December2022
Mini Review Sable (PS5) - Beautiful Coming of Age Adventure
Sable is not so stable
After a year of exclusivity over on Xbox and PC, Sable — a coming of age exploration game — has finally made its way over to PS5. The important question, as always, is has the wait been worth it? And the answer is yes, but only if you’re willing to overlook its technical issues. On a desert planet called Midden, when a...
November2022
Mini Review Norco (PS5) - A Peculiar Prosaic Paradigm
Norc by Norcwest
While on the surface, Norco might seem a fairly traditional point-and-click adventure title, this would do a gross disservice to what the game actually has to offer. A grungy, dystopian, post-capitalist mining town, Norco, Louisiana is a bleakly beautiful setting for a brilliant story. Offering a unique cross-pollination of...
October2021
Mini Review Backbone (PS5) - Escalating Mystery Bites Off More Than It Can Chew
A dog eat dog world
Backbone makes a great first impression. This is a noir, narrative-driven game in a world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, all living their lives in a dystopian city. Playing as Howard Lotor, a private detective who's barely making ends meet, you take on what appears to be a simple job, but it soon leads you to a much...
May2021
Mini Review Call of the Sea (PS5) - A Pretty But Predictable Puzzler
Lost at sea
Norah is ill, and her husband Harry is missing after having gone searching the world for a cure. After receiving a mysterious package, Norah decides to go to the place Harry was last known to be — an island off the coast of Tahiti. Call of the Sea bills itself as a Lovecraftian mystery game, and whilst the first person adventure...
March2021
Mini Review Star Renegades (PS4) - Rogue-Lite RPG Is Complex But Compelling
Breaking the timeline
Star Renegades is another rogue-lite indie game, but it differentiates itself in some interesting ways. It's a turn-based RPG where you fight a threat that spans multiple alternate realities with a ragtag group. Sporting a lovely pseudo-3D pixel art style, it certainly looks the part, and its multifaceted gameplay is complex...
February2020
Mini Review Mosaic - An Intriguing Experience That Can't Stick the Landing
Big brother is watching
Much like with its previous title, Among the Sleep, developer Krillbite seems to have bitten off more than it can chew. Mosaic is an intriguing title with exciting ideas. Unfortunately, the ideas simply outpace the resources that the developer has available to realise them. But it’s not for lack of trying. Mosaic’s...
December2018
Review Kingdom Two Crowns - Enjoyably Minimalist Strategy
Regal action
Strategy games can be rather intimidating. Generally speaking, they're difficult by design, forcing you to think several steps ahead, and make decisions more carefully than you would in other genres. Occasionally you'll come across a strategy title that's a little easier to get into, and the Kingdom games are certainly in that ballpark...
August2018
Island hopping
Bad North is an oddity, as it's quite a niche game wearing a casual game's clothing. It's a rogue-like real-time strategy game, but don't let that scare you off -- it takes a minimalist approach, throwing out a lot of the fiddly stuff associated with the genre in its pursuit of purity. The result is an extremely lean experience that...
