerily unflappable Boro.

2. High Seas, High Profits!

Developer: lexy.zip
Release date: March 31, 2025


Do you like making money? Do you like sailing the seven seas and completing quests? Then, perhaps unsurꦓprisingly, given its title, you'll probably love High Seas, High Profits. The gameplay loop is simple – find goods that one town makes, take it to another that needs them – boom, you've got a profit. But that only scratches the surface – there are quests (for instance, delivering sacks of salt for a wealthy family's wedding, you can build ships to add to your fleet, and keep your ships in good working order. It calls to mind a more user-friendly Port Royale, or a heady mix of the world map fro♏m Sid Meier's Pirates! and the feeling of making money in Stonks-9800.

1. Skin Deep

Developer: Blendo Games
Release date: April 30, 2025

By far and away the funniest game that I've played during Next Fest, Skin Deep is a brilliant immersive sim/FPS from the creator of Thirty Flights of Loving and Quadrilateral Cowboy. You are Nina Pasadena, an insurance policy made flesh, protecting ships from pirates in deep space. Oh, and the crew are all cats. Why? Whoཧ knows. Does it ma𝓡tter? Not one bit: it's worth it for the slo-mo "MEOW" they let out when you rescue them.

Yet don't think that this is just an FPS that is funny, it really is an immersive sim as well. In one encounter, I made a pirate sneeze by throwing pepper at him, smashed⛄ him into two washing machines, removed his head, which was still very much alive and angry at me (it's how they respawn, I'm not a monster), and flushed it down a trash chute (okay, maybe I am). His friend then spotted me and let off a shot, but I hid under a cabinet, threw soap on the floor to make her trip and gave her the same treatment. It's got so much personality, and I really, really love it.

To see what indie games we've been enjoying in 2025, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

There's really no easy ⭕comparison to better understand the concept of While Waiting, but the closest I've come when talking about it with others is taking the general vibe of Untitled Goose Game and applying it to killing time. You don't really have to do anything, and in fact the game will largely move forward entirely without aꦓny input from you at all, and any behavior beyond that is arguably completely unnecessary.

Killing time

Not that I would actually recommend doin♕g nothing at all; it's merely an option the game technically supports. The real goodness, the nougat at the center of While Waiting, is everything that it technically allows you to do, well, while waiting. The game is mechanically a series🏅 of vignettes or scenes with timers that range in length (and generally are not known to the player) with the only stated goal being to wait until something happens. Wait until someone texts back, wait to fall asleep, wait for class to end. But just outside the confines of all of these are a wide variety of shenanigans in which to partake.

Exactly how to accomplish these shenanigans is hinted at in two ways. A little notebook has a brief description of what you could possibly also do in addition to nothing at all, and a series of stickers in t𝄹he upper right of the screen has some visual clues. If you successfully achieve whatever secondary objective, boom, you get the sticker in your notebook. Each scene ranges in just how many of these extracurricular activities exist as well as how involved they all are, which is honestly part of the appeal.

Highlighting all of the ways that While Waiting can surprise and delight would ruin it somewhat, or at the very least dim the sheen, but it does feel worthwhile just to give some idea of the range. These extra objectives and opportunities can be trying and failing to squeeze between two people on a bench. Simple enough. Or, as just one example, it can be rolling a shishkabob along an unevenly lit grill, trying to get it cooked on both sides, without burning it in a sokoban-like puzzle of back and forth turning and dragging. I literally had nightmares about that one, I kid you not.

Time enough

But even when those little puzzles turn out to be big puzzles and the easy solve becomes much, much more involved, While Waiting doesn't take itself particularly seriously. Yes, these can be significant logic puzzles, but you can also just leave that all behind to slowly (and sometimes very slowly) wait for th🀅e next scene to roll around. You only have to engage with what engages you, and i🍒f the part where digging in a drawer suddenly becomes a Tetris-like minigame isn't your speed, well, you can just move on instead.

While Waiting might, at first blush, seem like a gimmick. The whole game is about waiting, the worst part of most video games. But the puzzle game does the impossible and actually makes the act of waiting around for something to happen fun. Beyond the puzzles and activities and charmingly minimalist art design, there's really nothing extra to ✱the video game… except a dedicated button for bringing up and playing with a fidget toy of some kind. You know, to help keep ൩you engaged while waiting.

While Waiting is out now on Nintendo Switch and PC. To see what other indie gems we've been enjoying so far, be sure to check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Arthur Ackerman provides the perfect introduction to this many-wheeled murder mystery. On the surface, as a lawyer who loves paperwork൲, this will-penning leading man may see🉐m a little dry – but, almost Guybrush Threepwood-esque, his hapless demeanor makes him the perfect foil for stumbling upon comically complex puzzles aplenty. So single-minded is he on his precious papers, that he carries a real himbo energy for everything else, making getting to grips with the cast of characters and different train compartments a joy.

Investigation derailed

Not only a series of screens, the nature of the train setting that makes up the majority of Loco Motive♛'s environment also means each screen can serve a very clear purpose. One of those old timey-style posh sleeper trains, rather than the commuter to London Paddington, there's a sleeper carriage that offshoots to other rooms; a dining carriage with its own bar; a kitchen where struggling chefs attempt to corral dinner; an entertainment carriage with its own stage, complete with VIP green room; and even a casino full of high-rollers. And, rather than having to worm in and out of buildings, they're only a click away as you move from carriage to carriage – Arthur and company (there's three characters overall) able to run at speed between them.

At times, this can still mean a bit of backtracking as you dash to and fro. Especially as for the most part Loco Motive takes a "more is more" approach to its inventory that ends up stuffed to the brim in no time at all. Yet, a nicely arranged chapter system helps to avoid overwhelm, making the parameters of your objectives between each one quite clear, handing off between protagonists not only refreshing your main goal and inventory but stopping things from spinning too wildly out of control. Because of the enclosed setting, ꦆyou can even carry an amount of foreknowledge about locations and events that can prompt you on what to in๊vestigate as a different character in the next chapter.

But, what's most important for an adventure game to n💃ail, for me, is a sense of character – and every element of Loco Motive feeds into this. Whether it's exuberant animated sequences that have lashings of cartoon 'squash and stretch' movement; dialogue trees with enough silly responses fᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚor you to want to hear them all; and plenty of 'aha' moments as oddball ideas for how to smash together inventory pieces to solve conundrums actually pays off. The gorgeous pixel artwork and terrific audio design make it feel like this train has taken me through a tunnel to the past, and I'm right back playing my favorite LucasArts adventure games yet again.

I'm only left wishing, by the end, that Loco Motive was able to go a bit more off the tracks than it does. While early non-train screens are little more than simple tutorials, th♑e ones that come later really showcase some smart design that extends the principles of the connected 'screens' that make up each carriage.

Minor spoiler warning, perhaps, but here at the end you get to play as all three characters at once, able to switch between them a little li𝓰ke in the cla🍷ssic Day of the Tentacle. The puzzles here come from the very limited interactions each is able to perform in their own mini-spaces, and how they can shunt items back and forth, and affect the puzzles active in other characters' areas.

These end up being quite straightforward, perhaps in part because once introduced there's only an hour or so left in the game, but they end up being the ones that delight me the most. With less ground to cover, the characters and the puzzles really come to 𒆙the forefront, highlighting the areas where the game rocks the most. I'm left wanting more, yet satisfied with the journey I undertook, which is all to say that yes, I'd love to board the Reuss Express for a second trip any time – let's get that puzzlebook passport anotꦺher stampin'.

Loco Motive was⛦ played on PC with a code pr🦂ovided by the publisher

and Switch. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. Or, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best game stories list for more!

Wilmot Works It Out has some odd-looking jigsaw puzzles that test your grey matter too, but it's nowhere near as intimidating or stressful as solving a thousand-piecer (I assume that's what jigsaw puzzlers call them). In Hollow Pon🍎d and publisher Finji's latest title, you play as cheery white square Wilmot and he's part of what may be the worst puzzle club ever becaus🤪e it always mixes pieces from multiple jigsaws in each weekly delivery. This sounds nightmarishly irritating, but it's actually what makes Wilmot Works It Out so compelling and got me into a puzzle flow state.

Join the club

The game is split into eight levels, known as seasons, which see Wilmot receiving puzzle club deliveries every ♔so often from chirpy postwoman, Sam. Each delivery, which you usually get after solving a puzzle and hanging it on the wall, provides a varying number of tile pieces to dump into Wilmot's front room and then it's up to you to continue solving until there are no more for the season.

With the first delivery, you'll learn about the puzzle club's disorganization, where some pieces are so different they stick out like a sore thumb, clearly part of another jigsaw. You'll quickly get to a point where Sam's deliveries have really stacked up, leaving you surrounded by the disparate pieces of three or four puzzles. This forces you into a sort of organization metagame, where you need to divide the front roo⛎m into imaginary sectors to ensure you don't mix puzzles and make things more confusing with each delivery.

Keeping things orderly becomes much tougher when you discover that, as the puzzles꧃ ge✨t bigger, the chances of their tiles being more varied in style, color, and pattern increases. That means you'll start grouping tiles into what seem like different puzzles, only to realize later with one crucial piece that they're all part of the same masterpiece.

However, the game's final trick of throwing in tiles with near identical patterns that🐲 are actually for completely different puzzles is truly devious. One puzzle features a dinosaur with an orange dot pattern and dark-purple foliage, but those same fe𒅌atures appear in another puzzle where the orange dots are clouds in the sky. It sounds frustrating, but the tile pieces can be easily shoved around by Wilmot to find the right place. That means it's easy to experiment and slide individual tiles or even massive clusters around to see what fits, and it's mightily satisfying when you eventually figure out the trick and complete a puzzle that you can hang proudly.

All these design tricks come together toꦕ make Wilmot Works It Out highly engaging, even if you're not into jigsaws. Despite the simplicity of some of the final works, the puzzles aren't insultingly easy, and the small piece counts and ease of experimenting means they aren't tediously difficult either. There's a nice challenge in trying to figure out what a completed puzzle isꦡ going to look like when it's done so that you can manage the limited space and the tiles within. And when you hit a roadblock, in Metroidvania fashion, you can try looking somewhere else to make progress.

That constant switching between puzzles is what kept me hooked on Wilmot Works It Out, too. I'd start a season, quickly solving the first few puzzles, but inevitably tiles would pile up. Then, while moving things around, I might suddﷺenly notice one tile that'd be a perfect fit, which would cascade into more correct tiles and solved puzzles until I was done with the season - in what felt like minutes but had actually been almost an hour.

Once I wrapp𝓡ed up the game in about six and a half hours, I was presented with marathon mode, where you're given every puzzle piece at once and must solve them all. Tempting though it was, it reminded me far too much of the jumbled mess of real jigsaw puzzles. So, while Wilmot Works It Out has hardly converted me when it comes to jigsaws, it was a charming and extremely pleasant change of pace, and a surprisingly inventive little game that had me hooked over its short run time. Sorry, Ravensburger. You're not getting my money just yet.

Wilmot Works It Out is out now on PC. For more recommendations, be sure to head over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

In fact, I'm delighted to say that I'm looking forward to Aloft's venture out of Early Access and how its journey to 1.0 will unfold. After all, there are many things I love about the game - its cozy gameplay loop, sense of never-ending freedom, and vibrant visuals are highlights. It's off to a solid start, and my only real complaint aside from bugs that are likely to be iron🔯ed out over the coming weeks is that I wish there was more - and with time, there will be.

So much to do, so much to see

The first thing that caught my attention when I started Aloft was how it leans into the🌼 survival genre so comfortably with its Raft-esque aesthetic and familiar mechanics. I gathered stones and twigs, explored the cav꧟e I awoke within, and messed about with the crafting menu until I made the three most essential survival game tools - an axe, a pickaxe, and a hammer. After building a bridge out of the cave and learning a nifty new recipe, I set out to explore.

I was taken aback by the lush island I found myself on outside of the cave. With rolling green hills, long-forgotten structures, and rushing waterfalls, it was a serene paradise that looked as though it had only briefly been touched by humanity - and I loved it. I searched every nook and cranny before acquiring my handy dandy glider, a tool for island hopping that transported me back to other beloved, equally stunning games like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Tears of the Kingdom.

From that point on, Aloft seemed to largely hand me the reigns. I could fly to any island if I so chose to - left, right, up, down, you name it. There were corrupted environments to tame decorated with spores straight out of the Underdark in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Baldur's Gate 3 along with a plethora of mysterious anchors and secrets to uncover. I captured bugs, gathered blueberries, and most importantly, I picked my favorite island and turned it into ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚa massive airship.

Taking the wheel

In all of my Howl's Moving Castle-esque glory, I was finally ready to embark on a whimsical ride through Aloft's endless sea of clouds. Much like in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Sea of Thieves, I could map out 🀅where I wanted to go and view where I had already been. It was enchanting in a way, albeit a bit "empty" at times - I wanted, and still want, more to see. More variation in islands and in en🉐emies would be brilliant, as would a greater sense of purpose among it all.

While I do wish I had found more motivation to explore after the initial humor of it dancing from island to island, sky to sky, had passed, that doesn't mean I didn't find plenty to do yet. I was enamored wit☂h the idea of caring for and raising adorable animals while flying, and I loved getting to exercise my hardened Stardew Valley muscles by collecting and farming. When I felt that I was becoming bored of the more survival-y bits, the sim-y features were there.

Overall, I'd suggest fans of laidback gaming experiences keep an eye on Aloft or give it a go while it's in Early Access. It never hurts to support an indie developer, and this rings especially true with a title as alreadyᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ rewarding as this one. Whether you're hoping to soar the skies aboard your very own island airship, or you enjoy tending to your crops and pets, you may just discover that Aloft is the perfect cozy gem to start 2025 off with.

Aloft is out now in Early Access on PC. For more, check out these other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games on the way or head over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

It's hard to call a game that confronts such sensitive themes "fun," necessarily. Therapeutic, trancelike – those are more fitting descriptors. Playing through each of the four vignettes feels a lot like stepping back in time, into shoes far smaller than mine, adopting a perspective on꧃ the world that paints over all its cruelties with an unbridled imagination. Miniatures is both cozy and troubling in that regard – albeit deeply cathartic.

Warning: discussion of themes of child neglect and broken homes ahead

Rose tinted

It all starts with a keepsake box. After being dug out of a forgotten attic somewhere, the player unlocks it to find an array of trinkets from days long gone: a seashell, a preserved moth, a screwdriver, and a lizard figurine. The lizard catches my attention first, with its flickering pink tongue and reptilian yellow eyes gazing expectantly at me, so I hover my Switch cursor over it and be🔯gin.

Each item in this box tells a different story, summo✤ning flashes of childhood memories that feel somewhat changed. A little boy, left all alone at home by supposedly absent parents, starts viewing each room through the eyes of his pet lizard. Hugo's enclosure – no, "a paludarium," the little boy corrects his father – is warm and safe, teeming with wildlife and delicious insects to devour. The little boy, in contrast, has a large, empty house as his only solace. He combats this loneliness by turning the experience into a game; he creeps through the house, through imagined shrubbery and interlaced vines, curling up beneath a lamp to bask in its glow much as Hugo bathes under his own. It's bittersweet, but also beautiful, and Other Tales does well to address such delicate themes with a gentle, loving hand.

Perhaps my favorite of the four interactive stories is The Last Sandcastle, found after examining the seashell trinket. Immediately I am transported to a seaside, no longer viewing the character from the outside but occupying their perspective from first person. The sandcastle before me is a grand thing, all turrets and little doorways marked by white clamshells, a narrow moat encircling it, keeping the crustacean inhabitants safe and sound. The gameplay here is more of an interactive, musical puzzle; I click on each front door to see who's at home, or flick sand at the hermit crabs to see what they might do. A little flute falls into the moat, to the horror of a little bipedal fluff ball – I♒'ve no idea what else it could be, really – who immediately chases i🌼t down to a still pool where another's fishing rod bobs quietly in the shallows.

The more I click, the more I discover that each little creature can play an instrument, and it's my job to help the band get back together. But afte🐼r a few minutes tick by, the little parade of marine creatures now criss-crossing about the castle playing a jaunty festive tune, a wave crashes over it. It's a sharp, abrasive moment, one that washes away all the joy I'd worked so painstakingly to conjure up. T🌊he sense of disappointment is one I can almost taste, and I realize that it's the sadness of a child whose magic spell has been cruelly broken by the harsh realities of life.

That's what Miniatures is about: rediscovering the world through the naive, forgiving eyes of youth. Its themes might be hard for some to tackle, especially given that so many of the experiences feel acutely familiar yet utterly open to interpretation. I don't want to spoil all o🍸f Miniatures' wonders – of which there are plenty, I promise – but if you're looking for a healing balm of an indie game to curl up with tonight, here's your sign to uncover something beautiful amid all the broken things.

There's a host of beautiful 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games to dig into in 2025, and if you're after more recommendations, be sure to check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

With textured visuals and hand-drawn animation, full of loud and contrasting blocks of color, Iris wanders around small, explorable spaces as she pursues leads for her estranged sibling just as she would for any story as a reporter. Points of interaction are few and far between – don't expect anything close to Sam & Max's constant puns♈ for every object on screen – but ✱when you can, the story of this world on the brink of collapse slowly pieces together.

As you poke around to progress the plot, Iris both has plenty to say and, frankly, not a lot. Like the big bold colors, Iris' voice is applied heavily across every scene. Voiced well by Alexꦡandra Brown, she narrates the whole experience whether she's examining an object or giving us an overview of a conversation with a character. But, often cold and stilted, she's usually just delivering us the facts (making times when there's more to her performance really stand out). Almost every line feels like a voice memo she's recording to listen back to when writing her reporting later on.

Word on the street

Rather than a traditional adventure game inventory, Iris collects leads over time, a collection of words that perform the same function as items. Applying these words to objects around the environment 🅰will prompt Iris to contextualize the two by association, often revealing even more leads – though again, as it's๊ fairly minimalist, these can sometimes feel a bit abstract. Especially as things get dreamier and hazier the further you progress. Yet, that's all part of the tone Phoenix Springs is going for. Other than the leads, ways to interact are slim, often giving you a small pop-up of "talk to", "look at", "use", and the like.

Given its minimalism, there are quite a few red ꦫherrings. They're almost annoying, though do help to build on the all important atmosphere that Phoenix Springs is all about. While some seemingly out-of-pace events or objects may seem strange, like an old-timey radio in the middle of a desert, they do add a certain energy to your exploration even if they're not puzzle solutions (unless I missed something).

Leads also become greyed out when no longer needed, though sometimes do become highlighted 𒁏once again – you can imagine ꦛIris circling words, drawing little arrows, underlining (though don't expect any of that visually, as ever the presentation is minimal). Crucially, these words can also be used on people to probe them on the lead in question. Dialogue here isn't drawn out. Iris simply gives a quick annotated summary of the subject to let us know if there was anything important, such as "I command her attention. Hard to keep it for long. Music's blaring. She slurs her words, won't stop moving."

For most of its brief runtime Phoenix Springs feels incredibly focused, which does make the odd point of puzzle frustration grate. Still, it's impressive for the genre that this only happens a handful of times. (Need I remind you i꧒nfamous goats, monkey wrenches, and more? This genre can be tough love.)

At all other times, Phoenix Springs is simply a vibe that washes over you and draws you in. Its art and style are captivating, even if what it creates isn't all that friendly – in fact, its coldness is quite the opposite – but it certainly mak﷽es it feel mysterious and engaging in a whole different way. And for me, someone who has played an awful lot of adventure games, Phoenix Springs stands out in how it knowingly sets itself apart from what came before, but only in the way a creative who understands a genre inside out could manage. It might not end up as one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but it sure is 🐷an unforgettable one.

Phoenix Springs was played on PC with a code provided by the publisher

Phoenix Springs is out now on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. Or if you're just looking for the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best game stories, give that a read as well!

After all, take one look at Penny's Big Breakaway and it's immediately clear that this is a love letter to the 90s with its high contrast, clashing colors, vaporwave-like piping, and Y2K-core aesthetic. But it's wholly modern in how it pl💃ays thanks to some incredibly slick running and jumping as you control Penny, a jester-like figure, as she attempts to sav🔜e her kingdom while also evading capture from its penguin police force (there was an… incident… involving the King's undies).

Well, that is to say slick… once you figure out how to play it. Stumbling upon a magical, sentient yo-yo, Penny's movement is all about using it to propel her forward through stages. One thing's for sure, while there are many 3D platformers that attempt to feel like genre classics of days gone by, Penny's Big Breakaway is not among them. In the pursuit of its momentum-based mechanics, it feels like little else.🍨 Which does mean it can frustrate to no end while you learn to play. This is genuinely a brand new type of platformer that, while it tips its cap to plenty else in the genre, is really its own thing.

Takes ages

I𒆙t's not just the occasional onslaught of penguins who swarm to arrest Penny that spurs you on, but almost every surface. From curves steep and🃏 gentle to trampolines, there's constantly something teasing you to keep the flow going. Able to chain moves together, Penny can ride her yo-yo like a big ball to pick up speed, and perform no less than three types of double jump in the air.

One pings the yo-yo straight ahead which Penny can then snap to, another holds the yo-yo in place mid-air for Penny to arc a swing from, and yet another is the more standard extra flip in the air. Combining them all together, mixing in additional power-ups, is where things get really fun – zipping up half-pipes to get air, twisting and turning🏅 as you skip a whole chunk of the stage, or even skipping across bodies of water.

Extra gimmicks for each area, from water spouts that shoot you forward to poles to swing from give new ways to build this momentum. Each new region is brimming with personal🎃ity thanks to their unique color palettes, toe-tapping soundtracks (from veterans in the retro-styled space like Tee Lops, Sean Bialo, and Christian Whitehead), and low-poly citizens who add fun, tongue-in-cheek color to the off-kilter and gamey 🌼world, somehow making the absurd kingdom feel lived in.

Some of these citizens need help from Penny, but smartly they're also all based around speed and momentum, often revolving around little collectibles on the path ahead that it challenges you to nab as you blaze on by. Everything in concert tells you to: go, go, go.

The only grumbles I have with it are the bosses, which do force you to slow down a little and can feel a bit annoying in the process – but these only form a small part of the six hours or so of playtime for a first run through. This might seem breezy to some, but it's form♐idable for this kind of speedy platformer, and with a hefty amount of stages on offer, it's hard to resist returning to beat your times and scores – or just bask in the incredible crisp 90s vibes of it al♛l.

To add to that, Penny's Big Breakaway even boasts a "pro" control scheme that further leans into its unique mechanics. Here, rather than just pressing the face buttons to throw the yo-yo straight ahead, you use the right analogue stick to do so instead in any direction, and can use the triggers to do your jumps and yo-yo rides. Both are active at once, which yes, does mean it uses a fixed came🐷ra (but it's really well done), but being able to switch on the fly has its uses. And when you're able to combo a whole line of moves just by flicking the stick, it feels incredibly satisfying.

Penny's Big Breakaway manages to land its trick well, and feel i🐻ncredibly unique. While that can be off-putting at first, it's worth sticking with as, thanks to its canny design that ensures you Gotta Go Fast, it recaptures an old school magic in an entirely new school way. Who can forget the feeling in Sonic The Hedgeho𒅌g of running down a hill and pressing down on the d-pad to tuck into a ball and ride the waves of a stage? Penny's Big Breakaway captures that feeling again and again in 3D, and makes it look effortless – and that's worth a whole crowd's applause.

Penny's Big Breakaway is out now on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Switch. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. Or if you're just looking for the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best platformer games, give that a read as well!

But after a week spent in an irradiated hellscape for my 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review, Fruitbus has been the perfect way to unwind. An adorable food truck simulator is such a brilliant concept 💧for a game that it feels obvious in hindsight, but Fruitbus' add🍸ed road trip adventure and customizable van make for a smooth cruise to flavortown.

Apples and oranges

Despite the simplicity of Fruitbus' cartoonish visuals, running the titular Fruitbus means keeping several plates – or to be more specific, bowls – spin🐭ning. Your ultimate goal is to reunite your late grandmother's friends (and ex-friends) for one last feast, using her former van to bring culinary joy to the Gustum archipelago's inhabitants. But keeping the kitchen-on-wheels chugging along means ensuring it's got enough fuel in t🐽he tank, there's plenty of dinnerware to serve food on, and you've got ample ingredients to cook with.

That last point is arguably the most important. During the game's first stage, driving from a gorgeous coastal resort to a less tourist-y town inland, you're mostly confined to making fru✨it salad. I spent more time walking along the seafront, yaꦇnking apples from bushes and jumping from cliffs to pluck lofty bananas, than actually serving any of it up from the truck. Trekking further afield turned up zesty lemons to mix into my salad, and I eventually saved up enough money from hawking diced fruit to buy a shovel capable of digging up carrots.

When it comes to cooking it all, you can pull the Fruitbus up to anywhere with people milling about, announcing your business with a lever that rolls up the shutters and plays a catchy jingle. As locals⭕ form a queue, each will approach the window in your van and say what they're after – some will stick to the menu listed on the van's exterior, but others have their heart set on finer dining. Customers can also ask for a vague meal like a salad, but specify that it needs to have a set amount of ingredients in it. It's not as simple as smushing four chilis into a bowl though, as your pay for each meal depends on how tasty it is – one ingredient may complement another, for example, ℱwhich leads to some very satisfying moments when the 'score' of someone's snack adds up and converts to lots of lovely money.

Shelling out

It's a questionable economy, but Gustum's harsher business realities mean some of your hard-earned money needs to be reinvested in the Fruitbus. Driving between towns means stopping at gas stations for fuel, though it always pays to have a full jerry can for longer treks. Meals use up disposable dinnerware, which need to be replaced at stores where you can buy a mix of essentials and… er, not essentials. The latter includes plants and decorative mods for your van, and you best believe I bought googley-eye headlights be💟fore 🧔a single practical upgrade.

I did redeem myself by buying a blender immediately afterward (if only to make a carrot smoothie for one veggie-loving botanist), but the real pièce de résistance will be an extension to the interior's tabletop I'm currently saving up for. Making meals on the cramped one-square counter you start with is both awkward and painfully relatable – I don't know when this happened, but wanting to expand my cramped kitchen in the real world has become the biggest fantasy of my late-20s. Living that𝔉 dream out in Fruitbus is probably the closest I'll come to cooking in spacious peace, but it's currently on my (non-existent) shelf as I've spent every penny of profit on houseplants, a hammer, and said googley-eye headlights.

Even if I'm not being particula🙈rly sensible with my money, or organizing grandma's final feast as diligently as I perhaps should be, I'm having a blast just driving around as a nomad caterer. There's something delightfully gratifying about coasting through Gustum and setting up shop wherever catches your eye, or pulling over to run into the jungle and hunt for new ingredients on foot. I'm savoring every morsel of Fruitbus – which is a fancy way to say I haven't finished it yet – but I'm loving every second, and look forward to getting my hands on more and more elaborate recipes as my adventures through Gustum continue. Bon appétit!

Fruitbus is out now on PC. To see what else we've been enjoying this year, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Knowing Tactical Breach Wizards, that's 🥃about to mean a chaotic array of moves, including but not limited to; ricocheting a bolt of lightning around half a dozen goons at once; summoning a clone to eat up some of the incoming enemy fire; and conjuring a portal to an alternative dimension to dispatch a shoved opponent through. If that's starting to sound a little out-there, that's firmly by design - while its inspirations might be intense strategy campaigns filled with impossible decisions, TBZ is a far more whimsical playground filled with those same genre-leading ideas.

Deja vu 

Set against the backdrop of a rap🅠idly-heating fictional cold war, Zan Wesker is a 'Navy Seer'. His powers of foresight are usually limited to a single second – just enough to make him very useful in a close-quarters firefight (and power that useful rewind skill) – but have recently started showing him glimpses of an apocalyptic future that he feels duty-bound to undo. Joining him on his journey are Jen, a storm witch currently struggling to make rent as a freelance P.I., Banks, a 'necromedic' who unlocked their powers of resurrection during a particul🌊arly bad shift as a surgeon, and Dall, a rebel priest fighting with both censer and riot shield.

Zan's mission takes the team across TBZ's fictional world, fighting off magical traffic cops and ineffectual pyromancers amid hordes of generic goons. Perhaps that might seem glib, given the backdrop of the apocalyptic war that you're trying to prevent, but Tactical Breach Wizards' humor is a huge part of its appeal. Almost everyone in its world is a bit of a joke, and Zan's visions offer a touch of existential dread that's very much in keeping with the disas🦹trous lives being led by the rest of the cast.

Deja vu 

The laughs tend to take a back seat during combat, but their absence allows the realities of this world to shine once fighting starts. Applying a breach charge to a door, Zan's foresight means you always get the first move, and can undo anღy number of moves you make until you lock in and let the situation play out. You might, for example, discover that you would have benefitted by leading with a different character, and decide to jump right back to the start of your turn. You might also, however, realize that you actually made an error halfway through the turn, and jump back to the point just before you made that choice instead.

It's a system that could feel a little cheap to hardcore, veteran strategy game players. If you run forward with abandon in XCOM and get one of your best soldiers cut down in their prime, that's a mistake you have to live with. It's also the aspect of XCOM 2 that caused me to bounce off it, hard, multiple times. But Tactical 𓆏Breach Wizards neatly ripostes any potential criticism with optional objectives, a gentle encouragement towards speed and efficiency, and a toolbox that makes you want to work to get the most out of it.

Each character has some nifty tricks, but a limited ability to use them. Movement is at a premium, and some of the strongest skills in the game involve the chance to get around after you've repositioned. In even the smallest arenas, Dall's ability to swap places with any other unit, or Jen's broomstick, which lets her leap out of one window before reappearing through anotherꦅ, are inv꧒aluable. Most characters only have a single action per turn, and while they can use mana to cast more powerful spells, you're still mostly limited to one empowered cast per fight, meaning that every spell has to punch above its weight to be as effective as possible.

That's where I've started to find Tactical Breach Wizards the most satisfying. Getting the most out of a given spell is tricky, but the ability to use some trial and error can make for an excellent payoff. I might shuffle a group of enemies around the room with an empowered lightning strike, only to find that I could have insta-killed a major threat with it if I'd maneuvered them a touch closer to the window first. Maybe that's frustrating, but with TBZ often encouraging you to both complete missions in few turns and push maﷺny enemies out of windows, the ability to jump backwards to optimize each spell is far more empowering than annoying. It's not exactly the same kind of strategic depth offered by the likes of obvious inspirations like XCOM and Into the Breach, but it's a rewarding alternative to those same ideas, with a narrative package around it that finalizes the push into a slightly different space and makes Tactical Breach Wizards a quiet contender for this year's best strategy game.

Tactical Breach Wizards is out now on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Such is a regular day in the mystical, unforgiving world of The Axis Unseen. An 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:indᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚie project from Just Purkey Games, spearheaded by ex-Skyrim and Fallout developer, the game pits players against an expansiv﷽e world of hostile creatures intent on sniffing you out. I've yet to experience all the twists of turns of the nameless Hunter's story, but there is one thing I can do: hunt my prey in search of energy sources to power my weapons, magic, and a nascent set of helpful skills – which will hopefully get me out of sticky situations as fast as I seem to find myself in them.

Sharpshooter

Perhaps my favorite thing about Axis Unseen so far is the vicious blend of survival gameplay and heart-pounding moments of genuine terror. Bolstered by the🙈 ever-present ebb and flow of music, quickening or slowing in line with imminent dangers or combat encounters, the experience is a uniquely sensory one that demands my full attention.

There doesn't seem like much to look at to start off with. Endless rolling dirt hills with an odd smattering of pale white rocks form the average t♚errain of each level, accessed by passing through shimmering doorways from a safe hub area. But a quick glance up at the horizon reveals gargantuan skeletal remains꧑, bringing to mind images of long-dead monsters that once roamed these lands. Thankfully, the creatures lurking here now are far smaller – but they still pack a mean punch.

Sneaking up on prey is something the game pushes me to do a lot, but unfortunately for The Axis Unseen, I just don't swing that way. "Don't sprint," on-screen text tells me far too late, "you'll die if you keep sprinting." My thunderous footfall can be heard by creatures some many yards away, as indicated by theඣ noise gauge I choose to ignore. It's much easier to plant an arrow between two eyeballs if I can see them staring at me. With only five projectiles in my quiver at a given time, landing a one-shot kill is pretty crucial out in this brutal wilderness unless I fancy doing laps to pick them up again. Of course, there's always my trusty knife for close encounters should I accidentally go into spray-and-pray mode, but I like to keep 🎐those moments few and far between. That's because the game can sense my panic and uses it against me.

Fear prevents me from harnessing my primary and secondary magical gifts, leaving nothing but bows, arrows, and blades to defend myself should I respond to events too rashly. I'm playing a hunter, after all; cool, calm, patient. But again, that just isn't me, whi♉ch in turn means that I frequently forget that The Axis Unseen features both magic a꧑nd melee combat.

The most useful bit of magic I've come across is a rune on my hand that glows purple when I enter close enough proximity to a nearby creature. If just the top section of the rune lights up, that indicates the monster is of a smaller or weaker stature. But if that thing flickers into action fully? Yeah, I'm backtracking for the time being. Knowing when and how to choose your quarry is vital for survival, as in a similar vein to FromSoftware 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like Elden Ring, dying in the world causes me to drop any unsealed energy at the point of death. This is a huge nuisance – I need that energy to upgrade my powers and health reserves, damn it, and I can only do that from the hub area where I respawn.

All of this just adds to the unique blend of gameplay mechanics and genres employed by Just Purkey Games to create The Axis Unseen's unpredictability. Frustrating as some of them might be, especially compounded by the charmingly outdated Skyrim-esque graphical jank, the combination certainly does its job. Pure stubbornness sends me back into the fray head-first, and I make a point of racing past all other monsters on the tail of my killer. Vengeance, energy, and thin wisps of story will be mine if it kills me – and in The Axis U꧒nseen, it aꦦlmost certainly will

The Axis Unseen is out now on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Those eyes, though, are kaleidoscopic – one become many. Revered as the Allmother, a whole society has sprung up literally in her image – cloned from her DNA, though without her immunity to the sickness they must live within the confines of the Orchard. Residing a distant train ride from the compound, the Sisters dream of one day being recognized enough to join her, never ret🐲urning from the vast rail network.

The Allmother isn't often directly present within 1000xResist's story. But she hangs over every facet. Not just because she's the sole conduit between the old and new world, but because our viewpoint character, Watcher, will assassinate her. The bloody act provides a bombastic openꦇing that leaves us with the question: w🐎hy?

Back to the past

Turning back the clock, we follow Watcher as they say goodbye to their friend Fixer – off to ride the rails – as they continue to ponder the nature of their existence. Watcher is new to their role as an administrator, spec⭕ial roles within the Orchard who oversee each department, color coded to match their duties.

Neatly, they also echo facets of Allmother as a person, and facets that reside within every one of us. Bang Bang Fire heads up the military, preparing constantly for what feels like th🌠e inevitable return of the Occupants; Knower is in charge of the knowledge archive, such as surviving books; Healer doesn't just run the medical wing but the cloning department itself, carrying out vital research; and Fixer keeps everything moving as head of engineering. Above them all is Principal, ensuring everything continues to run smoothly.

As Watcher, though, you're more of an observer, able to use your special Secretary dr൲oid to enter into 'Communion', giving you direct access to literally explore the Allmother's memories from before she was thus; back when she was just an awkward teen girl named Iris. Given the opening, and an early tip-off that what we're seeing as we wander through the past may not be all it seems, we're never quite sure what we're going to uncover about Iris's relation to the Occupant threat. But we know that for Watcher, there will be an awakening.

Sensing Watcher's unease, Principal gives us new orders after our first Communion: take your sisters with you to deepen the Orchard's knowledge of the Allmother more widely. It's the perfect set-up to make sure each Communion feels fresh. Not only do you explore specific eve🦄nts in Iris's memory, but you also get to deepen your connection to your fellow Sisters and learn more about the world of the Orchard through their reactions to what they see.

Naturally, each has quite a different reaction to the events they're immersed within. Watcher might be an outside observer, but rather than staying completely neutral, she uses these perspectives to broaden her views on each event she witnesses (and yes, I'm dodging spoilers like nobody's business here – you really deserve to go in and be surprised yourself!). As 𝔉clones, there's a murky line between how close all these viewpoints are to being part of our and Watcher's own feelings.🌸 Where's the line between Iris, Allmother, Watcher, and the rest of the Sisters? And where do they all really belong?

Developer Sunset Visitor is based in Vancouver, Canada, and draws on the real Asian-Canadian diaspora experience in a way that can be felt within the story, the context of the Communions neatly allowing its speculative sci-fi tale to shake hands with events much closer to home. Placing us within both spaces as the Watcher makes its story more impa🐲ctful than if it were simply written down, though the writing on show in 1000xResist is definitely a major strong point. While it's not subtle about some of the parallels to real-life recent events of political resistance, allowing us to take part in exploring those threads adds a lot.

Reading mode

While 1000xResist is visual novel adjacent – there's an awful lot of (fully voice-acted) text – the way you engage with the story is quite active. Various points within Communio🎀ns have you exploring, soaking up extra detail as you look at objects or listen in on snapshots of conversations, and also figuring out how to progress.

Rather than Communions being locked solely to one specific moment in time, they're connected memories from the same period. With the touch of a button you're able to jump through time, allowing you to reflect on the slow passing of days, or simply zap back and forth to move through spaces when, for instance, a door has been clos🍎ed in a memory one day but is open the next (and then zapping back to see what was going on behind that lock). It's a little reminiscent of the dream-diving in AI: The Somnium Files, but with thankfully zero of the time pressure.

Even when the 1000xResist is in a more text heavy mode, you rarely feel like you're just reading reams of text thanks to the combination of voice acting and snappy writing. While the visuals can be technically rough around the edges on Switch especially (where I played), stylistically there's some breathtaking cinematography at play with how it's all put together. For those who found Necrobarista's approach easy to get into thanks to its dynamism, 1000xResist very much plays in a similar✤ space with its presentation, using its grander narrative and wider range of situations to its advantage when finding interesting visual framing.

Tying it all together is the Orchard itself. Between Communions you have the chance to talk to sisters milling about, and check in with those you've grown closer with. It's a confusing space to navigate – even with the post-launch map that was added – that had me wishing for an almost 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Neon White-๊like fast travel menu. That is, until later chapters smartly recontextualize the spaces you've grown familiar with. It's similar to how within Communions you can toggle between dif꧃ferent versions of the same location, but here, it's become out of your control. Time always moves on.

1000xResist is always smartly judged, and its great pacing makes it easy to work through even if you find narrative heavy games a bit intimidating. Taken a chapter at a time, its 11-12 hour runtime doesn't feel too long at all. And once it's got its hooks in you, you'll find yourself pulling much longer sessions, much in th🥃e way you often can't resist reading the next chapter in a good book. Turn the page, and begin!

1000xResist is out now on PC and Switch. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. Or if you're just looking for the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best game stories, give that a read as well!

Following an asteroid collision, the Tulper is adrift in deep space and, bi🐼g soulless corporations being what they are, a costly rescue is almost certainly not coming. To make matters worse, the pro💫tective foam that sealed countless hull breaches, has shut off nearly all the ship and its supplies, leaving the crew with months of food and a cargo full of alcoholic mouthwash to keep them going in their final days.

Crew manifest

Trying to deal with this is Anya, a frail nurse who's not coping well with anything, Swansea a rough mechanic with zero patience for even an ounce of bullshit, ♐and Daisuke, the optimistic young intern who sees the good in everything. Then there's you: Jimmy, the acting captain trying to hold it all together as everyone frays and falls apart.

Oh, and let's not forget Curly, the old captain. He spends most of the game as a charred stump - a wetly bandaged leftover of a man, with his arms and legs burned away by the fires of the crash. One lidless eye searching from the scabby fabric wrapping him, alongside a lipless toothy grin. Constantly topped up with painkillers, he is always mindlessly writhing and moaning somewhere in the background, bridging the gap between alive and dead as a reminder of what'🍨s c🐓oming for the rest of the crew.

On its own, this set up for a strong character lead story about mortality, 🎐set in a grimy, sci-fi world is a pretty good hook. However, Mouthwashing takes an almost experimental approach to the story, its screen melting between time skips back and forth, creating a mystery to what you're watching play out. '6 Weeks after the crash', '2 Days before the crash', '1 hour to judgement' announce various occasionally cryptic headers, as you weave through everything that's happened. Back and forth the story jumps, in a way that leaves you guessing about things you know have happened.

I won't say any more here though, as one of Mouthwashing's most interesting aspects is how nothing is as it seems. The information and events you experience rub and butt up against each other in their disjointed♍ orders. Cওonsequences are often presented before actions, and even then, the recounting of what happened might not be from the most reliable of narrators. Messages like 'Take Responsibility' or 'I hope this hurts' flash up constantly, suggesting there are other subconscious sentiments or voices trying to be heard.

Even without the impending death, Mouthwashing often philosophically veers into bleak🍌ly introspective musings like intrusive thoughts winning the 'steer the car off the road' argument. "Am I figured out? Is this all I'll ever be?", one character says thinking about their life. Not because it's bad, but because it's pretty good. "I've thought many times 'Is this what peace feels like?' And is it good enough?". There are points where certain conversation🉐s make the entire game feel like a playable memento mori. The crash might be speeding up the process for the crew, but the thoughts are applicable wherever your asteroid is right now.

The right angle

There's also something v🥃ery cinematic about Mouthwashing. The heavily coded use of 70's and 80's movie sci-fi influences are obvious from the start, but it's the way it uses its spaces, color and light to frame 🧸the ship's rooms and corridors that stands out. As you grapple with its metaphysical and existential, time hopping, everything you look at oozes style - using its deliberately foam-limited space and palette to make everything look like a carefully thought out camera shot. Its low poly horror stylings hide a triple A art direction.

The ship's galley, for example, has two doors that both face a garish, ceiling high video screen showing fake weather, making it impossible to enter �🗹�the room without framing it beautifully. The Tulper's chunky corridors open up and turn at just the right angles to draw your eye to the space ahead. Even without the claustrophobic exploration of death it would simply be a pretty place to explore.

Mouthwashing is a short game, maybe three hours tops, but it gives you a lot to chew over in that time. Especially as its closing revelations warrant an almost immediate replay to reevaluate basically the entire story, and see all the things that flew by unnoticed without a final context. The forums and reddit are full of ending discussions, with some varying takes on what it ultimately all means. Personally, I think the core of it is pretty clear cut, but there are🅘 some different takes to some areas that suggest parts of it speaks to different people in different ways. It's bleak, deep, and effortlessly stylish and the only way you're going to find out what it says to you is by playing it. I hope it hurts.

Mouthwashing is out now on PC. For more recommendations, be sure to head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Neva is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful꧒ games I've played this year, not just in a visual sensꦕe, but also in the tale it tells.

Changing seasons

The 2D action adventure takes place across the changing seasons, beginning in spring, when the wolf is just a little pup. As time goes on, Neva grows not just in size, but in ⛎ability, which gives you new ways to fight against enemies and navigate through the landscapes with platforming elements. While Neva is more dependent on you to begin with, the young pup can even get distracted by the environment, which means you have to keep calling them back to your side. But as the seasons progress and the pup turns into a big majestic wolf, Alba learns new ways to direct them – such as using the trigger on the PS5 controller to send them soaring across the screen to sink their teeth into a foe – and Neva will begin to help you more of their own volition.

I love the sense of teamwork and companionshiꦆp at the heart of the game, and how it's reflected in the progression in the story and the mechanics you use. While there are lots of practical ways for the pair to work together as they face dark dangers and obstacles, I also appreciate the smaller interactions you can have with the wolf that make it feel like you're really developing your bond. At any point, you can pet or hug them, and you're always able to call out to Ne💞va if they run too far ahead.

As dialogue is scarce, so much is conveyed wi👍thout the use of the words, from Neva's expressive animations to the emotional soundtrack. Thꦉe world itself and the journey you go on reminded me of the likes of Princess Mononoke, with it exploring the bond of a young woman and a wolf, and their relationship with the environment.

The beautiful world setting is decaying around them, with black darkness infecting both the landscapes and the wildlife. Enemies also spring up from the decay, as though they're born from it, with foes reminiscent of No-Face from Spirited Away. As a wolf, Neva appears to have a speci🍬al connection to nature, often howling to restore light and life back to the environment. There's an undercurrent of sadness to the setting, that such a beautiful place could be corrupted and plunged into darkness. But as Alba, you're also trying to help fight back against it, and I constantly felt so connected to the world.

As the developer behind Gris, it's no surprise that Neva is utterly gorgeous. Every backdrop is a work of art, and throughout my time with the game, I couldn't stop taking screenshots. Sincerely, this is the most beautiful game I'vܫe played this year. And if you're in it to experience the story, there's happily a story mode difficulty which takes death out of the equation so you can get swept up in the journey without fear of failing. Neva is the kind of adventure that stays with you. It's a treat for the eyes and 𒈔the heart, and I can't recommend it enough.

Neva is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Switch. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

Everything from E✱uropa's emotional story to its unique take on the 3D platformer g🐓enre has stuck with me since I finished playing, and will probably continue to do so until the end of time. It's such a simple and serene game, yet it manages to carry so much depth within itself. The vibrant aesthetic is almost misleading in a way, honestly - Europa offers a far greater experience than just a pretty playthrough, and it does so nearly seamlessly.

One lonely planet 

Beneath Europa's stunning Ghibli-like world is one very lonely planet, a moon that served as a home to many at one point, but now carries nothing but🌸 the sounds of buzzing gardeners and rushing rivers. Gardeners, the game's robot-ish creatures that stand as the setting's bugs and wildlife, remind me of Breath of the Wild's own Guardians in a way - they exist as a reminder of both the past and what eventually came of it.

While there's a fair variety of gardeners, I can't help but feel almost entirely alone traversing Europa as Zee. After all, he's just a young boy now left to learn the moon and its inhabitants' history from notes penned by his father - who, of course, is no longer around to accompany him either. Zee's father wanted his son to have a better life, to e🔯xperience everythinꦇg he was never able to as a child on Earth - grassy fields, flowery hills, and a thriving ecosystem.

Every little letter I read told me as much, and b𒉰oy did reading them hurt. I felt a plethora of emotions - I put myself into Zee's shoes and felt the heavy pain of knowing everyone around me is gone, including the one who loved me the most, but I was also reminded of my own home here on Earth and how fragile it really is. After all, the game's story isn't so far-fe𓆏tched - climate change is very real, and we won't have the luxury of ignoring it forever.

A truly touching tale

As I soared through the sky using Zee's Zephyr, this fact stuck with me - my world is just as fragile as his father's was. Europa presents players with a very important tale, then, of life and love and how easily we can allow both to slip from our fingers should we remain selfish. It's a story I'd argue we all very much need𒉰 right now, and it's so well-structured in terms of how it fits into the game that it never feels overwhelming.

That's likely༒ due in part to its unique gameplay loop - passive combat, platforming, puzzles, and plenty of collecting. Whether it's glittery emeralds, hard-to-reach chests, or new notes to better understand Europa's story, there's plenty for Zee to collect atop the moon. It all adds a fun, rewarding layer to an otherwise emotional adventure - and it somehow never takes away from the overarching serenity of the game, either.

Between the brilliant storytelling and the relaxing gameplay, I truly think that Europa is one indie game you simply shouldn't miss this year. It's short in꧑ length, but massive in impact - and that's something I feel I seldom say about most titles nowadays. I won't spoil anything here, but I promise that if you do play, you probably won't be able to stop searching for notes to uncover more of Europa and Zee's cryptic past - and when you do, bring tissues.

Europa is out now on PC and Switch. For more check out these other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games, or head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

I love that you play as BOBO, a member of the lowest caste on a futuristic Saturn where music is outlawed. I love the music show minigame that is legally distinct from 🌳the likes of Guitar Hero. I love the NPCs with their goofy problems and captivating designs. I love that every single Chrono Trigger-style fight brings up a G🌺.R.I.D.S. – Gradual Riot Inconveniences De-escalation System – conflict bar before getting into the thick of it.

But Keylocker's movement and combat, which together represent roughly 90% of the game, actively continue to frustrate me in a way that will actually probably appeal to a certain subset of gaming sicko♌s.

Play the hits

While wandering around the map to progress various quests like digging up an alpaca or delivering ice cream before it melts, enemies such as, just to ♔name a few examples, robotic clerics or vultures can attack you and your team. These encounters can be deadly from the jump, and more than once I was wiped out before I could👍 even do any serious damage.

Helpfully, you can just avoid them if at all possible as enemies typically only fight you if you walk into them, or otherwise actively engage them. There's nothing random about these encounters, usually. But once you're in the thick of things, you better hope that you have good timing because anything less than perfection is going to cause 🦂you trouble.

Keylocker takes the "rhythm" part 🎀of its description quite seriously. Every single attack or defensive move you make typically has some aspect that requires precision timing. Charging up your EP with your music can require you to play a simplified tune using arrow keys in a particular o🧔rder and rhythm while attacking with an axe or any other gear must be timed to a specific animation.

This isn't exactly surprising given the themes of the game, nor is precision timing for actions anything new. But Keylocker can be absolutely brutal and punishing if you don't get it right. Not only are your attacks and defensive measures less effective if yo⛄u get anything less than perfect, but enemies will do more damage to you if you fail to dodge their attacks correctl🧔y.

The entire game's combat feels a bit trial and error, and mostly error, at least initially. If you're using a particular attack or skill for the first time or facing♛ an entirely new enemy, it feels inevitable that any initial attempts will beef it more often than not. While getting into the feel of Keylocker does seem to somewhat be the point, there's more friction than flow involved in a way that can be grating.

Cyberpunk'd

There are ways to ameliorate Keylocker's wild combat difficulty, however. You can turn down the difficulty setting, for a start, so that misses are less of a burden aꦛnd successes are even more powerful. There are skills to unlock, equipment to wield, and while practice might not make perfect, it certainly will make you twitchier in a way that isও beneficial.

And yet, even with my complaints, I still find myself drawn to the unus💞ual boiling cauldron of ingredients that make Keylocker, well, Keylocker. Combat will never be my favorite part of it, but it's become less of a hassle with time. Movement both in and out of combat is still clunky despite my experience, but in the kind of way where it eventually becomes comfortable like an old car that makes horrible noises on left turns – but you know just how to steer the wheel to get where you need to go anyway.

Keylocker is an experience I struggled with mechanically, found fascinating otherwise, and would do it all over again if I had to. Nothing is for everyone, and Keylocker is likely to only appeal to an even smaller segment than that, but for those folks it does work for, it'll really work for. It's far from teꦡchnicall🦂y perfect, but it's ambitious in all the right ways, and that goes a long way.

Keylocker is out now on the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. To see what other indie gems we've been enjoying so far, be sure to check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

I had to smash those pots to progress, so what's a cat to do? I guess I'll just have to keep at my janitorial duties as I try to find a way into the palace myself. As someone who hasn't played many Metroidvanias, I've really been enjoying my time with Crypt Custodian so far. With a wealth of settings to help ease me into the experience, the afterlife is full of intrigue and challenges, and the charming artstyle and cast of characters quickly drew me in. Fans of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Metroidvania games areﷺ sure to enjoy the fami🌊liar features, but for relative newbies like me, it also feels like a welcoming entry point.  

Ghost stories

Once I'm cast outside of the palace to clean for all eternity, my adventure truly begins. With some platforming and puzzles throughout the afterlife, the initial ar🔯ea gets me in Crypt Custodian's groove as I face some some mysterious trashcan-like enemies and learn how to dodge-roll out of harm's way. It's not long before I reach a building, with a neon sign of a feathered friend sipping martinis. Once inside, I realize it is in fact a bar run by a bird called Marla, who informs me that this local haunt is where I can purchase useful upgrades and buffs, and even pay to get some hints about where to go next should I get stuck. 

As it turns out, all that garbage I'd been cleaning up and collecting is used as currency, so🐭 it actually pays to fulfill my janitor role well. There's also a jukebox inside that lets me know there are collectible discs with music dotted around the world for me ꦿto find, as an added incentive to explore every nook and cranny. 

Every new ability for Pluto has a set amount of upgrade points you need in order to assign it, which you can earn by completing challenges – such as lifting a curse by defeating 15 enemies without dying – or finding them hidden away in the world. Initially,♉ I only have basic attacks for my broom, but as I progress further, I get a more powerful sweeping attack move that lets me swing my broom around to do some crowd control. Combat is very much a case of learning every different enemy's unique attack pattern while putting your dodging roll to good use. Occasionally, you can come across a menacing statue where you'll have to face enemy waves to clear it, which really puts my dodging and timing to the test. 

The landscape is quite expansive and as a Metroidvania, you'll have to puzzle your way through it and work out how to get past blocked paths as you learn more skills. Fortunately, there are well shrines dotted around where you can save, heal, and also teleport to wells you've already come across, which comes in handy when💫 you need to pop back to the bar to spend your hard-earned trash.

While I undoubtedly get a satisfying sense of accomplishment from figuring out how to progress further and unlock more abilities, it's Crypt Custodian's world and characters that keep me coming back. In the afterlife, you encounter other bad ghosts who have met the same fate as you. As you talk to them and explore, you'll start to learn more about them and their story. Early on, I meet a frog called Pebble who's having to sweep up just likജe I am. Through conversations with Pebble and discoveries I make out in the world, I start to build up a picture of the frog, and I'm already keen to see who else I'll meet and what stories they'll have to tell. 

As someone who tends to shy away from Metrodivanias, there&a🤡pos;s a lot I've come to love about Crypt Custodian. With three different difficulty levels to choose from, I really appreciate how many options there are in th❀e menu to tailor your experience, which makes it feel so welcoming. If you want to tamp down the challenge a little bit more, for example, you can give yourself extra health, or turn off fall damage so you don't lose a life should you make an ill-time a jump from a platform. Above all, it's just downright charming, with plenty of humor and heart to be found as you make your way through Pluto's journey. Hopefully someday, I'll help the cat janitor get to the palace - and find out what the deal with Kendra is. 

Crypt Custodian is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and Switch. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

Reka is a cozy game made for those who wouldn't usually call themselves cozy gamers. Gnarled woods and whispering treetops do not always trigger the warm fuzzies in us all, but I'm already captivated. This sense of wo꧙nderment and fairy tale whimsy suffuses every inch of Reka's spellbinding world, and though it's still in Early Access, I'm more than convinced that Emberstorm Entertainment has created nothing short of 💦magic.

A real Reka-ning

The first thing I notice about Reka is how absolutely breathtaking it looks. Stepping out into this charming rendition of old-timey Eastern Europe, I'm greeted by lush green grass a꧟nd tree canopies the co🤡lor of honey as I make my way to the village of Kopnik. 

A few hushed conversations with the busybody locals, who are more than eager to gossip with the strange traveller, indicate t🍃hat this peaceful village holds more intrigue than meets the eye. An old woman lives nearby, all alone in a shack. Some say she has red eyes and iron teeth, a wicked creatur🌊e that eats up little children for supper. Others take pity on her, chiding their fellow villagers for spreading falsehoods about witches. After all, Reka is told: they do know darkness, but they also know light.

This duality is꧋ something that stays with me as I explore the first two hours of Reka. I marvel at the bright sun sitting low in the sky, a wintry reminder of the dark night to come. I turn to the babbling brook not far away, to the green grass swaying nearby, the misted uncertainty of the forest just behind.🌠 There are so many of these curious moments of darkness and light in Reka that even before I meet Baba Jaga, I have a hunch we are going to be great friends.

The old woman greets me with exasperation, as if I have been keeping her waiting. Immediately, I am put to task: gather mushrooms and honeycomb with haste. An important ritual is about to commence, and she will not stand for any more tardiness. You can read more about this particular moment of the game in our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Reka preview🍰 but suffice it to say that gathering honeycomb with the help of a murder of c▨rows is one of the most unique scavenging mechanics I've ever seen. Everything about this dense woodland feels like a loving reminder of the folklore that the tale is based on, from the mischievous Lukti spirits dancing among the trees to the tense push and pull between the Old Gods and the new.

The ritual itself is a prime example of the sensitivity and reverence that Emberstorm has for Baba's story. Shunned and alone out in the woods, all she has ever wanted is the return of her "friend, her love, her child". The beautiful script writing encapsulates the pain that this old woman has gone through, and with the arrival of Reka in her life, she 🌼can finally be whole again.

This fairytale introduction gives wa𝔍y to the base-building elements of Reka. Placing wooden planks, walls, and furniture is as simple as hitting the E key, with decoration and furniture items found hidden across this opening section of the game𒅌. Whether down the well, in return for services, or in locked chests peppered throughout the village and woodland, building a beautiful home looks like it will take a lot of time and TLC. Luckily, I have plenty of both – and set off with Baba Jaga down the river.

Reka is a stunning game, perfectly balancing its mystic naಌrrative adventure with relaxing crafting, building, and other coz🅷y game elements to create a truly unique experience. I'm only a couple of hours into my Reka journey, but the thrall of its power over me doesn't feel set to wane any time soon.

Reka is out now in Early Access on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

A Western, but not really 

I'd hoped to play more of Arco this week but then vertigo and a migraine teamed up to double lariat my temples. A few chapters in, with much of the game's overlapping revenge stories still to be revealed, I'm not short on things to love. Arco is obviously good in many ways. Sharp pixel art brings color and character to a fantasy-lite Mesoamerican world and its inhabitants, who are largely split between natives and colonizers. Arco is grounded and familiar, but six♔-legged bison, exploding cacti, magic trees, and the occasional teleport have kept me on my toes. A fine balance of predictable effects and unpredictable causes gives every section of the world, separated almost Super Mario-style as stages on a path-strewn map, a sense of mystery. 

Interacting with that world is a treat. There's a toy-like quality to Arco that puts it somewhere between old-school adventure games and modern RPGs. The first thing I did was pet a donkey, and theꦓn pet it again, and again, and again, spamming my way through prompts waiting for something to happen – until something did. Arco seemed to offer a knowing laugh as the donkey fussed at me, and from that moment I just wanted to poke and prod this game ꦕto see what happens. Environments hide useful items, observations split between cute dialogue and important context, and plenty of hidden encounters. Curiosity is encouraged and rewarded and sometimes punished. 

The lofi wrapper on Arco feels like a disguise. If I could peel it back, the🦄re's not a doubt in my mind that I'd find a labyrinthine web of interlocking decisions underneath. Tiny interactions and discoveries carry enough weight and consequence to make you wonder what might've happened if you'd chosen Option B earlier. Let me give you two of my favorite interactions so far, obviously not including the donkey. 

You get gold by completing quests, looting areas, an♎d selling items to merchants. At one point I spent almost all of my gold hiring a guide named Zoka, convinced that any companion this expensive must be worth it. This guide has his own customizable skill tree, a pruned version of the more complex ranged and melee and movement abilities of the main characters, and ended up being indispensable in pretty much the entire chapter, both for navigating combat and avoiding it. 

I found the wreckage of a caravan attacked by large lizards, the crew already half-eaten. My guide advised me that there wasn't much to be found here, but I investigated anyway, predictably pissing off the nearby lizards. One scaly fight later, which cost both of us a bit of precious health, Zoka heaved an I-told-you-so sigh as my search turned up nothing. Damn, I should've listened to him. But wait: on the return trip, the family of the dead caravaneers thanked me for avenging them and killing the lizards, and gave me a nice bowl of paella which healed me up. So in the end, I basi🌳cally got some 🏅free and valuable XP out of the deal. Take that, Zoka. 

Elsewhere in our travels, I encountered some local mountainfolk. "For the love of all gods, just don't wave," Zoka advised me. Arco is a hostile place, so this time I heeded his advice with no questions asked. If I hadn't hired him, I can guarantee that I would&♍apos;ve waved at these folks, presumably committing a massive faux pas and igniting a fierce battle that I frankly don't have the healing items to pay for. I wouldn't say Arco is a brutal game, with quick saves and do-overs aplenty, but it is capable of killing you very quickly, and with that said I can finally talk about the combat. 

Turn-based, but not really 

"Simultaneous turn-based" sounds oxymoronic but really is a perfect description of Arco's combat system. There's a bit of Real Time With Pause to it, but with more clearly defined turns. Each turn, you use an ability to attack or move, popping cooldowns and/or spending mana (Magia) points, and then everything plays out in real time. Any incoming attacks or projectiles, their paths visible through a pr🎉eview of enemy actions, will miss if you move out of the way, so movement, including carefully curving your path around bullets, is crucial. As with many RTWP games, kiting enemies is also important. You can use items as needed, move normally to regenerate one Magia, or wait in place to regain three Magia. 

This creates a back-and-forth tempo where reacting only gets you so far; you need to plan ahead, predicting enemy behavior and formulating attacks around it. Budget your strongest moves, find time to regain mana, focus down dangerous targets – it's classic RPG tactics but feels like a bullet hell game animated on threes. It's like a kinetic version of bouncing enemies around stages in Disgaea, or a tactical spin on the "time moves when you 🦩move" hook of Superhot. The way you sync up movements and attacks even reminds me of Resonance of Fate at times, and that's a deep cut. Earning XP and unlocking increasingly powerful and costly abilities ramps up the complexity, and while kiting two or three enemies is easy, Arco loves to throw mobs at you out of nowhere to switch up the rhythm. 

The kicker is a stroke of genius: the mistakes and regrets of the narrative you've charted are woven into combat through a Guilt mechanic that summons ghosts which can move and attack during the paused section of your turn, forcing you to think and act quickly. This ghastly timer adds a wonderful bit of narrative through gameplay, as well as a counterweight to the immediate gains of taking the evil route, which – like in real life – is very often the easy and exploitative route. Arco maintains this and other delicate balancing acts without even blinking. It's a smart, tightly designed RPG with nothing but respect for your time. It's a wonder and a shame that it ever struggled🌳 to find an audience.  

Here are 25 of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPGs you can play right now. 

Love, Ghostie is part dating sim, part management sim, and part muli-ended visual novel, but it's all heart. There's something so calming about watching love blossom between two strangers, seemingly from nothing at all, while having had a hand in the proceedings all along. Some might call it a thankless task, steal൲ing little items and "gifting" them to residents while crediting it to a would-be admirer, but that's kind of the point. This is not just a game about making others fall in love. Love, Ghostie is a game about accepting and loving yourself, no matter where you stand on this mortal coil. I'm passing a tissue your way as we speak.

Love from the other side

Aft♍er completing my first three days in Love, Ghostie, I think I've got the hang of it. The gameplay is simple, but there's a calming tranquility about it. Starting off with four action points per day to use however I please, Ghostina clues me in on how to spend them efficiently. Stealing an item would cost me an action point, as would gifting said item🧔 to a housemate. I can also spend action points on assigning chores from the blackboard, where three daily tasks get refreshed each morning.

If you've already got a romantic duo – known in-game as a "ship," because hello there fandom culture – in mind, one of the daily chores involves sending them on a date. Each date corresponds to certain personality tags one or both of your couple might have, but to discover the personality of all four housemates, it's a matter of trial and error. Gifting a gothic wreath to a housemate who&a🎀pos;s more interested in sweet, bright, or playful things than in the dark or serious things in life will result in a more tepid response, resulting in less relationship gained with the gift-giver. Similarly, sending a clumsy housemate and a lazy housemate on a hiking date is su𒉰re to end in awkwardness.

But one thing I love about Love, Ghostie is how even the awkward dates can still be good ones. It doesn't seem possible to have a bad date in the game, meaning all the residents have to lose from a slightly calamitous date is their dignity. It also seems like you can theoretically pair up all of the game's residents, with none of them being bad pairings in terms of personality matchups. Still, there were times when I didn't quite like the narrative playing out between certain couples, so I swapped them around. I'm sorry, Ollin the frog prince, but you don't get to tell Gerard the angsty goth giraffe that he needs to change his style for anyone. That's not okay (I promise).

After a long hard day of gifting and plotting, it makes sense that Ghostie🐠 might need a little downtime themselves. That's where the attic laptop comes in handy, serving as my one-stop shop for all things dating sim. Here, I can sell off unwanted stolen items for ghost coins and spend them on shiny new presents via EEPbay, the ghostly online shopping platform. I can also check out Deaddit, an e-forum and message board that serves as a clever FAQ mechanic, giving me tips and advice from day to day. The attic is also home to the chest of drawers, and here, I can equip all manner of hats or ghostly trails to leave in my wake. It's the small, loving details like these that make Love, Ghostie such a sumptuous delight, every mechanic tailored to its themes in a way that feels effortlessly authentic.

Alas, all good things come to an end – including Ghostie's stint as a matchmaker. I was incredibly sad to see the game had an ending at all, and would happily play through its three and a half-hour runtime over and over again. The game does encourage replayability, with the developer recently saying on Twitter that you'd need eleven playthroughs to see everything. With so many boos to unite in so many combin💧ations, I just know that I'll return to Love, Ghostie's house of blossoming romance again and again – and I'll be crying just as much by the end of it as I did the first time. I won't spoil what that ending is, but it speaks to the fragile yet beautiful impermanence of life – something that🧔 also applies, it would seem, to the afterlife.

Check out some of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best dating sims to play next if you're in the mood for more boos.

Tasked with solving all of thi𒀰s is a small, lemon-colored traveling salesman who's only stopped by for a meeting with Barnsworth's mayor. When the mayor is delayed by 15 minutes, we're encouraged (see: ignored by the receptionist playing solitaire) to go for a wander and take in the hand-drawn sights of Barnsworth. And oh, what sights there are. 

Not from around here

As I step out of the town hall, I immediately take note of several pressing issues. Local eccentric Charlie, for starters, has his arm stuck in a storm drain. Skeevy handyman Herbert, played wonderfully by What We Do In The Shadows' Matt Berry, wants someone to help cut the grass. Mother Megg's Buttery Goods hasn't opened because its teenage employee has lost the keys – "mi mam'🧸s got me back on the mercury again," he says, by way of apology. 

Solving all of this is like pulling at a jumper's loose thread, only to have the whole thing unravel spectacularly. Though Thank Goodness You're Here is technically a platformer, most of the game is played by slapping everything in sight or falling through holes that nobody else can fit through. I nip into Barnsworth's pub - which proudly displays a license to serve minors - where an inebriated citizen has Mother Megg's keys, but won't leave before starting his day with a pint. Unfortunately, the taps are blocked up, so to get everything rolling I jump down the pub's sink to reach its beer cellar and slap every keg until they're shuddering with fizz. Mission accomplished: I'm sucked upstairs through the beer lines and poured out in a pint glass, while our satisfied regular goes ဣoff to open Mother Megg's Buttery Goods. Now that it's open, I nip in and grab a particularly sloppy-looking chunk of butter for Charles, who frees himself by taking a good chunk of the pavement with him. 

The whole of Thank Goodness You're Here - which plays out across a punchy two or three hours - is about trying to keep up with the ensuing chain reaction. Barnsworth is a deeply broken town, and everyone there has a favor to ask, which in turn usually means indebting yourself to two or three more people along the way. Luckily, its citizens are as funny as they are needy. I can count on one hand the amount of games I've laughed out loud at, but Thank Goodness You're Here is packed with one killer gag after another. Every street is ca𒆙ked in graffiti - "Graham shags moss" and "Lester packs lun💛ches" are personal favorites - and there are a few brilliant running jokes, like the man who gets progressively more broken every time you cover his living room in soot, or the rats that slowly take over a corner shop. Brilliant writing makes every scrawled message or throwaway line a banger, while the cast's larger-than-life performances bring it all to a sizzle.

Things get progressively more absurdist and surreal as the game u🌃nspools, but Thank Goodness You're Here's northern charm never slips. As someone who lives just two hours north from Barnsley, the South Yorkshire town that Barnsworth derives from, I love the sense of familiarity that Coal Supper has painstakingly created. It feels like someone has taken a slice out of North-Eastern England, (mostly) brushed off the pie crumbs, and examined its contents through a kaleidoscope. It may seem silly to take a genuine message from a game where the most serious issue is a chippy's broken fryer, but I do adore how quickly our strange yellow hero is adopted by Barnsworth's community, and the almost-homely way that everyone goes out of their way to help each other through the day. 

I rolled credits the day before writing this, but I'm still giggling at the thought of Matt Berry's deathmatch with a mole, a number of characters' cartoonish fa𓆏cial animations, and the poor soot-stained man whose living room I kept wrecking. Whether you're from Up Norf or not, Thank Goodness You're Here is a wildly funny misadventure that's well worth the few hours of your life it asks for - just, er, don't believe everything you hear about asbestos. 

Thank Goodness You're Here is out now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5. Check out the rest of our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series to catch up on other gems you may have missed.

Designed to be played a little bit each day, The Garden Path runs in time with real-world clock, but I love the way it encourages me to slow things down and take my time. I never feel pressured to complete its goals or objectives, and nothing too demanding is ever asked of me. Whenever I want to step away, I can leave it and later pick things up right where I left off. Essentially, the garden lets me set my pace, which I've come to appreciate more and more. Lately, I've been turning to this little gem of a game a lot when I need to unwind and switch off, and it's slowly but surely helping me in much the same way as 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 

Growing 

At the start of The Garden Path, I create my own character and learn how to interact with the garden. When I want to gather resources I see around the landscape, for example, I can focus on plants, with options to harvest or record them. Doing the latter will help me learn more about the flora and fauna I come across - I actually find it very relaxing to simply run around the place recording every tree, flowe𓆏r, or shrub I find. To harvest certain plants, I need to use the right tools, which I can only get my hands on with the help of some new-found friends. 

After a bit of exploration, I come across some folk visiting the garden who are more than happy to instruct me or help me out. My first encounter sees me meet an adorable scout bear by the name of Augustus, who first has me fetch him some plants before offering to re🅘pair and give me his secateurs once I've found the missing half. A buffalo called Larto then freely gives me a fishing rod. 

Carrot Cake's delightful take on fishing is by far my favorite pastime in the garden. You move a cursor within a tiled square, and your character will whistle to attract the attention of song fish. Once one is lured, a circle will ওappear that you move the cursor into to secure your catch. Every songfish has a sound that you can emulate once you've caught it to use its ability - such as a beech fish that will cause some beech seedlings to grow in the earth. It's one of the more unique fishing minigames I've come across, and it's what I like to spend most of my time doing. 

The characters you can meet are undoubtedly a big highlight, not unlike the villagers in An🍸imal Crossing. Every time I step back into The Garden Path, I run around to see who I might meet next, from the suspicious frog Tabbal, to Molly who has an onion for a head, and a monkey called Bunk who gives me some tea. All of them have their own personalities and they'll sometimes ask you for help with set tasks to complete. It's a delight to speak to each and every one of them so far, and I can't wait to see who else may pay a visit the next🌞 time I boot up the game. 

Written in the stars 

As you go about trying things out and completing goals, you'll also unlock stars in the sky🎃 that act as in-game achievements. This can be everything from harvesting a certain amount, to planting seeds, and speaking to a number of folk. You can also track stars you haven't yet unlocked to give yourself additional goals, which is a nice touch if you want some more direction.

Eventually I find a wise old man by the name of Thom who sets me on my way to learning more about the garden. While you're free to spend your t💮ime however you wish during your visits, there's an undercurrent of mystery to the idyllic hand-drawn land, and you can try to learn more about its past and the gardener who used to tend to it. I'm already curious to see where this may take me as I steadily piece together more and more each time I decide to return. 

As a garden that's yours to grow and shape, you🉐 can also place down decorations and make it your own. In this world, there's no set currency, but folk will trade you all manner of things for different resources, including more ornaments you can place down anywhere you like. It can take a little spell to get used to the controls and learn the in🌳s and outs of the menu and what resources are needed for trading, but everything works quite well on the Switch. 

I've really been taking my time with The Garden Path, which is really how it's designed to be experienced. As someone with generalized anxiety, I often find mysꦗelf feeling especially restless at night, or in the early hours of the morning. And lately, I've been reaching for Carrot's Cake's charming life sim to get some breathing space. If you're looking for a quiet, slower paced experience that you can get lost in for a time, and you're a fan of gardening, this is just the ticket for you. 

The Garden Path is out now on PC and Switch. To see what else we've been enjoying this year so far, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

Moving on 

There's something so rﷺefreshing and uplifting about the way Closer the Distance explores death and loss. It's never an easy subject to broach, but I love the way Osmotic Studios' delivers a comforting message that shines through. Set in the small fictional town of Yesterby, you follow the story of its residents in the wake of a tragic car accident and the sudden death of a teenage girl. It plays out much like The Sims, with you influencing the actions of different characters, but instead of being a sort of omnipotent figure controlling people, you're actually playing as Angela – the young girl who passed away. 

Using her ethereal ability, you watch over her loved ones and try to help them navigate their grief by influencing them to fulfill their wishes, aspirations, or goals. To begin with, you help to direct Angela's♛ sister, Conny, whose strong connection allows her to hear her sibling. Over the course of the game, you start to influence more residents that all have some kind of connection to Angela, and you'll have multiple people to manage and watch over. Not unlike The Sims, they also have their own needs, like hunger and sleep, but every character has th🌳eir own unique ones that can reflect their flaws, personalities, or the feelings they're struggling with. Conny, for example, needs alone time and the bar fills whenever she has some solitude, while Angela's boyfriend Zek yearns for distractions to keep him occupied. 

You're free to swap between characters at any time to see what they're up to - even if they're not individuals you're directly influencing - and you can see how they're feeling through their needs meters and indicators that show you the core emotion they're dealing with. You'll also see a list of hopes and desires, which you can also try to help with through the characters you infl🥃uence at certain points. 

As someone who grew up playing The Sims, I was quick to fall into its pace and became completely absorbed by it. Sometimes particular goals for characters can be time sensitive, and each in-game day, I relished the challenge of trying to help everyone achieve their goals in time. But it also drew me in thanks to the choices you're presented with as you help to influence the residents. From helping Zek figure out what he wants to do for a career, to helping Conny support your parents in various ways, you often see the impact or importance of your actions later down the line, giving weight to every choic༺e you make. I really felt like I was actively helping everyone, and getting closer to them as I did so. 

Letting go

Closer the Distance is, in manౠy ways, all about connection. Throughout the story, you get a window into the people of Yesterby's lives. From the fractured relationships some share, to the fears and worries others harbor, I came to care for everyone in the little community. As I tried to help several people let go and move on, the story does such an effective job of showing how much impact just one persoꦑn can have on so many lives. 

What's more, it instills the idea that those who pass away live on through the people they leave behind. Whether it be their memories of Angela, or through the actions t🐎hey take because of the presence she had in their liveܫs or the connection they shared, they're never truly gone. There's comfort in that. 

There are so many lines of dialog that will stay with me and moments that caused tears to fall, but I don't want to spoil any one of them. It's worth checking out the content warnings and considering the sensitive themes it explores if you're facing grief yourself. But I wholeheartedly recommend Closer the🎀 Distance for anyone🌜 who's looking for a moving narrative experience with choices that matter and a Sims-like feel. You won't regret it. 

Closer the Distance is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5. See what else we've been enjoying in our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

When I first heard of Vampire Therapist I knew it was a game I'd have to sink my teeth into. And boy howdy, was it worth getting my pointy little fangs on. Vampire Therapist is a new visual novel game made by Little Bat Games, and was inspired by the likes of What We Do in the Shadows, Monty Python and even Horrible Histories. You play as Sam Walls, a vampire cowboy who makes his way to Leipzig to become a therapist under the mentorship of a 3000-year-old vampire, Andromachos, or Andy, as our lovable cowpoke calls him. Under the roof of a goth night club, reminiscent of Nadja's for any What We Do In The Shadows fan🐬s, Sam is able to see clients with historic trauma and help vampires realize their true potential and find inner peace. In the process, Sam also learns more about himself and healthy ways to look at his past and future. 

Our Cadaverous Clientele

The characters you meet are full of life (maybe a poor choice of words on my part considering some of them are undead and thousands of years old) and are all written very authentically, with a little theatrical edge. They really feel like actual people that would seek out therapy, and are complex with multiple layers of trauma to process. They're not simply two dimensional "I am a vampire and I hate it" characters. I actively found myself wanting to help them, wanting them to better themselves and see the light (again, an insensitive phrase). I even caught myself cheering on the characters you treat when they had a breakthrough, no matter how small. It was just nice and rewarding to see them realize something.

As you play and conduct therapy sessions, clients will have a cognitive distortion to which Sam glows red and you are able to click the matching distortion you believe they are having. If someone calls themselves a "vile monster" then it's Labeling, or if they say that they should have achieved their goals by now, then that's a Should Statement. As the game progresses you end up 🌱choosing four tailored cognitive distortions you believe the client𒆙 will use the most so they can get the most out of their therapy sessions. There is no real repercussion in getting your answers incorrect, as your pal Andy will swoop in and stop you before you can talk so you can never pick an incorrect answer. It's a good learning tool, and I understand why, with such a sensitive topic, there's no good or bad story repercussions. The game wants you to succeed and help people, and I'm okay with that. 

I think these characters are not only brought to life through the fang𒆙-tastic writing, but also the truly talented team of voice actors behind the roles. I especially have to give props to the creator of the game, writer, and voice actor behind Sam and several other characters, Cyrus Nemati, whose performances were a real stand out to me.

Helping the Haunted Ones   

Initially I was dubious about how well the real world therapy aspect would work in a game with such humorous inspirations. Do sexy vampires, visiting a "kink room" and making jokes about farting on a chair Jesus Christ himself made, really go hand in hand with talking about CBT? Oddly enough, yes, and it pulls it off ma💫sterfully. 

Little Bat Games clearly car𝓀es about getting the therapy aspect of the game perfect. It isn't just a gimmick or throwaway plot with meaningless made up language which was included for the sake of humor. Vampire Therapist was made in conjunction with real licensed therapists, and for that I can only applaud it. The fact you actively learn and begin to understand real life cognitive distortions and therapy techniques while playing as a gun slingin', blood suckin' cowboy is a testament to just how much Little Bat Games wanted to get right when approaching such a sensitive and complex subject. Therapy is confusing and serious, and I am so glad that the developer behind Vampire Therapist understands this and doesn't just make a gag out of it.

One thing I didn't expect to happen after playing this game was that I started to recognize my own behavioral patterns and the way I talk to myself. Sam and Andy seemed to have wriggled their way into my brain and I now catch myself when using Labeling language, or Nosferatu Thinking. I genuinely cannot believe a vampire visual novel has helped me use kinder languaꦇge on myself, but I lov൲e it.

Now that being said, is this game a real therapy tool? No. I don't think any game, even one written in collaboration with✤ a real therapist, could do such a thing. I also don't think Little Bat Games were trying to achieve that. There is no real replacement for therapy, but it's been a delight to game-ify my own way of thinking and relate what I learned to the wonderful cast of characters the game throws at you. Sadly, I do not share enough in common with a 400 year old vampire to have this game be my own form of therapy. Maybe if you're a 400 year old vampire with centuries old trauma it'll work for you though! 

It's very rare that I play a game that has an emotional impact on me for reasons other than the dog died or my favorite cowboy has Tuberculosis. However, I came away from Vampire Therapist actively wanting to emotionally improve and be kinder to myself💙. I can't believe how quickly this game helped me realize I needed to just love myself that bit more… and I also came out of it with a new fa💙vorite cowboy who, luckily for me, doesn’t have TB. 

"You are deserving of love, especially from yourself"... I cannot think of a more poignant quote from this game to sum up ✨my experience of playing it.

Vampire Therapist was a bloody good time and I cannot recommend it enough.

Vampire Therapist is out now on PC. For more of our indie game highlights, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series in full.  

For all that, however, Bo: Path of the T🅺eal Lotus remains firmly rooted in its own identity. Based around Japanese mythology, its journey begins with the descent of Bo - a Yokai created for the game that blends a fox-like top half with the powers of a 'celestial blossom'. Those powe✅rs put a swift focus on platforming, and it's not long until you're learning to combine Bo's aerial abilities with their powerful staff to work your way through sprawling levels.

Some of that is a little tricky, and while later sections run smoother and faster, there were times at the start of the game where I felt I was relying a little more on luck than judgment to solve some of the puzzles. As you might expect i෴n any Metroidvania, as Bo progresses, their staff gets upgraded. An ear⛦ly upgrade lets me thwack around some hard-shelled nearby critters to break through some otherwise-impenetrable barriers. It's satisfying at first, but as Path of the Teal Lotus pushes the idea further, complexity starts to give way to good fortune.

Godlike

Much of the 🌊time, however, there's a sense of genuine mastery that's far more in line with some of the best 2D platformers of recent years. It's certainly prepared to be tricky, and there are certain skills that do require practice to perfect, but Path of the Teal Lotus treads a fine line well. A single missed input🌳 doesn't always have to send you back to the start of whatever challenge you're facing, and I appreciated the fact that Bo was often able to scrabble back into a position where they could continue from wherever they left off without crashing to the floor or losing HP to a reset.

Even if Path of the Teal Lotus wasn't a little more forgiving than some of its Metroidvania brethren, however, I'd be prepared to cut it some slack for just how beautiful i𓂃t looks. I was drawn in very quickly thanks to its beautiful artwork, and I'm pleased to report that I was far from disappointed by the f⛎inished result. Few games live up to the anime-style trailer that initially drew me to Bo, but there's a huge amount of character tied up in their movement, and the various other Yokai that inhabit their world.

It's here that Path of the Teal Lotus' Japanese inspiration is most keenly felt. 𒀰Its backgrounds - whether in close-up platforming secti𝓡ons or screen-spanning vistas - speak directly to the mythology that shaped the game, and lend it a crucial sense of identity. Combat is rarely a core focus of the action - platforming, motion, and mobility feel much more important - but Path of the Teal Lotus knows how to put on a show when it comes to boss fights. Arenas open out, these Japanese-inspired monsters filling and adapting the space to allow art and action to truly complement each other.

Bo's foes might be some of the more apparent sources of Japanese influence, but their friends ensure that the some more subtle ideas are capable of holding their own too. Bo powers up by collecting ingredients for various teas, each of which empowers their staff in various ways. Some of those are combat heavy, but others, such as  a particularly entertaining grappling gun, are movement-ce🙈ntric. Elsewhere, the collection of Daruma Dolls - traditional dolls often thought of as good luck charms - offer another nod to the sour𒈔ce material, while adding an extra layer of depth to Bo's combat.

In much the same way that it must be hard to exist in the shadow of something like Silksong as a developer, it can be hard to write about modern indie Metroidvanias without dwelling too long on Hollow Knight. It's clear that Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus isn't looking to shy away from that comparison - the scent of Team Cherry's masterpiece is all over this game. But crucially, it is just a scent; Bo and The Knight have plenty in common, and I can feel the influence of the Hallownest and its inhabitants, but at no point does this feel like a cheap copycat. Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus and its Japanese mythology offer a valuable, if familiar, entry into this part of the Metroidvania genre. If you, like many others, are still waiting for Silksong, this is a worthy contender to not just help you kill some time, but൲ help you get excited for that eventual release. 

Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Switch. To see what else we've been enjoying this year, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

That's easier said than done. Unlike its chirpy older sibling Mario Kart, there are few rules in Nightmare Kart. If you fancy pulling up beside a fellow racer and blasting them with a shotgun, that's perfectly reasonable – encouraged, in fact – and you best believe those skeletons on the track are going to try and kill you. If all of this sounds familiar, you may know developer LWMedia's Nightmare Kart by another name: Bloodborne Kart, the viral PS1-style demake that had to drop all FromSoftware-adjace🅘nt branding when Sony's lawyers caught wind of it. With those changes made, there's nothing here to 𝓰interest any lawyers – off you go, now – but plenty for speed demons to enjoy.

Going the distance

Have the lawyers left? Great, because this is definitely still Bloodborne Kart. Sure, the legal formalities are out of the way (that's Father Gregory to you) but there's no shaking the deja vu as you tear through the gothic streets of Miralodia. But to write this off as pure parody would be a big disservice to a free game that&a♛pos;s bursting with stylish PS1-era aesthetics, over-the-top thrills, and a ꦛ that goes unfathomably hard. 

Though Nightmare Kart has one foot in soulslike and another in traditional racing games, it won't quite fit your expectations of either genre. The campaign mode, which follows a night-long "hunt"' with a bunch of unsavory♍ characters, is a mix of rubber-burning thrills and violence. During its more conventional levels, you'll race your kart or motorbike through tight cobbled streets, using boosts to overtake your Lovecraftian competitors while avoiding the monsters strewn across each track. 

Here, it's possible to keep your foot on the pedal and🧜 win without resorting to violence. Flasks are used for nitrous-style speed buffs, and although they're fairly limited, you can restore them by performing aerial tricks with conveniently-placed stunt ramps. Most maps are fairly simplistic, but narrow tracks and tight turns keep things interesting for technical-minded drivers. Pulling off the perfect drift requires excellent timing and nerves of steel, but if you can drag it out for long enough without crashing into a corner then you'll be rewarded with an extra burst of speed. 

However, playing as a pacifist won't stop your fellow motorists from blasting you to bits. Certain levels are more combat-focused. One stage in the sewers is a team deaꦰthmatch on wheels, where opposing racers vie to kill each other with deadly weapons found in power-ups. It's a strange mix of Bloodborne, Mario Kart, and Quake, but the result is undeniably silly fun – in one race I shot from fourth to first place in a race bec🌸ause I used the Threaded Sword's dash attack to overtake two of my rivals and behead a third. 

There are even one-on-one boss battles, in which you burn rubber against some familiar-looking characters. But if you're picturing engine-powered dodge-rolls and dying to agonizing one-shot attacks, let me put your mind at ease: even these bouts are giddily arcade-y. 𒉰Fighting Father Gregory is a two-stage fight that begins with a manic car chase, complete with falling boulders and daring jumps. When I finally corner him in a dingy graveyard, the teeth – or in this case, the Gatling Gun mounted on Father Gregory's motorbike – come out. I don't know if you've ever tried to fight a trigger-happy werewolf from a spe🐲eding go-kart, but yes, it's as awkward as it sounds. 

To make things worse, the track is littered with mounds of grave dirt that stall my kart upon contact, which makes me an easy target. My health bar is much smaller than Father Gregory's, which stretches across the screen, aﷺnd guns from power-ups only last for a few shots. This means I've got to fly arounඣd the course non-stop, scooping up a randomized weapon before drifting around and sinking a few shots into my pursuer. After cycling through shotguns, pistols, and even a Gatling Gun of my own, big Greg finally dies in a fiery blaze and my whistle-stop tour of Miralodia continues.

I won't spoil every detail of the hunt, but Nightmare Kart is fairly short, and you should expect to get an hour or two of silly fun out of it. Considering it's free, that value is hard to argue with. Nightmare Kart stretches so far beyond its punchline that it's hard to think this was ever just a joke, and I can see myself regularly coming back for a few laps. If you find yourself between games, I'd recommend taking Nightmare Kart for a spin – and FromSoftware, take notes: everything is better with go-karts and nitrous.  

Nightmare Kart is out now on PC. To see what other indie gems we've been enjoying this year, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

The more I explore everything The Night is Grey has to offer in all its interactive glory, the more certain I am that this fairytale will not have a happily ever after. The reason? It almost feels like a video game adaptation of a children's story as penned by a 17th century Frenchmen – yet even more ominous than its already creepy origins. 

Warning: Discussion of sensitive themes ahead, including domestic abuse

What big eyes you have 

I don't know if The Night is Grey is meant to remind me of Charles Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood, but it definitely does. A tale of wolves, a lost little girl, and getting even more lost on the way to grandmother's house? The basic plot points are there, but certain sobering t𝐆wists to the formula are what makes The Night is Grey feel fresh, unnerving, and quietly bleak.

Let's start at the beginning. After fleeing from a pack of wolves, protagonist Graham finds an isolated cabin nestle🍎d deep within the woods. There, he meets a little girl named Hannah. Her mother has not been home for a few days, so instead of leaving the child to her loneliness, Graham offers to take her to her grandparents' house in the village across the forest. At first, H𓆉annah thinks Graham is some sort of monster, pointing out his thick fur (a beard) and shining large eyes (his glasses) as evidence. The player is then instructed to fix a nearby generator and restore light to the cabin, the first of many found-item puzzles that will form the basis of our core gameplay going forward. Graham thereby earns Hannah's trust, and the two venture forth.

With the boat broken and wolves🐻 still slinking about the bridge, the task then turns to finding an alternative route. As I start up a conversation with little Hannah, though, the things she tells me about her mother raise alarm bells. 

Hannah alludes to being cooped up at home most of the time due to an illness she supposedly suffers from, as her mother fears the "poison" of others might exacerbate her heart condition if she attends school. All the doors are locked inside Hannah's home, except for the front door. There are no toys to be found, no food aside from a burnt stew bubbling over the fireplace, and the supposedly "old and dirty" crayons that Hannah's mother threw away are recovered from the trash can in pristine condition. Something isn't adding up, and my stomach sinks as I piece tog♛ether that 𓃲Hannah is most likely the victim of multiple forms of child abuse.

The Night is Grey confronts these themes head-on, but never makes them feel offensively melodramatic or ham-fisted in their allusions. Hannah has the bright candor of childhood innocence, all too happy to tell Graham all about her mommy, her life, and any item the player sees fit to drag over her character model to receive her honest opinion of. T꧒he bond between the two characters forms slowly but tangibly, the languid pace of the game itself feeding into Graham's gradual feelings of fatherly affection for his newfound charge.

From here on out, The Night is Grey doesn't cease to surprise and chaওrm in equal measures. Dark themes entwine fluidly with the rich sense of atmosphere, the world's lore fleshed out inch by mystifying inch as you investigate the detritus of this eerie place and try in vain to soothe Hannah's worries. I don't want to spoil much more than this, because truth be told, this is one of the most 🦹spellbinding and unique indie games I have had the pleasure to experience in months. Just beware of the big bad wolves, and you'll be fine – for now.

Check out the litany of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games slated to launch in 2024 and beyond.

In God we sort of trust 

Things start off fairly gently, establishing Indika's pious life as a deeply unpopular nun, living a life of grinding servitude in a monastery. It's never entirely clear why no one likes her as she carries buckets of potatoes a�𝕴�round or collects water, but she's shunned and alone despite her diligence. Well, not quite alone - there is the voice in her head. Initially, it sounds like a narrator, filling you in as you play, but it quickly becomes clear Indika can hear it too, interrupting and arguing with its ideas and takes on events. 

For a game that&a⛄pos;s all about testing the main character's faith, it's fitting that it uses gameplay to make you feel this as a player. One of your first༒ objectives is to collect five buckets of water; a task so tediously broken down that you can't actually believe it's going to make you do all five as you walk to the well, crank the handle, fill the bucket, carry it back to a barrel and repeat. "Useless labor is the basis of spiritual development" the voice intones as you complete buckets one and two, assuming at some point the game will cut away and save you from buckets three four and five. 

It doesn't. But, thanks to a strange point system introduced moments earlier, I actually found myself chasing the rewarding little digital pings of the numbers going up. When a mean old nun tips the barrel out at the end, pouring away all the water, all I could think, in a quiet little voice to myself, was 'but my points'. There's a nonsensical upgrade path where you can trade them in - sometimes from doing obvious things, sometimes for no clear reason - and progress a tree of options. These include things like 'Grief - every time you get points, you gain the chance to get a 1.46 multiplier', or 'Humility - get the cꦦhance to gain 120 points right now'. 

On point

What are the♊se points? What are they for? It's never really explained, and the game even tells you they're worthless, but the compulsion it creates to try a💞nd get more remains and underpins Indika's themes. Indika, the nun, is deeply troubled and lost, desperately laying all her problems on her religion's shoulders and this quest for points simply voices her desperate need for approval, no matter how vapid.  

As the story progresses, and her faith provides fewer and fewer answers, 𒐪things start to unrave🌠l. Her world literally starts to crack and come apart, with only the power of prayer holding things together - red tinged sections see the voice run amok, expressing how she really feels about her life deep down (hates it) while levels fracture and move around. Holding a button makes Indika pray, blocking out the voice's truths and putting things back. Weird as it sounds, this mechanic then lets you solve puzzles as you break and repair the world to reach new areas and move on.. 

Much of Indika's strangeness revolves around this idea of using game mechanics to make her inner turmoil a playable process for you to go through. The endless chasing of points never seems to actually do anything, but it might? The world literally comes apart without mindless devotion and pray🌸er. All while the voice in her head, the Devil/inner monologue, constantly taunts her with the truth she's so desperate to 🤡avoid. 

I don&aposꦍ;t want to spoil the story's finer details, but Indika eventually meets an injured prisoner on the run, and sets off with him to find a religious artefact called the Kudets they both believe w🅘ill fix everything. Which is when the real strangeness starts. Beautifully drawn pixel art flashbacks fill out Indika's backstory and past life, for example, with chases and musical puzzles. An impossibly large, shaggy black dog pursues the two for a stretch, manifesting a popular folklore bad omen. And the world distorts into impossible shapes and scales to create puzzles full of twisting industrial gantries, corridors, staircases, and even giant fish dwarfing you as you explore. 

One stand out puzzle sees a room turned into some sort of internal Rubix Cube, made up of identical linked compartments you can see repeating - the only difference is where th🅠e 'floor' is as you move between them, m🐽aking use of the walls, floor and ceiling to move crates around to reach an exit. It's a Portal level geometry warping brain ache to get through. 

Difficult issues 

It's a game full of difficult topics. There's an attempted sexual assault early on you should probably be aware of. Indika, the person, spends the entirety of Indika, the game, struggling with her mental health. It's an incredibly clever game though, using its mechanics and ideas to visualize this struggle and journey, framing things with a vocabulary familiar to countless games to articulate processes and events. From point collecting to visual perspectives, it feels like little is done here without a point. Almost in a direct counter to Indika's fruitless search for meaning in the story, everything the mechanics do in the gameplay does happen for a reason. 

When developers like Naughty Dog obsess over minimal UIs or trying to create frictionless connections between players and story, it's fascinating to experience something like Indika; which revels in using big chunky, impossible to miss mechanics to express its themes. It articulates and underlines the issues involved in a way that just explaining or watching them couldn't do. I originally hated the ending, although I won't spoil why, but now, with a little distance and perspective, I've reappraised my opinion. The more I think abou𒉰t it, the more the conclusion is just another expression of this. 

You're unlikely to play anything as creatively weird as this for a long time to come. But, most importantly, it uses that weirdness. Nothing here is batshit wft crazy without a reason and it's a really interesting way of expressಌing a story I'd now struggle to see told any o🗹ther way.  

Indika is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5. To see what other indie gems we've been enjoying so far, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

#BLUD puts players in the shoes of one Becky Brewster, a plucky protagonist that attends high school in lovely Carpentersville. But not all is as it seems, however, as some sort of demonic force has arrayed here and Becky finds herself shunted to the for💜efront of the vampire apocalypse with a trusty field hockey stick in tow.

#BLUD for the #BLUD god

The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and from the jump it's obvious that the cartoony dungeon crawler is go🦹ing to be a mix of gross horror and comedy. What's less obvious is how well these inspirations mesh, as my early time with #BLUD felt a bit slug🤪gish and bogged down with meeting various NPCs and mechanics – not to mention several fetch quests.

That's not to say all of that's boring or unnecessary. Any kind of prologue that takes several steps is always going to feel like friction getting in the way of a good time, and at least #BLUD has the good fortune of genuinely ജlooking great – the various enemy animations and zany squishing of characters are a major highlight – from the moment it begins. But it took about an hour, hour and a half to get to a point where I actually felt like I was doing something mechanically meaningful.

Speaking of slow starts, combat against the bugs and rats you initially fight will likely feel somewhat𒅌 clunky to those accustomed to, say, Hades or the like. I never could quite shake the feeling that I was woefully misjudging distances or directions as I attempted to punch my way out of problems. But once I unlocked the aforementioned field hockey stick (and then the upgrades to it), it all smoothed out considerably. There's a nice, nougaty center to #𒊎BLUD's gameplay if you can stand to chew for just a bit first.

POW! BANG! BIFF!

Thankfully, the joyful love for animation and goofy illustrations takes no time at all to get going. Every hit, every emotive reaction, every idle animation, and generally every little part of the game that move𓄧s has been lovingly rendered and exaggerated in a way that so very clearly draws from classic cartoons as well as modern indie ones. (I'm also a sucker for a title card.) The quest system is⭕ handled through a fictional social media app that Becky uses to interact with friends, complete with animated selfies featuring multiple different poses for her to strike – which can also reveal monster weaknesses, by the by.

This goes a long way as you unlock further upgrades and explore more of the map with even wackier animations opening up for everything from combat finishers to boss battles. And the latter truly do shine, both from an animation and mechanical perspective, to showcase what really works with #BLUD. While early combat against generic foes felt sluggish to me, every single boss battle from the very first basement ra🔜t/abomination was a highlight. Even the early tutorial boss battle against a wayward washing machine contraption was generally a good time, actually.

I've not finiꦇshed the game yet, so perhaps my opinion will change or shift in some way as I continue to play. But as it stands, I've only grown to enjoy #BLUD more the more I've seen. When it comes to games we highlight like this, I can't think of stronger praise than the fact that I'm still thinking about it, I'm still enjoying it, and I actively want to play more. In other words, #BLUD does not suck, despite all the vampires.

#BLUD is out now on PC via the Humble Store and Steam, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. To see what other indie gems we've been enjoying so far, be sure to check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

Pitched as a "single-player, top-down journey", Cozy Caravan doesn't exactly do well in selling itself on its Animal Crossing meets Cooking Mama vibes. As the game's name suggests, you travel around the idyllic pastoral locations in your caravan. A gigantic kind-hearted bumblebee pulls your hoꦺme on wheels and you're also accompanied by your friend Bubba: a frog that can only say his name, but in true Pokemon style, can seemingly be understood by anyone they talk to. 

Most of the time you'll be driving around chatting to the folk that live in this peaceful little place. There are little clusters of homജes, farms, and slightly larger villages to discover across the map, where you'll be able to pick up quests that might include things like returning overdue library books, looking for missing baby frogs, or a variety of other very wholesome tasks. 

The various farms dotted around will also need your help harvesting crops, which you'll always get a delicious cut of. There's something so charming about the way the fou🔜r things you can hold in your backpack visibly stack on top of what's essentially a little picnic basket, swaying around as you run back to your caravan. The art style is also glorious, with a slight stop-motion hilt to its movement, which only adds to the characters' chubby charﷺm. The low-fi beats powering the soundtrack also help make Cozy Caravan the perfect game to just chill out with, especially if you're playing it on Steam Deck. 

Bubba?

From carrots and cabbage🦩s to eggs and milk, you'll need everything you can find to start crafting the recipes you'll unlock on your travels. 

On the weekends, you can run your own market stall by pitching up your caravan and ringing the littlꩵe market bell that swings from the back of it. All kinds of adorable critter villagers will rock up, with thought bubbles above their head to give you an indication of what they're looking to buy. You'll end up scrabbling around in your caravan's inventory to get what you need on the selling table fast enough.

Both selling at the market and helping people out will earn you hearts, which, if you gather enough to let you level up, will earn you a Guild Token that can be exchanged for caravan upgrades. That could well be a table to let you start chopping up fruit and vege🐈tables for the more simple recipes, but upgrades also give you access to ovens, better knives and backpacks, and also some color swatches for y🏅our caravan's roof. I really want to turn my caravan into a portable bakery, but I know it'll take some literal love to get there – love that I'm more than willing to put in. 

Cooking is incredibly satisfying if you've ever enjoyed games like Cooking Mama, with simple mini-games getting you involved with each stage of c🅰hopping and stirring. 

The more complicated your recipes, the more hearts you'll g💜et at the market, so it's well worth inve🎐sting time into. There are other mini-games to discover too, like stone skimming or hopscotch, which only serve to make Cozy Caravan even more adorable. 

It's still in Early Access, so there are some closed-off areas and incomplete♔ quests that you'll spot in Cozy Caravan. Plus, there are certainly some quirks like repeated dialog and the lack of a logbook to jot down all your various quests in – although the game does make a joke out of it, which made me laugh. Still, there's plenty here to justify the low-entry price tag, even in these early weeks since launch. Plus, developer 5 Lives Studios is constantly updating the game and is super active in their Discord when it comes to working with players on improvements. 

Cozy Caravan has been a wonderful surprise so far, with just the kind of pick✃-up-and-play for a minute or an hour gameplay that made Animal Crossing: New Horizons so appealing. With such sweet,♔ unique aesthetics and character designs, it's such a paradisiacal place to spend time in. 

Check out all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games to get hyped for this year

From the minute I played the Steam Next Fest demo back in February, I was immediately taken with Duck Detective: The Secret Salami's comedic chops (or should that be beak). The way it constantly pays homage to film noir is a big highlight; with Eugene frequently delivering an inner monologue to describe a location during rainy, sepia-toned scenes. Philip Marlowe, eat your heart out. After receiving a phone call, I'm tasked with solving a case revolving around a stolen lunch at a local bus station. But after finding clues and questioning the employees, I make some deduc(k)tions that start to unravel an even greater mystery and I have the best time trying to get to the♏ bottom of it all. 

Ruffle some feathers  

As a big fan of detective games, I've been yearning for a new experience that lets me scratch💟 my investigative itch, and Duck Detective: The Secret Salami has been doing just that. With one big case to solve that initially starts out with you looking into the theft of a lunch, you begin to understand there's m🅰ore afoot in this bus station than first meets the eye. 

The way you go about your detective work involves you inspecting your surroundings or questioning those you meet in order to gather key clue words. From honing in on the details of a person you meet - such as their tired eyes, or a collectible badge that gives away their affinity for K-Pop - to looking at the contents of a duffle bag, your magnifying glass is one of your most important tools. It immediately brought 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:to mind my time as Frog Detective - I wond꧃er what the amphibian sleuth would make of Eugene McQuacklin? Now there's a crossover I 🥃would love to see. 

Using the clues you've noted, you then open up your trusty notebook and try to piece together sentences. Once you've correctly filled in the gaps, you'll complete a deduc(k)tion which𝔍 allows you to progress to the next part of the case. You're introduced to this feature right off the bat, since the game begins with you having to figure out why the Duck Detective is strapped for cash in the first place. While there is a core mystery to solve, you're essentially solving a series of m𒀰ini cases as you work towards finding your culprit. 

As I began to explore the bus station, for example, the first thing I had to put together was the names of the employees who serve as my core suspects - since n🃏o one was willing to give proper introductions. After questioning just about everyone and looking over every inch of the place - both inside and outdoors - I connected the dots and correctly named every character in my notebook. It was only then that I could work towards getting to the meat of the case. 

Get a clue

Each step gets progressively more complex from then on, with more missing words to unearth through my investigative skills and longer deduc(k)tions to piece together.  You go from trying to ascertain why a Giraffe is in a bad mood to who is doing something much more nefarious than nicking a sandwich - although let's face it, taking ꦗsomeone's lunch is still pretty cheeky. And if you're a duck who loves bread? Well, it's an even greater offense. 

One of the great joys of Duck Detective is its sense of humor, coupled with the fact that every line of dialog is performed by voice actors, which really brings the experience to life. There are so many memorable personalities in the bus station, and it's such a treat to question them and learn more about them through my inဣvestigations. 

At certain points, it was definitely not all that clear as to what I needed to do next to get a clue, and while there is a hint system if you do get stuck, it didn't actually help me all that much. Still, all told, it took me about two hours to reach the conclusion of the case, and I was left wanting more. I would absolutely love to see another installment of Duck Detective down the line, but even if this is all we'll see of Eugene McQuacklin, I really enjoyed my time in Happy Broccoli's bready caper. If you♛ love detective games as much as I do, do🧸n't skip this one. 

Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch. To see what else we've been enjoying this year, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series for more. 

The game's narrative, which I won't spoil here, essenti♑ally sees players ꧃take on the role of Paige as she leaves home for the first time to become an academic of sorts. The frame story plays out like Paige narrating her journey through foldable bits of paper, which include little vignettes in addition to various gameplay sections. But it's all paper and it's all folding.

Matter of perspective

If you happen to spot any gameplay footage of Paper Trail, it might actually come across as a bit overwhelming. There can be a lot of moving parts and different folds, but it actually starts off incredibly simply and builds to that over time in a way that feels exce♏edingly natural. It doesn't just throw you into the deep end.

At its most basic, Paper Trail's puzzles are square or rectangle-shaped environments with fronts and backs. You can fold corners or s⛄ides t🌊o create new pathways or potential solutions based on a combination of what's on the back now being on the front. Simple enough, right?

It is! And then it adds locked doors, keys, paths that are only traversable when numbered blocks of the same kind touch, pattern matches, folding multiple environments that are next to each other, moving platfꦐorms that only go in certain directions, and more. All of these combine to a wild posℱsible number of variations to shift through in order to find the correct solution.

Often it's not even a one and done kind of thing. Frequently, there are several sets of folding, unfolding, moving, folding again, and so on before you can actually move to the next area. On paper (apologies) that might seem intensely frustrating,ဣ but it honestly makes the whole experience that much sweeter when you actually figure it out.

There's a definitive logic to it all, and if you can just alter your own perception enough it becomes clear. Getting to the end of any given puzzle is a bit like finally crossing your eyes enough to see the image hidden🦋 behind all the noise. Like seeing the green, raining code in The Matrix in that once you can get to that point, the whole game makes that much more sense.

Helpfully, there is a hint system in place. What's interesting about it, however, is that it won't just walk you through the entire puzzle. It only shows the proper folds, in order, and you have to scroll through them each. So if, say, you only need help understanding what the next fold might be, you can do that and move on to solving 🎀it yourself rather than being entirely spoiled. And because it doesn't show you where to actually go once the folds are in place or what bits and bobs to move, it does still require a bit of a think from the player regardless.

To me, the best kinds of puzzle games are the ones that leave me feeling satisfied like I've been chewing on something nice and savory. A bit of brain foཧod to eat and digest that ultimately leaves me sated. Frequently, I find that puzzle games overshoot this mark and make me frustrated instead, leaving me feeling less like I understand what&ꦚapos;s going on and more like I simply tried and failed until I didn't fail. Playing Paper Trail, on the other hand, makes me feel like a genius, and that's not because it's simple – but because it isn't.

Paper Trail is out now on PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and on mobile through Netflix Games. To see what other indie gems we've been enjoying so far, be sure to check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

But in order to do that, I have to solve a variety of creative environmental puzzles, and make use of my ghostly powers, which highlights the game's most unique feature: Hauntii puts its own spin on twinಌ-stick shooterཧ action. 

Written in the stars  

As a ghost, the twin-stick shooter element feeds into your spirit powers. On the PS5 controller, one analog stick allows you to aim, while the other can be used to fire out ghostly essence against foes wondering Eternity, or to break down obstacles. But it also comes into play when you use your haunting ability. Dotted around each level, you can find all manner of creatures and natural elements, which you can inhabit to either take control of, or interact with in various ways. From haunting a tree to give it a good shake, to taking control of a sprout-like being tha𝔍t shoots out powerful seeds, you can even haunt a ladybug in order to climb upᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ trees, or propel yourself to another one nearby. This ability, in particular, constantly encourages me to get playful and experiment to see what I can do.

Along with a dash ability that lets the little ghost zip around, all of the powers are also used to solve various puzzles that earn you stars. Whether that be a timed challenge that sees you use dash to make it through a series of illuminated loops, or a quest to find a🥀 very good ghost dog that's strayed away from its owner, every level is home to a collection of stars for you 💖to discover and collect. Interacting with the environment with your essence power or haunting will also earn you various collectible currencies that can be used to buy a myriad of different hats for your ghost - so far I've rocked cat ears, a witch hat, and a stylish mushroom, and I'm determined to earn as many as I can. 

The stars act as fragments of your memory, which you can piece together by adding them to constellations in the sky. Once you complete a constellation, a moment from your past will play out to gradually paint a bigger picture of the life you lost. These are often simple, short scenes of hand-drawn characters in different scenarios, but I really feel like I'm getting to know the ghost through them, bit by bit. I'm actually surprised by how invested and attached I've already become to this brave little ghost, who's just trying to find their way and get some answers. I also love how the constellations not only factor into progression from a story perspective, since completing them will al𒆙so allow you to upgrade your dash, essence, or health.

While there is some action thanks to its twin-stick set up - with different enemies, obstacles, and even some bigger boss-style fights - it still succeeds at feeling like a quiet, contemplative adventure that's moved me on more than one occasion. Plus, there's an intriguing undercurrent of darkness and a slight edge to Hauntii that's never too far away; if you stray from the light for too long, the screen and music will begin 🍌to warp, and menacing eyes appear as if they seek to reclaim your soul and swallow you whole. But that speaks to the mystery of the experience, too: I want answers just as much as the little ghost does.

The world of Hauntii is one I won't s⭕oon forget, with plenty of ghostly characters to meet along the way who have all manner of things to say. I'm constantly charmed by Moon Loop's beautiful, otherworldly setting, and I haven't really stopped thinking about it since I started playing. If you're looking for something a lit🎃tle different, give Hauntii a try. 

Hauntii is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Switch. For more recommendations, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

In terms of gameplay though, Harvest Island veers closer to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Potion Permit for its deeper stress on story and exploration. From the get-go, you're given the option to play in either story mode or normal mode, with the latter leaning mo꧋re into the farming and crafting elements. I'm very glad I opted to play that way and add a little humdrum levity to the experience instead of gunning for pure story; despite its charming exterior, Harvest Island is one of the most unsettling indie games I've played in a long time. 

Happy families 

Watering the carrots is a welcome reprieve from the harrowing opening sequence. Harvest Isℱland succeeds in subverting its own genre and style against my expectations, mo♔ving between wholesome cozy game to bleak pastoral horror with a deliberate abruptness.

It all starts out well e🌼nough. Stepping into the shoes of Will and accompanied by my annoying little sister, I'm sent by my father to carry out farm chores. They're mostly what you'd expect: fetching eggs, milking cows and goats, and making an offering out of them to the gods. 

That's right: on this farm, we must appease the gods to ensure a bountiful harvest. That's according to my dear old dad, anyway, who reminds me every single day to look after my little sister even as she moans and whines at my heels 🐬while I carry out my tasks. But those offerings are nothing to worry about, surely. Not as long as I do what I'm told and don't go poking around into a🐠nything not my business. Then again, the more I find, the more questions I have.

The movement controls here take some getting used to, existing on a grid-like system not unlike mobile game Snake🅘 in terms of how and when you can turn a corner, but I still have no trouble exploring the sandy shores and secrets o🅺f Harvest Island. Venturing into the woods with my sister leads me to a broken bridge, with something scratched on it: "the lies", it reads. Immediately I recall one of the darker moments I experienced just the previous night: waking up as a paranoid, terrified little girl called Becky, running into the man who had locked her up in a windmill after vowing to poison all of the children in town. "It is all a lie," he told me. "And now, you will become a lie too."

Harvest Island does well to maintain a charming edge to all of this, despite the fact that there are literal sprites of dead children dotted about the farm in said nightmare vision. There's apples to gather, good for feeding to goats as snacks to build a bond with them, as well as coconuts and crabs to cook up delicious stamina-replenishing meals as I tire from a day's work. There's so much to see and do in much the same way as many soothing farming sims that I almostဣ forget I need to check in with my father about that spooky sign. 

The art style between the dark color palette of those nightmarish visions and how verdant and green everything is by day is striking in its contrast. It makes the horror sequences feel like a vestige of time, perhaps the town's sordid history floating to the surface that I might be able to wholly ignore; how could a place this beautiful be plagued with something evil, after all? But when I skip merrily back through the woods to ask dear old dad about my findings, he tells me something that sends a chill up my spine. "Oh that old thing," he says of the sign. "I put that there years ago. It used to say Dragonflies." 

I've not yet finished my Harvest Island journey, but I'm telling you now that I don't believe my dad for one single minute. Is he the poisoner who killed all the children in my visions? Why does no one else seem to live on this island? And who exactly are these gods, demanding tribute with ever-changing demands? It might not be the most polished version of itself just yet, but Harvest Island is a beautiful and inღtriguing indie adventure game that has surprised me at every twist and turn. Judging from the look of shock on my father's face, things are looking set to get curiouser and curiouser still.

Harvest Island is out now on PC. To see what else we've been enjoying, be sure to check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series for more recommendations. 

As the camera pans back to settle on the scene of my little kitty slumbering, I sink into the moment along with them. There are plenty of opportunities to cause some playful chaos, and get caught up in humorous quests to help other animals, but what I love most about Double Dagger Studio's adventure is how it lets you simply enjoy being a cat in a big city. Whether it be pausing to do a big stretch, jumping into any boxes you see, or curling up for a snooze, I love how it lets me take everything at my pace and make new discoveries by putting my paws to the test. I've lost count of the amount of times it's made me la💎ugh so far, and it's a constant mood lifter. Litty Kitty, Big City really is a delightful playground to get lost in. 

Purr-sonality  

It all begins on the ledge of a window. Our poor little kitty protagonist is startled by a Shiba Inu and after a bit of a tumble, you're on a quest to find your way back up to your home in the big city. Once you free yourself from the trashcan you land in, the adventure is away, with the game introducing you to some of your feline skills. While you have an overall goal of returning home, your exploration and experimentation is constantly rewarded by discovering a host of smaller side activities for you to try 🦩to fulfill. It's up to you to play around to find hidden opportunities for mischief, or pawsome shenanigans as you puzzle your way through areas. 

Certain blockades such as water - which, as a cat, I don't really like - obstruct paths and I have to hunt down workarounds. Maybe it's a little crevice ♏in a wall I can squeeze my way through, or perhaps it's making a discovery later on that will open up the solution to me, but I love the way Little Kitty, Big City encourages me to test things out, get my thinking cap on at times, and put my cat qualities to good use. From jumping up to fences, to swatting and breaking plant pots and making paw-print by walking through pots of paint, there's no shortage of fun hijinks to get up to, and tasks to tick off. The main objectives are also great at making you explore, since you have to collect a lot of shiny objects hidden around the city, and there's a satisfying sense of accomplishment and progression as you work to both make y🔯our way home and complete side objectives. 

The adventure is also packed full of purr-sonality, not only thanks to the adorable cat you're controlling, but as a result of all the other animals you encounter in the world. Alongside fellow cats who will give you very important tasks like knocking over jam jars and catching birds, you'll also meet all manner of critters in need of a helping paw. The conversations that unfold between the kitty and the other furry or not-so-furry friends are a constant source of joy, with so many lines 🌼that elicited a laugh out of me. 

And as iꦏf this game needed any more charm, the fact that you can find and wear a myriad of different hats just tops it all off. Little Kitty, Big City is like a warm sunshine beam resting on your face on a cold day. It's fun, relaxing, and a real treat. I can🐻't recommend it enough. 

Little Kitty, Big City is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch. To see what else we've been enjoying check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

The explosion will be heard for nearly four miles, and pieces of both truck and driver will be found for nearly half that. On a hilltop overlooking the destruction, a stringy-haired figure smiles tersely beneath her white mask, slings a smoking rifle over her back, and trudges into the undergrowth, the bushes parting ahead of her before she even reaches them🅺, pushed aside by invisible hands.

Believe it or not, you're not missing much context for all that. Devolver's most recent slaughter-fest, Children of the Sun, has the same lean, threadbare storytelling a lot of their fanbase might've come to expect - static-𓂃riddled images and coarse, neon visuals give it a rough framing and most of the narrative is little more than raw snippets of conte🍒xt-light info: a superficially friendly religious movement with dark intentions, a loved one mysteriously driven to suicide… and an abused victim of the cult's machinations gifted with psychic powers and an old bolt action rifle.

Psychic killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?

The light story and murky context are clearly an intentional choice that speak to a very damaged perspective. Like the protagonists of Hotline Miami and Katana Zero, the main character of Children of the Sun (known only as THE GIRL) has the kind of brain that could be charitably described as "an A for effort". I guess if half your consciousness is riding the astral plane while the other half is experiencing Rambo: First Blood, coherence was always going to be an ambitious goal. Still, the immortal lin🗹e "I just killed a man, now I'm horny" is some of the best character work you'll get in gaming right now.

But while we're referencing movies, the flick that's more illustrative for gameplay pu🌳rposes is the timeless MacAvoy classic Wanted. The goal for each mission is to snipe every cultist in an area, but this is a revenge story on a serious budget, and you're only given a single bullet for each level. THE GIRL therefore has to use her telekinetic abilities to control said bullet after it leaves the barrel, bouncing it off enemies' cerebellums and threading the needle between obstacles to rack up a massive killstreak.

Cult following 

What results is a surreal and splattery puzzle game that feels a little like Hitman: Sniper Challenge via Superhot. You start with the ability to pause time and redirect the bullet after it hi🐠ts a target, causing a chain reaction of skull-splattering ricochets, and before long you're firing a round that realigns its trajectory ♔within an enemy's neck, zooms off into an explosive barrel, bounces off an unsuspecting bird before gleefully soars away to cause more chaos. Later on you get even more control over the bullet, curving it around barriers and accelerating it to break through armor, and the result is pure geometry. It's not uncommon to spend your time squatting on a hilltop with chin on fist, considering distant targets and trying to calculate angles like the most morbid game of snooker imaginable.

Children of the Sun isn't perfect - it's very short and almost certainly could've gone fu⛄rther in exploring its core gameplay concept - but I had a good time with it, especially when it stretches itself and thinks outside the box. A mission where you fire your gun out the window of a moving car to wipe out an entire motorcade is probably the highlight, and I like that you can use wildlife as optional ricochet points, bouncing a bullet off an oblivious wood pigeon mid-flight so you can angle it down through a skylight to cause further havoc.

And on a broader level, when taking a step back, I love that Devolver are still completely happy to bankroll whatever the exact opposite of a "cozy game" is. After years doing this, they&a꧙pos;re still taking risks on weird, creative and important projects like Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Inscryption, Card Shark - and now Children of the Sun. If that's not worth celebrating, I don't know what is.

Children of the Sun is out now on PC. To see what else we've been enjoying check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series. 

What fails to b♎reak, however, 💙is my spirit. No matter how many times I am sent to my watery grave by a hostile sea creature armed with a toilet brush as a jousting pole; the frustration that goes hand-in-hand with a Soulslike simply doesn’t set in while playing Another Crab’s Treasure. Yes, I am dying repeatedly to a crustacean wearing a bow made of garbage bag ties on its head. But I am dying with a smile on my face every time.

If the concept of playing as a fork-wielding hermit crab on a quest to retrieve your shell from aཧ (literal) loan shark all sounds very silly, let me assure you - it is. But beneath the zany juxtaposition of SpongeBob meets Soulslike lies sat🐟isfying combat, nimble platforming, lighthearted wordplay alongside social commentary on pollution. 

Shellden Ring

The game's pun-filled dialogue oozes a multilayered humor we’ve come to expect from developers Aggro Crab; who’s previous release Going Under is a💝 hilariously observant parody of failed tech startups, in dungeon crawler form, naturally. Some creatives just know how to take an outlandish idea and make it work, the tonal finesse of Aggro Crab has elevated Another Crab’s Treasure from 'novelty crab game’ to genuinely funny, must-play Soulslike.

And yet, Soulslike feels inaccurate to describe this game. It’s a term that conjures expectations of grim atmospheres, punishing enemies and gloomy color palettes. Not to mention complex menus and character builds too. Another Crab’s Treasure is the antithesis of these traits, boasting colorful graphics, endearing characters and a simplified approach. It’s lack of direct imitation of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dark Souls makes Another Crab’s Treasure 'Souls-esque’ at best - we may be losing 'microplastics’ (souls) on death, or resting at a Moon Snail (bonfire) - but the games fun original concepts outshine its Souls similarities. It is, in fact, where the game differs from Dark Souls that it transcends the limits of a Soulslike i♑n a blossoming fashion. 

For starters, the game offers several Assist Options that can reduce enemy damage or slow down gameplay, the most notable being the option to "give Kril a gun" which transforms his shell into a giant one-hit-kill handgun. Struggling with a boss? No problem, simply whip out your gun and blow them to smithereens in one shot, leaving your crab and your patience intact. It’s a welcome change, where it’s safe to assume that for every Soulsborne fan lamenting the easy gun mode, there’s a Soulslike newcomer picking up Another Crab’s Tre💙asure faster than you can say "git gud."

Another strength is the 3D platforming, where jumping, climbing and grappling your way through the vibrant underwater environment is a joyful experience in itself. It’s the combat where moving as a crab really pays ♏off though. As you lock on to an enemy you’ll notice that Kril moves faster side-to-side than he does forward and backwards - just like a real crab. This makes for plenty of fun ways to dodge, especially when combined with limitless rolling. In another staunchly non-Soulslike move, Aggro Crab chose not to pro꧙vide a Stamina bar, giving players the opportunity to roll until our crabby little hearts content. 

With just four stats to level up, you won’t get bogged down in the often overwhelming choices of customization either. The notio🍨n of choice can instead be found within the variety of protective trash you can wear as 🍒a shell.

Wearable rubbish options vary significantly, with each piece of trash possessing unique abilities called Shell Spells. From special attacks to defensive buffs, Shell Spells bring a healthy dose of variety to the combat. My personal favorite being a Banana Peel that you can eat mid-bat𒅌tle for a health boost. The fragility of each shell encourages players to try out loads of different shell options and discover their unique powers in battle, keeping combat feeling fresh in the process.

If you love Soulslikes, you should play Another Crab’s Treasure. If you avoid Soulslikes at all cost, then you should definitely play Another Crab’s Treasure. If anything is going to convert you 🉐to the world of dodge rolls and brutal bosses, it’s this gloriously creative entry point.

Another Crab's Treasure is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Switch. For more recommendations, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.