The Disappearance of Pinball In 2007, Budapest-based Zen Studios released their first virtual pinball title. At the time, physical machines were growing increasingly difficult to find. Arcades were on the wane, and most remaining amusement ...
Read More »Ski Jumping Pro VR review
Video games have a multitude of positive attributes, but one of the medium’s best traits is the simulation of ability. In real life, I didn’t have the training, talent, or dedication to be anything more ...
Read More »Lost Ember review
Whether it’s the verdant jungles of Crysis, moss poking through the pebbled shores of Dear Ester’s Hebridean islands, or the snow-shrouded pines in The Long Dark, games routinely provide fascinating recreations of flora. With the ...
Read More »Black Future ’88 review
Time limits are quite common in games. But when Black Future ’88 provides you with a scant eighteen minutes to scale up its procedurally generated tower and exterminate its architect, you’ll undoubtedly feel an upwelling ...
Read More »The Princess, the Stray Cat, and Matters of the Heart 2 review
Romantic comedies are often like pillowy gobs of cotton candy. Syrupy sweet and sublimely insubstantial, they routinely leave you yearning for another taste. That comparison certainly held true for last year’s English-language release of The ...
Read More »Sparklite review
Indie developers have learned that layering roguelike elements into gameplay modeled after the classics can yield remarkable results. 20XX’s injection of procedurally generated stages separated the title from a crowd of more straightforward Mega Man ...
Read More »Gun Gun Pixies review
If someone ever created a softcore send up of Toy Story, it might be a lot like Gun Gun Pixies. Here, the banter between protagonists Buzz and Woody is recreated in the oft-uneasy pairing of ...
Read More »How to Raise a Wolf Girl review
Global folklore is filled with instances of humans endowed with animalistic features. From the Scottish selkies, who shifted between seal and person by shedding their skin, the sailor-ensnaring sirens of Greek mythology, to the swan ...
Read More »Xeno Crisis review
Bitmap Bureau’s Xeno Crisis is available on PC and Switch, but more remarkably, the title is also releasing on long-dormant consoles like the Genesis/Mega Drive, Dreamcast and Neo Geo. The unusual undertaking undoubtedly helped draw ...
Read More »Conception Plus: Maidens of the Twelve Stars review
Originally released as a PSP game in 2012, Conception tackled the kind of epistemological issues you might face on a college exam. From reflecting on inter-generational efforts that help advance civilization to exploring how relational ...
Read More »