Bloomtown: A Different Story – 74 minutes completed demo. This one is a pretty cool narrative game with excellent graphics, music inspired by the newer Persona games, and also gameplay inspired by Persona. In it you play a girl who with her brother go to stay with their grandpa. There is some weird demon stuff going on, but you kind of live around the rural town, accomplish quests and eventually get to some RPG mechanic with Persona fighting where you try to attack an enemy weakness to get bonuses. This one was a little clunky mainly in music, but everything was top notch. I liked the story, the characters seemed alright, and it did feel like I was living the small-town life. A very decent demo for sure. 8/10
Boyhood's End – 35 minutes. This is a weird blend between visual novel, RPGMaker I think and clicking on a UI for a laptop interface. This one is about a guy who is a survivor of some tragedy. He ends up in a school with a human score of -2000 I believe and is bullied because of it. Stuff happens and he tries to keep going by doing hacking, but circumstances change. Frankly it was pretty depressing and it was very annoying jumping back to the laptop GUI for every message. Overall I got a bad end, and I’m okay only getting this one from a bundle. It had interesting ideas but I wasn’t jiving much with characters. 6/10
Closer the Distance – 43 minutes. This one is a weird kind of Sims like game where you play as a girl who talks to her sister. A certain event happens to the sister and the sister helps guide her after the tragedy. It’s a very strange, simple looking game about coping with things and likely moving on. The main character isn’t my favorite, but she’s OK enough. The UI is really janky feeling for second stories in houses and twirling the camera around and selecting some things. I feel this has potential, but it feels maybe a bit too ambitious and clunky cause of that result. The voice acting is really good. 6/10
Fading Skies – 108 minutes. This one is an 3D action-adventure exploration game where you play a girl who is exploring this unknown land and you get to solve a lot of environmental puzzles, platform, get some story, have a boss fight now and then, and have these large environments where you learn new abilities. This feels like a decent homage to the newer Legend of Zelda games and was a decent bit of fun. The graphics were nice, the sense of scalability and height was excellent, and all the abilities you get help. I think the only one I had problems with was the last one, which was a little harder to control. This would be an excellent bundle and is one to get cheaper as well. It will have a Kickstarter some point to at this
Kickstarter link. 8/10
Metal Slug Tactics - 39 minutes. This is a tactics game using Metal Slug characters and graphics. The actual gameplay is challenging as you have follow up attacks if a character is in line and could do it once a turn. Weapons are mainly guns. You have abilities that charge over time and there are certain tasks to complete missions. It’s pretty good overall although it feels mobile like with smaller maps and a rogue type system for missions. It’s worth a try although I’m not sure It’s a great turn-based strategy game. 7/10
Pinball Storm: Lokanta – 16 minutes. This one is a Vampire Survivors like game with you shooting balls out that bounce around like pinballs. They bounce not only off of enemies and terrain, but also your character. You can have abilities activate when certain things happen. The graphics and sounds are just OK. This feels more gimmicky than fun, but I can see it being fun at the lower end of a bundle. 6/10
The Rise – 3 minutes. This is a somewhat OK controlling the Series X controller precision platformer with timers to get carrots for a rabbit and a daughter or something. It has okay music and graphics, and I couldn’t get the first carrot. It was decent enough, but didn’t feel as good as something like Celeste or Super Meat Boy. 5.5/10
Rubato – 22 minutes. A very floaty frog 2D platformer where you collect the pieces of a planet (that look like the Sega Saturn logo I believe). The controls are a bit weird physics wise for moving things, your tongue, the way boxes move, etc.… It had a really quirky story about the universe being destroyed because of a pool game. I enjoyed it enough other than some really quirky annoying music and surprisingly floaty jumping and movement. 6/10
Sacre Bleu – 10 minutes. A 2D action platformer where you play a musketeer who has been framed and is trying to save the other musketeers from the Bastille. It looks pretty good and has decent voice acting. The combat is decent and a quirky way to get around is to shoot your gun down to get velocity going the opposite direction. This is a very buggy demo though with one crash and one me getting stuck in the walls. I gave it up at this point, but it was going to be fun. With the bugs I’ll leave this as a 6/10.
Seafrog – 20 minutes. This one is a strange 2D platformer where you hoverboard around and do tricks, fix leaking pipes, collect fuel and there is even a trick performance for items (I got stopped here). Overall, the graphics are good, the controls pretty solid on the Series X controller and the levels are like mini open worlds. Overall, very solid and well worth trying and possibly getting in a bundle later. 7.5/10
Shell Runner – 7 minutes. This one is a pretty average feeling do a mission looter shooter with Diablo like inventory system (feels awful here). This looks alright and plays okay with the mouse and keyboard (move with keyboard and shoot with mouse). Nothing too special and honestly the enemies feel a bit spongy already just playing one mission. 5.5/10
Slug Gear – 11 minutes completed demo. This one is an action packed 2D platforming Metroidvania with some girl and her hammer. It looks OK enough and the movement is a bit floaty. The series X controller works well and the boss fight was alright. Everything is not too exciting, though not really bad either other than the weird trajectories coins go from defeated enemies. I would only get it bundled, but there is some potential here. 6/10
Sock It – 21 minutes completed demo. This is an okay unpolished pretty indie looking Punch Out clone. This one has a silly story, but it also was decently playable. The timing for dodges is a little tricky, but otherwise it controlled fine. This one wasn’t too bad and would be a fine cheaper game or a bundled game. 6.5/10
Sodaman – 14 minutes lost one run. This one is a run and gun Vampire Survivors like game. This game controlled pretty well with a mouse and keyboard. The graphics were decent enough and the gameplay as well. Nothing majorily special but I did like the gun mechanics. 6.5/10
Somnabuster – 6 minutes. This one is a 2D platformer where you collect stars and stars witches I believe. You have different movement techs to get around to the end of the level. The hitboxes are really wonky sometime and you will get hit even if not as close to some enemies’ movement. The music is good and the graphics have a hand drawn feel. Overall, it feels decent enough but needs some polish especially the hitboxes and a few of the weird at times jumping. 5.5/10
Stardust Demon – 15 minutes. This one is a 2D platformer Metroidvania similar to Cave Story. You play some dragon and shoot fireballs and move around. It sounds and looks fine and I was ready to give it a good recommend. A movement skill using a boost thing drove me to not finish the demo as the trajectory of it was hard to control and I reached an area where it needed a perfect angle to boost through lasers. They likely know it’s wonky to control as they put check points before every boost point. This was not well designed (I’m not sure why you can’t see the trajectory and hold the button till you got a good one). That leads me to not recommend it, but it was fun before that. 6.5/10
Steel Seed – Heck of a lot of jank in a 3D third person action game. This one looks really nice and has decent voice acting. It also has some really bad action battles (hard to dodge and a bit too flashy), some jank stealth, some first-person robot companion flying with awful shooting and it seems like big open areas but very linear similar to Remember Me. This one needs a lot of polish, but is pretty high quality. 6/10
SWORN – 19 minutes. This one is a very average Hades like action rogue lite except it deals with corrupted Arthurian stuff. This one is likely made for co-op with HP spongey enemies. The enemies attack very quick at times, which makes for hard dodging or quick activating of abilities. This is especially noticeable with the second big hammer guy. It looks and sounds OK enough, but I wasn’t feeling the gameplay much at all. 6/10
Victory Heat Rally – 12 minutes. Completed a few races and a trial. This one is an arcade racer with a strong emphasis on drifting. It should have default controls, but makes you set them up when you open the game (not a good idea). The graphics and sounds are quite good and it is fun to play. It is also pretty hard as some roads are pretty narrow. Overall I could see this one being a really decent one, and even though it’s not for me, it’s pretty high quality and on the verge of being very good. 7/10
Witching Stone – 15 minutes. Lost first run. This one is an interesting match 3 type game where you use your matches to cast spells. You at least start (not sure if able to get more) can select 5 items. Generally, spells cast 2 and 3 stones and have to be in order, but you can skip stones such as a red yellow yellow one being able to be cast with red, blue, yellow, and yellow. This one is pretty challenging and fun and is engaging with good music/graphics. Overall, it is a high-quality game that I’m not very good at currently. 7/10
Yars Rising – 15 minutes. This one was a kind of weird new take on Yars Revenge I believe it was called where you play some young girl who wants to hack and take down her company or something like that. She has cool friends and of course the old school game comes back every few screens with a hacking terminal where you have to complete a mini game to open doors or get a new power. This one is a Metroidvania, although it feels extremely linear. I thought it looked and controlled nicely though it felt like there was very little incentive to exploring, as it seems that gets you little bits to restore your health and I’m not sure what else. Not really my type of game, even developed by Way Forward, and feels like an Epic freebie in the future (like other Atari reboots). It’s way too generic with uninspired gameplay, but plays just OK enough to almost get a recommendation. 6.5/10
