DON’T DIE as you assemble a ridiculous arsenal of weapons and desperately hold out against massive hordes of creatures pulled from a variety of classic horror genres reminiscent of 80s and 90s Golden Age comics and B-movies in this stylish action-packed arcade roguelite.
The first two of which come from the same developer, Deep Shadows, a company that seem to have moved into hidden object and mobile titles, which is a shame, as they have real character and craft. If each game mentioned here had more time and money invested, they would be classics still talked of today.
As a fan of top-down racers, I thought it would be fun to do a mini-review of this, as I hadn’t heard of it before stumbling across it on the developer’s website, and it takes a slightly different approach to its gameplay when compared to games of a similar ilk, in that it’s much more of a fun, unfolding narrative than simply disjointed races.
Developer OutOfTheBit Ltd have delivered a strong slice of such action, in a wonderfully wordless experience that clocks in at around a couple of hours, making it a breezy game to replay – in a similar vein to Devwill Too on MD, a game I routinely return to each year, for its brevity and melancholy.
This review is for the Nintendo Switch version which we received from the developers for review purposes. I found the Switch version to have a few framerate issues but nothing that made the experience unplayable.
My time at Sandrock is a charming and engaging life simulator game that sets you down in the role of an aspiring builder tasked with rebuilding the bustling town of Sandrock. From the moment you step into the world, you're greeted by a vibrant and welcoming community filled with quirky characters, each with their own unique stories and personalities.
The game's art style is a delightful blend of cartoon style character graphics and watercolour-inspired hues, creating a visually captivating world that's both nostalgic and refreshing.
Hero Survival is a classic survival game featuring enemies such as ghosts, werewolves, and jack-o-lanterns, etc. The objective is to progress through the 10 levels of each stage and then defeat the boss at the end. However, each stage takes roughly 20 minutes or more and surviving for that long is not an easy feat!
The game is the work of Ginolabo, a solo developer, which results in the double-edged sword of it being an impressive feat for one person (self-taught, too), but having some areas of the game where collaboration might have polished it up a little.
You play writer Etienne Quist, a writer serving a 30-year sentence (geddit?) of writer’s block for a mysterious crime. Etienne hopes to reduce his sentence by taking on “bookwalking” gigs, i.e. diving into various books to retrieve powerful items. For example, you’ll head into a fantasy world to swipe an Immortality Potion or venture into a gloomy robotic take on Norse mythology to get your hands on Mjolnir.
With these fond memories swimming about my mind, it was quite exciting to discover that Microids would be releasing this new VR version of the game, and whilst it may have its flaws and visual differences to the original, this captures the sense of mindless blasting action that Operation Wolf provided to so many fans back in the ‘80s.
Now, more than 40 years later, Centipede has been reimagined in the new game Centipede Recharged, and it offers a fresh take on this classic title.
This cinematic 2D platformer is the debut release from indie developer Wishfully Studios, and if they’re setting out to make a name for themselves as an artistically minded team with a rock-solid grip on puzzle platformer mechanics then mission accomplished.
Set on an alien yet familiar world you play as young girl Lana, who we meet enjoying a bucolic life in her cosy fishing village. Naturally, as is the fate of practically every video game hero’s cosy home town, disaster soon strikes.
Robots emerge from the blue skies to entrap the locals and promptly speed off into the distance. Lana is the sole survivor and must rescue her ambiguously defined best friend/girlfriend/sister/boyfriend/brother from their steel clutches.