Gloomhaven XSX Review 8.5/10 "How Deep is Your (board gaming) Love?" 🧙‍♂️ @GloomhavenGame #IndieGame #GameDev

Although Gloomhaven was originally released on PC back in 2021, I wanted to cover it here on GF (on Xbox) in 2024 because I had such a rich experience with the boardgame on which it is based at one of our regular nerdy weekends away a few weeks ago. At said weekends, we tend to have several smaller, briefer games, and then a hefty one to tuck into for a good portion of each day. In this way we’ve played some pretty heavy hitters...but Gloomhaven always lurked at the back of our minds. 

A Void Hope Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "An enchantingly melancholic game with a world class soundtrack" 🌲👻🌳 @EldenPixels #IndieGame #GameDev

The team that brought us Alwa’s Legacy and Alwa’s Awakening has returned with A Void Hope, a 2D narrative adventure with a soundtrack provided courtesy of the monolithic skills of Waveshaper.

The game begins with a short prologue that sets the scene; a couple exist in a world where people are becoming ‘empty’, which is to say they slowly lose their memories, before becoming ghostly, wandering figures that ‘haunt’ the city. Whilst the female is the main character of the prologue, the narrative soon focuses on the male, who begins in a forest cabin and must make his way through the city to find out what has happened to his partner, before his memories completely elude him and he becomes one of the empty.

Persona 5 Tactica Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 “Let me in your heart again” 👦👧 @Atlus_West #Persona5 @TransvaalGF

I have a very strong attachment to Persona 5, it was released at a time that I would comfortably describe as one of the worst periods of my life. Everything had fallen apart, and for a while, everything seemed a bit hopeless.

Luckily, I have been a huge fan of Persona and the Megami Tensei series as a whole since the PlayStation 2 era, so, just as everything seemed bleak - enter Persona 5, a game I had pre-ordered the special edition for, and it made me feel good. I spent 128 hours playing it with nothing but joy in my heart, it was the thing I needed - it wasn't just a distraction, it really felt like an old friend, and the story and the cast of characters really resonated with me, so every time this universe gets expanded, I’m always hopeful that special feeling will still be there.

ASTLIBRA Revision Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 ⚔️ @_KElZO #IndieGame #GameDev

ASTILIBRA Revision is a 2D action JRPG, with fantastic hack-and-slash combat and various
other elements to keep you engaged. You play as a young blonde boy who lost a dear friend
during an attack on his village, the last he saw of her was when she was near the demon that attacked, just before we cut to a block screen. He wakes up with no memory of his past or who he is, but he is greeted by a crow who eventually names itself Karon, this is the beginning of a long journey in search of answers.

Virtua Fighter 5 --The Ultimate Showdown PS4 Review 8.5/10 "does not fail to deliver hours of button-bashing gameplay..." 🤜💥🤛

The Fifth World Fighting Tournament has arrived, and it does not disappoint. 

Virtua Fighter 5 returns with its all-out action and fast-paced - fighting that any arcade beat em’ up fan would be proud of...

This arcade (turned-console) beat 'em' up classic harnesses all of the features you would expect from its predecessors and finds more in this all-enhanced re-master. All new downloadable content is available, such as costumes and themes, updated graphic interfaces and most of all its alternate life bar User interface graphics. If you have loved all the others, then you will enjoy this!

Stay Out of The House PS5 Review 8.5/10 “The home of sleaze, gore, madmen, slashers, and maniacs” 🔪🩸 @PuppetCombo #IndieGames #GameDev

Stay Out of the House is the new game from developer Puppet Combo, now I must admit that I’m not familiar with any of their work, although when I went on to their website it pretty much told me all I need to know, this is a quote from the website –

“PUPPET COMBO is the home of sleaze, gore, madmen, slashers, and maniacs.”

Stay Out of the House is split into four sections; the first act is named Night Shift, whereby you go to your character’s night shift at a gas station. Things start out pretty normally, you clean up, deal with customers etc. the store also has an arcade cabinet in the corner which you can play when the store is quiet - oddly enough the arcade game is about a killer chasing you, and you must collect things in order to escape. I really liked this introduction it was a nice build-up of suspense, and even though you can see what’s coming, it still made me jump.

Circuit Superstars Nintendo Switch Review 8.5 /10 "Leading The Pack" 🏎️ #IndieGames #GameDev @CircuitSUP

As someone who has grown up enjoying the best of top-down racers through the decades, the sheer quality and depth of Original Fire Games’ Circuit Superstars completely leave a lot of others in the dust when it comes to blending seemingly superficial gameplay with incredible depth, without feeling alienating in its design and accessibility.

Dark Quest 3 XSX Review 8.5/10 "oh go on...one more go..." ⚔️ 🧙‍♂️ @brainseal #IndieGames #GameDev

It has only been over the last few years that I’ve really gotten hips-deep into board games. From diving into breezy games like Dungeon! And Hero Quest to rule-laden slogs like Massive Darkness or Endure the Stars/Rules, I’ve really come to appreciate the wonderful blend of dedication and camaraderie that comes from a day of getting some snacks and drinks in, then settling down for eleven hours of arguing over the results of dice rolls and bafflingly unclear card descriptions.

It was after a recent weekend jaunt to a salubrious part of the country – where the curtains were promptly drawn and daylight not sighted for 48 hours – that I began to yearn for a single-player board game experience… but in the digital realm.

I genuinely spent a few days installing and uninstalling various games on my phone, hunting around for what I was looking for - and it was then that I stumbled across Dark Quest 3, which was due for imminent release, I can’t comment on Brain Seal Ltd’s other games, or even the preceding two titles in this trilogy, but I can certainly say that Dark Quest 3 is exactly what I needed.

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos XSX Review 8.5/10 "Pretty Pugilism" ⚔️ @theACETeam @NaconFR #GameDev #IndieGame

It was only as I was installing Clash: Artifacts of Chaos that it dawned on me that I’d played the previous games in the series a decade ago - Zeno Clash and Zeno Clash 2 (2009, 2013) – and enjoyed their idiosyncratic take on the 1st person melee fighting genre.

As the installation percentage slowly rose, I cast my mind back to the sessions on my PC with the initial Clash games, they were incredibly unique titles with flawed but fun mechanics that had a narrative style and structure that called to mind Ice-Pick Lodge’s Pathologic – but the Clash series was different in that they actually held up to close scrutiny and were fun to play.

It’s a heady combination when you discover a developer that isn’t afraid to go off-piste with their narrative presentation, whilst also pushing forward a pretty niche genre, in this case, an FPS melee combat / RPG hybrid.

Fast forward to the present and within a couple of hours, I was completely on board with the third title in this long-running series - Clash: Artifacts of Chaos.

Gunman Tales Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "Moonstone Meets Wild Guns" 🤠 @FobTi #GameDev #IndieGame

Considering how much I adore the game, I can’t believe that FobTi interactive’s Gunman Tales didn’t set off my inner ‘Moonstone Alarm’ when it was originally released on PC back in 2018. Regardless, am I glad I got a chance to enjoy this Switch port in 2023!

Fight ‘N Rage XSX Review 8.5/10 "A Wonderful Throwback Title With Astonishing Depth" 💥👊 @sebagamesdev #GameDev #IndieGameto

The side-scrolling brawler genre is such a timeless and wondrous thing when done properly, as one-man Uruguayan studio Seba Games Dev has done here with Fight ‘N Rage.

The natural repetition of the genre is spiced up here by an insane amount of unlockables that make the grinder part of me twitch into action.

There have been some tasty games in the genre over the last year or two – mainly courtesy of DotEmu - (and I know it’s older than that, but I have to mention Mother Russia Bleeds) and Fight ‘N Rage absolutely has to be mentioned in that conversation.

Life on Mars: Genesis Kai Magazine Software SEGA Mega Drive Review 8.5/10 "There’s life in the Mega Drive, as well!" 🌕 #SEGA #SegaGenesis #IndieGames #GameDev

When Life on Mars: Genesis was announced, I was excited due to the fact that there were so few (if any) Metroidvania titles on the Mega Drive. I’m a fan of the genre, especially the shorter, snappier releases such as Shadow Complex. 

I find that a sub-12-hour blast keeps things spicy and fresh, and Life on Mars: Genesis falls into that camp, feeling like a novice entry in the genre, which fits in well with the fact that it is effectively an entry to the genre as a whole on the Mega Drive.

Chained Echoes XSX Review 8.5/10 "I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain" 🔗 @ChainedEchoes #IndieGames #GameDev

It’s been a good while since I got hips deep into a turn-based RPG, in fact, I believe the last one to really capture my imagination to this extent was Octopath Traveller a couple of years ago.

A very different beast, Chained Echoes calls to mind 2018’s Crosscode in the visuals and style of traversal in the game world, but the setting and narrative feel more traditional and classic in terms of the delivery.

Shadows Over Loathing PC Review 8.5/10 "Very Little To Loathe" 🧟‍♂️ @asym #IndieGames #GameDev

Asymmetric’s previous title – West of Loathing – was my 2017 game of the year,  to this day, over five years later – I’ve rarely laughed as heartily as I have at that game. It was reviewed before we integrated our rating system, but it would have honestly been teetering on being the first 10/10 game I’d played.

That’s a pretty hard act to follow, and whilst Shadows over Loathing is a fun and extremely funny game that leans heavily on the template set down by its predecessor, it doesn’t quite have the impact of the original.

🎲⚔️ Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! Nintendo Switch 8.5/10 "If I Could Turn Back Time" ⚔️🎲 @inkleStudios #IndieGames #GameDev

Those familiar with the classic Fighting Fantasy books will remember holding their thumb as a marker in various pages as they skipped forth to whatever fate their choice has dealt them…before quickly making the opposing choice when they see that they are going to get gassed and knocked off a ladder and killed when they try to yank that emerald from the statue’s visage.

🚶‍♂️🚶‍♀️ Voyage Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "A Beautiful Walk" 🚶‍♂️🚶‍♀️ @venturousgames #GameDev #IndieGames

Voyage is a dream-like video game that drops you into a world with little to no introductions and leaves you to work out how to traverse a beautiful world.

Playing Voyage is like being trapped in a watercolour storybook with mystical tinges of story interwoven into the puzzles that will leave you wondering what will come next and what is going on in this world.

My immediate thoughts went to Journey, LIMBO and Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons when I began playing this intriguing puzzle platformer that leaves you agog with its beauty and the atmosphere that is created through visuals rather than words. 

🏚️🔥🦖 Gigapocalypse XSX Review 8.5/10 "Absolutely Roarsome" 🏚️🔥🦖 @goodypundit #IndieGames #GameDev

Having had my fists kicked off by Covid for the second time, I was in a pretty sorry state last week. After three days of being bed-bound and praying for fevered sleep, I couldn’t take any more Billy Blanks movies and dragged myself to the couch for some interactive entertainment.

Being ill, I couldn’t really focus on anything too hips deep, and was really fancying some kind of casual, zoned-out fun…and stumbled across Gigapocalypse in our ‘to be reviewed’ list. It was just the tonic.

🔪 The Quarry Xbox Series X Review 8.5/10 "The Best Supermassive Title Yet" 🔪 @SuperMGames #TheQuarry

We at GF – specifically, myself and Transvaal – are big fans of Supermassive Games’ approach to the horror genre, especially in the ‘one session and done’ The Dark Pictures Anthology series, which appears to be growing stronger with each release. And so we approached The Quarry with the (little) hope that we’d be in for a good time watching people have bad times, and that hope was rewarded with – what we believe to be – the best Supermassive Games release yet.

🌳 Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles Xbox Review 8.5/10 "A Massage For My Mind" 🌳 @YonderChronicle #GameDev #IndieGames

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a single-player game bereft of enemies or indeed any sort of combat, the gameplay is essentially a series of fetch/crafting quests as you quietly explore the island of Gemea. What sets Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles apart from similar titles is the tone of hope, positivity and relentless charm that runs throughout.

🤖 The Cursed Knight Mega Drive Review 8.5/10 "A curse for the knight, a blessing for your Mega Drive" 🤖 @TKthegame #IndieGame #GameDev

Funded in just seven hours on Kickstarter, it’s clear that there was a lot of interest and high hopes for GGS Studio’ creation. And rightly so.

Sometimes referred to as T.C.K, The Cursed Knight is set in the year 3122 - long after the fall of civilisation – and casts the player as Kalder, a knight who is in love with his king’s daughter and must set out to rescue her when she is kidnapped by nefarious forces just as the king bestows his blessing on their relationship.