Recent reviews by Entropy Phi

Full Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2V96iC4X1k
Condensed Text Version:
How is it possible that in the 15 or so years since Mirror's Edge came out, no other game has really come close to capturing that same feeling? Sure Dying Light has a lot of similar parkour mechanics, but it's missing those breathtaking sights, that killer soundtrack, and the overall sense of wonder throughout.

This is where a brand new parkour game comes in. While Mirror's Edge depicts a sort of clean, highly refined future, Lorn's Lure takes the concept in the complete opposite direction. Instead of jumping across rooftops in a sun-bathed city, Lorn's Lure leads you further and further into the depths of a ruined world.

In fact, other than the short introductory cinematic, the entire game takes place deep underground. Many people compare the subterranean megastructure to the manga Blame!, which I haven't personally read, but seems to be a big selling point here.

In Lorn's Lure, you play as a lone android, searching the depths for hundreds of years, looking for some purpose in life. The game begins a couple-hundred years after you've been wandering aimlessly through this megastructure. You witness some kind of glitchy bird - perhaps an owl - although it's hard to make out any definite shape in it's formless mass. With no real goal or purpose, you decide to follow it. And for the remaining 8 or so hours of the game, you chase this bird through countless enviroments further and further into the depths.

You use a variety of tools and abilities, from climbing picks to air-dashes, and even a grappling hook to overcome each new enviroment. You're constantly reminded that you aren't intended to be here, and there is no clear, marked path to your destination.

This is a huge deviation from the yellow-paint-laden AAA games of today, even if it does mean you're gonna spend a lot of time trying to figure out where to go. There is a hinting system that gives you a general direction to head towards, but even then it's up to you to find a viable route to that destination. So, for the most part, you have to make your own way, taking leaps of faith through the rubble - and often failing in the process.

Thankfully, the game has a very forgiving checkpointing system that lets you quickly restart from a nearby platform anytime you plunge in to the abyss. There are 8 main story levels - not counting bonus content - and each one is very close to an hour in length, depending on how quickly you can navigate through them.

While I did enjoy the varied environments and challenges the game constantly threw at me, I actually felt like some of these levels dragged on a bit. You see, while each level introduces a new mechanic either at the start or around the midpoint, you're not really encountering much "new" stuff in the remaining 50 minutes or so.

Each level has a single visual theme and music track - with the exception of one level that really felt like two different 30-minute levels mashed together. So you have ample time to take in the scenery, learn the new mechanic, enjoy the music, and figure out how to make your way through the varied environments. That's all great, and I definitely enjoyed my time with it, but I felt like some areas were just a little more padded out than they needed to be.

But I may be the outlier here, I'm sure some people will love these very long levels because it gives them more time to experience the world. And I'm also sure that this game is going to be a hit with speedrunners, who will undoubtedly be finishing these massive levels in a matter of minutes.

Overall I had a great time puzzling my way through every last jump, climb, tic-tac, and grapple I made towards my goal of following this strange glitchy bird. The wide variety of levels was great to see. And I was genuinely awed by a few vistas I happened to come across. Lorn's Lure really succeeds in selling the overwhelming size of this megastructure, making you feel pitifully small in comparison.

The views are often beautiful, despite harboring unfathomable loneliness. I can't say many other games have successfully sold this contemplative sadness quite as well. Good visuals are not always about how realistic or polished something looks, but rather how successfully it makes you feel something.

And man does Lorn's Lure make you feel things. From the striking expanses littered with technology of past civilizations, to the somber music - this whole world feels alive. Or rather, it feels like it used to be alive - a long, long time ago. All we see are remnants of what once was.

But speaking of music, the soundtrack absolutely completes the overall vibe this game is going for. Some of it feels clearly inspired by Mirror's Edge, which isn't a bad thing - I personally love the Mirror's Edge soundtrack. "24/7 chill beats to jump and/or climb to" works very well here. But some levels take the music in a completely different direction.

I think it's fair to say this game is pretty hard. You're going to spend a lot of time lost. You're going to spend a lot of time falling and failing and stumbling and cursing the mechanics and everything about it. But if you have the patience to stick with it, I think it's quite rewarding.

Like I said before, this game will make you feel some things, and that's pretty high praise for an indie game. It's not just fun mechanics or nice visuals or chill music. You'll be thinking about this one for quite a while after you've finished it. And I'd just like to say, hey, that's pretty cool. Great job rubeki, and everyone else who contributed.

Regardless, I think it's pretty obvious that I'd highly recommend this game to anyone who likes Mirror's Edge, or Blame!, or parkour, or spelunking, or any other similar interests. But even if you aren't into any of that stuff, and you're just interested in weird, highly-memorable experiences, maybe you'd dig Lorn's Lure.

Full Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoGi0M-Ql_s
Condensed Text Version:
First off, Sonar Shock is obviously targeted at fans of of System Shock 1 & 2, which I've never played (if we're not counting the recent remake). I'm sure a lot of strange features in this game could be explained simply as references to System Shock, but I'm going to be looking at it with a slightly different perspective.

That aside, Sonar Shock is pretty unique as far as indie imsims go - especially one made on the rather fledgling Godot engine. And it's got a lot to love, if you can put up with the weird controls, clunky interface, and inconsistent performance. A large part of the game design feels intentionally obtuse, partly due to nostalgia for the games it's inspired by, and partly because it makes things just a bit harder.

Like, why are we limited to tank controls without the ability to strafe, or even look up and down? Well, nostalgia of course, but this decision also directly impacts the difficulty and how you'll choose to interact with the game.

Like any good immersive sim, the game offers up a lot of potential options for some creative problem solving. You've got all the classics - fast-paced combat, climbing through vents, tossing boxes, and a whole lot of secrets scattered throughout the world. This is further expanded by the various stats that give you even more options - like the ability to hack keypads or use psionic powers in combat.

But not everything is as you'd expect. For example, picture a door you have to go through with an enemy standing just to the left of that door. Since you can't strafe in to the room, that means you'd be forced to walk in and turn to face them while eating whatever attack they do upon first seeing you. There's no way you can enter the room and turn fast enough to stop them without taking damage in the process. So the game subtly pushes you towards different strategies, like tossing a fire extinguisher in first, to stun them with the explosion.

Likewise, since you can't look up or down, grabbing items above or below you forces you to be more methodical in searching areas. On the flipside, you'll waste a lot more time just trying to pick up items at different angles than you would in any other game.

Similarly, menus don't pause the game, which is fine for creating tension, but you can't actually attack unless your weapon menu is open. So if you're trying to read a quest, or look at your stats and a monster pops out, you've got to quickly fumble through menus before being able to respond. And even if you do switch back to the weapon menu, your gun has to be manually reloaded by dragging ammo in to it with the mouse. It also needs the slide racked whenever you run out of ammo, or randomly when the gun jams because your mysterious sanity meter is low. And while you're fumbling with all of this, most enemies will kill you in a manner of seconds on the default difficulty.

So, all-together, it does seem very intentional that every interaction is rather difficult in some way, because it does add to the tension. I think that's sort of cool, I mean, props to the dev for making things intentionally obtuse, because it is central to the game design. But on the other hand, I can see how this would easily upset a lot of people who are used to the more streamlined games you'd expect to see today.

And now I'm a couple paragraphs in to this and I realize I haven't talked about the story or setting at all. Well, Sonar Shock takes place on a soviet nuclear sub that has recently been taken over by all sorts of strange eldritch monsters. You've got bitey blobs, possessed sailors, living suits of armor, mutated laser-deer, and a whole lot of other weird creatures.

Likewise, the environments you'll make your way through are quite varied, despite supposedly all being inside a submarine. You've got your typical metal hallways, crew quarters, cafeteria, and even a missile bay to explore. But there's also a soviet war museum, a forest, a cultist's church, and even a strange non-euclidean section where nothing really makes sense.

To further this, the game likes to throw in random things when you're low on Sanity, like fake error messages and random jump scare moments. Low sanity also makes your guns jam, A LOT. And as far as I've seen, only one item restores sanity, and it's not super plentiful. So once you run low on sanity, you're better off just going full punch-mode, despite the fact that most enemies can kill you in a matter of seconds. I enjoy when games make an attempt at sanity mechanics, although I don't think anything's beaten Eternal Darkness in that department.

But I'm getting off-track here - what else is there to say about Sonar Shock? Well, the pixel art is pretty solid - it's clear that the dev has a talent for it. On the other hand, the super low-poly 3d stuff doesn't do much for me. It's not very stylized or anything, so it just comes off as amateurish in comparison to the nicely done pixel art everywhere else.

The audio was also rather forgettable. Thinking back on it now, was there even music in the game? I remember the intro theme song, but I'm actually struggling to think of any other music.

Overall it definitely feels like a super low-budget indie game that's been fleshed out over a long time to make it in to a multi-hour experience. And that's all perfectly fine by me, because despite the weird UI and retro mechanics, I had a good time making my way through the strange scenarios Sonar Shock presented around every corner.

Well, at least for a while I did. Unfortunately there was one persistent issue that just kept rearing it's ugly head. Performance. The bane of many low-budget indie games.

Now, I have to preface this by saying I have a decent computer. It's a couple years old, but I usually have no problem playing any new AAA game on Medium or High settings. And visually, I think it's fair to say that Sonar Shock probably isn't doing much that would be putting a strain on the GPU. Half the game is 2d art, while the rest is super-low poly 3d. There are minimal screen effects, so I don't think any major performance issues would be coming from the visual department.

And the game was running great - sometimes. Everything would be smooth as butter one moment, only to turn into a complete slideshow the next. Whenever monsters are active in your area, the game takes a huge performance hit - the more monsters, the slower it gets. The developer had a few posts saying he'd work on the performance - and he even released one update allowing you to change the pathfinding settings, which had no major impact on my framerates as far as I could tell.

Judging by that, it seems like the dev knows that multiple monsters pathfinding at the same time makes the framerate tank, by why is that? Just about every modern game can handle tons of enemies and NPCs pathfinding around the map simultaneously with minimal issues. And the enemies in this game don't seem to be doing anything special as far as pathfinding goes - I mean they basically all just walk directly in to you or shoot at you from afar.

I had a whole section of the video just discussing this major issue and the possible reasons behind it, but it's too long to fit in here. In short, the game becomes basically unplayable in the later stages when you're trying to do anything at just a few frames-per-second and half of your inputs don't even register.

To summarize: If the weird UI and retro-nostalgia of this game is off-putting to you, I'd say this one is an easy pass. But if you can get over that hurdle, I really would've liked to recommend this game as a pretty cool low-budget indie imsim. However, I just can't do that unless the performance issues are fixed. But who knows, maybe it'd run great on your machine. If not, I guess that's what Steam refunds are for, after all.

Full Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpv52gmv7Y4

Condensed Text Version:
Do you like goons? You know, vintage mobster goons. The type of goons that say "ok boss" while working for a comic book villain. Well now that Fallen Aces is out, goons are finally back in style. It's obviously tongue-in-cheek, but I think we can all appreciate them reviving the original definition of the word for a bit of humor.

You might think that doesn't tell you much about Fallen Aces, but they aren't just joking for the heck of it. The game heavily plays in to classic comic book tropes - from griseled detectives, to costumed vigilantes, and yes - a ton of goons for you to beat up in all manner of ways.

Right off the bat, there's a lot to love in the artstyle alone. The cutscenes really nail the retro comic style, even featuring that signature halftone filter we all know and love. The in-game graphics maintain this style very effectively, especially considering it's a mashup of both 2D and 3D graphics. The enemies, items, and most interactable objects are 2D sprites, while the level geometry - floors, walls, buildings and the like - are all 3D. And while we already know what these comics look like in 2D, it's definitely a challenge transferring a comparable artstyle over to 3D assets. But the devs did a great job here, making everything look pretty cohesive and rather unique, despite the mixed media.

Likewise, the levels themselves are pretty large for an indie game. Offering up some pretty nice views and giving a great sense of scale to the world. This influences the game design as well - providing the player with tons of areas to explore and secrets to find off the beaten path. You can face enemies head-on, brawling your way to victory, or sneak by through a vent, or on a roof, or even underwater.

Given the breadth of options here, Fallen Aces actually feels a lot closer to a typical immersive sim - like Dishonored - than the DOOM-clone it may look like at first-glance. In many ways, I actually felt like the level design and scale was pretty close to Gloomwood. Which makes sense because New Blood also made Gloomwood - although that's currently being developed by a different team.

Fallen Aces is definitely more combat-oriented, but you can play it like a typical stealth imsim and that's completely valid too. They've even got one level where you have to infiltrate a mansion with a blackjack and not kill anyone - clearly calling back to the Thief series.

Stealth is fine and all, but combat is definitely the most fleshed-out part of the whole experience - so that's how I solved most problems. You've got your typical punches, kicks, blocks, and other unarmed maneuvers, but then you've also got just about every grab-able object in the environment to expand on those basics. You can use an axe or gun like you'd expect in any game - but could I interest you in a trash can? or a chair? or a bar of soap?

Even items that can't go in your inventory can be picked up to chuck at enemies - giving a nice frantic, makeshift feeling to the combat. Likewise, you only have 3 item slots, and items break rather quickly, forcing you to constantly think on your feet.

I know item durability has been a hot topic ever since Breath of the Wild, but I think it works out pretty well here. You're not supposed to get too attached to any single weapon, often shuffling through a handful of them in the course of a single fight. You make do with what you're holding and whatever is nearby, or you revert to your fists, which are plenty capable on their own.

This is all well and good, but I did feel that ammo and consumables taking up one of your three valuable slots felt a little weird. I understand the developers want to to make tradeoffs between holding different items, but it often led to less-than-ideal situations.

Like picking up some ammo you expect to use later, only to never find the gun for that ammo, and then losing all of it when the level ends. Or leaving behind a medkit, taking a beating 10 minutes later, and then having to trek halfway across the level to heal up again. Or the fact that ammo and speedloaders take up separate slots, even if the ammo is the exact same type. You could have one pistol, 2 bullets, and a speedloader, and that would be your entire inventory.

Likewise, the game has consumables like potions to give you armor or make you berserk briefly, but those also take up one of your slots. Which means that basically anytime I found a consumable I would instantly use it, even if it provided almost no benefit, because I didn't want to waste a slot lugging it around. It's also weird how large and secret-filled these levels are, when you can't even hold most of the rare items you come across in these secret areas.

Like I said, I totally understand the three-weapon limit, and I think it works pretty well with the flow of combat. But I'm a little more mixed on the consumables and ammo taking up those valuable slots. There is a potential that the in-game currency would allow you to buy more slots later, which would be cool to see, but who knows if that'll happen.

But enough about game design, what else is going on in the current build?

Well, the voice acting is pretty nice, featuring a handful of different actors pulling off some peak pulp-noir characters. Everyone gave a solid performance, even down to the regular goons you spend the most time interacting with. Although I think the actor behind Glassjaw was my favorite of the bunch. He really nailed that fine line between a menacing and cheesy comic book villain.

While we're talking about audio, the in-game music and sound design is pretty well done too. And even though the loading screen music is made up of public domain tracks, they make sense alongside the rest of the game. Suffice to say, you've almost definitely heard some of the loading screen music before, and it perfectly fits the vibe they're going for.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised with the Early Access version of Fallen Aces. My biggest issue with the previous demo was the overall linearity of it, and they completely blew that out of the water. While the current version isn't too long, it also isn't very expensive either. Paying about 10 bucks for a couple hours with a unique, entertaining game is completely worth it to me.

And that's not even considering that the game is expected to be three times as long when it's finished development. So would I recommend picking it up now, even in it's incomplete state? For sure - and that's coming from someone who usually doesn't buy Early Access games.

The current version feels like a complete game from a smaller studio, and I'm even more excited to see where they take it in the future. So huge props to the New Blood team for finally releasing the game - I'll definitely be checking back on this one later down the line.

Full video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGvHxmpE_5A
Condensed text version:
Have you heard that My Friendly Neighborhood is like Resident Evil meets Sesame Street? Well, I sure did, probably too many times. Not that I'm gonna deny it's a pretty accurate description of the game. It's not a perfect game by any means, but it actually fully delivers on that proposal in a nicely-polished package.

Indie horror games can sometimes get a bad rap for being full of shovelware, and mascot horror games amp that bad reputation up to 11. If you haven't heard the term "Mascot Horror" before, it's referring to a subset of indie horror games that usually share a few key qualities. You've got bright colors, ear-blasting jump scares, cutesy monsters, minimal gameplay, and a heavy focus on appealing to younger audiences. Not to say that all of these games are terrible, I mean I haven't played most of them myself, but it's undeniable that their success hinges mostly on marketing to children. We all know kids, they aren't exactly media critics. So a lot of these games are massive money printers, despite having some of the worst gameplay imaginable.

But there's one big difference between My Friendly Neighborhood and the vast majority of the Mascot Horror genre - it's... actually good? You see, the game plays sort of like a certain survival horror series about Evil Residents that I won't mention for the rest of the review. If you've played classic survival horror games, almost everything you'd expect to see is present in My Friendly Neighborhood. We've got item boxes, inventory tetris, limited resources, branching paths, arbitrary puzzles, and tons of backtracking. Heck, they even took the classic zombie burning mechanic, in the form of taping up puppets that you've downed, so they don't get back up when you return to the room.

I had a pretty good time exploring all corners of the map, slowly expanding and unlocking areas over time, and blasting some overly-chatty puppets along the way. Replicating old game mechanics is cool and all, and they're mostly executed pretty well. However, beyond nostalgia, it's clear why some of these mechanics fell out of favor over time.

One issue I took with the design was how many loading screen doors there are around basically every corner. The loading screens aren't long, and the game runs very well, even in the larger, more open areas. Plus, there are doors that don't have loading screens attached, and it's not like they break the game or anything. But you never know if a door will trigger a loading screen until you actually interact with it. Many times I thought to myself, "I just wasted a bunch of ammo downing these enemies, do I really want to test this door and have that all go to waste?"

So I can only assume the countless loading screen doors were added for two main reasons. The first being nostalgia, like many of the mechanics, but the more important of the two being that they force you to plan around enemy placements. However, even in a classic survival horror games I won't name, the zombies stay dead when you first kill them, until a much later point in the game. In My Friendly Neighborhood, if you're not planning to use your very limited tape on an enemy, it's almost always better to just run around them instead of engaging. There's no reason to waste resources on enemies that can be easily avoided and instantly respawn when you leave the room. I wouldn't even mind the doors that much if they weren't interrupting the game every 30 seconds or so, with the the random exception of some big areas that don't have them.

While I'm listing off minor game design gripes, the puppets have a pretty wild grab range. It's clear that they don't want you to use the wrench much, but getting grabbed 10 feet away just feels wrong. However, don't let small issues like that take away from the big picture here. Overall I had a pretty good time playing through the 4-5 hour campaign on Survival mode.

As you can probably tell by now, the visuals are solid throughout. It's not amazing or anything, but they executed pretty well on their desired style. There's a few highlights that stood out to me, like the retro sound stage and the art-deco office building, while some other areas like the garden felt a little more rushed.

Like many horror games before it, My Friendly Neighborhood is decently front-loaded - in that the early levels are the most intricately designed and fun to experience. They definitely put a lot of effort in to the first few levels, but maybe they decided to expand the game a little more on the tail end of development. I don't fault them for this, but it does cause the game to lose a bit of steam in the back half, especially when one of the later chapters is basically just a backtracking world-tour.

And while some parts of the game may vary over time, the voice acting remains consistently excellent throughout the whole runtime. I don't even know where to start with the voice acting here. I mean, it's possibly some of the best I've heard from any small-budget indie game.

The constant chatter from the puppets is somehow annoying, humorous, and consistently memorable all at once. The sock puppet, who acts as a sort of guide, is very well-done. They provide not only comedy, but a range of unexpected emotions throughout the story. And of course I can't forget about the main character, who sounds exactly like Bob Hoskins from the 1993 Mario movie. All I could picture while playing this game was a gruff, grumpy Mario begrudgingly making his way through hordes of killer puppets just to do his job. You even do a little plumbing, so I'm really wondering if the old Mario movie was an inspiration here, at least in some small way. But really, all the voice acting is top-notch, so huge props to everyone who contributed to this.

I could go on about the story, or the "boss" puppets, or the lessons behind the narrative, but I think I've already said enough. If you enjoy classic survival horror in an indie format, I think this game would be right up your alley. I'm definitely interested to see more from these developers in the future. But what I'm even more interested in seeing is how this impacts indie horror games in general. You'd have a hard time getting a Five Night's at Freddy's kid to play Silent Hill, but show them My Friendly Neighborhood and you could easily bridge that gap to other survival horror.

Full Impressions Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KuttUOP748
Text Version:
You might be thinking from the low-poly visuals that Interior Worlds is yet another standard PS1 horror game, but I'd actually have to disagree there. While the models are chunky enough, the game utilizes a lot of modern rendering techniques that add a nice bit of flavor to the aesthetics. There's bloom, chromatic aberration, film grain, dynamic lighting, depth of field, and a handful of other things that make it feel pretty sleek and modern. The textures are nice and crunchy too, giving everything a pretty unique look. Overall I think the art is where the game really stands out. Not to say there aren't other good elements, but if you don't like what you see from visuals alone then you should probably pass on this one.

Which brings me to the things that aren't as readily-apparent from the store page. In many horror experiences, atmosphere and tension can live and breathe on audio alone. Interior worlds has some nice spooky ambient soundscapes, but the rest of the audio department feels oddly vacant. And I'm not talking about the creepy abandoned world kind of vacant, I'm talking about the almost complete absence of notable sound effects. Interacting with some things makes noise, as it should, and taking pictures makes noise, but there's very little else to listen to beyond the ambient audio track in each level. Oddly enough, this is one of the few horror games I've played with almost no footstep audio at all. It is there if you crank up the volume, but you'd probably never notice it otherwise. Sure lots of indies have terrible footstep sounds, but they can definitely add a slight creepy factor when done right. On the other hand, there are some audio tracks that are weirdly mixed and way too loud, at least on my setup. For example the theater level rhythmically blasted my speakers when the high parts came in.

But enough about aesthetics and atmosphere and all that. What does the gameplay actually feel like? As mentioned, you explore a variety of liminal spaces and take photographs of certain points of interest. These points are marked with little dust clouds scattered around the map. You don't have to actually take a shot of the thing they're highlighting though - as long as the cloud is in-frame the picture will count towards completing the level. You can't move on to the next level until you photograph all the points of interest, so most of your time is spent wandering, searching, and taking some random pics if you feel inspired. There are some locked doors that require keys found elsewhere in each level, but beyond that there's no real puzzles or anything like that required to progress through the game. One of my main criticisms here would be the lack of any sort of puzzles or other obstacles in your path. The locked doors and keys are the very beginnings of some gameplay, but unfortunately it ends there.

Looking back on Anemoiapolis - the last liminal game I played, despite 90% of it being a "walking sim", there were still a scattering of tiny puzzles to solve and things to interact with along the way. It breaks up the tedium of liminal spaces a bit - stimulates the mind, ya know?

Instead of things to do in the world, the game offers up a variety of environments to spur some makeshift photography. Unfortunately the game stutters everytime you take a photo, which is ok in games that aren't centered around photography, but a little more annoying here. It could be that capturing the screen pixels of my 4k window caused the stutter, but I think it's more likely that saving the photo to the hard-drive ate up the bulk of that time. Personally, I would've captured the screen, showed a blank photo thumbnail, saved the photo to the hard-drive in a background thread, and then showed that thumbnail develop like a polaroid. But that's just complete armchair development - a cool idea in theory, but maybe not the most practical for this project.

Anyways, like the infamous bathroom skeletons in a Fallout game, there's a fair bit of "environmental storytelling" scattered throughout Interior Worlds. Well, that, and some random aliens that act as collectible secrets in tiny corners of each stage. There's also these humanoid figures that appear very briefly a handful of times in the game. You don't really learn anything about the world or these weird creatures you encounter, so it's all up to the player's imagination. On the upside, the photography elements of the game are mostly well-designed. You have a couple settings to fiddle with on your camera, allowing you to make each shot feel more personalized. Every picture you take gets saved to a photo album, which you can then share on the internet for everyone else to see.

It seems like the dev is still actively working on this one. Maybe it'll just be bug fixes and small features, or maybe there's something else in the works. Either way, I think that the core experience will be largely the same. It's not a game for everyone, but I think it's got some neat ideas and will definitely vibe with a niche audience. Hopefully you can tell by now if that's your kind of thing or not.

Full Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWlde7nEdxo

Condensed Text Version:
When talking about liminal spaces, most people instantly think of the Backrooms. And while the Backrooms did have a huge impact on the genre, the concept has been bouncing around the internet for a lot longer than that. Liminal spaces mean different things to each person, but the themes are often associated with nostalgia, unease, and a little bit of horror. So why is everyone talking about Anemoiapolis when mountains of other liminal games flew under the radar?

Well, I think the initial hype behind this largely comes down to visuals. Compared to the countless drab yellow Backrooms games, there's a lot more variety to look at here. It's got the typical hallways and empty malls you'd expect, but there's also a lot of distinct areas with unique styles to break things up. And of course there's the shiny tiles, water features, and all the screen-space reflections you could ever ask for. Of all the levels, the water one was my favorite visually. It goes beyond the dead mall theme and mixes in some vaporwave aesthetics. But I couldn't say it was my favorite level to actually play. Which brings me to the meat of this review - is this game really worth playing?

Don't let the shiny screenshots fool you - this is very much a micro budget indie game made largely by a solo dev. If you've played a few itch.io horror games before, you pretty much know what you're in for. Lots of walking through repeating, maze-like rooms that mostly all look the same. In-between there's a small puzzle here and there to break things up. Oh, and you also collect tickets on the ground, to encourage exploration I guess. The game actually locks most levels behind tickets, but if you just look around a bit you'll have more than enough to continue on.

There aren't any threats, but I know that a large portion of this game's audience finds liminal spaces absolutely terrifying. I didn't think this game was scary at all, but I also don't think liminal spaces are really scary on their own - without some context or atmosphere implying it. The scariest part of the game was when the protaganist said "Is there something in here with me?" in a dingy locker room maze. Of course, there wasn't actually anything there, but the implication was probably the only mildly horror part of my whole experience.

On the other hand, the game is actually pretty chill in some spots. There's some funky vaporwave mall music playing throughout, which may seem like background noise, but it hits that nostalgia spot just right. Props to whoever made the music for this, it's a great reprieve from wandering endless maze-like corridors.

Speaking of endless corridors, this game likes to pull the classic indie horror trick of changing the level layout as you move through it. There isn't any real puzzle to solve in these sections, so you're forced to just roam around continously repeating segments until the game shows you the exit. Much like the recent discussion over Skinamarink, some people will find this terrifying, while others will just be frustrated. I personally found the labyrinth sections interesting at first, but by the fifth time I walked through the same room I was pretty much done with them. Overall I don't mind them being included to fit the liminal theme, but I really think they could be cut down a bit.

On the other hand, there's one level - the conference halls, that seems to be an endlessly-generated maze, but is actually just one massive level. I probably spent around 20 minutes completely lost in this level with no distinguishing features until I stumbled my way back to the entrance to continue the game. I don't think this one is required for the story, so if you do play this game, just skip this level altogether.

The best levels in this game were ones where you actually have something to do. Solving minor puzzles and finding ways to traverse through these foreign spaces was the highlight of my playtime. In the end, this is just Chapter 1 of the game, so there's always room for improvement and innovation in the future.

I think more than anything, this game does a good job of capturing the essence of liminal spaces. It may not be scary, but it scratches that liminal itch way better than any Backrooms game. It's not the most enjoyable experience when you're wandering for minutes on end with almost nothing going on, but the more vibrant levels help make up for that.

Overall it'll probably be a pretty divisive title. I think it'll find a niche audience that really vibes with it, but I can't recommend it to everyone. But it is a solid first step for an up-and-coming solo dev. Not something I'd go back to replay, but I'm definitely interested to see where the dev takes it in the future.

Full video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EJ0F7cQ9eM

Condensed text version:
The year is 2023. I am fighting a singing dracula with a fully automatic stake gun. I am dodging lightsabers and catsharks in the post-apocalypse. I am basking in the glorious vaporwave aesthetics of ancient greece. But most of all, I am chopping goblins. Oh, wait a minute. I'm getting word that the goblins are literally called the "Chop Goblins." Nevertheless, I feel like the amount of destruction I'm causing can also qualify as chopping goblins.

Chop Goblins is the latest release by the developer of DUSK and Iron Lung. Now, I've done videos on both those games over the years. Iron Lung really blew up in a big way on youtube last year, so that's probably a bit more fresh in people's minds. But that was a slow, brooding horror experience, while this is an over-the-top arcadey shooter. If you're familiar with DUSK, this game is a lot like that distilled down to a short, goofy time-traveling adventure.

It feels like jumping right back in to some classic early-2000s games - like Crash Bandicoot, Gex, Timesplitters, and the like. A very basic story that holds together a variety of levels across the most random settings and time periods imaginable. Why did early-2000s games always have a Halloween level? Or a medieval level? Or a cyberpunk level? Because telling a big, serious story wasn't always the focus back then. And I kind of love that Chop Goblins brings that back, in the best way possible.

Games have trended towards being a lot more "cinematic" over the years, and as such we've lost the carefree nature of titles like these. Sometimes I want to play a game I'll be questioning for years to come, while other times I just want to fight a boss battle against 10 goblins on a car.

Chop Goblins is a short experience, only about 30 minutes in length, but it does feature a handful of modes and even a New Game+. For comparison, Iron Lung was also around the same length and price, but that's definitely a one-and-done game. Chop Goblins, while containing much more "gameplay", and even having a handful of memorable moments, will probably be the lesser-known title of the two released last year. But I still think it's worth a play if you're in to this sort of thing.

There's a surprising amount of content jam-packed in to such a short experience. You'd think a small game like this would have 2-3 weapons and enemy types, and maybe a boss at the end of the game. But there's actually a pretty nice variety of new stuff constantly being thrown at you all way to the very end. Each of the stages introduces new weapons, new enemies, unique bosses, and of course vastly different visuals. From the Halloween-vampire-castle to the vaporwave take on ancient greece, I really enjoyed how dynamic everything was.

It's pretty clear that the dev had a lot of fun coming up with all these wild ideas and smashing them together in to one semi-coherent project. And I'm all for more games like this in the future. Like I said before, it's great that people are pulling off cinematic serious games nowadays. But we're definitely in need of more stuff like this.

Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9XsLBO0g6I

Condensed Version:
Do you really like H.R. Giger? Do you want to play a game based on his work? Well, then I'd recommend Alien: Isolation. It's easily one of the best survival horror games out there. Or perhaps the Dark Seed or Tormentum games are more up your alley. But really, I know you want to hear about Scorn. Often touted as the "first true Giger game". I just felt like mentioning all those other games to really emphasize that this is not the once-in-a-lifetime game some people are claiming it to be.

Is the art amazingly good, especially for an indie team? Absolutely. It's creepy, grotesque, foreboding, and sometimes even strangely beautiful. What can I really say about the art that a thousand other people aren't already praising? It's clearly the selling point of the game, and they definitely nailed it. Unfortunately, we're talking about a video game here, not a movie. In order to progress through this game to experience some more juicy visuals, you have to actually suffer through playing it. And it's not even like it's a walking simulator where you can take it all in at your own pace. No, this game features a handful of gameplay elements that almost universally detract from the experience.

The game quite literally throws you down a hole at the start, in to this alien hellscape. You wander around doing things for seemingly no reason, other than to find a way forward. There is no dialogue, voiceover, or text in the game. There also aren't any notes or logs to expand the story, unlike most other horror games. You wander through areas and interact with things just to get to the next area so you can do it again. The nice art is your only reason to move forward, but that's simply an extrinsic motivation. The game doesn't really give you any story reason to move on. I guess you can boil the entire game down to "don't die here", which is potentially the barest story imaginable.

It's not like it's buggy or anything, it just isn't very fun. Except for the part where my game completely broke when I got to Act V. Part of the area never loaded in, and this issue persisted through reloads. I slogged through almost the entire game just to get turned away at the end. I reached out to the devs a few times but never received a response. So I had to watch the final section of the game on YouTube instead. But that's a bug that could be fixed in the future. What about the stuff that isn't going to change, like the puzzles? There's a few puzzles scattered around each level to give you something to do - or perhaps to pad out the game length a little bit more. They're definitely harder than standard survival-horror puzzles, but that doesn't make them any more interesting to solve. In fact, the very first major puzzle in the game is a bland sokoban puzzle. You know, that "move the rocks" segment that's been in almost every puzzle game ever made? Yeah, it takes a few minutes to do, but I didn't enjoy a second of it. Most of the other puzzles are just like this. The only joy I got from the puzzles was thinking that I might get 10 more minutes of nice visuals before having to deal with yet another puzzle. Like I said, lacking any motivation beyond the art makes the thought of trudging through these puzzles a real tough bargain. But then again I've never been a huge fan of hardcore puzzle games. Myst and Riven are definitely not up my alley.

But wait, the gameplay goes beyond just puzzles. There's also combat, that could be good, right? No, no it is not. If you were hoping that Scorn was some sort of indie DOOM, you'd be sorely mistaken. I wouldn't even blame you for thinking that though. If you look at almost any of the gameplay trailers, you can see a gun dead-center, often mixed with a bit of combat. Despite them saying this was more of a puzzle game, their marketing didn't quite land correctly with the majority of players. Having read up on the game beforehand, I didn't expect much when it came to the combat, but even still I was disappointed. I'm sure the developers would tell you it's intentionally slow, dangerous, and methodical, but instead it comes across as clunky, poorly designed, and just an overall bad experience. I might have even enjoyed the game better if they removed the combat altogether. Everything in the game is slow, especially the heavy usage of animations for all sorts of things. On the other hand, monsters in the game can attack quickly, and rarely miss. Even worse, the common spitting monsters can attack you from beyond your effective range. And there aren't any stealth mechanics that would allow you to get past enemies without fighting. Given how dangerous and hostile the world is supposed to be, you'd think they would at least give you the option to sneak. It's almost always better to just run by enemies, given that there's no real reason to fight them. Unfortunately, quite a lot of Scorn is spent in very tight corridors, where enemies block the entire path. You can sometimes squeeze by, while others you get trapped against a wall and stunlocked to death. Oh, and good luck ever reloading or switching weapons in combat. The animations are so painfully slow that the only real option you have is to run back to the previous room to do anything.

Sure they made some neat animations, and they're cool to see once or twice. But once you've swapped a few weapons and interacted with countless objects, the animations become a huge annoyance. Everything about this game feels like it was made by a team of very skilled artists with no game designers in sight. Or maybe there were designers, but the CEO was an artist who overrode all their ideas. From the worst aspects - like poor combat and uninteresting puzzles, to the minor pains of endless animations, it really feels like Scorn could have used another game designer or two to help smooth things out. I really hate to compare anything to the travesty that was Agony, but there are a lot of similarities here. Obviously Scorn is much higher quality than Agony, but it's still a hellscape game highly focused on visuals and shocking content, while heavily neglecting the gameplay aspects. If the art side of this game was on the same level as the gameplay, we'd never be talking about it in the first place.

But hey, those visuals, huh? I will say I did enjoy that part, but almost everything else about it felt like a slog. I almost never say this, but I think Scorn is best experienced by just watching someone else play it. Watch a long-play video or check out your favorite streamer going through it. It's fully linear so you're not missing out on exploration or anything. You even get the benefit of skipping the puzzles - something I would've gladly done in-game if I could. So anyways, that's Scorn for ya. Looks good, feels bad. If you're a hardcore fan of both Giger and Myst, maybe this is the game for you. I could see it gaining a cult following given some time. But for anyone else, I don't recommend playing it. Unless you like suffering for some art. Which, hey, might be pretty on-brand after all.

Full Video Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjkRgMX0CkA

Short Text Version:
Dread Delusion is a first-person open-world RPG taking place in a horror-fantasy setting consisting entirely of floating islands. That's a mouthful, but how does it actually play? Well, fans of Morrowind and Oblivion will be very familiar with the game mechanics here.

Despite being in Early Access, you're given a pretty large world to explore, multiple classes, stats, and abilities to experiment with, and a handful of quests to complete. Although, unlike RPGs of old, you don't gain experience from repeating actions or killing enemies. Instead, stat points are awarded directly for completing quests or reaching secret areas. This means you can't really grind for character progression, and are instead required to complete the optional content to grow stronger. It's not a bad idea in theory, but it does make fighting enemies feel almost pointless. Sure they can drop a coin or a potion or whatever, but money isn't super hard to come by. Combine this with the ridiculous run speed, and almost every fight can be avoided easily. So if you already have the best gear from the shop, why even bother fighting anything?

When you do fight, the melee combat ends up being lots of slashing and backing up before the enemy can land a hit. Much like it's predecessors - so I can't really complain. That said, magic is pretty strong, allowing you to one or two-shot most enemies from a safe distance. Not that you really need to fight at all with a little bit of agility.

Speaking of agility, I love that they let you level it up to gain speed and jump height. Just like Oblivion, it lets you absolutely break the game by skipping important triggers or jumping out-of-bounds.

Anyways, there's a decent amount of content to experience in the Early Access, in varying states of polish. Some of the quests kept me engaged, while others were just straight up stat-checks with little else behind them. The main story was able to keep me interested throughout, but I could barely recall most of the side-quests I ended up doing. The best non-story quest I encountered was joining the Thieves' Guild. Subtle introductions, secretive NPCs, and hidden passages throughout the city brought me back to the old days of RPGs long-gone. While not a very long quest, it stood out as a promising step forward for where the game could go in the future. Learning about the different factions and choosing sides was a nice touch to make the world feel more alive. Although the factions are pretty barebones at the moment, mainly just sporting slightly different dialogue and aesthetics.

Which brings me to probably the most recognizable part of the game - the art. The game throws back pretty heavily to the graphics of the PS1 era, with a bit of modern design sensibility. Most people I see talking about this game picked it up for the art, which is totally understandable. It definitely feels like it was made with visuals at the forefront, while the gameplay is a little less fleshed-out. Personally, I feel like PS1 graphics may be a little overdone at this point, but this is definitely one of the better-looking ones. No real complaints about the art here. It seems to be the main selling point of the game for a good reason.

The whole idea of taking on a massive open-world RPG project with a small indie team is already pretty wild. It's nice that they're trying to accomodate a breadth of gameplay and build styles, but there's only so much they can really do within a realistic scope. Open-world RPGs thrive on offering a wide variety of optional content that many players will never experience. Take away those options and the world feels lifeless and dull. It's a huge task, and I can't imagine the tough decisions they have to make on what features to cut constantly. But they seem determined to take a swing at it, and it is a promising start for a small team.

If you can take it for what it is - a small indie game with some cool art and ideas taking on a big concept - then you might just dig it. But if you're expecting the next "Oblivion Killer" I don't think this is going to satisfy your desires. Then again, it's still in Early Acccess. If they focus on their strengths and polish the core experience, instead of trying to add too many surface-level features, they might just have something here.

Pick it up if you feel like supporting the devs through their rough journey. As for me, I'll be putting this one down for now, maybe giving it another go when it's fully released.

In-Depth Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un7fkZQorbU

I covered both the collection and some of the surrounding details in my video review. Since I have limited space, here's my quick thoughts on each game, ranked from Most to Least Favorite.

-- Resver --
Easily the most memorable game from the entire collection. Very minimal gameplay, but an absolute feast in the audiovisual department. You're invited to a secret rave underneath a back-alley convenience store. The party is raging, until a hole opens up in the floor, dropping hundreds of clubbers in to the abyss. The following segment is so brutally well-done that even videos can't do it justice. It just keeps going and going - much longer than you'd expect - really burning that excruciating scene in to your mind. Running through hallways drags on a bit, but the visuals stay consistently good throughout. It pays off with some nice scenes at the tail end, but nothing beats the big scene from before. If you were only going to play one game in the collection, this is the one to pick.

-- Karao --
Regardless of the strange storytelling, this game probably has the most polished gameplay from the entire collection. The survival horror elements are limited, but they're all pretty well implemented. You spend most of your time blasting your way through various underground settings and solving a handful of number-code puzzles. But the recurring theme in this game is the karaoke. In this case, a handful of machines scattered around the world that start off little cinematic sequences. Each karaoke segment is pretty unique and definitely adds a lot to the overall experience. By the time you're done with this game it'll be repeating itself over and over in your head.

-- Hunsvotti --
A very nordic game about Finnish traditions and dark humor. You play as the local pariah, hated by most of the townsfolk for unknown reasons. You collect 7 flowers and the game takes a turn from there. There are some cool effects in that second half, but they get a little worn out after how many times you have to see them. You know how basically every game makes kids invincible to pass international regulations? Yeah, well about that...

-- Gallerie --
This game throws so much at you - crazy visuals, eye-bleeding colors, loud noises and a whole lot more. The last time I felt a game was this overloaded was "Agony". A little more acceptable in a bite-sized game like this, but I was still feeling a little bit fatigued by the end. Oh and the voiceover is done in an ASMR-like speaking voice. I know there's a lot of people that like ASMR, but I can't stand the sound of it. Anyways, the DDR puzzles were fine, but I never felt like I had enough time, leading to pretty much all my deaths in this game. The parts where you have to speak to a computer became annoying enough that I ended up just resorting to trial and error eventually. It's memorable, at least.

-- Vestige --
Actually two games wrapped up in one. There's the rather bland game walking around a house and getting jump-scared, and the excellent mini-game where you play as a radical skeleton pulling off tricks on a motorbike. I actually think it's a little unfortunate they devoted time to this outer storyline, when the Tony Hawk skeleton game was one of the most enjoyable parts of the collection. But even that mini-game gets interrupted by jump scares in the "real world".

-- We Never Left --
Perhaps the most cinematic of the bunch with some higher-quality graphics, which are then crunched down with a retro filter (which felt pretty unnecessary). I was shocked at the incredibly good voiceover in this game - way better than most indie horror titles. I thought the guy sounded like the main character from Dying Light 2 and Beastars, and I was right. I didn't recognize the girl's voice, but she was very obviously a professional too. Anyways, I think there's supposed to be a text-adventure portion to this game, but I never got to play it. The computer says "Insert Data Disk", and despite searching the house multiple times over, I never could find it. Maybe it needed a little more to lead the player along, or maybe I just missed something obvious.

-- Outpost 3000 --
Kind of like a spacey Chuck-E-Cheese. You visit a room, collect a page for a comic, solve a little puzzle, and then get a gift. You take these gifts back to the table and get to choose from the list of games to unlock one. The hub world holds the anthology together and gives you a nice little break in between some of the more hectic games in the collection. Nothing too revolutionary, but it gets the job done.

-- Rotten Stigma --
A very classically-styled Survival Horror game. You read notes, solve puzzles, collect supplies, and fight some deformed monsters along the way. It's obviously inspired by the older Resident Evil and Silent Hill entries, and it does manage to mimic their style pretty well. The main thing I felt like it was missing was sound design. Lots of dead air and minimal sound effects made it feel a bit flat. A deeper soundscape definitely could've amped up the horror. That, and it ends pretty abruptly out of nowhere.

-- Beyond the Curtain --
A vaguely backrooms-esque game with evil puppets. You spend a large amount of your time running through rather nondescript backstage environments. Despite the game telling you not to run unless necessary, you pretty much have to, unless you want to this one to take forever. There are occasionally enemies to avoid, but most of the time nothing is really happening. I made it to some gooey tunnels with an evil worm, but kept dying and having to repeat multi-minute walking segments each time. Atmosphere was nice, but not enough to keep me from dipping out.

-- The Book of Blood --
A mashup of most of the popular indie horror tropes all in one. A spooky carnival, restarting power boxes, windows to look for the bad guy, and a heaping ton of scripted jump scares. Despite it all being competently put together, I just felt like I'd played this game a thousand times before. There is a neat little book that provides lore and puzzles to solve, but other than that it was exactly what I expected. My main gripe is that the enemy doesn't physically exist in the world. Every now and then he pops out of thin air just to jump-scare you. You can crouch to be quieter, which I guess makes him take longer to show up, but then you'd have to suffer through the entire game moving at a snail's pace.

-- Interim --
A very opaque game about... Hollywood, I guess? It feels like it takes pieces from lots of meta-commentary movies - like Videodrome, Mulholland Drive, and the like. The gameplay itself was mostly just walking around, with a very janky physics climbing section later on (which was more frustrating than exciting). The live segments are delivered well, but the rest of it feels pretty disjointed.

-- Spirit Guardian --
Kind of like Amnesia for kids. It's got a million physics props, cabinets and drawers to search, lockers to hide in, and a roaming insta-death enemy. You solve some puzzles in a daycare while avoiding the patrolling ghost. After making it through a few rooms and getting caught a couple times, I just didn't have any desire to continue playing.

-- Ludomalica --
Sort of like an evil Jumanji or something. Not a bad concept, but the execution is kind of bland. You close some doors, flip some light switches, roll dice, and avoid a shadow man. It works, but I can't really say much more than that. More than anything else in the collection, this one felt like an amateur project. Not to say that's bad - everyone has to start somewhere. I played for a while, but it never really seemed to be going anywhere, so I eventually gave up.