Part visual novel, part rhythm game, part interactive animated movie, Goodbye Volcano High taps into the sacred relationship between music and coming-of-age in ways that would be impossible in any other media format.
A must-play for anyone interested in narrative-driven games.
An enchanting, emotionally charged visual novel with a new take on deck-building and tarot divination.
Watcher, who worships her god the ALLMOTHER, must learn the language of resistance and uncover a thousand-year-old lie, in this intense and intimate narrative adventure.
Chinatown Detective Agency is a solid hardboiled detective adventure with a unique DIY approach to clue-solving-but it's most impressive as a cultural artefact.
It's hard to say how impressions of Dog Airport Game might have changed if we'd gotten the game outside of a pandemic, but it's a lovely comedic slice of a forgotten time when air travel was normal. Just with tons of weird dogs and puns.
In its quest to be the most meta game ever made, Alan Wake 2 becomes a spectacle about writers and writing that badly needs an editor.
Much of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is more of the same gruelling beauty - but a shift to explict storytelling and signposting means its essence as a living, evolving shared text is lost.
As someone with a lifelong soft spot for the medium-specific charm of video game glitches, Cyberpunk 2077's botched launch just ain't it. Even overlooking the rushed rollout, after an eternity of being bludgeoned in the face with hyperbole, running through 2077 feels like five different games stitched together into an entertaining, passably decent, generic behemoth.
Conway is a solid detective game that ticks a lot of the right boxes and fulfils standard sleuthing expectations. It leans well into the crotchety-old-protagonist stereotype which more often than not creates an interesting tension between Conway and his ensemble cast of neighbors, as well as with you as a player. It's not tremendously challenging in terms of hard solves, but it's more about the journey. You could do worse than spend 10 hours immersed in the small and all too human miseries of Dahlia View.
A dark-fantasy western RPG with a compelling world and an ambitious narrative, Weird West is undermined by awkward combat and micromanagement. Weird West's rotating multi-character perspective will be an acquired taste, but makes sense as a method of world-building. It's got room to grow, but right now, it's challenging to build momentum in the early game and to persevere through the mid-game.
A serviceable, sometimes-engaging official Star Trek version of Stellaris that makes sense for generic space war fans, but flounders when it comes to narrative logic and Trekkie authenticity.
Stray is the work of sly cat people, and it’s a triumph
This narrative-driven dice game from Cosmo D is packed full of his signature visual and musical motifs, and loosely picks up your pizzaiolo/secret agent journey from 2020's Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1.
Witty, observationalist writing and a hands-off approach to deduction elevate this excellent period murder-mystery to a singular work.
As with most horror endings, Alan comes away from his literal journey to hell and back a changed man. There’s no particularly profound message lurking here, which is actually kind of nice after all the chaos. Sometimes shit just happens, most of all in Hollywood. I leave this incarnation of Los Angeles with no regrets, but a fierce, bittersweet ache for the city I once called home, and surprisingly (and perhaps this is the benefit of distance), a twinge of affection for its insufferable movie bastards, many of whom probably, honestly, need an Edward Keller moment in their lives.
The original third-place-simulator gets a sequel with much of the same conversational charms, but also some rougher edges to its chit-chat.
When I finally decide to end the game, I leave my Sleeper in the Greenway, where I imagine they can keep on going about their quiet, private routines. I’m not sure I’ll come back to the Eye again, because even if I make different decisions on another run, Citizen Sleeper’s most potent power lies in that first playthrough, when you arrive with nothing, and know even less. This isn’t so much about “replay value” as it is about the singular experience of a journey that — in keeping with the fiction of being a ragged Sleeper trying to survive — is very much a one-way street. Did I do right by my Sleeper? I don’t know. But all things must come to an end, and I feel like they would understand.
My relationship to Swansong has become almost like my ritual appointment with Passions — until I fully exhaust the entire story, I need my dose of ridiculous people making ridiculous decisions, and the nuclear fallout of their mistakes.
In exploiting this fan-like thirst for knowledge as authority and authenticity — even if it occasionally undercuts the storytelling — the game also creates an easy choice for the curious outsider: Either play, or don’t. Immortality embodies the most enticing hallmarks of the “if you know, you know” meme — there’s no quick recap for a politely interested stranger that can adequately sum up the question What happened to Marissa Marcel? The only way to fully appreciate the scope of this project, flaws and all, is to throw all expectations of story and structure out the window, and realize that the simplistic divide between film and games is holding us back from doing so much more with either medium.