Recent reviews by Kissaki

Spilled! is a cute 'clean up the environment with a boat' game.

+ Very good pixel-art-style graphics
* ~1h playthrough (I cleared the first three areas in the demo, which was taken over, and after the end, I tried to clean up all areas, so I don't know how long I actually took for the playthrough alone)
* Decent game loop
* Top-down camera
* Varying environments and themes
- Progress from the demo is taken over, but it fails to unlock achievements from it
- Some smaller technical issues; after playthrough, continuing the save, seems to be very broken game-state wise, but not in a blocking manner
- I had to go window-mode then fullscreen for the Steam Overlay content scrolling to behave correctly

Satisfactory onboarding and new-game rampup is unnecessarily slow and grindy, unfortunately.

5050 is a simple, free, supposedly 50:50 chance gamble. Fortunately, the odds do not seem to be 50:50 but slightly in your favor.

Beyond initial novelty and achievement/progression grind with luck, there's nothing else.

As a free game with a decent implementation, I'll give it a thumbs up.
It's not something I would recommend in general, or specifically, but you get the gist on the store page, and that's what you get, in a fair and decent way.

Sclash is decent.

+ Good artful visuals; interesting, meaningful, themed; especially environment; brush strokes, at times "minimalistic"
+ Fully voiced story mode (with mostly good voice-acting)
* ~70 min story mode playthrough
* Fighting system seems decent, albeit kinda random, not very dynamic or in control against the NPCs
- No players for multiplayer, no bots

The "single hit kill" premise was a bit confusing when the story mode ends up being 'you fail on being hit once' but 'named enemies have multiple hits you have to succeed through'.

In story-mode gameplay you traverse various visual environments, always from left to right, with story subtitles and audio, simple matches against one-hit enemies in groups, and named characters with multiple hits.

The fighting style consists of
* Stamina blocks that deplete on most activated actions
* Attack; with directional dash or without
* Short-range "kick"/push (no stamina required)
* Block
* Dash
* Charge-up not for more range but for more enemy stamina depletion; Unlocked 2/3 into the story
* Two attacks also deflect each other

I don't get River City Girls.

+ Animated cutscenes, strong themeing
+ A lot of voiced dialogue
- Only two difficulties, and the easier 'normal' seemed impossible without grinding and a lot of luck
- Unlikeable, cheesy, caricaturish, shallow characters
- Story and story progression did not captivate me at all; more annoying than anything
- Not a brawler or fighter, more of a boring patient grinder
- Problematic gameplay design and implementation
- Sometimes does not trigger actions
- Regularly triggers unintended actions, getting you stuck in disadvantageous and problematic positions
- Often unreadable boss fights and enemies

I feel like I'm missing something with how difficult, unintuitive, and excessively broad yet narrowly possible the game is.

River City Girls has a ton of moves, items, and buff accessories. But everything is locked behind a money grind.

When you unlock moves through level-ups or shops, your moveset expands massively, but in fights, only very little seems applicable. Whenever I wanted to use different and interesting moves and move sets, I felt punished. Whenever I was tempted to try again, I felt punished.

Every fight devolves into evading enemies entirely by moving across the vertical lanes and light-attacking enemies before they react. Even then, sometimes enemies run at you not just horizontally but vertically. Some areas are very small, block your sight, making it very frustrating to fight. Every fight devolves into attacking and knocking down enemies, then waiting four seconds for them to get up again, then repeat. Some enemies have a lot of health, and this becomes a boring repetition. Even if there are a few other enemies and you can get stomps in, it can take five loops. And then the next two waves come, for the same thing again.

When you attempt to run and don, when you attempt to stomp and do a short dab with a two- or three-second action cooldown, when you grab an enemy unable to move or defend yourself, when you attempt to stomp attack the one in front but stomp the one lying below - you're fighting controls and the vast multi-assigned action and ability set more than enemies.

There are too many abilities and moves. Few seem reasonably usable in practice.

There's a block and a deflect mechanic, but they can be broken or missed and get you into stun locks anyway.

There's no evasion or escaping stun locks or knock-downs. Once you're in, it's waiting time.

Boss fights seem to have unblockable moves. I felt I was missing something, but repeatedly evading does not help, letting them run into walls does not help, and blocking or attacking does not help. So, do you just eat the damage and get knocked down?

You need to stock up on health consumables. But shops may be far away - so you have to track back over several screens. Sometimes you consume for health, but then get a level up which refills your health anyway, so you just wasted your spent grinded money.

Really, River City Girls felt more frustrating and annoying than anything, unfortunately.

Finn Dorset's Institute For Livestock Replication is a clicker/idler progression game with no offline progression.
It has no sound, but is worthile with good mechanics and visuals for a while, but unless you exit early when you've had enough, if you want to complete the game until first prestige reset or 100% the achievements (four prestige resets), it becomes a slow grind. Most of the game[play] is having it run in the background.
I wish it were more focused and conclusive - sometimes shorter is better - so the mechanics and visuals would be a definite recommendation. The later elements are interesting too, but just too spaced out.

+ Good visuals
+ Interesting progression elements
+ Interesting environment development
* No sound
- Needs to run in the background for extended periods of time (no offline progression/accumulation)
- Becomes very grindy/becomes a waiting-game

I originally planned to not recommend it. But it's free and interesting [for a while], so I'll give it a thumbs up after all. If you like idlers or the artistic design, give it a try for a while.

Mini Drift Car is a mobile cash-grab game with questionable tech and design.

* Mix of menu gameplay and one-button rail-drive gameplay
* Two currencies; one received for in-level playtime, occasional pickups, unlocks, and the other for money, occasional pickups, and paid-with-first-currency invest
- Bare minimum, janky gameplay, animation jumps, impossible physics
- Horrendous stuttering in levels (look at the screenshots, there's nothing there, yet it stutters, on a good PC)
- Long Terms of Service
- Free progression end hit after 20 mins; buy or grind
- Follow-actions tutorial; more of a chore than illuminating or empowering (huge hand finger pointer pushing a mobile cash app feel)

On launch, 1. long Terms of Service to agree to, 2. Request to run with administrative privileges, launches fine without anyway, 3. has/attempts active online connections, runs without them anyway

I do play progression/idle games, and this game has some aspects of that (it has the idler tag; inappropriate), but Mini Drift Car is infested with bad tech, bad design, and dark-pattern design pushing cash buying.

+ Strong theming
* Very slow progression, which could be fine if you're not interested in active play or progression
- Stylized themed menus are not obvious/accessible
- No guidance, tutorial, or information; it's discoverable through trial, but confusing

The 1k hours achievement makes it clear: This product expects you to use it as an interactive background. There's no timely active gameplay or progression. Seaweed grows, but very slowly. The shop has offers, but doesn't swap out automatically, so either you wait longer to unlock items irrelevant to progression and gameplay, or you pay a swap fee.

A Tiny Sticker Tale is a worthwhile exploration and environment puzzle adventure.
Walk around as a character, and interact with the world through a hand, picking up, placing, and stashing in a sticker book.

+ Art style
+ Good amount of content and variance
* Story and cutscenes didn't captivate me (mute cutscenes)
* Controls can feel a bit cumbersome at times; it remains consistent in-theme, though

Unless is an exceptional free platformer.

+ Great, colorful, varied, discernible pixel graphics
+ Great platforming, control, environment and gameplay variance, progression
+ Very good tech; snappy loading, resets, navigation, platforming
+ Good story characters (just two; they add character and meaning)
+ A lot of optional and bonus content, speedrun mode, challenges, leaderboards
+ A lot of settings to customize control, difficulty, game behavior, accessibility
* ~70/100 min playthrough (all levels/all levels+bonus levels+10 As)
* Non-voiced text story dialogues
* Limited character mechanics; there's only jumping, with height control; all variance comes through the environment, which I consider a good, well-implemented design

If you like platformers or jump-and-run games, play Unless!