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chuckroDark Fear - You wake up in a cabin in the woods and your memory is gone. You'll have to fight monsters and undo curses to figure out what's going on. A first-person puzzle adventure game done in a classic 8-bit style (which mitigates the impact of the game's few jumpscares), with rpg elements like turn-based battles (spiked, not random) and upgradable weapons and armor. Because the battles are set and the damage numbers are predetermined, there's no randomness: You can either win a battle because you have the proper equipment, or you can't. Which makes it more of a puzzle than any kind of real strategy. The game takes less than four hours, and much of that is padding from having to do the hunting minigame over and over to upgrade your armor. I enjoyed it; it was amusing and didn't outstay its welcome.
Fox & Flock - Peg-jumping puzzles with assorted rules and a vague story about Victorian foxes. I dislike that style of puzzle in general and I found the art style here very hard to differentiate.
Slap The Fly - Humans vs. pests (flies, bees, mice) in a 3D arena, effectively playing tag. The primary draw is the online game, which no one is playing and wouldn’t be my thing regardless. Meh.
RFLEX - A very simple game: You have a 3x3 grid and need to jump among the spots to avoid blocks that come flying at you. Survive for 60 seconds to beat the level. What then follows is essentially a reflex test, which gets boring fast.
Townsmen - A medieval township simulation game, clearly designed for mobile gaming, which the standard “wait for buildings to recharge then collect from them” sort of setup, and a dozen different buildings to manage happiness, needs and emergencies along with multiple production trees for trade goods. I don’t usually object to the setup, but there are just too many meters, factors and complications given the scale of the game. It looks like it should be a relatively simple clicker, but the level of complication sets SimCity to shame.
TREBUCHET - A strategic board game that involves blocks and balls, and you need to try to line up your balls by moving blocks and tilting the table, so that multiple balls strike enemy pieces and remove them. It’s an interesting and original take on a board game, and I didn’t particularly like playing it.
In Celebration of Violence - An action roguelike in which you need to kill lots of things, up to and including the local gods. When you die, some of your experience is recovered and can be used to permanently upgrade your characters. This is technically an Early Access game, but there’s clearly plenty of material if you want to go searching for it. (This is the sort of game that demands, and has, its own wiki.) I didn’t find the gameplay exciting enough to play a lot of.
Survivor Squad: Gauntlets - A top-down shooter with puzzle elements, in that your characters fire automatically and most of what you’re doing is trying to maneuver and direct them with unpleasant mouse-based controls. If you really like it, the game comes with an editor so you can make and dissect levels to your heart’s content. I found the controls unpleasant and if the game has a plot, I wasn’t willing to stick around for it.
Razenroth - A top-down shooter with a vague horror/fantasy setting, and some sorta-rpg, sorta-roguelike systems. Or basically, you explore the mysterious forest finding randomly-generated items and limited-inventory potions, and shooting monsters with magic blasts that improve as you gain levels. It’s—okay? Kinda repetitive run-and-gun gameplay?
The Tale of Doris and the Dragon - Episode 1 - A very short, heavily pixelated puzzle adventure game in which you need maneuver an old lady named Doris (who gets help from a long-suffering dragon named Norb) through some sort of purgatory. Honestly, it feels more like a tech demo than a game, as you can blitz through “episode 1” in half an hour (assuming you are good at obtuse puzzle game moon logic), and episode 2 is apparently still in development.
Binaries - One of the “move both of these things at once” puzzle game, specifically platformer style. You’ve got two balls, orange and blue, and you need to get them both past various spikes and lasers to both of their exits. Moderately fun with a decent tutorial scheme, though after a while it overwhelms my skill level. Credit to the developer for having a good sense of humor.
Road to Ballhalla - A rolling-ball action/puzzle game, where a major gimmick is that you can take a few hits, unless you’re dashing, in which case, one touch kills you. So there’s a strong risk/reward system and your ability to twitch-dash becomes increasingly important. I thought the first few levels were fun, but my less-than-awesome reflexes made later areas frustrating.
Overall: This was a mix of all sorts of games, many of them puzzle-ish. I enjoyed Dark Fear and feel like Binaries and Road to Ballhalla would be more fun if I had the reflexes to be better at them. And as usual, I was very entertained for my $2.
Fox & Flock - Peg-jumping puzzles with assorted rules and a vague story about Victorian foxes. I dislike that style of puzzle in general and I found the art style here very hard to differentiate.
Slap The Fly - Humans vs. pests (flies, bees, mice) in a 3D arena, effectively playing tag. The primary draw is the online game, which no one is playing and wouldn’t be my thing regardless. Meh.
RFLEX - A very simple game: You have a 3x3 grid and need to jump among the spots to avoid blocks that come flying at you. Survive for 60 seconds to beat the level. What then follows is essentially a reflex test, which gets boring fast.
Townsmen - A medieval township simulation game, clearly designed for mobile gaming, which the standard “wait for buildings to recharge then collect from them” sort of setup, and a dozen different buildings to manage happiness, needs and emergencies along with multiple production trees for trade goods. I don’t usually object to the setup, but there are just too many meters, factors and complications given the scale of the game. It looks like it should be a relatively simple clicker, but the level of complication sets SimCity to shame.
TREBUCHET - A strategic board game that involves blocks and balls, and you need to try to line up your balls by moving blocks and tilting the table, so that multiple balls strike enemy pieces and remove them. It’s an interesting and original take on a board game, and I didn’t particularly like playing it.
In Celebration of Violence - An action roguelike in which you need to kill lots of things, up to and including the local gods. When you die, some of your experience is recovered and can be used to permanently upgrade your characters. This is technically an Early Access game, but there’s clearly plenty of material if you want to go searching for it. (This is the sort of game that demands, and has, its own wiki.) I didn’t find the gameplay exciting enough to play a lot of.
Survivor Squad: Gauntlets - A top-down shooter with puzzle elements, in that your characters fire automatically and most of what you’re doing is trying to maneuver and direct them with unpleasant mouse-based controls. If you really like it, the game comes with an editor so you can make and dissect levels to your heart’s content. I found the controls unpleasant and if the game has a plot, I wasn’t willing to stick around for it.
Razenroth - A top-down shooter with a vague horror/fantasy setting, and some sorta-rpg, sorta-roguelike systems. Or basically, you explore the mysterious forest finding randomly-generated items and limited-inventory potions, and shooting monsters with magic blasts that improve as you gain levels. It’s—okay? Kinda repetitive run-and-gun gameplay?
The Tale of Doris and the Dragon - Episode 1 - A very short, heavily pixelated puzzle adventure game in which you need maneuver an old lady named Doris (who gets help from a long-suffering dragon named Norb) through some sort of purgatory. Honestly, it feels more like a tech demo than a game, as you can blitz through “episode 1” in half an hour (assuming you are good at obtuse puzzle game moon logic), and episode 2 is apparently still in development.
Binaries - One of the “move both of these things at once” puzzle game, specifically platformer style. You’ve got two balls, orange and blue, and you need to get them both past various spikes and lasers to both of their exits. Moderately fun with a decent tutorial scheme, though after a while it overwhelms my skill level. Credit to the developer for having a good sense of humor.
Road to Ballhalla - A rolling-ball action/puzzle game, where a major gimmick is that you can take a few hits, unless you’re dashing, in which case, one touch kills you. So there’s a strong risk/reward system and your ability to twitch-dash becomes increasingly important. I thought the first few levels were fun, but my less-than-awesome reflexes made later areas frustrating.
Overall: This was a mix of all sorts of games, many of them puzzle-ish. I enjoyed Dark Fear and feel like Binaries and Road to Ballhalla would be more fun if I had the reflexes to be better at them. And as usual, I was very entertained for my $2.
