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Static Spotlight

The Best Game I Played this Month

The Mermaid Mask

The quality of this game is truly outstanding. The presentation is fantastic and has a unique style, matching Psychonauts’ levels of character and charm, which is about the highest compliment I can give.

90% of the game involves simply presenting tons of evidence and profiles to every suspect, which can get a bit tiresome after a while in a single session. However, the hint system helps mitigate some of the tedium and the voice acting and writing are so good that most conversations are still worth seeing even if they don’t ultimately help you make headway in the case.

The whole game culminates in the most satisfying conclusion SFB Games has ever crafted. Considering how hard it is for these mystery games to properly stick the landing, The Mermaid Mask is a true testament to their mastery of the genre.

It’s very cool to see how far this series and studio have come since I played the original Detective Grimoire game on a web browser back when I was in middle school. Between this series and the fantastic Crow Country they released two years ago, it’s clear that SFB crushes any project they set their mind to and I’m excited to see what’s next for the studio.

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Completed

Rogue Loops

It adds its own unique spin to the genre with the loop mechanic where you add various obstacles to rooms to offset gathering upgrades and abilities, but it lacks the polish to really make it stand out.

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Unhinged

The controls and execution are interesting, but the gameplay and story fall incredibly flat. There was also a noticeable delay between my phone and the TV, which caused some dialogue lines to overlap and made the motion controls imprecise.

It’s sad to see Night School Studio, which has solid games like Oxenfree and Afterparty in its catalog, become another workhorse for Netflix. Hopefully they get the chance to put together another full length game sooner rather than later.

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Signalis

It was about this time last year that I really dove into the indie horror genre and gained a greater appreciation of it. I’d even go as far as to say that it’s become one of my favorite types of gaming experiences based on what I’m looking for in games these days. Great visuals and style, haunting imagery and themes, unforgiving gameplay, all wrapped up in a narrative that sticks with me after I’ve rolled credits. MOLE, Fear the Spotlight, Crow Country, ROUTINE, Eclipsium, and The Tartarus Key are just a few of the horror titles in this category that I really enjoyed playing through. Given the overwhelmingly positive reception, I thought this was going to be an absolute slam dunk. Unfortunately I walked away from this one feeling a bit low on it. Its presentation and overall style are fantastic, but the gameplay itself felt a bit lacking in numerous ways.

GOOD

• Fantastic style
• Fascinating imagery throughout and hypnotic sound design

MIXED

• Interesting narrative, but I feel like the abstract, artsy cutscenes and tons of notes that you had to read to make sense of any of it made it pretty hard to follow most of the time
• Puzzles were pretty ok with some standouts that usually revolved around the radio mechanic, but most of the gameplay revolved solely around pick up item A to get item B to unlock a door that led to Item C and so on and so forth, which didn’t really feel all that intersting to play through.

BAD

• I really don’t mind limited inventory slots in these kinds of games, but Signalis makes it a problem with how the game is designed. You have to pick up so many different key items to progress through the game and it’s really obnoxious that they only give you 6 slots. Later in the game, one of those really needs to dedicated to having a flashlight and then you need at least one slot for a weapon and another for ammo, leaving you with really only 3 useable slots, which means that you’ll be running back and forth to your storage way more times than you want to. Thank god I decided to toggle the expanded inventory option on in the last area of the game, because exploring would have been a real nightmare without it.
• No useable maps in the later areas of the games really makes navigating a lot more of a hassle than it needed to be
• Sometimes when I entered a room, I would walk straight into an enemy and take damage. Very dumb.

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Still Wakes the Deep

A great premise, spooky setting, impressive graphics, and solid performances by the cast are unfortunately squandered on a game that’s fixated on a non-stop journey of menial tasks and bland platforming. Also, the “hide from the monster” sections were really bad.

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Parking Garage Rally Circuit

Solid arcade racing game. I really like the 4 different visual styles you can choose form, but I just ended up on the most modern looking one because it made the courses way more readable. The physics system can feel a bit inconsistent and punishing at times, but hitting a good series of drifts in a row always felt pretty satisfying.

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Dogpile

A great puzzle game that smartly combines Suika Game with roguelike deck builder elements to create a wholly unique experience that is mechanically denser than it might seem at first glance. It was really fun working my way through each modified deck, as they always pushed me to try new strategies and builds that would inevitably break the game in super satisfying ways. With great presentation and art style to boot, Dogpile is an easy recommendation for anyone wanting to sink a few hours into a worthwhile experience.

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Smash Hit Museum

Nice presentation and satisfying physics at play here, but the back 45 minutes of this game is a total slog and the ending is one of the flattest I’ve ever seen in the genre.

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The Incident at Galley House

The Incident at Galley House started strong, got even stronger near the midpoint, but then slowly became less interesting as it started to become clear what they were going for with the narrative.

It wasn’t as much of a rabbit hole as The Roottrees are Dead (for better or worse), but overall I preferred this experience; it felt much more manageable while still offering plenty of satisfying revelations to discover through your own deduction skills.

Despite some pretty sizeable plot holes (If Reya is aware of everything that happened and who everyone is, then how did she survive?), rather wishy-washy rules governing the curse, and a pretty lackluster ending, the moment-to-moment puzzle solving was very unique and very satisfying to work through all the way to the end.

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Denshattack!

GOOD

• Dope soundtrack
• Super fun gameplay filled with a ton of different mechanics
• Fun levels with over the top set pieces

MIXED

• Tons of different trains to choose from, all with their own unique ups and downs, but I found most of them pretty unremarkable

BAD

• Story was pretty meh the whole way through
• Huge cast of very unremarkable characters

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Dropped

Hell Clock

I can definitely see the appeal for people who are fans of Diablo and other ARPGs, but this one just really doesn’t do anything for me. Working through floors just kind of feels like a chore after awhile and I didn’t find any of the upgrades particularly interesting.

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Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Looks surprisingly good on the PS5 Pro, but I’m just not invested enough in the World of Pandora to sink anymore time into this one, especially with the giant spoonful of Ubisoft-isims that they cram down your throat in the opening act of the game.

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LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

While I’m sure kids who are fans of Batman will get a real kick out of this game, it personally doesn’t do a whole lot for me. The whole thing just feels like baby’s first Arkham game. That’s great for introducing a younger generation to that series’ strengths, but it’s not something I’m interested in sinking any more time into.

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The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

It’s hard to even fathom what the original vision for this game was and how anybody thought that it would be a worthwhile endeavor to invest time and resources into. Suffice it to say this game is really bad and it deserves all of the negative reception it received.

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