Neon Inferno X Box Series X Review 8.5/10 *never reload, never stop shooting* 🏍️🔫 @ZenoviaLLC #IndieGame #GameDev

There are a lot of genres in the world of video games that slide by, or don’t feel like they got as fully explored as they could have at the time of release on whatever systems they found their home on. 

Quite often I’ll go back to one of my favourite consoles and wonder why there weren’t more titles in said genre – Landstalker springs to mind! - as they nail a niche that feels like there are deeper depths to be plumbed. 

Back in 1990, Dick Tracy on the Mega Drive was the first time I played a game that melded both side-scrolling action and gallery shooter mechanics, and despite its flaws it remains a strong title in the MD library for me; not only because of its awesome music, noir atmosphere and presentation, but because it felt truly different on Sega’s awesome 16-bit machine.

Cue Neon Inferno. Yes, there have obviously been other titles in this dual genre over the years, but since the 16-bit heyday, I can’t recall too many games that blended these genres so well.

Citizen Sleeper 2 PC Review 7.5/10 "Cracked Dice N Glitches Means Stitches" 🎲🎲 @FellowTravellr #IndieGame #GameDev

Not many games embrace uncertainty as boldly as Citizen Sleeper 2. Following in the footsteps of its acclaimed predecessor, this narrative-driven, dice roller, sci-fi RPG once again places you in the fragile body of a Sleeper—a digitized consciousness fighting for survival in a hostile universe. But where many games punish failure, Citizen Sleeper 2 thrives on it. Every dice roll, every misstep, every imperfect outcome becomes part of a living story that adapts and grows around you.

At the heart of Citizen Sleeper 2 lies its signature dice system. Each cycle, you’re given a pool of dice representing your available actions. High rolls can be assigned to critical tasks—repairing a ship, negotiating with a faction, or uncovering lost technology—while low rolls might be relegated to riskier endeavours. 

Borderlands 4 Xbox Series X Review 8/10 *More shooty, less bang bang* 💥

I covered Borderlands 3 back in 2021, scoring it a 9/10 and celebrating the zany world of Pandora and its myriad denizens. Whilst there were hardly any immense leaps in terms of core gameplay between games, the series always delivered mindless blasting action, which ramped up gloriously when playing with friends. 

This newest instalment instead shifts the action to Kairos, a hidden planet run by ‘The Timekeeper’; a masked, golden, and seemingly immortal figure that plants chips in the minds of his subjects allowing him to control their will, or to drive them insane, if he deems necessary…which he does deem quite often, quite frankly.

I was hips deep in the initial unveiling and first couple of hours, everything that I enjoyed about the series had returned, and now it was tied to a story that - although basic - seemed slightly more serious and focused which was certainly refreshing. Starting the game off with an epic prison escape got my engine revving and my guns cocked and loaded.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion PS5 Review 8/10 "It isn't a reinvention of the genre, nor does it need to be" @MARVELCosmicInv #IndieGame #GameDev

Marvel Cosmic Invasion doesn’t waste time pretending to be anything other than what it is: a loud, colourful, unapologetically arcade brained brawler where superheroes knock extra-terrestrial pests into orbit. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it wears its comic book heart proudly on it's sleeve, sometimes a little too proudly, but we’ll get to that.

What stands out straight away is the presentation. The game is a love letter to past Marvel fighter/brawlers like Marvel vs Capcom and the X-Men side scrollers. It has a punchy Saturday morning cartoon energy, all neon space vistas and chunky comic panel transitions. 

Every character, from deep cut favourites to headliners, move with personality. Rocket Raccoon scurries and blasts everything that looks vaguely flammable; Captain Marvel practically glows with stoic swagger; and even the grunts have expressive, over the top animations that make fights feel busy and chaotic in the best way.

Dark Quest 4 Xbox Series X Review 8/10 *A Quest Very Much For Heroes* 🎲⚔️🧙‍♂️ @brainseal #IndieGame #GameDev

Dark Quest 3 was installed on my Xbox for a very long time back in 2023/24 when I covered it, and earlier this year I covered Brain Seal’s Blow It Up! Which was also a good time. 

Whilst I haven’t played the first two iterations of the Dark Quest series, I can tell you that whilst it looks the same in trailers, and the artwork and characters are familiar, this is a different beast to Dark Quest 3, moving away from random encounters and luck-based sections, and more towards a style of gameplay that feels more akin to the quest-based Hero Quest board game that Dark Quest gets some of its inspiration from. 

Whilst this does freshen things up, it also feels oddly stripped back, as the mechanics now feel quite bare, and I found myself wishing for a little more depth and camera control, especially in areas where parts of the environment were a mystery to me because of the locked view.

Desert Race Adventures Nintendo Switch Review 7/10 "Oregon Trail With Less Dysentery and More Horsepower!" 🚛 @bssgameshq #IndieGame #GameDev

This new title from Firedrake Games is a rally game with a difference, as opposed to actually racing, your vehicle instead trundles on regardless as you take a backseat from driving, and instead focus on the logistical side of this mammoth task – which is driving across Europe and Africa.

With some lovely pixel visuals, and simple, looping music to keep you company on your trip, Desert Race Adventures begins with choosing your driver and co-driver from the six available and selecting up to three items for your vehicle loadout. 

Whilst each driver / co-driver has their own strengths and accompanying weaknesses – perhaps they fatigue slower, or require less nourishment than the other, greedier drivers, but also suffer more in crashes – the balancing act of switching between the stock in your limited carrying space makes up a very important part of your journey.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 Xbox Series X Review 8/10 *Spooky Match 3 Action!* ⏹️🔼⏺️ 🦖 @StrangeScaffold #IndieGame #GameDev

I had no idea what to expect when I was installing Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3, but it very quickly became apparent that I was going to love it. 

A hybrid game that blends traditional Match 3 style gameplay with light horror-comedy elements in a setting that becomes very meta very quickly, it initially feels like a hodgepodge of ideas on paper that somehow works surprisingly well together in practicality!

Heading Out Xbox Series X Review 8 /10 "drive your fears away" 🚗💨 @SeriousSimGames @CrunchingKoalas #IndieGame #GameDev

Heading Out single-handedly saved my entire weekend recently, I had a rare free day and fully intended to veg out on the couch, getting slowly tipsy on bourbon whilst diving into some gaming gold. Unfortunately, the gaming ‘gold’ that I initially decided upon was the recent Game Pass title ‘Dragon Age: Veilguard’ which I’ve been keenly awaiting since release last year, having been a huge fan of the previous Dragon Age games. Within a couple of hours, I was deflated, morose, underwhelmed…and quite frankly uninstalling Dragon Age: Veilguard quicker than Oliver Reed can get the free drinks vouchers out of his pocket at a wedding.

Having no intention of playing further through the insipid, tedious game, I was flustered as to where to turn next, my Saturday plans lay in ruins. It was then that I remembered I had been sent the review code for Heading Out and decided that it could be a saucy palette-cleanser, and indeed it was, thank you, Serious Sim!

Canine PS5 Review 7/10 “All Charm and Some Bite” 🐺 @PuKoStudio #IndieGame #GameDev

I’m going to start my review of this horror game by not talking about gore, or darkness, or being scared… but about charm. Now, when talking about things that one finds important in a game, charm isn’t usually at the forefront - but I find that it can go a long way, and I found both Canine and its overall message really charming, there is a real sincerity to it, the love for both horror and dogs shines through and although without it Canine would still be enjoyable, the heart makes it much more special.

You play as a boy who has lost his dog, Tomy, I want to at this point inform both spell check and my editor - it is just Tomy with one ‘m’ (noted, maybe they named him after a much-loved Japanese toy company? – ed). You find out he has been taken by a company called Umbral. It is not really a spoiler to say this, as they are a company in a video game which means they are as evil as… well companies in real life, I suppose - so very quickly you realise that you need to get your dog and leave. In most horror games you have a weapon to defend yourself, such as a handgun or perhaps shotgun, heck - in Resident Evil you even fire a rocket launcher! 

Echoes of The End Xbox Series X Review 7/10 "a visually stunning action-adventure title that fails to entirely engage" ⚔️ @MyrkurGames @deepsilver #IndieGame #GameDev

Myrkur Games began work on Echoes of the End back in 2016, and that length of time and dedication shines through in a lot of the visuals and audio work, but the core puzzling that makes up the bulk of the gameplay feels somewhat inserted, and actively works against the games’ strengths, meaning that each area soon stops feeling exciting and evocative, as you instead grit your teeth and wonder what contrived puzzle you’ll have to work your way past in order to proceed further through this genuinely beautiful and desolate world.

Echoes of the End begins with Ryn, our heroine, and her younger brother Cor, as they make their way through a rocky, mountainous region of their land of Aema. Ryn is a ‘vestige’, a person who has magical powers feared by the majority, leaving her a fiercely independent spirit who prefers solace to the city. Cor, on the other hand, is a youthful optimist that seeks out adventure naively, often at his own risk. As the game begins, we find that large, vital crystal formations called ‘wards’ have begun to be destroyed, and whilst trying to find out what is causing this, Cor gets kidnapped, leaving Ryn to try and locate him with the help of Abram, a mysterious older adventurer that luckily happens across her path just as her brother is taken away.

Our Summer Festival 2 Nintendo Switch Review 7/10 "A Bunch of Mini-Games Set in a Japanese Festival" 🎈 @SAT_BOX_2011 #IndieGame #GameDev

We’ve covered a few Sat Box games here at GF, with the most recent being the very enjoyable Desktop Golf. This newest title takes us away from the links and instead plonks you and up to three other players in a Japanese festival in which you will find yourself doing everything from fishing through to dancing, and even cooking!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown Xbox Series X Review 8/10 ‘Turtle Renaissance’ 💙🐢 @StrangeScaffold #IndieGame #GameDev

Leonardo leads.

Donatello does machines.
Raphael is cool but crude.
Michelangelo is a party dude.

Anyone (over forty) knows this to be true. Though “doing” machines is not something one ought to interrogate too closely. Anyway, I, like everyone I knew at school, loved the Turtles (NB. ‘Ninja’ in America, ‘Hero’ in soft-shelled Britain). And this game from Strange Scaffold promises to bring back the radicalness of the teen greens and blend it with turn-based tactics.

I am a great fan of the XCOM and Rabbids games, and as a starting point, TMNT:TT (as I’ll snappily refer to it) can be summed up as just that, a mix of those two. It’s not as detailed as XCOM, and it isn’t as silly and fun as Rabbids, but it manages to succeed on its own terms.

Alien Breakout Nintendo Switch Review 8.5/10 "An accessible, 100 level alien platformer!" 👽 @Vergiuu @eastasiasoft #IndieGame #GameDev

It’s easy to get burned out on certain genres, many times over the years I’ve moved from one epic RPG to the next and just sighed at the sheer weight of time-suck that I know is about to take place, and I’ve learned to switch to shorter, more succinct titles whenever this happens so that I don’t lose interest in gaming for a while. 

I was recently at this very point, and so fancied covering a few titles that were a little more pick-up-and-play friendly in style, cue Alien Breakout from developer Vergiu and publisher Eastasiasoft, folks who very much have a taste for this genre of games - a simple 2D platformer that’s perfect for beginners, has a player-friendly learning curve, and is just the ticket for some quick blasts of action!

Golden Tee Arcade Classics Xbox Series X Review 7/10 "True Golf Classics Approach The Tee Once More" ⛳ @DigitalEclipse #RetroGaming

The Golden tee series of golf games were a mainstay in arcades here in the UK back in the ‘90s, and I have many fond memories of playing them throughout the country on various holidays and trips (and more recently, thanks to the awesome folks at Timewarp Arcade in Bridgwater). It was always good to see golf games in amusement centres, with the main two being the Golden Tee series and of course, the mighty Neo Turf Masters.

What set Golden Tee apart, however, was the trackball…which we will talk about later.

Collectible Cars Shop Simulator Nintendo Switch Review 7.5/10 "That Endless Loop Has Become Oddly Relaxing" 🚗 @nostra_games_ #IndieGame #GameDev

Being the father of a four year old that has more Hot Wheels cars in our house than Oliver Reed has receipts from Oddbins in his back pocket, the chance to cover Nostra Games’ Collectible Cars Shop Simulator was one that I leapt at. 

Whilst it feels very ‘assety’ as a lot of the ‘simulator’ games can be, the lack of variety in NPC character models, fiddly controls, and endlessly looping music couldn’t put a dent in my enjoyment of the core gameplay – opening the store, hiring staff, upgrading where possible, and making dosh off flogging those sweet, sweet toy cars before closing up for the night and doing it all over again the next day.

Labyrinth of the Demon King PS5 Review 8/10 “Let’s Horror like its 1996” @jrhudepohl #IndieGame #GameDev

I must admit, when I first started Labyrinth of the Demon King I had a horrible feeling. Upon seeing tons of fog and noticing that, when you saved it flashed red - it dawned on me, “Oh, there are some real Silent Hill influences in the game” which should delight me as the Silent Hill and Resident Evil series of games are two of my favourites, but playing and reviewing horror games has kinda burnt me out on them, so many games are inspired by and take influence from them that it has just lessened the enjoyment. Luckily, within about thirty minutes I realised that, no, this is the good kind of influence - gentle nods but a completely different experience, so I dived in, kept playing and had a wonderful yet brutally awful experience.

All You Need is Help! – Nintendo Switch Review 7/10 "Tetris Inspired Funky Family Fun" 🧶 @PixelJunkNews #IndieGame #GameDev

Whenever a four player co-op video game drops into the Games Freezer I immediately think, "Will this make it onto our Best Video Games To Play With Your Kids list?" Some of my best times playing video games come from gathering around the Nintendo Switch at the BIG telly and playing four player Minecraft, Mario Kart or Overcooked and I'm always super keen to add more good times to the ever growing list. All you need is help gets a lot of things right to make it onto the list but slightly falls down on other things which means it's not an all time classic co op game.

In the ever-growing pantheon of indie party games, All You Need is Help! brings a nice cosy dose of teamwork, miscommunication, and gloriously silly chaos. The game has been developed and published by Q Games who always seem to be bring out some fun arcade style video games on the Switch.

Ready or Not Xbox Series X Review 8/10 “A Surprisingly Dark Descent Tied To SWAT Tactics” 👮‍♀️💥 @VOIDInteractive #IndieGame #GameDev

I tend to play online co-op games with fellow GFer Transvaal, and our usual approach of ‘shoot, shoot, shoot’ sometimes hits a wall when playing games frolicking on the more tactical side of life, such as here with VOID Interactive’s Ready or Not, a game playable in both single and multiplayer modes that casts you in the role of a SWAT team commander in the fictional Los Suenos Police Department (LSPD) as you make your way through a surprisingly generous amount of missions, in the hope of arresting the guilty whilst protecting the innocent. Each mission leading on from the last – although you wouldn’t necessarily know this until you get a high enough ranking in completion of said missions, which adds key context to your actions, filling out the narrative background.

Victory Heat Rally Nintendo Switch Review 7/10 "A Super Vibrant Retro Racer" 🚗💨 @skydevilpalm @PTonicFriends @VHRgame #GameDev #IndieGame

A vibrant racing game with retro-arcade style mechanics, Victory Heat Rally makes a great first impression with its energetic audio, bright graphics and kinetic sense of energy. Indeed, whilst the devs of Victory Heat Rally are based in LA, it’s very easy to assume that this is a Japanese-made game, so strong are those classic arcade vibes! 

Featuring many stages and environments, the order of the day here is super-fast arcade racing. It’s a very bare bones setup in terms of the core game loop, the tracks are often short, and you can whip around them in around thirty seconds, with the high speed action being all about avoiding other cars and managing your boosts. 

Hole Digging Master Nintendo Switch Review 8/10 “Take a deep breath, and dig...deep.” 🕳️⛏️ @nostra_games_ #IndieGame #GameDev

I have to admit to covering Hole Digging Master out of sheer curiosity, the premise seemed somewhat bland, but hey – Fishing Vacation was awesome! There was also the fact that the trailer promises mysteries and treasures, tied to relaxing gameplay...good.

Hole Digging Master begins with a swift tutorial that introduces the game mechanics and core loop, that is – you dig, you sell, you upgrade...you dig. Played out entirely in POV, Hole Digging Master takes place entirely in a garage and the nearby garden, with a large square marked out on the grass, and the surrounding paraphernalia suggesting that the reason for digging – initially, at least! - is to get a swimming pool on the go. And so you grab your – erm – battery-powered shovel, and get to work.