Static Spotlight
The Best Game I Played this Month
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
Release Date: Mar 1, 2024
Genre: Visual Novel
Platform: PC, Switch
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a real narrative triumph for gaming that introduces a fascinating world, a memorable cast of characters, and a choice system that feels impactful at every step of the journey.
Overall the world building in this game is just top notch. The opening hour shares very little about our main character’s situation and the world around her that led to her current circumstances. Once you start having conversations with visitors though, a lot of that is revealed through dialogue in very natural feeling ways. On top of that, I felt like every character you met had something interesting to add to the narrative, whether it was their entire backstory, a bizarre situation that they found themselves in, or simply just a unique viewpoint on the world around them.
Narratively, I thought the weakest points of the story always came out of the flash back sequences that they would usually slap in as the opening scene of a new chapter. The dialogue always felt a bit forced and the author tended to use these moments to push personal gripes in very unsubtle and ham fisted ways. These scenes were also riddled with pop culture references that always felt out of place. Anytime Burger King or Adventure Time popped into a conversation it totally took me out of it.
I really thought the music tracks peppered throughout the game did a great job accenting a lot of the scenes you find yourself in. They all felt like very complex pieces that not only did a great job characterizing the revolving cast of visitors but also choreographing the turns in tone that these conversations often took.
I’m not really one that finds a lot of fun in arts and crafts systems, but I did find myself getting invested in the tarot card design system in this game. It was a lot of fun getting creative with all of the elements at your disposal, even if it was figuring out how to hide some of the mandatory parts that didn’t jive with the rest of the art I had put together. Despite having a good time with designing cards, I was a little disappointed that the system was built out in a way that didn’t really focus on precision tuning. The tools that are in place here certainly let you edit cards to your liking just fine, but the resize tool can be a bit finicky and it would have been great if we could resize the field of view on the backgrounds to have more options to play around with.
Some of the tarot cards I made during my playthrough
After playing the game for about 2 hours, you would probably think that you’ve seen how the the whole game will play out from there. Wake up, check your window, talk to a few visitors, make a new card, and go to bed. While it does keep this up for awhile, the game also constantly flips the script in ways that always had me guessing where we were headed next. It was a real rollercoaster the whole way through.
The final act of this game was pretty messy, but in a chaotic way that still felt fun. It was the culmination of every major decision I had made up until that point crashing together in a way caused shit to hit the fan in numerous ways, but it was cool to see the game react to my choices in a way that created these bizarre turn of events..
The Red Strings Club blew me away when I randomly played it as a free game I got from Twitch years ago, Many Nights a Whisper was one of my sleeper hits of 2025, and with the The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood leaving as good as a lasting impression as it did on me, I’m convinced that Deconstructeam has the sauce and I’m really looking forward to what they put out next.
Completed
The Mobius Machine
Release Date: Mar 1, 2024
Genre: Metroidvania, Shooter
Platform: PC, PS, Xbox
Despite its flaws, The Mobius Machine is a pretty good metroidvania that does just enough right to make it worth checking out if you’re a big fan of the genre.
At it’s core, I think this game has a very solid foundation. The shooting feels good, the maps interconnect in a natural feeling way, there are plenty of shortcuts to unlock to make backtracking through areas a lot more manageable, and there are a lot of hidden areas that are satisfying to find. On top of all of that, they have a great system in place that lets you use energy to heal yourself on the fly or, if you’re feeling confident, you can use that same resource to temporarily boost your attacks to do significantly more damage. Juggling how I was using energy throughout the game was a lot of fun, especially during boss fights where the stakes were a lot higher.
I’d say the best thing about this game by far are the upgrades and traversal tools that you unlock throughout your playthrough. While they don’t feel wholly unique or ground breaking, they do make getting around this word a lot more fun. I was especially a fan of the booster packs that let you zip around underwater completely unhindered or shoot yourself off of ladders to access new areas and, eventually, get a massive amount of air that you could then combo into your glider to cover great distances and uncover hidden areas.
Despite all the things this game does right, there are just a few too many elements here that feel a bit too underbaked to make this a more recommendable title. The music tracks are really lacking, the story and characters are paper thin, and all of the locations feel pretty samey.
Enemy variety was one of the biggest issues I ran into with this one. Despite the fact that there are 7 distinct areas to explore, you’ll find the same handful of enemies used in just about every one of them. That goes double for the minibosses that you’ll go up against to pick up some optional upgrades and currencies. It was nice to see that repeat enemies in later areas had at least some sort of additional element tagged on to make them a bit more interesting to fight against. I was excited to see a brand new enemy type introduced in the last area that they actually tied into the narrative pretty well, but it was disappointing to see that it was literally just that one new enemy and they just make you fight them over and over and over again throughout the final stretch.
Bosses were a mixed bag overall, but I’d say most of them were pretty fun to fight against even if a lot of them were pretty easy to figure out. I will say that they did a really good job of getting you into each of these boss areas. They very rarely telegraphed the fact that you were about to walk into a battle and often just dropped you straight into the fight by having you fall into a hole through crumbling terrain or by having you fail at some platforming. I did find the final boss fight to be super underwhelming though. The ads that they spawn are super annoying and they make lining up your shots to meaningful damage very tedious.
On par with the very lack luster narrative, the ending here was pretty middling. There’s a machine right at the finish line that implicated that I was missing a device that would lead to the true ending, and I contemplated going back through the game to clear all of the undiscovered portions of the map. After taking a look at everything that I would have to do though, I decided against it and, after looking up the true ending online, I’m glad I did. You just get a few more lines of dialogue that makes the conclusion a bit more palpable. No new boss, area, or anything else substantial to justify the few more hours it would have taken me to get everything I needed to see it in game.
If you’re really in the mood for a metroidvania and have completely exhausted your list of options, I’d say give The Mobius Machine a shot. Otherwise, I think there are just too many other titles out there that outclass this one.
The Tartarus Key
Release Date: May 31, 2023
Genre: Escape Room, Horror
Platform: PC, PS, Xbox, Switch
The Tartarus Key is a very cool indie horror game that I’m surprised doesn’t come up in more conversations regarding hidden gems in the space. While it is missing a few elements that would really push it towards being a considered a modern classic, the core experience is very unique and enjoyable throughout.
Seeing the game’s presentation through it’s Steam page was really what sold me on picking it up. I’ve been on a real kick with these games that feature a pixelated, blocky style that evokes the PS1 era, titles like Crow Country, Fear the Spotlight, and Eclipsium that all look and feel amazing and The Tartarus Key does a similarly great job with it. Despite loving the overall aesthetic, I did feel like the way textures moved around in cutscenes with the swaying camera was a bit nauseating, but you can turn this along with a bevy of other old school effects off to fine tune the display to fit your preferences. Personally I just ended up turning everything off but the CRT filter and I thought that really smoothed out the entire experience.
The puzzles here were really exceptional across the board, aside from the meat locker block pushing puzzle that was a real pain to get through. They required a satisfying bit of creative thinking without feeling cheap and time consuming. I thought this was going to be structured more like a survival horror game, but it’s really just a series of escape rooms that you’re placed in with some spooky atmosphere to help set the tone. It all works together to create a very unique experience that’s worth playing through. On top of what you’d expect from that kind of gameplay, they also sprinkle in a good amount of suspense by adding some real stakes to finding these solutions on your first try. You’ll be introduced to several characters throughout your playthrough, most of which will just straight up die if you’re not flawless in execution. And if they do end up beefing it, you won’t get a game over and the game will react accordingly. For a game that really would have been fine omitting this extra layer of gameplay, it’s very cool to see the devs put in the leg work here to go the extra mile. And if that death system scares you off, you always have the option of reloading a previous save if you want to make it through the whole game with your full party alive.
There were just a few things here that I felt were lacking a bit, namely my issues with some of the audio. This game would really benefit from VO to take the writing and characters to the next level. Even adding some Animal Crossing-esque mumbling would have been great to see. Hell, even just adding in some SFX for when dialogue is flying across the screen would have been nice. Instead we get some scenes that you’ll play through in complete silence and it doesn’t feel suspenseful, just really awkward.
Aside from that, the narrative didn’t really land on it’s feet for me personally. They threw a lot at the wall during the playthrough, which was all really compelling, but I felt like the true ending needed to be a bit stronger or there needed to be a few more emails scattered about that did a better job of explaining the history of these trials and their direct ties to the occult.
I picked up The Tartarus Key on a whim and was really impressed by what these devs had to share, especially after seeing that this was this first foray into the genre. I’m excited to see what Vertical Reach puts out next.
REANIMAL
Release Date: Feb 13, 2026
Genre: Horror, Stealth, Platformer
Platforms: PC, PS, Xbox, Switch
Check out the full review!
Crisol: Theater of Idols
Release Date: Feb 10, 2026
Genre: Survival Horror
Platforms: PC, PS, Xbox
Check out the full review!
Dropped
Beacon Patrol
Release Date: Sep 17, 2025
Genre: Puzzle
Platforms: PC
Exactly what it sells itself as: a video game adaptation of an existing board game. Not much to say about this one other than it’s pretty boring, even with the expansion packs that they’ve included. The presentation is pleasant at least.
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
Release Date: Jan 18, 2019
Genre: Flight Simulator
Platform: PC, PS, Xbox, Switch
A great game for plane perverts and a surprisingly fun time even if you’re not.
When the game isn’t just showing you news reports or droning on about made up political affairs, the narrative was actually pretty compelling and became a big driving force behind my playthrough. While I didn’t love the combat, it was simple enough that it became a pretty zen experience in some situations. On top of all that, I did enjoy saving up money to buy new planes and parts to see how they would effect the gameplay, and more often than not they felt pretty substantial.
Even on easy mode though, this game got really frustrating around the halfway point. Objectives start to can really strict and you could easily spend 20 minutes trying to complete a task or protect a base just to fail and get set right back to the start of the mission. After my 3rd attempt trying to protect HedgeStone, I just gave up and uninstalled it.
While I couldn’t see this one through to the end, it did make me pretty hopeful about the sequel that’s supposedly coming out this year. If they’re really able to kill it with the narrative and make the game a bit more player friendly, I could definitely see myself picking it up to give this franchise another go.
Relooted
Release Date: Feb 10, 2026
Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Platform: PC, Xbox
We need more great heist games in the world and while I think Relooted does a lot of things right, I feel like there are just a few too many things holding it back for me to want to see it all the way to the end.
Right off the bat, the themes, characters, and music here all feel really unique and refreshing. It’s cool to see how the devs translated a very real world problem into a game that let’s you take action against it. The fact that you’re reclaiming real African artifacts and gaining insights into their cultural significant really helps drive this home as well.
The parkour mechanics here are simple but feel really satisfying to pull off. The boost mechanic is a nice way of keeping the action engaging and make the whole experience feel less like an autoscroller.
The presentation here is pretty solid, but I can’t not think of Knack whenever I see the character models doing their thing. Cutscenes are presented well, but the game feels really budget whenever you’re placed into conversations in the 2D sections.
The whole “plan your heist” aspect of this game was a compelling idea, but in practice it just kind of slows down the gameplay in an unfun way. Operating your drone is kind of pain if you actually want to utilize it to plan out your escape route and there’s only so many tables I can push around before it starts to feel like a chore.
Relooted is a game with a lot of really interesting ideas, I just think that the execution could have been a bit better by focusing more on the flow state gameplay and less on everything else that really only served to deter from its strengths.
Aerial_Knight’s DropShot
Release Date: Feb 17, 2026
Genre: FPS
Platform: PC, PS, Xbox
Dropshot is a game with a simple and straight forward premise that had a lot of potential to be fun, but it feels so underbaked in just about every way.
The biggest sin in this game is having your base speed be so slow. And I mean really slow. Like, so slow and unfun that you’ll think something is broken or that you’re missing some sort of additional button press or mechanic, but that’s just the way it is.
Every level (at least the first 15) feels exactly the same, even the special “levels” at the end of each chapter. Shooting enemies isn’t fun. Flying through the air isn’t fun. I just don’t get how someone played this through and thought it was in a good enough state to ship.
Dice A Million
Release Date: Feb 25, 2026
Genre: Deck Builder, Rougelike
Platform: PC
I’m a sucker for a great deck building roguelike, but I really couldn’t find my groove with this one. I got a few cool synergies to work, but nothing that paid out massively. Some of the later bosses are really demanding and can kill your entire run if you happen to build in a way plays right into their debuffs, even more so than Balatro.
Love the music and the overall aesthetic, but I got too frustrated to see this one to the end.
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