2 Jul 2025
Kiborg Xbox Series X Review 7.5/10 "lock ‘n load...again, and again, and again" 👊💥 @SobakaStudio #IndieGame #GameDev
9 Jun 2025
Kemono Heroes Nintendo Switch Review 7.5/10 "hectic swipey-swipey action!" 🦊 @MadGearGames @JanduSoft #GameDev #IndieGame
Playable with up to four players in co-op, Kemono Heroes has a mystical Eastern vibe in which the main characters are anthropomorphic animals, each with their own special skills, although the main attack of each is a ‘Strider’-esque swipe of their blade - a little nod to one of its influences.
6 Jun 2025
Survivalist: Invisible Strain Xbox Series X Review 7.5 / 10 "More zombies than you can shake a selfie-stick at!" 🧟♀️🧟♂️🧟 @bob_the_PR_bot #IndieGame #GameDev
Casting the player in the role of a wandering survivor, Survivalist: Invisible Strain is playable in both campaign and sandbox modes, with the sandbox mode especially offering an incredible amount of customisation options to suit your preferred approach, with the ability to pretty much knock the zombie element on the head and focus purely on city-building and the more social aspects, should you so wish.
27 May 2025
Trident’s Tale Xbox Series X Review 7.5/10 "Pirate fun for all the family!" 🏴☠️⛵@3DClouds #IndieGame #GameDev
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The chandler never mentioned the glow in the dark sails at the showroom |
Playing the part of Ocean, a young pirate who yearns to explore the seas, she soon finds herself mourning the loss of her guardian as skeletal pirates hunt her down, seemingly due to her discovering a small trinket that has a lot of otherworldly folks very interested in it!
9 May 2025
Peglin Xbox Series X Review 7.5/10 "Can Peglin best Peggle as the king of the ball game?" 🏐 @rednexusgames @BlitWorks #GameDev #IndieGame
Peglin begins with your initial character – a little goblin (possible the titular ‘Peglin’, thinking about it) – taking a rogue-like path through various stages. It’s all about how the balls fall, you’ll find treasure, upgrades, stores, random encounters, and of course – enemies to thwart.
22 Apr 2025
Rendering Ranger R² [Rewind] Nintendo Switch Review 7.5/10 "SH'MUP & RUN ANYONE?" 🔥🏃♀️➡️🛸 @playziggurat @LimitedRunGames #IndieGame #GameDev #Retrogaming
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"George wasn't a fan of the new stand up tanning booths" |
While most people point to Contra as their fave retro run and gun from their childhood, mine was always Midnight Resistance. Specifically Midnight Resistance on the Commodore 64. There was a demo tape on the front of a C64 magazine back in the early '90s that I couldn't get enough of and me and my mate Johnny would endlessly play this demo tape in awe of the run n gun gameplay and the beautiful looking Commodore 64 graphics.
Eventually I actually located a Midnight Resistance Arcade cabinet in the local Kebab House (which also had a pool table) and once again I fell in love with the run and gunnery of Midnight Resistance.
19 Feb 2025
Blow It Up Xbox Series X Review 7.5/10 "A bomb-based physics title that certainly isn’t a dud!" 💣💥@brainseal #IndieGame #GameDev
Having been a fan of Brain Seal Ltd since I was introduced to them via the wonderful Dark Quest 3, I was intrigued as to what their take on a bomb-centric physics title would be, and would it be enough to take my mind off the hope of a further Dark Quest sequel?
Yes, yes it could!
Blow It Up takes place in Bombtopia, a world populated by voxel bombs that is suddenly taken over by invaders. Your friends are captured, and you must travel the overworld, collecting enough coins to free your friends – all of whom have a special power that can aid you – all the while completing stages by hurling one (or more!) of your explosive team members into the various structures that hide the fiendish enemies in each level.
12 Feb 2025
Big Helmet Heroes Xbox Series X Review: 7.5/10 "Helmets on, it’s time to rock" 🪖⛑️ @DearVillagers #IndieGame #GameDev
With a genuinely amusing trailer that captured the imagination, the thought of a modern, tasty 3D brawler with a wordless comedic approach that focused on slapstick and absurdity very much appealed to me. Whilst there is a lot to love and as much fun as the game is, it can’t quite shake the creeping repetition that haunts the genre.
11 Feb 2025
Keep Driving PC Review 7.5/10 "The Crazy Gas Fuelled Adventures Of A Sedan!" 🚗 @YCJYgames #IndieGame #GameDev
You play as a young driver who has just bought their first car around the early 2000s, and your main goal is to meet up with your friend at a music festival on the other side of the country within four weeks. Interestingly, the game features a procedurally generated world with various routes, 'shopping' stops and random encounters along the way.
29 Jan 2025
Eternal Strands Xbox Series X Review 7.5/10 "Eternal Strands That Don’t Quite Weave Wonder" 🧶🧵 @YellowBrick_Qc #IndieGame #GameDev
Eternal Strands casts the player as Brynn, a mercenary accompanying a group of travellers trying to find out the secrets of a long-lost civilisation. Your camp with the travellers acts as a hub, whilst Loomgates scattered around the land allow you to teleport to different areas of the world, each with their own biome, items, and enemies. The opening anime-style cinematic is impressive and engaging, although it hints at a slightly goofy humour that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the mostly po-faced game, where dialogue with the fully-voiced cast of characters is rich, but mostly eventless and dry. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of lore and world-building to discover and learn, more that doing so isn’t a particularly engaging aspect of the game.
28 Jan 2025
Burger Race Nintendo Switch Review 7.5/10 "Fast Food at a bargain price!" 🍔💨 @SAT_BOX_2011 #IndieGame #GameDev
A simple, accessible game, Burger Race allows for up to four players – in split screen – to select from a range of fast food items on wheels (or rather, cucumbers and tomatoes) and race around the nine tracks on offer, picking up the various boosts and weapon pick-ups scattered around the circuits en route.
20 Nov 2024
Mining Mechs Xbox Review 7.5/10 "A budget title that drills down deep into the well of fun" ⛏️ @DelayedVictory_ @eastasiasoft #IndieGame #GameDev
It’s always fun to cover smaller games that are under a fiver, as it’s always pleasant to be surprised by a game that may otherwise have passed me by. Mining Mechs is a game that was released on Steam in 2023 and has now been ported to consoles. I played Mining Mechs on the XSX, and was quite won over by the core gameplay loop, surprisingly catchy music, silly humour, and pixel visuals.
11 Sept 2024
Murder is Game Over: Streaming Death Nintendo Switch Review 7.5/10 "Detective Guy and his canine sidekick Cleo return to Switch!" 🕵️ @HitherYonGames #IndieGame #IndieGameDev #GameDev
Back in November 2023 I covered the first title in the ‘Murder is Game Over’ series, a fun title created in RPG Maker that puts you in the shoes of Detective Guy and his trusty canine sidekick Cleo as they work together to solve the murder of the eccentric video game designer ‘Lord’ Russell Gallant.
It’s a title that can be completed in a couple of hours, but the blend of basic fact-finding and breezy investigative work – bulked up a dog-treat collecting mini-game – made for a light evening of easy, crime-solving fun.
16 Aug 2024
Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand Xbox Review 7.5 / 10 "Atlas falls, and rises again!" ⚔️ @Deck13_de @Focus_entmt #IndieGame #GameDev
Atlas Fallen is the newest release from Deck13 - the team behind Lords of the Fallen and the Surge series – and, whilst it was initially released in 2023 to mixed reviews, this free update to the Reign of Sand edition aims to fix some key issues that affected the initial release, namely:
- An expanded world
- New enemies and challenges
- Revamped progression
- New quests
- Reworked voice acting
- Additional difficulty mode and a New Game+ mode
I didn’t cover the initial release and so can’t really do direct comparisons; and so I’ll review the Reign of Sand version of Atlas Fallen completely on its own merits.
23 Jul 2024
Crow Country XBOX Review 7.5/10 "A throwback survival horror with narrative depth" 🐦⬛🌎 @SFBTom @SFBDim #GameDev #IndieGame
22 Jul 2024
NeoSprint Nintendo Switch Review 7.5/10 "rev me up, buttercup" 🏎️ @HeadlessCG #GameDev #IndieGame
The newest release in the long-dormant Atari ‘Sprint’ series, this multiplayer (up to 8 players locally!) arcade racer is a welcome addition to the Switch catalogue for lovers of vintage, top-down racing.
Sticking closely to its local multiplayer roots, NeoSprint features no online gaming component beyond the ability to download tracks created by other players, and whilst there may be some that lament the lack of online play, the fact that NeoSprint caters for up to eight players is a serious boon here, and perfect for gaming nights with friends.
19 Jul 2024
Justice League: Cosmic Chaos Xbox Review 7.5/10 "A fun, family-friendly title with surprisingly cool music" 🦇 @PHLCollective @Outright_Games #GameDev #IndieGame
The story here is that life in Happy Harbor is turned upside-down by Mr. Mxyzplk, who usurps the current Mayor of the town by using Starro’s mind control powers to take control of members of the Justice League, leaving Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman – with a little help from some very super friends – to restore order to the idyllic town.
2 Jul 2024
The Glass Staircase PS5 Review 7.5/10 “Mind The Step” 🏚️ @PuppetCombo #IndieGame #GameDev
Puppet Combo was a revelation for me in 2023, I loved everything that they put out and had such joy playing them. Stay Out of the House was one of my games of the year, Christmas Massacre was an absolute delight and it remains one of my favourite games, the talking Christmas tree brings a smile to my face every time I think about it, which - come December - will probably be a lot, but The Glass Staircase doesn't quite hit the highs of these games, it is still worth playing but I didn’t get the warm, dark-bloodstained, fuzzy feeling that the Puppet Combo releases usually produce.
11 Jun 2024
Little Kitty, Big City XSX Review 7.5/10 "The purr-fect game to play with kids" 😸 🏙️ @LittleKittyGame #IndieGame #GameDev
It’s an interesting time in our household, as we have a three year old son who is just getting his feet wet in terms of gaming. I always keep an eye out for suitable releases to enjoy with him, and when we received the press release for Little Kitty, Big City, my dad-gaming eyes lit up. What we ended up enjoying was a wonderfully cute, fun game that wasn’t without its flaws, but the charm and family factor shines through, meaning that you’ll have a great time if you approach little Kitty, Big City with an open and curious mind...much like a kitten, in fact.
Little Kitty, Big City begins as very much a story of highs and lows, there you are – sunning yourself on your owner’s balcony when disaster strikes and you find yourself falling to street level, many floors below. Your quest? To get back to your favourite napping spot!