Yang Yumo is a perfectly normal high school girl until she falls into a dimensional rift into the Phantom World; a darker mirror world of Ximending city, but full of dangerous Chaos beasts hellbent on merging your world and theirs together. Rescued by convenience store worker and mystical beast Leo, work part time in a convenience store, team up with the Kunlunians, eat at a huge variety of restaurants, and unleash your spiritual power to save the city!

Dusk Diver is a 10-20hr “beat-em’-up” game with plenty of chain attacks, combos, skills, buffs, and tactics; but if that’s not your style button mashing does just fine! 11 re-playable chapters and small/large open world areas including the main hub, Ximending, which has plenty of fun Gatcha machines ranging from character art to outfit cosmetics, to eat-in restaurants, some of which will be surprisingly familiar, or stalls with actual menus with mouthwatering food and photo descriptions! Collect Dragon Vein Stones and restore harmony to the city!

Dusk Diver really is a fun game and I’ve only noticed two bugs, one is when you enter a friend event but the npc is wearing one of the special outfits, but since they are not wearing their default outfit for the cutscene the game crashes and you get a “Fatal Error” report; this is easily fixed by switching them back to their normal outfit; and the other was when I was fighting a boss and I did something which caused my character model to break and enter T-pose mode, which I was unable to get out of for a bit. Still, it’s a fun game and I definitely recommend it! A bit tedious to 100%, but not difficult.

Shuka is an adopted girl living peacefully in Ikkaku Village who was blessed to be able to speak with animals and purge evil from her surroundings, but new visitors to the village bring some terrible news; demons sealed long, long ago on the island have broken free of their bindings and are causing destruction! Set off on a short adventure to banish or re-seal these demons!

40 min to 5 hours, Hitotsu no mori is a cute game that that’s unfortunately no longer available on Steam. With watercolor backgrounds, explorable areas, cute and animated sprites, a fun combat system, 5 routes and endings to play it’s a fairly solid game. There are no difficult battles, but enemies don’t respawn so exp, or “purity points” is limited but technically unnecessary unless you plan on being overpowered. There are 5 routes and 5 endings, and while the game is short there are many visual novel segments and it never felt like the game was lacking. You pick your route about halfway through the game, and can make a save point so re-playability is high.

Taking shelter from the snow, stumble upon an icy cavern to take cover inside! Make friends with the slumbering spirit of the north that lives here and go on a curious adventure to eradicate the plague that has taken root while the spirit slept! Channel mystical powers to destroy plague tethers, return what was lost to the deceased, find the source of the infection and bring peace back to the devastated area! Also; you’re a fox.

6+ hours to complete, 8 chapters, 7 cosmetic skins which are rewarded to you based off your collectable completion. Spirit of the North is an absolutely gorgeous game with a bit of a confusing story; it’s very good vs evil with your character using blue energy and blue Spirit Blossoms to vanquish the red Plague Tethers and red energy; but the ending and actual source of the enemy is a bit unclear. There are a few puzzles, but they are generally very simple and used to assist you in learning a new ability that you gained, and while collectables can be missed in the initial playthrough there is nothing you can permanently skip.

Go on an adventure to experience TOEM, a strange, magical phenomenon that occurs only on the far-off mountaintop of Kiiruberg’s Peak; It’s a long journey, but your Nana has done it before, and has highlighted several tourist spots along the way. Armed with only a camera and an empty photo album, explore 7 main locations, assist residents for stamps to get free bus rides and apparel, and take photos of memorable things on the way to Kiiruberg to make the greatest memory of this voyage yet!

3-8 hours to complete, TOEM is a photographic exploration game where you set off on a journey to experience the phenomenon called TOEM while photographing and filling your album with snapshots of your adventure. Hand drawn in black and white, the game was surprisingly beautiful and fun to explore; looking around with your camera can let you catch things you will have otherwise missed, and helping other people rewards you with plenty of apparel items. There is a fair bit of optional content, such as taking photos of all the animals you see for achievements, and yes, you can pet the dogs.

10+min to complete, find 100 Hidden Dogs in this hand-drawn HOG with catchy music. This HOG features animals from other hidden object games made by this developer, and a few animations.
Press “N” for nightmode, or “Del” and “Esc” to reset all achievements.

Cleo is 14 years old and is absolutely done with working at her father’s bar; she wants adventure, thrills, excitement, treasure! But all her dad wants is for her to grow up! Enchanted by the multitude of books about the legendary pirate Captain Cabeca and his amazing adventures out at sea and wanting to leave this disgusting bar of fishermen and drunks behind, she’s dying for her own quest to begin; but when something fantastical actually happens, she quickly realizes she might be in over her head. A severed hand holding a logbook, an almost-death at sea, Cleo would like to go home now, please.
Set sail in search of a treasure even the mightiest pirate captain could never find – The Treasure of Eternal Memory.

4-6+ hours to complete, Cleo - a pirate's tale is a point and click adventure game with logic puzzles, remarkable voice acting, and bit of a dark story as there are multiple character deaths. Don’t let that put you off from playing; the game itself is pretty fun but the optional achievements are a bit tedious and I seriously recommend following a guide if you intend to 100% it, but if not, go right ahead and enjoy this absolute gem!

The Ulmer brothers are the fraternal twins of the King’s advisor in the Kingdom of Griffinvale; and largely play a similar role as their father did growing up, which is, assisting and advising the king. An avid hunter, the king was coming back on one such trip with his guards and the brothers when the drawbridge leading to the kingdom was raised, and all the guards vanished! The Ulmer brothers make their way across to see a terrible and gruesome sight, only to return to the king and find much the same. The King is dead, murdered, the brothers framed; and they must clear their name while preventing a new and unjust queen from stealing the throne! Where is a legitimate prince when you need one?

5+ hours to complete, King’s Heir: Rise to the Throne was completely nonsensical and honestly pretty great. True to HOG logic, there were many silly obstacles in your path while also being fairly fun to play with an interesting and engaging storyline. Two chapters, but the first one is the main game, with the second being an extra that takes place after the storyline. The extra I didn’t particularly like, but that’s because I got stuck at a point where I was looking for an adhesive, and the game was being absolutely ridiculous and essentially told me to look in a paper wasps nest to gather honey to use as glue. First of all, wasps don’t make honey, second, and I will die on this hill, honey cannot be used as an adhesive! It may be sticky but you try to glue anything together with it!!!!

1+ hours to complete, 10 levels, and 611 various cats to find in randomized locations, Ever Seen A Cat was honestly a huge and pleasant surprise to me; as once you complete 9 levels, you have an option to go back and find special cat variants. The background color and vibrancy is completely adjustable in the setting with a color bar, and the music was honestly pretty fantastic, the guitar strumming is my favorite!
Compared to other Hidden Object Games I came into this not expecting much, click the cats and within 10 minutes the game is done; but that definitely wasn’t the case here and Ever Seen A Cat is easily one of the best HOG games I’ve ever played.

1+ hours to complete, 9 levels, and 736 unique cats that are randomized throughout these cozy scenes, such as comfortable cafes, sunny beaches, a cushy cottage, and a greenhouse. The background color and vividness is completely adjustable and the music fits well to the theme. For a HOG, I didn’t expect to like this series as much as I did and playing was rather pleasant surprise.

1+ hours to complete, 9 levels, and over 600 cats that are randomized throughout this fairytale themed Hidden Object Game; unlike the series previous games, Ever Seen A Cat? 3’s gameplay is based around tales such as Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Golidlocks, and Jack and the Beanstalk to name a few. Notably, there is a color adjustable background and vibrancy slider; the music fits well with the themes.

Nayu shows up to participate in the Doki Doki Adventure Tour; run by the fairy Lugh; to become an adventurer and explore the nearby forest with totally-not set up situations! Unfortunately, or fortunately, an actual situation – specifically a bear, shows up and derails the whole tour! Completely lost and wandering the forest, they stumble upon and rescue Suzu, a cheesemonger, and start a real adventure!

1+ hours to beat, I honestly had a pretty great time playing The Adventure of Nayu. The art is incredibly cute, I love the music, and the main storyline is pretty enjoyable although I tried to keep it a bit vague in the paragraph above. It sells itself as a clicker game but even that’s optional, there is an auto attack and playing this game requires no actual effort on your part. There are 7 costumes you can purchase with Star Shards, a currency you collect by defeating monsters, which you can also use to buy information to increase your strength, speed, and luck; completing the main game unlocks an endless mode which I whole-heartedly recommend and the minigame, The Path to Cheese!

Following their dreams to go to America and learn in one of their universities, Hinata learns that their apartment and identity was stolen by an evil doppelganger. With no housing but determined to get to the bottom of this mess, three cute and handsome guys offer their assistance! You learn a bit too late that none of these men are people you should be hanging out with; and that your stolen identity is part of a significantly bigger plan.

2-6+ hours to complete, 3 routes and 6 endings. Mostly voice acted and with pretty graphics, I had a fairly enjoyable time playing My Dangerous Life. There are a couple things that could be improved such as more character expressions, a longer VN length, as a lot of the story felt cut down as you sort of teleported from one scene to the next, and the music selection. The background music was honestly a bit jarring and I ended up muting it and listening to something else, and if you play and don’t like the title screen music, I highly suggest doing the same. Despite having the tags for “Nudity, Mature, and Horror” there wasn’t much of that and the story really doesn’t take itself seriously. (Deflecting a gun with a playing card, etc.) Yet despite the negative aspects, it’s still a fairly enjoyable game to play and most of the CG’s were pretty nice! The story felt like it was supposed to be longer but overall, My Dangerous Life is still worth checking out if you like the LGBTQ+ genre.

Cila is depressed, tired, and absolutely alone in her tiny apartment despite having an android housekeeper, and life feels like it’s on pause indefinitely until Cila’s android breaks down. Stressed at the thought of a further solitary life, Cila speaks to her friend Yoko who runs a higher-end shop specializing in different companion models, but Yoko offers something… different. A high-end 5th generation android named Mara, for free, with a request to not look too deep into its history and not ask her any questions.
Cila never could keep her nose out of things.

3-5+ hours to complete with two endings, Synergia is a yuri thriller cyberpunk visual novel set in a dystopian world. Translated into three languages, English, Spanish, and Chinese with accessibility features such as text-to-speech and Opendyslexic font designed to mitigate common reading errors caused by Dyslexia. (Hitting “A” on the keyboard opens this setting option.)
With that out of the way, Synergia is a pretty enjoyable game with a lot of backgrounds, CG’s, and an interesting storyline. I particularly loved the art style and how there were multiple re-occurring characters with actual backstory, the world-building is pretty well done! My only real fault is that it’s very government conspiracy-y at the end and there are a couple holes you can poke in the story, but Synergia was still worth playing and if you want a short Yuri cyberpunk story; I think you will like this too!

3+ hours to complete, The Room 2 continues from the first game, trapped in a forgotten crypt. Your mysterious ally is now sympathetic to your plight, considering that you are just as trapped as they are in this strange, mysterious world. The atmosphere and theme is more darker and Lovecraftian than the first game, increasing in intensity as you move through the seven chapters; the puzzles have also expanded to the entire room than just a table. I wouldn’t classify it as a horror because nothing is particularly scary; there is a rather minor jumpscare in chapter 6, but The Room 2 is an excellent continuation and I wouldn’t bother waiting for a sale to play, as it’s an excellent game.

After freeing yourself from being trapped in the manor, once again investigate The Null. After hitting wall after wall on finding a lead to this mysterious power, a note is slipped into your jacket; with a location circled on some far away exotic island and notes on the thing you seek. Taking a train the next morning, a puzzle box appears in front of you. It might be harder to leave than first anticipated.

6+ hours to complete with 5 chapters, The Room 3 is a continuation of 2, and this is the last in the trilogy! There are 4 endings. Puzzles are now multiple rooms that interact with each other and even if you are not good at puzzles, they have similar mechanics as 1 +2 with some new stuff. Chapters 1 and 2 are the tutorial chapters and can be breezed by in 30 minutes, after that, the real fun begins! I had an absolute blast playing and while I’m a bit saddened that the journey is over, the multiple endings ensure everyone can pick their favorite one. If you get stuck or want to change your fate, ask Maggie!

Note: There is The Room 4, but there are different characters and storyline.

Investigate the disappearance of a couple in London, one of whom was reportedly working with something dangerous right before both vanishing in their home. Police have searched the area and have noted nothing of importance, but you and your employers are convinced that something is there they just cannot see or understand. Explore the house, locate the missing object, find the residents, and pray you do not become one of the lost yourself.

4+ hours to complete, 9 rooms to explore, The Room 4: Old Sins is a hidden-object puzzle mystery game that can be played separately from 1-3 as it is not part of the trilogy. Unlike the other games, these puzzles expand to the entire house and is not separated by chapters, but by rooms completed. Like the previous games, the puzzles are extremely fun to play and absolutely gorgeous! Lore is heavier here and the story is very well written, the ending especially surprised me! While you can start from The Room 4, I suggest 1-3 first as it will let the story make more sense; even if you are poor at puzzle games, you will definitely find yourself enjoying everything The Room has to offer! I sincerely look forward to playing any more of this series.

100 Hidden Aliens is a 7-minute hand-drawn hidden object game where you look for aliens; each one looks different and many pretend to be other things, so while simple, it may be tricky enough that you would need to look twice! The music is very upbeat, and matches well with the theme.
This game also offers a nightmode by hitting the “N” key, as well as an option to reset all achievements with “Del” and “Esc.”

6+ hours to complete, The Last Campfire is an honestly cute and heartwarming adventure, exploration, and puzzle game. There are three areas, each with a cold campfire to rekindle and Forlorn to rescue before you move on to the next chapter; Forlorn are like you! Lost souls who found themselves stuck here, a place between places, but gave up, lost their ember, and turned to stone. Touch them to delve into their mindscape and find their fire that was so deeply buried; and bring them back so that they may continue their journey with you! The road is long, but don’t give up hope!

2+ hours to complete, The Gardens Between is a memorable puzzle adventure game about Arina and Frendt; two childhood friends. Explore about 20 islands created by their childhood memories together, from when they first met to some rather fantastic adventures. The goal is to carry a lantern to the end of the islands, with Arina having the ability to carry and use the lantern to dispel fog, and Frendt being able to clear the way of obstacles by moving them forwards or backwards in time.

A very charming experience and well deserving of its reviews, The Gardens Between is an easy game to love and an even easier game to recommend.

Reluctantly joining the schools Literature club after selling your soul for a cupcake with your childhood friend Sayori; become friends and read Manga with Natsuki, intricate and sprawling fantasy books with Yuri, and write poems for Monika! Just Monika. With the upcoming festival, work hard with everyone to get your club set up making banners, baking cupcakes, and practicing poems! Everyone wants to spend more time with you, and you might want to spend more time with one person than another! It’s important to be friends with everyone equally! Or just be friends with Monika. Just Monika.
Welcome to the Literature club!

4-14 hours to complete, Doki Doki Literature Club slowly turns from a dating sim to a psychological horror; and with multiple endings, there is a lot of replayability and side stories to explore! While this is an excellent game, most of the story’s enjoyment comes from the plot points, and the less you know walking into this, the more enjoyment you receive. If you’ve been spoiled some or most aspects of the storyline… I’m not sure you will like this very much, since it’s admittingly a bit boring in the beginning and you already know what’s coming. Doki Doki is an incredible VN, a bit definitely overhyped, but still a solid read.

Lovingly stalk a family of 5 as they take a work-vacation to a dense and isolated forest; find out the reason they are there and follow them back home.

6+ hours, an open-world exploration walking sim with collectables. 7 areas, 7 chapters, 91 collectables (Runic Stones) and sort-of multiple endings. The graphics, voice actors, story, and music were really good! Interacting with a Runic Stone releases a spirit animal to wander around the map, and the more Runic Stones you interacted with the more abilities gained such as Sit, Lay Down, and Become Corporeal. The spirit animal you play as isn’t visible to humans in the beginning, so it makes for some fun reactions.

My only real complaint is the endings; in which they play one after another once the game ends, like the developers didn’t know how to end the game so they tacked all of them on at the same time; and some clearly had cut content because they made absolutely no sense, and almost dragged this review down to a negative. The Chapter 7 area is very linear, but it was definitely rushed. Buildings were missing walls, roofs, sides, but not in a “This building is destroyed or dilapidated” way, like it was straight up unfinished. There also were, quite a few loose ends never wrapped up, some story elements introduced and never expanded upon. I do want to make it clear; that this was a really, really good game that was genuinely fun to play until this point in the story, and I still hesitantly recommend The Companion.

Play as Edward searching for his sister in an old costal village nestled in a Fjord; formerly a mining town turned fishing called Graavik, the only way in and out is by boat. Your young and energetic ward Lissie has come along with you on this grand adventure, but arriving at this cozy seaside area, it’s immediately notable that something is amiss; every person has mysteriously vanished including the inviting hosts for your supposedly short stay. Search for clues, look at evidence, and draw conclusions as to why so many people are missing, and look for traces of your sister among them.

Set in 1920’s Norway, Draugen is a pretty entertaining 3+ hour exploration and walking sim with some dark themes. There are mentions and depictions of suicides, murder, and severe mental illness; and two sort-of mild jump scares in the game, with one being a figure backlight by lightning, and another a crow in the mines when you peek through a hole to look into a room. Visually stunning, it’s a bit regrettable that Draugen takes place in such a small explorable village -It would have been nice to see and enter more houses. The ending is open, there are dialogue choices and while they don’t change any gameplay or the ending, it changes how your character perceives things. Overall, for a three-hour game, it’s pretty good and worth checking out even if you don’t like games with darker tones.

100 Hidden Hares is an incredibly easy 10-minute Hidden Object Game in which you look for hares in a hand drawn background which, upon a closer look, resembles a lovely winter village that was bombarded unmercifully with furry fluffballs and presents. Clicking each hare results in an achievement; and it’s satisfyingly simple to finish this game with it’s interesting music and cute animations.
Pressing “N” turns the game into night mode for easier viewing, and “Delete” then “Esc” to reset all the achievements so you could earn them again if that’s something you wanted to do.

Asaba Yuma is a handsome boy who, quite frankly, isn’t interested in love or romance; it’s pointless, and typically both parties involved have their heart broken by the end; but he likes to make people smile. With a growing popularity amongst the girls in his academy and working as an assistant in the nurse’s office, his hours are regularly misused as girls often come to him with their romantic troubles; but the more he hears about other’s failing relationships, the less he’s interested in having one himself. A “Love Fairy” takes interest in his personal life and approaches him, insisting that she can help him get a girlfriend to make him happy.
The conspicuous Reaper’s Scythe in her hands makes him skeptical.

Saku Saku: Love Blooms with the Cherry Blossoms is a 17-50 hour 18+ adult VN with full voice acting. Slow-paced and mostly slice-of-life, everything is pretty basic except for the fantasy elements. There are 4 routes with 1 hidden route, and plenty of CG’s. There is an incest route which is fortunately skippable, and is unnecessary to complete to unlock the hidden route. Overall, Saku Saku is a fairly decent romance Visual Novel that has plenty of content, and it’s worth checking out if you’re interested.

Recently hired to look after a building full of cats after all the residents decided to travel for the holidays; it’s your job to make sure none of the cats are missing! Some are very skittish and will hide, so seek them out while seeing what a sneaky cat named Fofino wants from you.

40+ min to complete, 6 floors to explore with some relaxing music, A Building Full of Cats is a rather nice hidden object game. There are bonus cats hidden in the menu’s for extra achievements and despite it being short, there is a story with a satisfying ending.

Waking up utterly alone in a marsh with no recollection on how you got there except a memory of a civilization making a sacred pilgrimage to the golden door that leads to paradise; start your own journey to find your people and see what exactly is behind this door that no one ever returns from. Make an unlikely friend, and find your own definition of utopia.

4+ hours to complete, 5 chapters, one really good ending. An atmospheric adventure game with simple puzzles, the gameplay is pretty smooth; I didn’t experience any errors or bugs. You learn a couple skills to make exploration more fun and gain access to bigger maps, Float, Surf, Teleport, and Navigate. In each area, you need a minimum of 3 “energy sources” to move to the next map, with achievements for getting all of them. A lot of the story is told through “Memory cubes” of a previous pilgrim making the same journey. I enjoyed Omno more than I was initially expecting, the skills were fun to use, especially surf, and the ending was honestly very surprising and I loved it! Omno is an easy game to play and an even easier game to recommend.

Vella Tartine and Shay Volta are two people who live in separate worlds and yet somehow inexplicably connected. Vella is a baker who lives in the Badlands in the small but delicious town of Sugar Bunting; chosen as a sacrifice for a terrible monster that appears every 14 years from behind The Plague Wall and eats young girls from various towns in a ritual called “The Maiden’s Feast;” while Shay is the only passenger on the spaceship, the Bassinostra, looking for a suitable world to live in since his home planet of Loruna is dying. With two AI parent’s, MOM & DAD, who keep him safe from anything and everything at all times, Shay is wanting a real adventure! Fortunately, there seems to be a strange stowaway who needs his help “rescuing” innocent creatures from evil forces.
Let’s get this good time over with!

5-10+ hours to complete with 2 chapters, Broken age is a point and click adventure game with excellent writing, voice acting, and difficult puzzles. Act 1 is fairly simple and straightforward, but for Act 2 I recommend following a guide. Broken Age was made by the creators of Grand Fandango, another fun game with notoriously tough puzzles; and it shows. Solutions are not obvious and even if you are a creative thinker, some of these will leave you confused. Despite the drawbacks; I still have to recommend Broken Age for its fun storytelling, writing, and voice actors, but beware, there is a speedrun achievement and while you can save/load sections to shave off time, it’s still not super fun to do.

You start as a hunter, staying up late and looking for a deer to shoot for an easy meal; two come along, a big stag and a young fawn, and you line up your shot! Unfortunately for you, wolves attack and lightning strikes you at the same time and the baby fawn is shot instead. You definitely died; but the next time your eyes open it’s directly into the floating form of The Deer God, and they look pretty miffed. Appalled by your accidental cruelty, they reincarnate you as a baby deer and the only way to become human again is to redeem yourself. Good luck?

3-7 hour pixel platform side-scrolling adventure game where you play as a deer. Start as a baby and stumble your way to adulthood, complete easy push puzzles to gain various power ups; and use them and your platforming skills to beat some simple bosses. There is a karma system in place, if you’re good other deer will assist you in fights and follow you, but if you murder too many bunny rabbits you get reincarnated as one next time you die. I didn’t experience any bugs, and while the game is pretty easy, you could still die in a moment of carelessness. The only thing “unbalanced” is the Hail skill, where you have a Hail AOE that lasts a couple seconds you can actually stack/spam; I recommend it against one of the last flying bosses. Overall, The Deer God is a fantastic game and I don’t understand why the current reviews are mixed.

Play as Reiji Misaki, a college guy conned into working for a hellish video game company who can only make terrible games called “Judgment 7”; and you somehow end up really liking it and the other 6 employees despite the unethical hours and absolutely abysmal pay. Everyone who works here has their own sin, ranging from Perverted, Delusional, Chaotic, Childish, Airhead, and Plain; and together, this group of misfits has delved into VR to make a brand new, trashy 18+ game with their brand new W.O.R.L.D engine that- hang on, that’s not right; this new program traps the user into a fictional world, and randomly summons characters, creatures, and evil organizations from the previous games created that are at of risk being brought into reality! Save Japan before it is overwritten and destroyed while you try to escape from this false reality!

25-40 hours, 7 routes and 8 endings, a fully voiced VN with multiple options, I have a love-hate relationship with Our World is Ended; on one hand, the art is gorgeous, the world building is incredible, and I already mentioned but- this 40 hour game is fully voice acted and frequently goes on sale for $3.99? What? I’ve only seen two spelling errors and quite frankly, that’s pretty incredible. On the other hand, you will statistically hate all the characters until they grow on you and learn more about them. They are flawed, terrible people who become more human but at the beginning it’s really irritating communicating with everyone.
All the routes are similar except for the endings, but “skipping through all read text” of a 40-hr VN isn’t easy. There really, really needs to be a “skip to next choice” button otherwise seeing all the routes and getting 100% is absolutely exhausting. I wouldn’t recommend Our World is Ended at full price but at $3.99? Absolutely.

As a small shark with a traumatic entry into the world, become the greatest apex predator! Survive, evolve, and grow from a pup, teen, adult, elder, and mega shark; everything and anything is on the menu! Take your revenge on Scaly Pete, explore and become the underwater queen of the 8-9 locations on the Gulf Coast, and lure bounty hunters out in the open as you gain infamy points to unlock special perks and abilities. This world is yours!

8-12+ hours, Maneater can be played in a few different ways. Yeah, you can go all out and be super aggressive but the best moments I had were just, swimming around and enjoying the beautiful and realistic graphics. Later on, you get a perk which makes things smaller than you ignore you and swimming with the sharks is just, really fun! I went out of my way to find the albino versions of every animal and the Orcas are super cute. I named my character Ophelia and I really did have a great time. There are plenty of sea caverns and ecosystems to check out and many are just, absolutely gorgeous.

The game does have a couple cons and work-arounds I would like to mention to anyone interested in playing, the narrator is fun but can get super annoying 2+ hours in. He can be muted in the settings thankfully; but comes back in the DLC; which I actually recommend you skip. When I bought it, I thought it would just be silly but, is just, really annoying with all the conspiracy theories and ridiculous objectives. Fighting the final boss was good, but everything before then just made me thankful it was over.

Yen is the first god, father of mankind. He filled the middle worlds with spirits, animals, and men; seeded the forests with trees and filled the rivers with fish. He married and had 7 sons before leaving his wife and taking them on a long journey to become skilled hunters and slay the greatest of beasts; Vorsa. Vorsa is a legendary six-legged moose who carries Shondi’s fire, the sun, in his antlers and was created with the beginning of the world; and after a long hunt, was slain by Yen. With Vorsa’s death, the sun fell into the lower realm and Yen told his seven sons to draw lots among themselves, with each day a new son journeying to the underworld to bring a fragment of light back to the middle world so that the sun may rise again.

The Mooseman is 1+hr game that is largely an artistic reconstruction of myths and lore of the real-life Komi Permians, Komi Zyrians, Mansi, and Saami people who live in north-east European Russia around the basins of the Vychegda, Pechora, and Kama rivers. Artifacts represented in game are stored in the regional museum of Perm Krai in Russia. You play as one of the sons making their journey to the Underworld to collect a fragment of light and bringing it back to the middle world. Gameplay is very easy, simply move forward or backwards while switching between your mortal eye and spiritual to complete puzzles, progress through physical objects, and hide from the more dangerous spirits. Plenty of optional puzzles and riddles to collect secrets and artifacts.

7+ hours to complete, 8 chapters; House of Da Vinci is a well-made 3D puzzle adventure game with a large variety of mechanical puzzles and fabulous inventions! Solve your way through the House of Da Vinci and find the reason behind his mysterious disappearance. In nearly every room, there is a hidden blueprint which grants you both an achievement and a collectable that can be interacted with in the achievement room.

The world is peaceful and the Devil is bored; so, he jams a troublesome soul into a carved pumpkin that’s on fire and sends them to the human world to cause as much chaos as they can. This unfortunate- or fortunate? Soul is none other than Jack; the man who became a legend after tricking The Devil on multiple occasions; has made yet another deal with the devil; In exchange for hunting down The Wizard, The Champion of Humans, Jack can then leave Hell and wander the world once more.

6+ hours to complete, 6 chapters. Playing Pumpkin Jack was really easy and satisfying; the gameplay isn’t difficult and the puzzles, boss fights, weapons and power-ups are fun. My favorite character is The Cowardly Crow, a bird companion you meet almost immediately and spends the rest of the game with you. There are collectables but none of them are missable unless you choose to not explore an area or ignore them, the gramophones and outfits especially! I didn’t note any errors or sudden difficulty spikes, but there are some parts of the game where it’s easy to get vertigo; Either way, Pumpkin Jack well deserves its positive reviews.

Nora Everheart sets sail on the steamboat, the S.S Caramel after her wayward husband, Harry Everheart, and crew goes missing on an expedition to a strange island 74 miles east of Otaheite. He left in search for a cure for Nora’s strange genetic illness; and after searching for clues he is convinced that somehow, this island is it. Nora arrives, and immediately feels something is… off. There is a reason sailors won’t speak of this island except to warn you away, and it’s time you find out why.

Call of the Sea was such an awesome game, 7+ hours to complete, a good and interesting story with excellent puzzles and plenty of charming characters. A walking sim with gorgeous and colorful environments, and despite the well-deserved Lovecraftian tag, not a horror! 6 replayable chapters, two endings, and a lot of fun discoveries; Call of the sea is absolutely worth playing if anything I’ve written sounded interesting to you.

Arriving at one of many islands to take over your retired aunt’s calico cat café, meet and make friends with the animals and residents of Heart Village. Complete requests and errands from the villagers to collect various furniture and 21 recipes for your shop! With numerous animals, horses, foxes, cats, dogs, crows, bears and more, have up to 10 animals living with you in your café. Carve out a space and life for yourself on this gorgeous island, and make it your home!

There is a lot to unpack here, so I’ll try to keep it short. 6+ hours to complete, slow-paces and LGBTQ+ friendly yet with no romance options; Calico is purely a pastel slice-of-life and relaxation game. Every piece of furniture and apparel is fully customizable with a huge color wheel with apparel having numerous patterns. The baking minigame is very fun and there is such a huge variety of things to do on the island you can pretty much do whatever you like; with my favorites being relaxing in the hot springs with the capybaras and running the café. The music is a bit repetitive but it’s very enjoyable and in particular I love the NPC designs and dialogue; the game is however, very feminine.

For the cons: as stated before, it’s very feminine. Making a character is supposed to be androgynous but making a male character is fairly difficult due to the body types/outfits; this game is marketed towards women. Another is at the time of this review, cake decorating as shown in the steam store video was removed due an issue and it’s not certain if it will be re-implemented. There is a bugged quest with Kai; you have the option to give her a dog or cat for her to feel more comfortable living alone at the lighthouse, and I chose to get her a dog, but going to bed resets the quest and defaults to giving her a cat instead. Riding horses is fun because of their quick speed, but dismounting them while they are running makes them continue at that speed until they hit a wall or unclimbable area. While this can be hilarious, chasing down a horse zooming across the map is just fun for the first few times it happens.

Overall; it’s a fantastic game. I really enjoyed playing and while I wish there was a bigger display case for pastries and sandwiches you can make, it’s a very fun 6+ hours and it would be interesting if they ever decided to add multiplayer.

TLDR; 6+hrs, LGBTQ+ friendly, a pastel slow-paced slice-of-life game where you run a cat/animal café. 21 recipes and a ton of customization for your character and furniture is available. Very feminine and relaxing.

A girl wakes up alone in a strange place with floating blocks, missing walls, and a void below her. The floor crumbles as she discovers her unique abilities – The power of precognition and time manipulation; Team up with a cat to repair broken paths, open doors, and hide from the dangerous sentinels that roam the floors, and make your way home; Wherever that is, anyway.

Timelie is a very enjoyable 5-7+ hour stealth puzzle and strategy game! Absolutely worth it to get all the relics for the True Ending! My only complaint is that I wish it was longer, or a book. A bit hesitant to play at first since I’m not a huge fan of the strategy game genre, but it quickly grew on me - Time manipulation is fun to play with – and is worth checking out if you’re even slightly interested.

Poor Milo! On his way back inside from a wonderful day of sunning on the roof, some pesky Magpies drive him away! Slightly lost but not too far from home, Milo needs to make their way back through the neighbor’s backyards and outsmart those Magpies to get back home before that storm rolls in!

1+ hours to complete, Milo and the Magpies is a hidden object point-and-click adventure with original music created by Victor Butzelaar. Hand-painted and created by the developer Johan Scherft, there is a lot of love put into this! Solve puzzles, find all the collectables, get into your neighbors’ catnip and meet some new friends on your wayward adventure.

Szymon is a 12-year-old boy, left alone after his mother passed away. Exploring the nuclear wasteland that was Poland created from an alternate reality WWII, he stumbles upon an abandoned massive Nazi bunker that had its own city and civilization deep underneath the earth. Learn about its origins, the reason for its existence, what happened to the original occupants when it was eventually attacked and taken over by Polish rebels, and the colony they created inside from the ashes; and perhaps, make a home for yourself here too.

I had a really fun time playing Paradise Lost, I also however, love walking sims and haven’t experienced the bugs mentioned in other reviews. Aside from a visual glitch that in no way affected myself or the story, I had a great time! 3+ hours to complete with four endings and decent replay value. I highly suggest when you start the game you turn off head bobbing and severely reduce the camera sensitivity. There are no jump scares, nothing terrifying, nothing ever chases you. Fantastic game, play it if you want.

Something to note: In chapter 1 you have an option to walk through the station gates directly or take a detour through boxes and luggage – I suggest you go through the gates the first time and on your second playthrough; should you choose to do so; go through the luggage for a more fulfilling experience. (also, it makes more sense story-wise.)

Katamari Damacy REROLL, a 4-30 hour colorful and quirky game where you roll up objects to restore the stars in the sky. Levels are around 10 min each and the game can be completed very quickly, start from rolling up small household items, to entire towns. Create constellations, occasionally collect gifts from the king, and explore and discover new things in the world.

Warning for keyboard players, this is a lazy port and getting started is difficult enough to put you off from playing. You can skip the tutorial, which I recommend you do immediately upon starting, and then go talk to the giant bird on your planet to re-bind the keyboard to WASD so the game is actually playable.

Play as W-02, a small girl left behind in a flooded and forsaken Hope city. Waking up in unusual circumstances with an interesting power to control and move electricity, collect wisps, repair the decommissioned robots, re-power the cities cores, and light the lanterns. Find the truth of what happened that left you alone abandoned in this lost city; and go home.

I loved Flood of Light! It’s an extremely cute game with a curious story with some rather creative and fun puzzles with a couple flaws; The text is mostly broken English and there is a fair amount of spelling errors, but the art, graphics, music, and puzzles more than make up for it. 4+ hours to complete, for the low price, it’s absolutely worth picking up and a great gift to send to a friend. Consider picking up the soundtrack as well!

ISLANDERS is a 2-7h strategy city building game that features randomized islands, various environments, and sandbox-like qualities that will let you explore and challenge yourself. Created by a team of 3 people, for $5 it’s a solid game that you can come back to time and time again. Placing buildings gives you points which unlocks new buildings and Islands, but beware – once you leave an Island to create another, you cannot return.

I like this game, it’s very enjoyable; there really is only one issue I have with it. Placing buildings give you points, placing them next to or far away from other buildings give you even more points, and while there is a Sandbox mode, inevitably all my cities started blending together and looking the same. This was somewhat offset by the creative uses of plateaus and the randomized environments, but it’s also a notable downside. Regardless, for its price and the fun you can get out of it, it’s an easy buy even if you end up not putting a ton of hours into it.

Play as the Warden of life, Ina. Waking up after a long slumber, you find yourself completely alone in an overgrown and abandoned remnant of a broken city. Move forward an explore to see what happened to this lost civilization, using your vial of glowing light to brighten the way. Discover your own adventure and put the ghosts of the past to rest!

Aporia: Beyond The Valley is an honestly gorgeous game, 5 – 17 hours long, the puzzles are interesting and pretty fun! Despite there not being any text in this game – the story is you learning while exploring – it’s pretty intuitive. The only thing I recommend is you actually need to look around; there are a couple people who absolutely lost the plot because they never bothered to investigate the first room which the story builds on. There are 5 chapters and two endings.
If I had to complain about Aporia, it would be about the ghost. In chapters 3 & 4 you get hunted and you need to find a couple items to unlock the next area, and it really cheapens the game. Story wise from my perspective (no text, remember?) it doesn’t make sense and it’s rather annoying. If you go for 100%, beware; there are 96 collectables in chapter 4, which is a significant increase from the 20-30 in previous chapters and avoiding the ghost is pretty hard, but you need to do it without getting caught or you lose out on the Ultimate survival achievement, although you could just reload a previous save.

Terraria is an absolutely huge 50-175 hour 2D sandbox survival exploration with some rather fantastic biomes, boss fights, housing, furniture, weapons, and mounts – the survival mode is optional; as starting the game on Journey Mode gives you access to time & weather changes, enemy spawn rates, item duplication, and a godmode option you can turn on and off.
Starting the game, you create a world, and you choose how large it can be, how difficult you want it, if you want the crimson or corruption, or random. After that, it’s all randomly generated with an ocean on each side, floating islands, a huge dungeon, perhaps some living trees that you can make some rather fantastic treehouses with, and of course, The Underworld. Beating bosses unlocks new content, new npcs, new weapons and mounts, more biomes, and some neat events. Much of the content is optional and I will freely admit most of my time was me building a large apartment complex that went into space; with some individual houses for my favorite npcs in their preferred environments.

While Terraria’s strong point isn’t the storyline, the sandbox aspect is honestly enough to let you roleplay your heart out and come up with your own conclusions. Between fighting off the occasional pirate invasion, flying around with rainbow wings, and occasionally fighting my favorite boss, The Empress of Light, I honestly had a fantastic time by myself without even touching the multiplayer option. Spending 100 hours in this game is easier than I expected, and it’s easy to recommend.

TL;DR – A 2D sandbox game that’s easy to sink 100 hours into, optional boss fights, a rather incredible amount of weapons and item customization, pets, mounts. Fight god, or fish the entire time. Multiplayer is optional. 50 -175 hours to complete.

Townscaper is a cute city-builder, create a town on an island in the ocean, on stilts, floating in the sky; or some odd combination of everything. Sprawling cities and gardens, cozy houses, looming castles, huge apartment complexes, build your town block by block.
Fairly enjoyable, regardless of what you build the art style is enough that you’re going to be satisfied or happy with whatever you make. Place a house; and trees, benches, grass, and other things pop up making your town look lived in. More of a toy than a game, choose colors and discover combinations by building things, building things in a specific order can create some unique areas. My only complaint is that sometimes a house does not have any doors, or the door is in an undesirable location, like the back of the house instead of the front.

Warning: mentions of alcoholism, depression, gross negligence, and death.

A man seeking redemption for his past mistakes takes this pilgrimage every year, walk with him down the mountain to the oceanside and listen to the story of his wife, how she passed away young from cancer; his difficulty connecting to his daughter while they both deal with the heavy weight of grief; struggles with the bottle; and how he tries to redeem himself from an unforgiveable mistake, year after year.

Bottle: Pilgrim Redux, a lovely walking sim accompanied by decent instrumentals and some rather fantastic graphics. The game is almost completely linear and the storyline is easy to follow along, there are no parts or puzzles to sit around where you can get confused. 1-2+ hours to complete, if you’re looking for a good walking sim to spend some time in, this one isn’t bad.

Find 100 hidden fish in this rather enjoyable 10+ min hidden object game. Everything is hand drawn and you look for 100 different fish hidden in the environment with some classy upbeat music in the background. There are moving animations, such as bubbles and moving mechanical fish, making everything very entertaining to look at. “N” will give you nightmode if the screen is too bright, and you can reset all your achievements by hitting “Del” then “Esc”.