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Static Spotlight

The Best Game I Played this Month

Resident Evil Requiem

Check out the full review!

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Completed

Berry Bury Berry

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Berry Bury Berry is the full package when it comes to getting what you want out of an incremental game:

• A satisfying gameplay loop made more fun by the upgrades you pick up each loop
• A compelling narrative that gets more interesting the deeper you go
• Optional puzzles that you try to piece together as you’re going about your regular gameplay
• Multiple endings that range from satisfying to silly
• Tons of achievements to go for that will test your mastery of the game

Overall a solid time that you can knockout in a single sitting or two. Worth checking out, especially if you’re a fan of the genre.

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Venba

Short and sweet, Venba is a neat little game that tackles throughout its short runtime but executes it all very well through clever puzzles and solid writing.

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Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

After completing Resident Evil 9, I got a real hankering to go back to 7 since I’ve only experienced it through let’s plays years ago. While there’s a lot of good that came out of the team’s first foray into first person survival horror, there were just as many rough edges that needed smoothing out.

I know it’s been discussed to death, but Ethan Winters is just a crummy protagonist. It’s really jarring, especially in the beginning of the game, when the craziest shit imaginable is happening in front of him and he doesn’t properly react to it at all. I’m assuming the developers were trying to find the proper levels for player immersion, but it just feels so off when he just stands there silently as his girlfriend gets dragged away by some psycho or a goo mutant pops out of the wall to attack him for the first time. And when you get through a tough encounter, he always delivers the most generic voice lines ever. I know I’m spoiled by Leon having the best one liners in the entire genre, but this dude just doesn’t have the sauce.

I was really happy with Grace’s combat sections in RE9 and having that feeling fresh in my mind kind of made RE7’s combat look and feel like garbage comparatively. It just feels really clunky here. Hitting shots doesn’t feel super great, the enemy variety is lacking, and I was constantly running into issues with wonky boss behaviors that would have them getting stuck in walls and awkwardly clipping through textures.

This game has some of my favorite sequences in the entire franchise. I hold the Jack boss fight in the garage in really high regard and I always use it as a reference for what I wish we got more out of in Resident Evil. You can treat it like a totally standard encounter by filling him with bullets until he grabs the keys from his workbench and starts driving his car around to try to kill you. Pop some more ammo into him and the fight finishes in a pretty satisfying way. But then as you’re leaving you think, “Well, what would happen if I picked up those keys before him?”. If you reload your save to try it out you’re rewarded with, not only a completely new way for the fight to unfold, but with a strategy that ends up saving you a ton of resources and ammunition. It was disappointing not only to see fewer fights like this in the rest of the game but also that they didn’t try to build on this mechanic in Village or Requiem.

I also really loved the escape room sequence that Lucas traps you in. The puzzles are fun to solve, especially since they add another dimension by requiring you to watch the “Happy Birthday” VHS beforehand to figure out how to solve them without blowing yourself up.

There was also a big emphasis on hiding resources out of plain sight so that you really had to search high and low for them which I really liked.

Overall this felt like an “everything and the kitchen sink” kind of take on the formula, but it was desperately what this franchise needed after the mess that was Resident Evil 6. There was a lot of good and a fair amount of bad, but I think the highs of this game are some of the best in the entire series and it definitely paved the way for the more refined sequels that followed.

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Poker Night at the Inventory

I played the original Poker Night at the Inventory forever ago and wanted to support the latest project from Skunkape Games. Really hope these guys get to do more remasters, or better yet, a brand new Sam & Max series built from the ground up.

Love Sam and Strong Bad and I don’t have any real feelings about Heavy, but I absolutely loathe Tycho. Of course, in every game I played he was the last one standing so I got to hear his crappy early 2000’s edgy quips non-stop until the tournament ended.

Seems like there’s a fun drip-feed of decks and tables to unlock, but I already feel like I’ve had my fill of this one.

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Pokémon Pokopia

Check out the full review!

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Scritchy Scratchy

It’s a pretty solid incremental game with a good enough base. I just didn’t find the prestige abilities to be all that interesting, and runs started to feel repetitive, especially near the end where everything is automated and you barely interact with the game’s core scratching mechanic. I didn’t even look at the last few lotto cards in the final catalogue because there really wasn’t any point.

The narrative was fun, albeit a bit thin, and the ending sequence was a cool way of wrapping up the entire experience satisfyingly. 

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Easy Delivery Co.

A combination of zen gameplay and stress inducing mechanics made playing through Easy Delivery Co a very unique and memorable experience that I’ll look back on fondly.

I’m a real sucker for a PS1 aesthetic and this one absolutely crushes that old-school vibe. Each area is designed really well and the music that plays on the radio does a great job of cementing the retro, laid-back vibes.

As someone who’s innately terrible with directions, I was worried that the game’s lack of GPS and waypoints would be the end of me, but after playing through the entire game I think it really added to the experience. After a few runs, I had a good idea of which roads to take to get where I needed to go without checking my map. After you really get a feel for the areas, you’ll also start experimenting with shortcuts to cut down on your travel time. It’s pretty easy to destroy your car or drop your cargo if you get too ambitious, but you’ll discover some safe paths that really shave off a ton of time from your trips, which was always satisfying to figure out.

On top of the main quest objectives, there are also optional tasks along with secrets and collectibles to pursue, making this a worthwhile experience that I’d recommend to anyone sold on the aesthetics alone.

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s.p.l.i.t

A short game that the dev managed to jam pack with a tremendous amount of stress and tension.

I really liked how they didn’t hold your hand when it came to navigating the terminal. As someone with very little coding experience, as I a bit overwhelmed at first. Once I wrapped my head around the logic and what my objectives were though, it wasn’t too difficult to steadily make progress.

The very last scene seemed like a weird conclusion, but I was really impressed by the quality of the voice acting and writing regardless.

I didn’t realize that this was the Buckshot Roulette dev until I closed out of the game and checked the store page again. Mike Klubnika is definitely a very talented dude and I’ll be eagerly awaiting what he manages to put together next.

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This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker

One of the more subpar incremental games that I’ve played through to the end.

While it was nice to see the objectives change in pretty meaningful ways as you make you’re way through the campaign, the gameplay just isn’t interesting enough to keep things feeling fun and fresh. The prestige upgrades are super boring and they only slightly change up the way you tackle runs after subsequent prestiges.

The game starts off with a very jarring jump straight into gameplay and ends very abruptly with with little fan fare. As soon as you beat the final boss, there aren’t any in game challenges or achievements to go after, so there’s really zero incentive to keep playing.

Really didn’t get a whole lot out of this one, unfortunately.

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Crawling Angels

Woof, talk about a wild ride. They tackle some REALLY heavy stuff here under the guise of a game akin to the interactive buddy flash game. I feel like it was definitely an experience worth playing through, but be ready to deal with A LOT of sensitive subjects if you decide to take the plunge.

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Daemonologie

I didn’t really get anything substantial out of this one, unfortunately. Aside from the handful of cutscenes, which look absolutely fantastic, there’s very little substance here. You walk around aimlessly talking to or torturing each of the six townsfolks for about 20 minutes before you’re prompted to choose which one is the witch. The WarioWare-esque minigames are especially bland and repeat pretty often.

I guess the whole point of this game is to illustrate how pointless and directionless the Witch Trials were since I don’t believe there’s ever actually a correct answer to deduce. However, that doesn’t make for a good game, just a semi-interesting think piece.

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Dropped

Horripilant

Horripilant is a mediocre incremental clicker with a cool aesthetic and little else going for it.

The gathering mechanics here are as barebones as you can get and has really uninteresting upgrades. They don’t even populate the screen with minions as you hire them to do the dirty work for you, leading to a feeling that you’re really not making any meaningful progress.

The battles are dreadfully dull even for a game meant to be played on the side while doing other things. The boons you collect after clearing each floor are equally drab. Have fun adding 0.01% to your attack speed and seeing if you can spot a meaningful gameplay difference.

The prestige system is introduced way too early, meaning you’ll restart your progress as early as 20 minutes into your first run. This sets the precedent for the player to reset their run after clearing 5 new floors or so, which means dealing with the pitifully low resource capacity over and over again when you start back at level 1.

The classic point-and-click adventure game aspects seemed promising at first, but there’s really nothing more to it than using an item you just picked up to interact with a different part of the hub world to unlock a new mechanic or, in some cases, nothing at all.

Judging by the progression bar, there are easily 100+ floors they expect you to clear. I reached a point mid-run where I just wasn’t having any fun and just forced quit to my desktop.

I’ve played many interesting idle games in the past few months and unfortunately this isn’t one of them.

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Season: A Letter to the Future

Tried to give this one an earnest shot, but Season just reeks of pretentiousness. I don’t think I’ve ever rolled my eyes more in the opening moments of a game. Couldn’t even make it to my bike before realizing I had already had enough.

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YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES,” RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM!

It plays exactly as advertised, which is kind of the problem. The gimmick of each mini game gets stale very quickly the challenge of the later levels just aren’t very satisfying to tackle.

Outside of the games, the gacha and title collection systems seem beyond pointless and the music and UI are very poorly designed.

If you really want to give this a shot, wait until it’s discounted to $2 because it’s definitely not worth the $10 they’re charging at full price.