Publisher: Tlön Industries
Developer: Montraluz
Year: 2025
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series

Rating: 1

Full disclosure: Outside of The Stanley Parable, I have never played a game about liminal spaces.  That game relied on narration to engage the player, but from what I gather, many others about suspiciously empty rooms go for horror, with stalking entities or jump scares to keep you on the edge of your seat. Montraluz’s first game, Dreamcore, strips away all of that, creating enormous labyrinths of mostly nothing, almost exclusively relying on the player’s imagination to create tension and intrigue. However, while I appreciated the occasionally entertaining visual aesthetic, long before the end my imagination had been dulled by exhaustive monotony.  

Publisher: KAPA
Developer: KAPA
Year: 2022
Platform: Windows

Rating: 2

Half of an ambitious solo project from first-time Estonian game designer KAPA, The Silent Sky is a wonderfully hand-drawn and animated game about a boy who finds a portal in the woods behind his country home. Unfortunately, great animation is about all that it has going for it. Poor localization, poor dialogue, poor character development, and mediocre puzzles make it difficult to recommend.

Publisher: Stately Snail
Developer: Stately Snail
Year: 2024
Platform: Windows

Rating: 4

Yes, this game killed me early and often, and perhaps my greatest disappointment is that it doesn’t keep a death counter. I earned those deaths! All fifty of them! (At least.)

Publisher: Acclaim
Developer: Pulse
Year: 1996
Platform: Windows, Mac

Rating: 5

I just got done playing as a cockroach!

One of the grossest adventure games I’ve played, Bad Mojo flaunts a ten out of ten concept, using photorealism to depict the adventure of a cockroach, allowing the player to only do things a cockroach would be physically capable of doing. Sadly, while learning to utilize the roach in this context is always fun, the concept is dragged down by a confusing plot, laughable acting, and some frustrating moon logic.