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My selection box is not really a selection box. It’s a barely-speckled leftover tray, hastily plucked from the Steam backlog. One of the downsides of being a news editor, you see, is that I develop a goldfish-level focus. My desperate pursuit of the next scoop, or the next one Elden ring Update changelog, I’m going to grab game demos and throw them aside like a pickpocket running through the checkout line at Harvey Nichols. I know some of these throwaway games are great. A few are even worth playing for more than 30 minutes. I feel so guilty about this. Maybe a little… existential too. I measure my life in learning levels.
in order to! Instead of digging up three of the games I’ve completed this year, e.g The Crush House, Death of desire And Musk’s missionI’m going to gamble on recommending a few that barely scratched the surface, but which one sure is Feeling It has attracted excellent and positive critical acclaim. If I lie in this review, may Horace the Endless Bear bite my head off for my audacity. get started.
Twisted parts
If you have happy memories Alice McGee of Americaand/or enjoy Little Spooky Girl in the Big Spooky House horror subgenre, get a load of this. Set in a procedurally generated Victorian mansion that changes from dream to dream every night, it’s a 2.5D corridor crawler that erases your inventory in progress. I like the feel of the toy delivery and the creative and ghostly combat design of the enemies to compensate for some of the janky handling. There are ghosts that can only be seen in looking glass. There’s a potion that supercharges you and a chance to play as a zombie to trick a ghoul. You can hex doors to stop monsters from reaching them and use suits of armor to act as passengers.
The writing, atmosphere and supporting fiction reminds me a lot of Golden Age survival horror games like Rule of Rose, Kill Frame and Clock Tower. Hey, you gotta play this! Then tell me it’s good that I just made the sound! If I’m wrong, let Horus the Infinite Bear take my toilet papers.
to the stars
I’m all the more confident in recommending this because it’s a rapid-fire strategy game designed to be played in 15-minute bursts – a good coffee break diversion, as brutal as your coffee and swarming planets. The idea is to draw star lines between those planets and send ships to attack each other, this holds each planet consumes its own number to fund the war effort, and eventually it runs out of resources and explodes. There are also space monuments that claim victory when you claim them all, but have no shipbuilding facilities, and no special map-wide abilities when you freeze to tip the scales.
Some wise elders have described the rock paper shotgun idea. to the stars Like Galcon but with a twisted, on-market Hanna Barbara aesthetic. The presentation is definitely different: the planets are always looking at you and each other, teasing or laughing or wagging their tongues provocatively. The music, meanwhile, is the kind of music that gives you a happy heartbeat. While not confirmed for the Steam Deck, I suspect this will clean up well as a handheld game. If I’m wrong, Horus the Endless Bear mercilessly ransacks my kitchen.
Sea and sky islands
I didn’t care much for block-push puzzles until I happened upon this lovely, soothing, SNESAtional puzzle demo. It takes you as a furry castaway exploring the islands of an open world consisting of single-screen puzzles, lots of block and buttons. There’s an obvious story, but that’s important next to the balmy warm glow of PixelArt’s visuals and the complexity of the puzzles, which you can solve in any order. The props include impassable surfaces after walking on them, moving water jets, dynamic blocks that count down to explosions, slippery ice surfaces, and spiraling teleporters.
It is a formal Sokoban festival. I see absolutely zero ways this won’t get the best of the best. If I’m wrong, let Horace the Infinite Bear make a delicious spaghetti lunch out of my intestines.
