Inscryption is a pretty tasty blend of rogue-like deck-builder set inside an escape room cabin, with a vibe so thick it pushes back on you a bit.
The card game and escape room are both fairly simple, but they do interact and feed into each other pretty well, with some fun surprises. Both clearly want to push you forward, giving you tools and upgrades to keep you moving to the end

And the end is.. not the end, because it's just the first act. After that, things get a bit weird(er), and i'm not sure how many people will be fully on board. I've played Dan Mullins previous games and he clearly likes the "haunted media" trope, and i do too, so i enjoyed seeing where it went and the tricks it played, but i'm guessing a lot of people would prefer more of the self-contained, dark-ish vibe, simple but curious gameplay of Act 1

And for those people, they made the Kaycee's Mod update, where you can play Act 1 over and over on increasing difficulties. I've played it some, and got enough from it that i can call the whole thing beaten, but i personally don't think there's enough mechanical meat on those bones to keep chewing, in a manner of speaking

Overall though, very much enjoyed my playtime here, and looking forward to the Pony Island sequel

Now this is why we play video-games. Beautiful art, excellent music, lovely storytelling, and gameplay that's unique but still tight and well executed.
You'd expect as much from Supergiant, but Pyre exists as the kind of middle-child of their output - not talked about as much, or recommended, so here i am to say it should be put on equal footing with Bastion and Transistor, at least (i haven't played Hades (yet))

Art and music, and general presentation is gorgeous, as i've said, and frankly there's not much more to say. Character and narrative writing are similarly great, but the particular twist that the winning team of each league will set a chosen member free, messes up your brain's game plan in such a delicious way - or at least it did mine

Because you want to win, right? And the characters in the game do too. So awesome, there you go, your prize is to have to say goodbye to someone for the rest of the game. And you know that keeping anyone back because they're your best player, or because you like having them around would be unfair

The fact that it's written like a sports anime, where you get to know all your rivals, and they each have a distinct characterisation, adds to that whole mess. You start considering mercy, because some of them feel about as deserving of freedom as any one of your team - some others definitely shouldn't go free, and circling back to these characters again and again is great fun

And i think that's the message in the end maybe; no matter your decisions, win or lose, you'll make stories with the people left behind. And maybe we'll hear some news from the ones who went ahead. Lovely, lovely, gorgeous game

Well this is the most delayed review so far.. thankfully it's a brief one, so i can ease back into the rhythm of these things

Boltgun is a simple game; a boomer shooter, some might call it, or a doom-clone, if it was back in the day. It's clearly taking a lot of inspiration from those early-early 3D shooters, so perhaps doom-clone was even on the dev doc at some point. Coat the whole thing in a Warhammer 40k paint-job, and you have yourself a decent time

Weapons, gunplay, enemies, visuals, music - everything is alright to pretty good. Some soft-remixing ideas come with the weapon "strength" stat vs enemy armor, but nothing brain-changing (at least on normal). The narrative has 40k flavour, but as is tradition in these games, is just a thin excuse to shoot more things, which is fine

All in all, i can respect the commitment to the old-school 3d shooter bit, but perhaps they can be a bit bolder next time

I'm not too sure about the Plucky Squire. It clearly wants to be a smart, glossy rethink of the classic children's storybook tale (and in some ways it is), but it seems too afraid to let the player make any substantial change to its own rigid story, or even really trust them to explore (or play!) much on their own.

Now, if i view it through the lens that it's made for the younger crowd, and they need simpler toys to play with, i can forgive a little more, but that's a trickier argument to swallow when Wandersong exists, like right there - a game that actually looks at the hero's story from a different angle, both mechanically and narratively

So yeah, the presentation is gorgeous (that desk is a joy to look at, and the book illustrations are lovely), and mechanic ideas are great, but it really doesn't do enough that's inventive - or even expressive - with them

I was first made aware of Pseudoregalia through a "souls-like games you might not have heard of" youtube video, which might give you an idea of the type of game this is, but you'd only be half right, and that's because combat is a minor aspect at best. I encountered two bosses, and enemies could almost always just be avoided

Where it does get the souls-like influence from is the environmental aesthetic, and overall vibe. It's your classic derelict castle, with odd creatures roaming the halls, and much to explore, but it also does the souls thing of not explaining anything, leaving it all to interpretation. I have a soft spot for this style, and i like that Pseudoregalia leans into the light comedy of this sort of storytelling. The N64/PS1 graphics also help with this dream-like vibe

Mechanically, it's a 3D metroidvania, but in the purest sense. The main thrust of the game is almost entirely focused on gaining new movement abilities, and then mastering those abilities to reach new areas. Pseudoregalia nails this loop down to a science - pretty much every ability is useful on its own first and foremost, and the fact that they gate your progress almost seems incidental. Brilliant design, in my opinion, and feels good to play with too

Another lovely game played. A bit sad that it doesn't have achievements, but on the other hand, it was kind of freeing, to just play the game as it is, and not worry about anything external

Another one that was previously played (i think i wrote about Braid for a university course actually), but this is now the second time it's been chosen for PoP, so clearly someone, or something, wanted me to play it again

I still like it, i think. It's clearly got that whole high-minded arty indie thing going, which draws that sort of attention, but it's also riffing on Mario, which is about as grounded as you'll get in video games. Overall, the themes and mechanics tie (or braid lol) quite nicely into each other, which is quite impressive with how abstract the themes are. Some of the narrative ideas seem a bit disconnected, but i also think that's kind of the point - form your own connections, if you want

I also enjoyed the puzzle-solving again. It seems enough time has passed since i played it last that i forgot a few solutions and had to look them up, but even so, those difficult ones are so clever in how they mix mechanics to produce an unexpected result (or expected, if you're a smarty, i guess). Good, clean deterministic puzzle-solving

A nice short one, and a trip past some memories as well

I mean.. it's GTA IV.. even my boss has probably played it… Only bought this one on Steam fairly recently, and had intended to play it over the holidays, but Coromon and other events pushed it out to here

I'm sure i played this before, most likely on PS3, but i doubt i finished it then, and i definitely didn't play the expansions, which were a nice change of style. You can kind of see the through-line from the three boys here to the triple protagonist scenario of GTA V

Speaking of GTA V, IV reminded me a lot of it, which is backward, sure, but makes some kind of sense since i played V for a lot longer and is more recently in memory. Unfortunately i just ended up missing the conveniences of the more modern GTA iteration. I get that it's kind of a "style of the time" thing, and part of me can settle into that, but once you've been spoiled…

And then every GTA (and RDR now) game review has to, by law, mention the bipolar split between the free-form open-world shenanigans/simulation, and the focused linear story-telling, which yeah.. still exists here. Going back in time doesn't help that a whole lot. I think what makes it so frustrating is that Rockstar seems impressively competent on both sides, and so you can imagine how great a marriage of the two would be. But in this game, they're still divorced, and we can only visit each on alternating weekends

Anyway, still a good game; still got great production values - although maybe add the Fusion Fix to your modern installation before playing