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Static Spotlight

The Best Game I Played this Month

Cronos: The New Dawn

GOOD

• Fun new mechanics sprinkled throughout that kept things feeling fresh; the mag boots were cool to jump around with and the electro gun puzzles were just engaging enough to be a fun detour from the usual combat encounters
• Tons of optional content to search for, most of which is really worth going out of your way to find
• Kitty cat collection
• Solid upgrade system
• Weighty combat felt great to engage with
• Traveler suit designs are rad

MIXED

• While the story can be pretty convoluted, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t engaged with it the whole way through
• Inventory management can be a huge pain, even with it fully upgraded. Does harken back to the classics in the genre though and it did actively have me planning around what I did and didn’t need to be carrying around at any given point
• Enemies kind of hovered around being a bit too generic for my taste, but they were serviceable enough and there was a solid amount of variety
• A lot of cheap feeling jump scares scattered throughout, but I’d say most of the tension comes from the stellar environment design and overall direction

BAD

• Some cutscenes drag on for way too long
• The waypoint system is pretty lacking and rarely useful for actually pointing you in the direction you should be going

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Completed

Dungeon Clawler

A very solid roguelike with a super satisfying claw machine mechanics that I found really gripping (zing).

While there are a ton of playable characters and experimenting with their different builds was fun, I did find myself leaning towards specific playstyles regardless of what made the most sense to prioritize. Most of my experimenting resulted in failed runs, which was a bit disheartening with some characters, especially when I felt I had built them exactly the way the game was telling me to.

After I unlocked Hare L. Quinn as a playable character, I just started steamrolling runs because her starting ability is just too good. After I cleared a few debt levels and defeated the secret boss, I decided to call it quits there.

Not super motivated to go for the highest debt level or clear the game with all of the characters, but Dungeon Clawler is definitely a game I’ll keep installed on my Steam Deck just in case I get a hankering to do a run.

I also loved the look they chose for the cinematics and the soundtrack was really bopping.

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Dyping Escape

This would have blown my mind if it had dropped a decade ago, but I’ve seen too many games that use the meta style of checking through computer files for this to make a real impact.

They dive into some pretty involved meta stuff once you get through the played “turn the volume down” and “adjust the brightness” puzzle solutions, which made this a bit more enjoyable, but overall it felt a bit dated.

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Forbidden Solitaire

This game has great vibes, that’s for sure. They really nailed the feeling of a ’90s game in just about every way.

I was surprised by how fun the actual Solitaire gameplay is. While there is still a fair amount of luck in play that could potentially end your round regardless of what your moves are, the joker abilities and upgrades you pick up during your playthrough makes this a much more interesting time.

And while the story is pretty goofy, the performances and production value of the FMV scenes are really impressive.

Definitely worth checking out.

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MOTORSLICE

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Saros

GOOD

• Great controller haptics
• Interesting biomes that are very varied
• Solid enemy variety
• Fun parry mechanic that feels great to use once you get the timing down
• General movement and gunplay feels responsive and satisfying

MIXED

• Bosses are a mixed bag. Some fights are well-designed but drag on too long or become incredibly scripted, leading to the same series of moves executed identically every time. Other major bosses feel like rejected minibosses that developers simply increased the health bar for to create the illusion of an interesting challenge
• Interesting premise, but the story and pacing are all over the place
• Pretty shoddy writing across the board. I do like the audio logs that you pick up throughout the campaign, but they all just boil down to crazed cult delusions

BAD

• Every run feels the same. I always picked up weapons with the generator trait so I could spam my super moves as much as possible and that was all I needed to make each attempt a cakewalk.
• Lackluster skill tree filled with very incremental upgrades
• The facial animations really do the acting in this game a disservice
• Major upgrades are tied to incredibly lackluster moments
• Couldn’t have cared less about the crew you’re stuck with. All of their optional dialogue felt very stilted and robotic
• Negative artifact effects that are poor and unfun, making them never worth picking up. The increased kickback on some of these guns creates a truly nauseating experience, increased dash times make avoiding some enemy attacks almost impossible, and enabling fall damage forces you into a cautious play style that just isn’t fun to engage with.
• Disappointing epilogue mission that just has you revisiting places you’ve been a dozen times before and fighting the same final boss with almost no changes

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Mixtape

Mixtape does a great job of transporting you to a time and place through interactive means that a movie couldn’t accomplish. 

It definitely has a fair amount of pacing and tonal hiccups throughout and not all of the minigames are great. However, the ones that hit really hit hard and the devs do such a great job of bottling small-town feels and adolescent nostalgia into a very tight experience.

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Call of the Elder Gods

This whole game feels like you’re going through a dark ride at a theme park. All of the environments are so vibrant and stylized, making the journey through each area feel really unique.

Puzzles here were kind of a mixed bag across the board. The best ones always revolved around taking in a ton of information and figuring out each element of the solution one piece at a time until reaching a satisfying conclusion. Sadly there were really only a few of these and the rest of the game is padded out with much simpler brainteasers or obstacles so straightforward that they feel more like busy work than anything else. I was also really let down by the player swapping mechanic they introduced halfway through the game. It seemed like a great opportunity to include some really cool puzzles, but they didn’t push it nearly far enough.

The narrative really goes off the rails in the back half of this game, but I can’t say that I wasn’t compelled by the story they chose to tell. Lovecraftian horrors, time travel, Nazi conspiracies, secret cults, dinosaurs, mind transfers, and brainwashing are a lot to cram into a five and a half hour experience, but overall I think they do a totally serviceable job keeping things cohesive enough to follow the major plot points.

Glad to see Out of the Blue Games is still around and pumping out quality puzzle games like this one. Looking forward to seeing what they tackle next.

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Phonopolis

Fantastic art styles and puzzles that are not only extremely creative but also fun to solve are Amanita Designs biggest strengths and I’m glad to see that they delivered on those yet again with Phonopolis. I was constantly blown away by the out-of-the-box thinking required to design puzzles that are this intricate and interactive. While the narrative didn’t blow me away, I appreciated that it wasn’t just a series of separated puzzles, unlike some of their previous titles. It was a nice Framework for them to play in and I was constantly charmed by the world they built here.

Despite my overall enjoyment, I was pretty disappointed with the ending. My least favorite puzzles in the whole game were the ones where you had to move pipe pieces around to redirect shapes and of course it was the most reused type. When the final puzzles of the game ended up being yet another series of these pipe puzzles, it ended what was otherwise a great experience on a pretty sour note.

I also can’t forgive the narrator pronouncing Felix as “Fell-ix” the entire game.

I remember playing Machinarium around the time of its launch nearly 17 years ago and it’s great to see that Amanita Design is not only still around but thriving in the indie space by consistently crafting unique experiences such as Phonopolis. I’ll always be a fan of this studio and I can’t wait to see what they put out next.

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Budgie’s Bug Shop

Super simple, but still has the satisfying upgrade and gameplay loop that you would want out of an incremental clicker. Would have loved to have a bit more of a narrative going on, but the ending was a pretty cute send off to an otherwise very straightforward experience.

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007 First Light

GOOD

• Really stellar level design; the Office Building was a big highlight personally, but every location felt really robust and there was a ton of diversity
• One of the most robust and satisfying melee combat systems I’ve seen in the genre; was always really satisfying fight a big group of guys
• Fun vehicle sequences
• Gadget customization was fun to play around with. Figuring out which hidden paths you could unlock with the arsenal you brought into the field was always fun to discover and made them feel more replayable
• Tons of VR missions and difficult challenges to tackle if you want more out of the experience after finishing the campaign
• Great VO and motion capture performances across the board
• A surprisingly competent narrative that was a lot of fun to see play out across my 13+ hour journey

MIXED

• While there are free-form areas that allow you to tackle obstacles a few different ways, they felt very Hitman-lite, never really reaching the highs of IO Interactive’s previous series. The sequences in the later areas are much more fun and creative with what you can do compared to the early game missions, but I was a bit let down with these segments overall.

BAD

• Graphics issues and crashes were pretty persistent across my whole playthorugh
• I really didn’t love the “Batman Arkham City Mr. Freeze-esque” boss fights that they jammed in here that required you to kite an enemy around so you could hit them with a environmental attack
• Some very slow sections that I would dread having to play through again if I decided to replay the campaign

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Scale the Depths

A unique experience with the controlled fishing mechanics plus + Cooking Mama style scaling minigames, but one that I felt was a little lacking. Upgrades were super straight forward and, while it was cool to see the different blade upgrades in each location, I wish there were some crazier power ups they played around with. I did like finding my way to the boss fish of every area to see what kind of gimmick they had for defending themselves and cutting these monstrous creatures up afterwards was always satisfying to work through. I was hoping for a big finish, but the game ends pretty abruptly and on a pretty lame note. 

There are definitely better incremental games out there, but I had a solid enough time in the 3 hours it took me to roll credits.

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Lost and Found Co.

If you want to feel good playing a video game, than I can’t recommend this game more. Easily the best search-and-find game I’ve every played, and this is coming from someone who’s never really found any joy in the genre before. The level of artistry on display is here is insane and the devs put so much effort into making this game feel as charming and vibrant as possible.

Despite a pretty generous hint system, I did find myself wishing there was an option to straight up highlight a specific area near where an item was hidden. I found myself stuck with 1 or 2 items left in the harder optional levels that I just could not find, mostly due to hints that didn’t help narrow down their locations at all. I ended up using a guide for these rather than waste another 30 minutes painstakingly going through every area and room in a level hoping I hadn’t just glanced over them.

And then aside from a few tracks that became grating to hear over and over in certain levels and a handful of translation errors, there’s really nothing negative I can say about Lost and Found Co. It all culminated in a finale that felt rewarding for completing all of the optional content. Truly a delightful experience that will be hard for other releases this year to top.

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Dropped

Die in the Dungeon

I didn’t find the overall gameplay loop here to be particularly fun or interesting. I’ve played a ton of deck builder roguelikes with this same “die instead of cards” mechanic and I feel it’s been done better in titles like Dicey Dungeons and Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles. The moment-to-moment gameplay felt too simple while the text, item descriptions, and icons thrown in your face made everything feel complicated and overwhelming.

The music, pixel art, and animations are all top notch, but they weren’t enough to motivate me to keep playing.

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Neverness to Everness

Seems like a very generic gacha game in every way.

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TerraTech Legion

Seems fine enough, but I’m pretty burned out on the horde survior genre and the crafting mechanics aren’t enough of a hook to keep me going.

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Black Jackets

The presentation is great and the roguelike take on Blackjack was interesting, but the runs are too random for my taste. You can get royally screwed if your opponent pulls out some BS cards or just gets insanely lucky.

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Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery

The fact that there are no mouse controls for this game is unbelievably dumb. Navigation would be so much easier if I could just click on what I wanted to do. I read in a discussion forum that it was important to the dev that the game could easily be played with one hand. I don’t know how just making everything accessible via the mouse wouldn’t be the easiest path to achieve this. I could somewhat understand this if there were some console ports available at launch, but since it’s only on PC right now, I really don’t get it.

This significantly hampered my enjoyment, especially considering the amount of time you spend navigating menus in this game. I might jump back into this if they push an update that remedies this issue, but I stopped playing before I even left the office to save myself from the frustrations.