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Ever felt the need to unwind with a game but didn’t have your console or phone within reach? Well, browser games are your saviors when you’re seeking a bit of fun during a break from work or studying. We’ve compiled a lovingly curated list of 19 top-notch browser games across various genres just for you.…

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Imagine this: you’re lounging in your favorite chair, a bowl of your go-to snacks within reach, and you’re laughing with your best friends who, despite the distance, are right there with you on screen. That’s the magic of online games—they bridge miles and bring us together when we can’t gather in person. Why not host…

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Are you feeling stuck in your favorite video games, wishing for a little extra help to push through a tough level or boss fight? Maybe you dream of unlimited lives, an overflowing stash of resources, or just a simple power-up to give you the edge. Well, it’s time to let you in on a little…

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Are you feeling stuck in the same old daily grind? Are you looking for a little excitement that doesn’t cost a cent? Well, you’ve stumbled upon the perfect read! Let’s dive into the world of the best free online games that promise to deliver non-stop entertainment. Whether you’re someone who indulges in games for a…

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Are you itching to dive into a world of games without the hassle of downloads? Meet Poki – your new gaming haven! It offers access to thousands of games at your fingertips, ready to whisk you away on countless adventures with just a click. Whether you’re a seasoned gamer or just looking for a fun…

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Steam store – Official website – Wikipedia entry

Some game genres are so rare, it’s a miracle when a new game releases in that style. I personally call this genre: stealth tactics. The actual genre is Real-Time Tactics, but I find that name doesn’t really cover this (sub)genre. If you have ever played games like: Commando’s, Desperados, Robin Hood – The Legend of Sherwood or Shadow Tactics… You know what sort of game I’m talking about. A game features a rag tag group of heroes. Each hero has unique abilities. They must get through big groups of enemies. They do this one by one to progress the group’s goals. The game I want to talk about today is called Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. This was the last game by the studio Mimimi. Is this game the swansong to close down this studio, or is it a game that’s better left forgotten? Before that, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below. A comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article.

Promises of amazing treasure

In this game, you play as the crew of a special pirate ship named the Red Marley. Each main member of the crew has a black pearl in their chest, granting them unique supernatural abilities. These unique abilities come at a cost of being cursed to a sort of undead status.

The Red Marley’s captain fell in battle, and now the Inquisition is after the biggest treasure of the ship. Now, the Red Marley’s crew doesn’t want this to happen. So they do everything in their power to avoid this from happening.

The story in this game doesn’t take itself too seriously. The story is written like it’s a Saturday morning cartoon. A story arc can be contained in one or a handful of episodes, but always has an ending. While almost everything in the story ends well for the main cast, the story and writing never looses its charm. I felt like I was transported back into the time I woke up for the weekly Pokémon episode. I knew that the main problem of that week’s episode would resolve by the end. Still, I kept rooting for the heroes.

One of the biggest reasons I kept rooting for the main characters is because of the voice actors. Their performances are extremely well done. They bring a lot of personality and life to each character. They make the characters stand out like real, actual people. This script must have been immense, since the characters sometimes react on the actions you preform with other characters. There are 8 main characters, and more if you buy the DLC packs. If you start counting how many unique voice lines that bring to the table… And that’s the tip of the iceberg. The enemies for example, when they come together also have unique dialogue between them.

It’s possible to write an article by itself about the world building, story and voice acting in this game. I can also assure you that when I write this article, I’ll keep gushing about it all. A great example is how the save & load function fits into the story. It enhances the world of this game. Yes, you read that correctly. When you save, you store a memory in the Red Marley. When you load one of your saves, the Red Marley uses its powers to restore that memory. Your characters also respond to your saving and loading action and this brings even more charm to this game.

In these types of games, the replay value is quite high. Especially since you tackle all missions in various ways and each playthrough is going to be different. In this game, it’s taken even a step further. You can choose the order to revive your crew. You can also choose the order to finish the missions of that chapter. I can assure you that your playthrough will look nothing like mine.

The main quest is quite enjoyable to play through. I actually became really immersed in the world of this game. At the moment, I’m playing through the final missions of the game and the DLC missions. I’m having a blast. Thankfully, I can easily start a new playthrough of this game. Then I can experience it all of it over again and take a totally different route. And maybe I can do the little side quests and pirate tales as well. Since, that’s content, I haven’t gone into too much yet.

Your playthrough of this game will take you somewhere between 27 to 37 hours. That is, if you want to beat the main story and DLC’s. But, if you want to fully finish this game… Oh boy, then you’ll have a game that’s close to 80 hours on your hands. I already mentioned the crew tales. But there are also mini-challenges you can go for during the missions to earn badges. Let’s not forget the achievements you can earn. Well, most of the achievements are related to the main campaign.

Now, I have one complaint about the badges in this game. Earning some of these badges is extremely tricky. Sometimes, you don’t get all the information you expect to. For example, there is a badge on each map for using all the landing spots of that map. But guess what, there is no easy way to see if you already used a landing spot or not. It’s a shame that some badges work like that. Especially since some of these badges make you go out of your way to play in an unique way. A more challenging way to spice up your normal routine.

Apart from bragging trophies, these medals don’t really add up to much. But, I honestly don’t really mind that. Since, it’s fun to gather these medals and have some bonus challanges during my playthrough. It keeps me on my toes and it’s really enjoyable.

Mindblowing abilities

I’m still quite impressed at how balanced this game is. Each character has their own unique abilities. It’s best that you always have a character with an ability that can move guards from their position. If you don’t have that, the game will actually warn you. You are going to make it extremely challenging for yourself.

Personally, I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and your decisions actually matter. Before starting each mission, study the map well. Try to remember each map as well as you can. Since you are going to revisit each map at least once or twice. It’s extremely important to choose the correct landing position.

You would think that the game will be a bit boring if you always bring the same crew into missions. But, the game rewards you using different characters for missions. You gain more vigor if you play with certain crew members during certain missions. If you earned enough vigor, you can upgrade one of the unique abilities of your characters. This upgrade will give you more and better tools in your arsenal. Now, these upgrades can make the game much easier. You can always turn off the upgrades while on the Red Marley.

In the introduction paragraph of this article, I quickly explained how this game works. So, let me tell you the gist of it. In this game, you go from mission to mission, completing various goals in each one. These goals can range for example from rescuing an informant or stealing an artifact. In each mission, there are various enemies patrolling the area. Your goal is to find the weakspots in their patrols and dispose of the enemies without getting spotted.

Now, getting spotted isn’t the end of the world in this game. Depending on where you are spotted, it’s possible to escape and hide somewhere. You just have to avoid taking damage, since your health is limited, and you can’t heal during the mission. If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to get swamped or overwhelmed with guards. Especially when a guard with a bell spots you, the traces you leave behind or sees a dead body. When this happens, you have a limited amount of time to kill that guard before the bell is rung. When the bell is rung, more guards will emerge from nearby barracks and swarm to the location.

On top of that, there are also some unique enemy types outside your regular patrol goons. The first type I want to talk are the Kindred. These annoying buggers bring something quite unique to the table in this genre. Kindred are always connected with each other. If you don’t kill these all at the same time, they will revive each other. But, this is only the start of your troubles.

You also have Prognosticar. And let me tell you, these are even more challenging. To defeat these enemies, you need to have two units ready. One unit needs to be spotted or attack the Prognosticar. Since as soon as that happens, your unit gets trapped. This trap will go on and damage your unit until the unit either dies or is rescued. When the Prognosticar is using his trap, he can be attacked and killed. But do it quick. The trap is damaging your unit. You are also stuck in place. This situation is dangerous.

It also matters if the mission is taking place during day or night. The big difference is that in the daytime, the enemies have a bigger field of view. During the nighttime, some enemies will carry a torch on their patrol. This gives more light to other units. They can spot you sneaking by if you aren’t careful. There are also various torches dotted around the map, and you can put them out. The enemies can’t stand torches that are put out and will go out of their way to light them again.

It’s also important to know if an enemy stops in their patrol to talk to another enemy. Since if you kill one of them, the other enemy will start looking for them. They will start running around and if you weren’t careful, will find your tracks and spot you.

Learning those little mechanics is essential in this game. Never forget the tools you have in this game! This ranges from the abilities of each character to how for example view cones work. There is something called view cone surfing. If you want to dash to another place past some enemies… Understand that a full color in the view cone means they will spot you right away. Stripped sections of the view cone will cause you to be unseen if you crawl by. Also, it takes a few moments of you being spotted and the alarm being raised. You can run quickly enough past an enemy. Alternatively, you can run from view cone to view cone. It’s possible to get past unseen.

If you are afraid that you will get overwhelmed by all the information of all the little mechanics, don’t worry. The difficulty curve in this game is perfect. This game also has solid character tutorials. Each character tutorial guides you through 2–3 rooms, teaching you the abilities of each ability and their unique use cases. At the end of each character tutorial, you get a puzzle room. Putting to the test if you can use that character correctly. During the game, you can always open your logbook from the pause menu, where all tutorials can be watched again.

This brings me to the abilities of your characters in this game. If you have played similar games, you’ll recognize certain abilities and others will be quite new and unique. Now, some of these abilities will have a unique spin to it. For example, your sniper only has one shot. But, when you retrieve your sniper bolt… Your sniper can shoot again.

There are also extremely unique mechanics, like your Canoness has very fun abilities. She can pick up dead bodies in her canon to launch them at enemies to knock them out. But, you can also pick up allies. You can fling them over a group of enemies. This will give them a better hiding spot. Or your Ship Doctor, she can create one hiding spot out of thin air. Or your navigator, she can stop time for one enemy, allowing you to easy sneak by. And your ship cook can throw a special doll. This doll allows him to teleport to that location. He does this as soon as you click the button. Oh, and if you place that doll on an enemy, it sticks to that enemy.

You might be annoyed that I somewhat spoiled things in the above paragraph. But I have only told the tip of the iceberg here. I have left out several characters in that little summary and they have mindblowing abilities as well. Each map is created in such a way that it doesn’t really matter which characters you take into battle. Since you can finish it using any of your characters.

The Swansong of Mimimi

When Klamath and I started streaming Commandos, I wanted to play a similar game. One I haven’t played through. Since I first started playing through Desperados III again, and that was beaten in a few days. Since, I really enjoyed Desperados III, I bought the next game from the studio.

As somebody who enjoyed Desperados III quite a lot, I was happy to see things return in this game. I can’t tell you how much I love the speed up button. While I wish you can adjust the speed of it… The slow wait can be annoying. Sometimes, you have to get an enemy right where you want them. On top of that, you also have the showdown mode. With the press of a button, you can stop time and plan out your units their next move. Once you press the enter key, either still in showdown mode or not, the actions will be executed. It still feels amazing when you execute a well timed attack to take out difficult set of enemies.

Something that’s extremely useful is how you can rotate the camera in this game. Sometimes an enemy walks behind a building or some rocks… So, if you can’t rotate the camera, you wonder from where you are taking damage. Also, the ability of outlining the enemies, ladders and hiding spots help with that as well. As you can see from my screenshots, I always play with that feature enabled.

Sadly, there are a few ladders that don’t get an outline. Most likely since the developers forgot to put a certain tag on them. I remember one in Angler’s Grave, at the top right. It’s not too far from one of the mission objectives, the informant. Thankfully, these very minor oversights rarely happen. Overall, this game is extremely solid and blast to play through.

The controls are extremely solid. I had to get used to one thing. To execute certain actions, I had to hold the left mouse button instead of just clicking. This sometimes tripped me up but a quick reload fixed that problem. I only have one minor complaint about the controls. Depending on the camera angle, there were rare moments where your character refused to go to a location. I suspect it has to do with where you click. Your unit always wants to look for the shortest way to reach where you click. Sadly, this trips something up in the pathfinding and your unti refuses to go to their destination. Thankfully, a quick camera movement can fix these moments. And also, I’m glad that these moments are quite rare.

Something that’s even more rare are some minor visual bugs that can happen sometimes. Sometimes an UI-element refuses to dissapear. I had that happen twice, when I shot an enemy holding down an exit rift with the Canoness. The stars indicated that the enemy was dizzy. They hovered above the enemy’s head after the rift opened. Even after I killed the enemy, these stars remained visible. There are sometimes minor visual bugs happening like that. Thankfully, they are extremely rare and sometimes are quite funny. One time, one of my units was standing perpendicular on a ladder when I stopped it going up the ladder. The only annoying bug was that I couldn’t retrieve two bodies. They lay in a remote part of Angler’s Grave. It was almost impossible to get rid of two bodies. Maybe, it’s possible. I don’t know, I honestly gave up and earned the badge of hiding bodies on a later revist.

In such a big game it’s to be expected that sometimes things can go wrong. But it surprises me how little goes wrong and how polished the overall game is. Scrolling through the patch notes of this game, I noticed that the developers fixed many issues. They also added a lot of new content to the game. The last update to the game was even a modding tool for this game. These mods go from chaging your character models to adding new maps. I think I’ll play around with the mods after I have fully beaten the game. I’m extremely close, since I’m in the final missions of the game.

Now, earlier I talked about the UI. The UI is quite easy and helpful. There are several unique icons to inform you where certain things are. For example, where you left the paper doll when using the ship cook. There is only one thing in the UI I dislike. And that’s the list of save games. You get a little screenshot of the location of the save and a time stamp. And that’s it. You can’t give a special name or note to them. So if you are looking for a certain save… you either need to make notes OR just go through all them until you het it.

It’s the only real complaint I can give about this game. There is just a lot that this game does right. Like how you can scroll to zoom in or out. When you scroll again at the max zoom level, you see a live map. This map shows where all the enemies are. The only minor complaint I have about the map is that ammo chests aren’t marked on there. Also, quick note on the ammo chests… Almost every character has the same visual for their gun. Now, if another visual appears above the ammo chest, it doesn’t matter. The ammo chests are never character specific.

Visually, this game looks breathtaking. The attention to detail in this world gets a big thumbs up from me. The world really feels alive and somewhat real. The little animation details for example when an enemy stops at a prison cell to talk to inmates… This is just amazing. The immersion level is even higher with that.

The soundtrack is very catchy and a joy to listen to. It made certain moments in the game even more thrilling. The music has been created by Filippo Beck Peccoz, he also created the music for Desperados III. The soundtrack really fits the game like a glove. I’m so glad I bought the soundtrack DLC,. Now I can add the music to my music library to play while I’m at my dayjob.

This brings me to the sound design of this game. The sound design of this game is amazing. I’m playing this game with a good headset and I don’t think this game is playable without sound effects. A great example is, when you get spotted. You not only get a great visual hint of a yellow line turning red of the enemy spotting you… You also get some sound effects informing you that things are about to go down. On top of that, the sound effects add so much extra impact on taking down enemies. This makes it even more rewarding when you finally take down that one pesky enemy.

One thing I haven’t talked about yet is how flexible this game is. I have touched upon that by talking about how you can only choose three out of 8 characters per mission. And you are encouraged to experiment with different combinations. Now, when you open the options menu, you’ll be blown away. You can change almost everything. The controls like the shortcuts for abilities can be tweaked to your liking. You have quite a lot of control to tweak the volumes, the controls, the visuals… Even tweak certain game mechanics to your liking. Don’t like the save reminder? You can turn that off.

There is still another thing that boggles my mind that was added in this game. You can create a custom difficulty. The only complaint I have there is that the UI fails to explain the differences. I find it challenging to understand all the settings. You get a short explaination about the setting, and then you have a slider you can set. But, what’s the difference between 1 and 2 on the slider? That’s something the UI doesn’t really tell.

When I was writing this article, I kept looking at my notes and thought: “Oh, I forgot about that.”. There are just so many things in this game. The fact that in some missions, you must kill enemies in unique ways. In one mission, you have to lure enemies to a certain location. You need to do this 4 times. You do this instead of killing them. It’s a breath of fresh air. You’d think that having only a handful of maps would make this game boring and repetitive, but no. The maps are not only large but also used in extremely interesting ways. Revisits of a map make it easier to start, but each area is used in a mission. So, there is still a lot of challenge in the revisits.

Oh, there is one more thing. The question if you should buy the DLC’s or not. Let me just tell you this, I bought the game on sale with the DLC’s included. I’m so happy I did! Since the additional content in the DLC’s adds so much more to this game. They come highly recommended.

Now, I have left out a few things for you all to find while playing this game. This article is already getting quite long. I want to leave some things as a surprise for people interested in playing this game. I think it’s high time to wrap up this review and give my conclusion and final thoughts on this game.

Conclusion of this treasure hunt

The negatives:

-Unable to add notes to quick saves.
-Some minor (visual) glitches can happen. Thankfully, they are rare and rarely/never gamebreaking.
-The UI of custom difficulty could have been executed better.

The positives:

+ A masterclass in it’s genre in terms of gameplay.
+ Extremely flexible with options.
+ A modding tool.
+ A love-able cartoony story.
+ Amazing voice over work.
+ Superb soundtrack.
+ …

Final thoughts:

When I started playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, I had extremely high expectations. Mimimi blew me away with the amazing Desperados III. With this swansong of a game, they not only met my expectations, they blew them out of the water. This game showcases the achievements of passionate people. These individuals are dedicated to creating the game they love.

It didn’t take long before I fell in love with the cast of this game. The charm drew me into the world of this game. Apart from some minor things, it’s hard to find things to critique about this game. The only thing I can critique are small bugs that barely impact the gameplay of this game. This game really feels like a finished product and it’s a thrill ride from start to finish.

If you really want to find things this game does wrong… You’ll either need to be extremely nitpicky or just have the game not clicking with you. If you find this game too easy or too difficult, just tweak the setttings to your playstyle and voila.

If you enjoy games like Commandos or Desperados… You’d do yourself a disservice to not check out this game. Give the demo of this game a try, and see what you think. I wouldn’t be surprised that this game sinks it’s hook into you like it did with me.

It’s a shame to see that this game studio closes. Thank you to everybody who worked on this amazing title and I hope to meet your work in other games. This final game you all created together is a real piece of art. It’s a masterclass in game development and shows how well you know the community for games like this. I’m so happy that this game exists. Since it wouldn’t surprise me that I’ll play through this game several times now.

Before I ramble on and on about this game, I think it’s high time I wrap up this article. Otherwise, I’ll keep praising this game to high heavens and back. So, with that said, I have said close to everything I wanted to say about this game. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then… Have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 100/100

Steam store page

One of my favorite activities in Minecraft is going deep inside the caves and just exploring them. A few years ago, the developers behind Cave Digger reached out to me and asked me to review their game. Not too long after, the sequel got released and looked like it would be a VR exclusive. Until I noticed that it appeared on the Nintendo Switch eShop. So, I thought, maybe it also released on Steam, since after playing the Switch version, I felt like this game was better played with keyboard and mouse. Now, a non VR version is on Steam now… But is it worth it? Well, after playing the first sections of this game, I want to talk about it. The latest update was on May 28th, 2024 when writing this article. Now, before we dive right into it, I want to invite to you leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

Risk of Staleness

In this game, we play as an unnamed miner who is throwing into the deep end, when his digger broke. You arrive at a mysterious valley. In this valley, a hardy explorer once did his research. But why? Which secrets are in these valleys and the accompanying mines? That’s for our miner to figure out. Now, the story is being told by various comic book pages you can uncover and, according to the Steam store page, has multiple endings. I’m quite curious where it’s going to go.

So far, I haven’t gotten too deep into the story. But, from what I can read on the Steam store page, I think it has potential. I have my doubts on how the multiple endings will work. Since comic books mostly have one ending, right? Unless, it all depends on which page(s) you find or in which order or where. That’s something I’ll discover when I’m deeper into the game.

If this game is like the original game, the story overall will take a backseat for the gameplay. And after 5 hours in, that’s the case. The original game didn’t have a lot of story to begin with, but more story in a game like this can be interesting.

There is one voice actor in this game. He does a pretty fine job and brings some life to the atmosphere. I replayed a bit of the first game and I have to be honest, I appreciate the small voice lines during the exploration. Even when you quickly hear every different line, it’s a nice break since they aren’t spammed and don’t appear that often.

One of the biggest changes in this game is that the cave this time around is randomly generated each time you enter. So, this game becomes a rouge like to a degree. But, you can always exit via the lifts to safety. Since, dying in the caves means that at least half of your obtained loot is dropped. The atmosphere this time around is very cohesive. This game presents itself as a sci-fi western game, and it really feels like that. Something I really like in this game is that it doesn’t go overboard in the sci-fi genre and stays grounded. The technology could realistically exist today, apart from the unique enemies in the cave, that is.

With the story taking more of a backseat, it’s quite important that the gameplay loop is enjoyable. The gameplay loop is simple, you have to explore the caves with 4 chosen tools. The three slots above the entrance give you a hint on which tools you will need to bring to gather the most loot. You take the lift down and gather loot, while fighting enemies and avoiding pitfalls to survive. The goal is also to find the other elevator that takes you down to the next level to gather even more valuable ores to bring to the top. You have to fill in the ores you gathered into the grinder to buy upgrades to your tools and environment to progress.

The big risk with this kind of gameplay loop is that this is just a different numbers game. What I mean by that is that, apart from maybe the visuals changing, the core concept is always the same. This risks that the game becomes stale and repetitive. It’s possible that it is just a “me thing”, but I enjoy games like this more when there are some variations on the gameplay or some different puzzles. Thankfully, this game has that. There are a lot of things you can upgrade and improve to make each run feel rewarding, and each type of cave you can visit has different enemies types and unique lay-outs to keep you on your toes. In a way, I dare to compare the idea a bit to Cult of the Lamb in a degree.

The music in this game is also a blast. It fits the atmosphere of each area like a glove. My favorite track is the track that plays in the lake caves. It sounds like you image a typical track like that to sound. And it gets more intense while you are fighting enemies down there. Now, the silent moments when the music doesn’t play feel a bit long, but I always know that there is more music coming and that it fits the atmosphere perfectly and draws me more into the game. Sadly enough, this isn’t the only problem with this game, and I’d like to talk about them.

No feedback

This game has an addictive gameplay loop, and I’m really curious how the multiplayer works. I haven’t tested the multiplayer in this game, but it looks like fun. Now, this game can be played solo perfectly fine.

Now, I don’t know if VRKiwi took the VR version as a base for the non VR version, since I have the impression, that is the case. I especially notice that with the controls in this game. It feels a bit floaty, like you aren’t really connected to the ground. It also feels a bit stiff, like you have to move your mouse like you would a VR headset. You really have to play with the settings until you hit that sweetspot that feels right for you. For me, I had to lower the sensitivity to 80, amongst other things. I highly recommend that you tweak the settings to your liking, since on the Nintendo Switch version, I had to lower the sensitivity to 40 before it felt right.

Still, the character control doesn’t feel right. At first, I thought it was because the controls felt floaty… But, after some testing, I think I found a few other problems with the character control that might cause it to not feel quite right. First, the jump in this game is just silly. You can’t really rely on it, since it doesn’t always trigger when you hit the spacebar, and it’s just a pathetic jump. You can’t even jump out of ankle high water sometimes.

Secondly, there are no sound effects for walking on most floors. You feel like you are floating, and it’s jarring when you suddenly hear a sound effect when you walk over a table or a railway. Thirdly, climbing on ropes amongst other things is just insanely picky. There is also no real feedback or sound to show you grabbed the rope. Fourthly, the scroll order between tools is extremely weird. You get numbers on the wheel counter clock wise. But you go down, right, left, up. Which still confuses me after 6 hours of playing this game.

And finally, some things are extremely picky. For example, there are safe riddles you can solve down in the caves. But to rotate the letter wheels to make pick the right letter is more difficult to do. All of these things give you a feeling that you aren’t always in control of your character and that you don’t get the feedback as a player on what’s happening. Making you unsure what’s happening and doubt if you are doing the right thing.

Prompts like “Use W/S to use the crank” should be “Hold W/S to use the crank”. Since, you need to hold the key instead of pressing it. Small things like that could also improve this game and it’s controls quite a lot. Overall, the controls are good, but they lack feedback to the player sometimes. Either with sound effects or with some visual effects. Like with the hammer, you barely have any sound effects when you use it, and it has some wind up animation, making you unsure if you are using it or not.

That is one of the biggest flaws in this game. The lack of feedback on your actions. Things like not knowing how many bullets are still left in your revolver or a sound effect when you hit an actual enemy. I think if there is one thing I’d use the built-in feedback tool is to report various cases/moments when I expect feedback from the game, like a sound effect or visual effect. Maybe they appear in the form of rumble effects… But, I’m not playing this game with a controller.

When you read this section of the article, I wouldn’t blame you if you think that this game isn’t good. Small bugs like the text of “Press R to reload” when your gun isn’t equipped or the bullets not leaving from the gun but from the player model don’t improve things either. Yet, I find myself looking past these problems since the core gameplay still works. I find myself getting used to the jank in this game and finding a very rough diamond. If the developers keep up with their promise of improving this game, I think that more action feedback will bring a lot to the game and maybe fixing the small bugs like in this paragraph as well.

Things like the animation of the shovel looking weird sometimes. The animation looks like the arms go through each other after a dig. Speaking of the shovel, the last dig is annoying since you have to move a pixel or two for it to count and give you your goodies. But the bug I’d love to see fixed most is the freeze for several seconds when you pick up something new or get a new codec entry. The game locks up like it’s about the crash, but it doesn’t.

What’s next for us?

Usually, I’m not really picky when it comes to the visuals of a game. As long as a game looks consistent, I’m quite happy. It needs to have a certain style so that you can quickly identify what’s what and enjoy the game.

Yet, for this game, I do have some things that I not really like in terms of the visuals. Firstly, the contrast of some ores and the floor isn’t clear enough. Sometimes I was passing up on ores since I wasn’t able to notice them on the ground.

There are also a lot of objects to give more details to the cave, but you can barely interact with them. I’d love to see lilly pads in lakes to move a bit when you walk past them or something more than just being able to clip through them. As well, a sound effect when you hit a wall you can’t mine. You get shouted at when you use the wrong or a too weak tool on something, so when not for the rest?

I think the biggest mistake that the visuals make is that it has an identity crisis. What I mean by that is that it isn’t a cohesive style. There is a lot of shell shading going on, but there is also a lot of details that give off a more realistic vibe. Some textures aren’t detailed enough and strechted too wide giving wrong impression the rest of the visuals that look more modern. The floor textures sometimes suffer most from this issue.

Looking back at this article, I think I’m being very critical for this game. I have played a lot worse and broken games for 15€. But, in this game you even have customisation options for your character and thee developers are extremely open for feedback. This game has a lot going for it. Fun achievements to hunt for, bosses at the end of runs and an amazing auto save system.

Apart from improving the character controls and adding some feedback on actions, I think this game is pretty decent. Yes, there is some polish missing like not having a tooltip with the lever at the cave entrance on what that lever does. I personally feel less conflicted about this game compared to the original. The growth in this title is immense and brings me a lot of hope for either some amazing updates, DLC or a new entry in the series.

The basis of for an amazing title is here and if you look past it’s short comings, this game is a blast to play. Maybe it’s a bit too repetitive for some and can be more fun in short bursts. But, when this game sinks it’s hooks into you, it really clicks. There is some polishing left to do and for a rather new VR focused developer, this is amazing. It’s their second non VR game and it shows a lot of promise.

The game is a perfect relaxing game to wind down, since it isn’t too difficult. The game is rather forgiving. I wouldn’t be surprised that I play this game after work to wind down and try and finish it slowly. Then again, while I’m writing this, I have summer holidays and I wouldn’t be surprised that I finish most of this game during my summer break.

Like I said earlier, I feel less conflicted about this game compared to the previous title. This game has a lot more going for it compared to the original. It’s less repetitive and it has a lot more going for it. It has it’s problems, yes. But, if you enjoy games like Minecraft, Steamworld Dig or Cave Digger, give the demo of this game a chance. The demo gives a very good idea on what you can expect from this game and if you enjoy it, buy the game. I’m enjoying myself quite a lot with this game and I’m happy that I have chosen the PC version over the Switch version since I feel like it just plays better. But maybe, if I get used to the Switch controls, I might enjoy it on Switch as well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. Maybe when I finish this game, I might write a full review with the final thoughts and opinions on this game. But for now, I think the best conclusion for this game is that it’s an amazing step up from the original and besides some unpolished things… It’s a great game and comes recommend from me.

So, it’s time to wrap up this article with my usual outro. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

Nintendo.com microsite – Official website – Wikipedia page

When you purchase games on the Nintendo eShop, you earn store credit. I usually save up a lot of my credit and purchase a smaller title with it. One of these titles I purchased a few months ago is named Little Noah – Scion of Paradise. After playing it for a bit, I was surprised that it was the perfect game to play on my commute to and from work. I played it on a few train rides, and I think I’m ready to share my opinion on this game. This game is something unique and now that I have beaten it once, I really want to talk about it. Wait, beaten it once? What do I actually mean? Let’s talk about it in this article, while I invite you to leave a comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Zipping Kitty Attempts

In this game, we play as an alchemist called Little Noah. She is in a long journey to reunite with her father. While she is looking for her father, her airship gets caught in a storm, and she crashes near a mysterious ruin.

In that ruin, she meets an amnesiac cat named Zipper. Well, she names it Zipper. Together, they start to explore this ruin because they encountered a dark wizard named Greigh, who wants to enable a powerful machine which is dormant in the ruin.

Now, if you are looking for a deep story… I’m going to have to disappoint you. The story of this game isn’t the main focus of this game. The story in this game is fine for what it is and does its job, but there is nothing more to it. Personally, I don’t think it’s a negative for this game. Because the story takes a backseat, the gameplay loop is a lot more polished. Also, I don’t think it was the intention to have a very in depth story.

The voice actors in this game did an amazing job and brought the characters and the world of this game to live. The amount of personality they brought to their characters is really well done and really fits the atmosphere of this game like a glove. The amazing voice acting is one of the main reasons why I didn’t mind the “To be continued” at the end of the game at all. This small title really feels like the developers are testing the water if people who be interested in a larger game set in the world of Little Noah.

So, what do I mean by “small title”? Well, this game can be beaten in an afternoon. Now, the game has quite a lot of replay value in my opinion. The gameplay loop of this game is quite enjoyable. It has quite the potential to grow into something unique that I don’t often see in these rouge lite games. But, I’ll talk more about the gameplay later.

According to various sources online, this game has been worked on by a small team of 30 people. Even by some industry legends like Yukio Futatsugi, who had his hand on another title I played in the past called World’s End Club. The amount of love and care put into this title is quite impressive and gets a thumbs up from me. I know that this game is based upon an earlier mobile game from the same developers called Battle Champs. Yet, I think it’s great to see the developers repurpose the assets after the shutdown of that game and make something new about it.

If you have ever played a game like Rouge Legacy, you’ll feel right at home in this game. In this game, you have to explore a dungeon and fight bosses. During your exploration run, you gain various special items that give you all sorts of buffs.

In terms of difficulty, this game is very balanced. While you can get lucky and get amazing items and buffs to make it quite far in the game, with enough skill and understanding of the game… you can even outplay the game if you get bad items and not good buffs. Now, I’m reading mixed things about the hard difficulty online, but I have been playing through this game on normal difficulty and I found it pretty fair and balanced. So, let’s do one more dive to explain how this game works.

One More Dive

I want to talk about the unique mechanic in this game. The combat system in this game is something I wanted to play for a long while. In this game, you are accompanied by Lilliputs. These are special creatures who attack for you. You start each run with three basic Lilliputs. During your run, you can find other Lilliputs and make yourself stronger.

Each Lilliput is very different in terms of strength, element, attack, and unique attack. You can only have five Lilliputs for your main attacks, and you have two special attack slots where you can place one Lilliput in each. So, you really need to balance your Lilliputs well. The order is also quite important, you don’t want a whole row of slow attacking Lilliputs in an area with a lot of range attacking enemies. Also, you don’t want to use a weak element compared to the enemies you are facing. If you are focusing on wind, you will have trouble with fire enemies.

It’s extremely important to understand your Lilliputs. Since, once you started an attack, you are somewhat locked into that attack. You can’t start another attack while an attack is in progress, excluding the special attacks that is. So, if the enemy moves to the other side of your attack, though luck. This game is a whole balancing and time act, and it’s a lot of fun. The randomness in this whole game makes each run unique, and you can never predict how far you’ll be able to go.

Now, dying in this game isn’t the worst thing. All your items and Lilliputs get converted into mana, which you can use to repair your airship. The more you repair your airship, the more advantages and buffs you can unlock to make even better runs. You can also use special treasure chests you can pick up in your run to either increase the strength of your unlocked Lilliputs or give to Zipper for a special bonus for your next run.

So, how does a run go? Well, allow me to compare it to a crusade in Cult of the Lamb to a degree. In that game, you go into a dungeon, and you have to go from room to room, defeating every enemy in that room before you can progress to the next room. Unlike Cult of the Lamb, some rooms give you a special challenge. These challenges are reaching a certain amount of chained damage or hits, not being hit or defeating all the enemies in a limited amount of time. When you complete this challenge, you receive an additional bonus when you defeat the room.

There are also special rooms that can spawn. A shop where you can spend the gold you earn during a run, platform challenges with a strong treasure chest at the end, (combat) challenge rooms and rooms where you can get special buffs from a crystal and a room where you can get Lilliputs or a buff item. All of these special rooms have a special icon on the map. The map also shows little icons when there is still something you can pick up in the room.

Complete exploration of a dungeon is a very risk/reward thing. You do risk your health to go into an additional room to get additional buffs, or do you want to save your health for the next (mid)boss level? In order to beat this game, you have to beat three worlds. Each world works like this: level – level – midboss – level – boss. Be warned, you can only replenish your health potions at the start of a level. During (mid)boss fights, you can’t replenish your health potions, so keep that in mind when you are deciding if it’s worth the risk to go into that challenge platforming room.

Overall, the gameplay in the dungeon is quite addictive and the fast-paced decision-making you have to make is something that got me hooked. I don’t spend a lot of time on my airship, outside repairing it and setting up the right buffs for my next run. I always want to do one more dive and try and beat the game again. Now, the airship itself is build quite well. You can also re-read the tutorial boxes in case you want to refresh your memory on certain mechanics.

Repetition of Diving

Something that really impressed me is how smooth this game actually runs. The optimization of this game is incredible. I didn’t have any frame rate issues or slowdowns at all. Even when I’m preforming my ultimate attack, which causes a lot of visual flair and effects on the screen.

The controls are extremely responsive as well. Very rarely I felt like I wasn’t in control, and I think some of these moments might even have been a false positive where I was trying to blame my mistake on the game. In terms of the controls, there are only a few nitpicks I can give. The first is the decision to place “R” as the interaction button. This feels quite unnatural and took me some getting used to. Also, I think a left-handed mode would have been welcome since I think left-handed people who appreciate the “L” button then for interactions.

Why am I placing so much attention on this? Well, because you don’t pick up items or Lilliputs automatically. You have to stand next to them and interact with their medal or crystal. But items like health drops or burst gauges are picked up automatically.

The other nitpick I have is that when you start your dive, you get a fixed amount of mana from the first dungeon. Why can’t we skip this little cutscene that plays every time? It breaks the flow of the start of a run. Since you are stopped in your tracks every time.

Another nitpick I have with the controls is how the Lilliput attack order can be decided. The problem comes when I just want to swap two Lilliputs of their place. This is something you can’t do. Unless you swap them from your inventory to the main line OR from the main line to a special attack slot and vice versa. Swapping two Lilliputs in the main line is somewhat clunky to do and feels unpolished.

Visually, this game is extremely colorful and charming. While this is a side view game, like a 2D Mario game, the backgrounds are also incredible. The team that worked on the visual presentation of this game did an amazing job. I only have one nitpick about it and that’s somewhat shared with a nitpick I have with the audio design.

I feel like the frozen status isn’t communicated clearly enough to the player. Several times I was unable to move Noah and I couldn’t figure out why. It took me sometime to realize that she was frozen and that’s the reason why I couldn’t preform an action. Either a more exaggerated visual of a frozen Noah could solve this or more sound effects when you try to do something while frozen.

Apart from that, I don’t have any complaints about the visuals. The animation feels amazing, and you feel the impact of the attacks of your Lilliputs and it feels so rewarding, adding more immersion to the gameplay loop. This game is something where I felt: “One more dive” after each time I died and returned to the airship. Each time I wanted to go and explore the amazing caverns. While I was afraid that this game would suffer from long play sessions, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t the case for me. At the end of a long play session, I have to admit that the game felt a bit repetitive… But I don’t mind repetitive gameplay too much when the core gameplay loop and level design is fun.

The only negative I have about the level design is that you very quickly see all the possible room lay-outs there are in this game. While the dungeon is randomized each run, it doesn’t take long before you see similar rooms. A couple of times, I even had the same room back-to-back. This isn’t a huge problem perse, but I felt that the developers could mask this a bit better with different decorations or minor changes like one of the platforms having a possibility of crumbling or not.

The music and sound effects in this game are really catchy. I would love to add it to my playlist. Sadly, I can’t really find a way to listen to the soundtrack or even buy it. The tracks in this game are charming when they need to be but are also quite action-packed during fight scenes. The sound effects and visuals inform you quite well when an enemy is going to attack.

Now, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I think it’s high time for my conclusion of this game. Let’s dive into the summary and my final thoughts of this game.

Summary

The bad:

– Some minor nitpicks with the controls.
– Story is fine, but lacks some depth and is predictable.

The good:

+ Very addictive gameplay loop with high replay value.
+ Amazing voice acting.
+ Breath taking visuals.
+ Extremely optimized gameplay.
+ …

Final thoughts:

This game is a small indie title created from the remains of an old gotcha game. It’s only 15€ on the Nintendo eShop and it’s totally worth it’s price in gold. While the game lacks some depth and is quite short, the replay value this game has is something that’ll make you replay this game just one more time.

While playing this game, I felt that this game was an experiment. The developers were testing the waters if the gameplay would work or not. This game feels like a prequel to a much larger game and if I’m right, I can’t wait to see what the full game or the sequel is going to be like.

Even when this game is going to be a standalone game, I don’t really mind if that’s the case. This game is a game I can highly recommend if you enjoy games like Rouge Legacy or Cult of the Lamb. While it doesn’t have a lot of, if any, base building… It’s another amazing title in the genre.

While outside of the combat mechanics, it doesn’t do a lot of things you haven’t seen (a lot) before in other similar games. But, that isn’t a bad thing. Since, sometimes a game where all the good ideas from other games come together into one title can be a lot of fun as well.

I’d love to see another game in this universe where there are a bit more stakes in using your Lilliputs. What if certain Lilliputs get weaker when you pick up items of their opposite element? Or Lilliputs that can do a special attack with another Lilliput present…

There is so much more you can do with this combat system and I think that if the developers expanded on the core mechanics, this game sequel could reach quite far. Since, the game we already got placed an amazing foundation for an amazing series. I love this game to bits and I’m so glad I gave this game a chance, since it was an amazing pleasant surprise to playthrough. It comes highly recommend from me. After I finished the game once, I let me hunger for more. I wanted to play it even more. And the fact that I barely have any complaints about this game apart from a weak story and some nitpicks… This game just has a lot of care and lot put in by the developers and everything works and fits together so well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100

Itch.io – Steam

Back in 2017, a developer from France contacted me about their new point-and-click sci-fi game in the works called Ama’s Lullaby. But, it’s more than a point-and-click game, it’s also a hacking game. Now, this developer works on this game in his free time after his day job and with a small budget. Sometimes these passion projects die due to lack of time, money, motivation and/or just interest. But it looks like Ama’s Lullaby isn’t going to be one of those projects. Earlier this year, a demo of the game got released. Now, I asked the developer if he was interested in streaming this demo with us, and he did. Here is a link to part 1 & part 2. Sadly, due to overheating of Klamath’s computer, it had to be cut into two parts and the ending was quite abrupt. Now, this stream is almost a month ago, and I still wanted to write an article about this game. So, what do I think of the demo? Am I still as impressed when I saw it during the livestream, or is my opinion going to change when I’m not back seating and playing it myself? Let’s find out in this article.

Hacking The Point-And-Click Genre

The story of this demo is quite simple. Ama enters the police station and gets new tasks to aid the space colony she is in. Overall, the story is told more naturally compared to other games. Mostly, we get an opening where the main story of the game is teased, but not in this game. During interactions with the others, we get little glimpses into the world and story. Now, this is a tricky thing to pull off, since either you have to force the player to interact with everybody or risk that some players miss potentially important information. On the other hand, info dumping on the player isn’t always the best solution.

Now, in this space colony, there is an AI that makes a lot of decisions. It turns out that Ama and her dad have created that AI and the software to interact with it. She is one of the ambassadors of the human race. But it doesn’t take too long before strange things start to happen, and you notice that not everything is what you think it is.

The dialogues in this game appear above the character’s their head. When it’s cursive, you know it’s a thought. Not only that, you have simple sound effects that appear to put some additional power to the dialogues and to quickly differentiate between thoughts and spoken dialogues. Currently, there are plans to fully voice act this game, but if those plans fall through, I’d recommend to the developer to have different sound effects for the dialogues for different emotions.

Now, the game cold opens with an old school terminal as a main menu. This might be a bit jarring for new players who aren’t used to working with the command line. Personally, as somebody who knows how a command line works, I really love this touch. Since, this interface is also present in a lot of puzzles in the game. It fits the atmosphere and style of the game as a glove. To be honest, I think that with some minor polishing, it would be perfect.

There are a few things I would change. First, I’d get rid of the case-sensitive commands. The main reason is that a lot of people have the default keybinding for the Steam overlay with is… Shift+Tab. Since I love using autocomplete, it got pretty frustrating when I was holding my shift button and tabbed to autocomplete and my Steam overlay popped up.

A second thing I’d change is to allow the user to enlarge the font of terminal. The reason for that is because it doesn’t really scale pretty well with people who are using larger monitors.

Now, since this game is still in development and this is just the demo… I can totally excuse that there are features not present. Like pushing the up arrow to get the last command, or the help feature not always working correctly in all menus. For example, if you are in the options menu and use “QUALITY HELP”, you get information but if you first write “QUALITY” to see the options you can input and then “QUALITY HELP”… It bugs out and doesn’t give you help at all. Another small bug I noticed is that for some reason, the enter button on my numpad didn’t enter but always selected the whole text. But hey, during the stream the developer said that some of these things are on the list to get fixed for the full game.

Cyberpunk Sci-fi

I was impressed with the visuals of the game when we were playing this game on stream. While I haven’t played the Blade Runner games yet, I have seen a lot of people talk about it and know the visual style of the game. This game really mimics that style extremely well. You really feel like you are in a sci-fi world with some older technology than we have compared to our own technology.

Also, something I really love in this demo is that everything is one big space. You don’t really have “screens” in this game, like in a Broken Sword game for example. No, the camera swings and follows Ama as if she was in a movie. This sells the illusion of the area even more. While I’d have loved to see the details the developer put in every scene more up close sometimes, the more zoomed out look gives you a better overview on the scene. It almost feels like you are watching Ama through security camera’s or a drone camera in a way.

The biggest thing that I want to point out in terms of the visuals is Ama herself. The game goes for a more dark and dimly light environment and with a main character that’s wearing black clothes, it’s extremely easy to lose Ama in the scenery. It wouldn’t surprise me if they gave our main character in Blade Runner a brown coat for that reason, so you can more quickly see the main character without breaking the visual style of the game. But, overall, this is almost a nitpick. Since, it didn’t happen a lot that I lost Ama in the scene. It mostly happened when I was replaying parts of the demo while writing this article.

Now, I want to talk about the command line. The tutorial in this game on how a command line works is actually well done. I love how it doesn’t hold the players hands and tries to force them to input the right thing. It really lets you experiment with it and learn how it works. All the while, a small guide on how things work is displayed on the top of your screen.

This whole command line mechanic in this game is a breath of fresh air. It’s impressive how true to reality the whole command line is. While it uses some creative liberties here and there to make it fit into the game world, overall, it might be a real command line interface that’s open in the game.

In this demo, you have a few tasks to complete. Most of these tasks involve fixing various things. One task is highly dependent on the command line. This was quite easy for me since, like I said, I know how to use a command line. Visually, it’s a bit tricky during the tutorials in the network view since it’s not really clear/easy on how you can scroll up or down while in the network view. Using the mouse mostly scrolls around the network map. I think an easier way to scroll up and down in the terminal could be useful there. Also, when you have to input a command that’s longer than the terminal screen, I’d start a second line. Since, that’s how real life works. Or move the whole thing, and not let the username stay.

Final thoughts and future wishes

Overall, the demo is quite short. If you don’t know what you are doing and exploring everything, it will take you mostly two hours to complete. But if you know what to do, you can finish this in 10 minutes. Yet, the impression I got from the stream hasn’t changed. This game has quite a lot of potential but it needs some polish here and there.

There are some minor things like some objects not being solid and Ama being able to run through them, but there are also more major issues. The elevator bug the developer Marc mentioned during the stream, happened to me. Ama didn’t go up with the elevator and she was stuck. I think it was related to another bug I encountered where the head of IT got stuck in an animation loop. Somehow it was like Ama was near him while Ama was walking in other parts of the station. I don’t know what exactly triggered that, and I have replayed the demo trice to try and get it back into that bugged state, but I was unable to find the cause and I was unable to replicate it.

Currently, there is one way to save the game. There are several terminals in this demo where you can save your game. You only have one save slot. There is also no manual saving of the game. So, remember that. You can also only load from the main menu.

Reviewing a demo is always tricky to do. Especially if the game is still in development, since you never know for sure how the final game is going to look like. Yet, this demo is extremely promising. The puzzles where a lot of fun and after playing the demo, I had the same feeling that Klamath had at the end of the stream. I want to play more or similar games like this.

I could start talking about how the sound effects are amazing but there isn’t enough music yet. But, at one hand, the lack of music really sells the atmosphere of the game a lot more but on the other hand, the music during the terminal sections is really enjoyable. But, I’m sure that in the full game we shall see more music.

Just like I’m convinced that when the full game releases and the players find bugs, they will get fixed. While I was talking with Marc during the stream, I really felt the passion for creating this game and how he wants to make it the best experience it can be for his players. So, if you are interested in this game after reading this article in any way shape or form, I highly recommend that you give this game a chance, play the demo for yourself and give the developer feedback via his Discord or any other of his official channels.

I can’t wait to see and play the final game. Various things got revealed and talked about during the stream and I have to say, it was an amazing experience and conversation. I was already interested in seeing this game when it was on KickStarter but now that I have played the demo, I think we are on a winner here. This game will put an interesting twist on the point-and-click genre and will be interesting to anyone who enjoys adventure games with a sci-fi influence or just enjoy more unique puzzle games.

I want to thank Marc for reaching out to me and talking about his unique project. You can be sure that when the full version releases… me and Klamath will play through it and most likely stream it. And I’ll write a more in-depth article on the final product. Since, I might have not talked quite in-depth in this article but I want to hold off my final opinions when the game is fully released.

If you have read my article, played the demo and/or watched our stream, I’m curious, what did you think about this game? Feel free to talk about it in the comments. Am I overhyping the game or overlooking flaws? Or is there something you’d love to see in the full game?

And with that said, I have said everything about the game I want to say for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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