GIPTM: February 2026
- Ryan Zhao
- 7 days ago
- 42 min read
This is a monthly blog post in which I reflect upon and post micro-reviews for every video game I've beaten or otherwise concluded my time with in the month of February 2026. This includes both new and old releases.
Numerical ratings are purely subjective measures of my enjoyment of the game and are conducted on a full 100-point scale in which 50 means that I enjoyed it. Roughly speaking: 0 = hated it; 10 = frustratingly little enjoyment; 20 = seeds of ideas that were not adequately delivered; 30 = some interest; 40 = respectable effort but I didn't quite enjoy it; 50 = faint positivity; 60 = good; 70 = doing something uniquely well; 80 = great; 90 = very special; 100 = legendary.
Key: 🟩 = beaten; ⬛ = not beaten, but I will not be continuing; 🔁 = replay
The Séance of Blake Manor 🟩
2025
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave
Genre: Adventure || visual novel, detective
Played on: PC
Releasing amidst a wealth of deductive mystery games, like The Rootttrees Are Dead, Type Help, and Strange Antiquities, The Séance of Blake Manor sets itself apart with its cast of distinctive, interactive characters, a distinctive and highly-successful detective comic art style, and the integration of well-researched histories and mythologies of Irish lore, allowing the mystery to weave between elements of the secular and the supernatural.
The game attempts to overcome two significant design challenges: it is a deductive mystery, and the entire game has a time limit within which the mystery must be solved. Many have written about the challenges implicit in the deductive mystery genre of games. As opposed to detective literature, in which the reader is encouraged to “play along” by making hypotheses based on the clues given throughout the story but proceed forward as pre-written regardless of the reader’s cleverness, mystery-based video games should ostensibly depend upon the understanding of the player (representing the wit and guile of the detective) for the mystery to be solved.
Ideally, the player would be able to examine the details surrounding a mystery herself, gather her own clues and evidence, and then form and present her own hypothesis about what occurred. This presents challenges at several steps in the journey.
In the gathering of evidence, should the player be allowed to overlook vital clues? Games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney are very deliberately scripted, such that missing a piece of evidence would cause the entire ensuing courtroom drama to fall flat. Allowing players to accidentally render the trial impossible would make for a very unfulfilling story.
As such, most games that involve crime scene investigation do not let players proceed to the next stage of the drama until all evidence is gathered in a location. Considering the avatar as a locus of player representation within the virtual space, there is a degree to which this can be justified. Being a step removed from the virtual world impacts our ability to observe what is within it. A conspicuous scrap of burnt paper or bullet shell casing may be much more noticeable to a person investigating an actual space than someone looking through a computer screen into a stylized, simulated world. The avatar having extra-sensory assistance aiding her perception helps make up for that gap.
However, going into a scene and knowing “there are three pieces of evidence in this room” draws attention to the artificiality of the story. Having the avatar exclaim, “I think I’ve found everything here” signals to the player as a dramatic actor within the scene that it is time to transition her attention, but it gives the sense that the avatar has greater knowledge of the case than she should, undercutting the dramatic stakes.
Games have found several ways to account for these obstacles. Whereas the tightly-written narratives of Phoenix Wright or Danganronpa could not sustain players missing evidence, more open-ended mystery games like Shadows of Doubt have systems that allow for players missing evidence. In that game, each crime that takes place in each procedurally-generated city populates its crime scene with situationally-appropriate evidence — fingerprints, CCTV recordings, dropped items — all of which potentially helps the player narrow in on the culprit amidst the city’s proc-gen population. The game is unconcerned with whether or not the player obtains all available evidence. If the player does not yet have enough evidence to find the perpetrator, the criminal will strike again and leave a new set of clues. It’s a game with so many potential trajectories of investigation, the player can determine which she wishes to pursue. And, since each scenario is procedurally-generated, the game is not bound to telling specific, pre-authored stories. If the player names the wrong suspect, she has not missed out on chapters of pre-written story; that is the unfortunate ending to that particular case.
It is also challenging for deductive mystery games to test players’ understanding of the circumstances surrounding a crime without accidentally guiding them to the answer. Unlike mystery-based TTRPG scenarios, the player cannot usually present hypotheses in unbounded plain language. A video game, even one with a free-entry text parser, only “understands” variables and objects it has been specifically programmed to anticipate. That is to say, if the player suspects a victim died because she slipped on ice and fell down the stairs, she can only present this hypothesis if the game has been programmed with “ice”, “fall”, and “stairs” elements. If “ice” is not within the game’s pool of available evidence, she can rule this hypothesis out altogether in a way that is unrepresentative of real life mystery solving.
As such, the ways in which a game presents evidence can inadvertently tip players off to the resolution of a mystery before she naturally reaches it. If an otherwise inconspicuous fireplace poker is assumed into the game’s collected evidence pool upon interaction, the player is given a hint that it is potentially relevant to the mystery. This is justifiable in games in which the player assumes the role of an experienced investigator. Since the player is (most often) not an accomplished detective, the game takes that extra step in highlighting that which may be relevant to the case that would likely have been noticed by the more experienced eye of the character. It is a way of bridging the gap between player and character in the drama.
The most common solution for this problem is the inclusion of red herring evidence, such that the player cannot assume the relevance of a particular piece of evidence, as it may end up being a dead-end item that does not actually contribute to the plot.
Finally, the formation and presentation of the hypothesis is challenging to gamify. Since games are testing players for a particular understanding of an occurrence with a limited and controlled set of evidence variables, the solution of a mystery ends up being presented as a multiple-choice quiz rather than being truly player-driven.
In the least sophisticated cases, such as Phoenix Wright, the player does not even need to understand why a particular piece of evidence is appropriate for a particular junction in the mystery; it can be brute-forced until an acceptable answer is reached. More sophisticated games will allow players to construct more complex chains or webs of nouns, verbs, and evidence in the presentation of a hypothesis, such that the number of variables necessary for the construction of the hypothesis makes it effectively impossible to brute force one’s way to the correct collection of answers.
Blake Manor approaches each of these problems with an effectiveness commensurate with its genre contemporaries. Evidence is gathered through conversations with other characters and through investigation of the hotel. There are some red herring details to buffer presumptions of relevance, but the primary way in which the game prevents players from constantly maximizing available evidence is with the game’s time limit. Each day of the investigation has a limited number of hours, and investigating each object or asking any question of other characters requires an expenditure of that time resource. It is not real-time; each prompt advances the time by one minute (at least). The game is generous with its time, such that I never became frustrated by running out of time mid-investigation, but running out of time in a particular day is just enough of a disincentive to discourage being exhaustive in conversations and scene investigations in ways that I might be in other games.
The time limit is a brilliant touch. Video games, broadly, struggle with an alienation between information and value. Information (received from conversation with other characters, books, etc.) converts to “tokens” of knowledge housed within the avatar, not the player. Skyrim books, for example, do not need to be *understood* by the player; opening them instantly triggers the flag that transfers its relevant token to the avatar. Opening the pyromancy tome awards the increase in the fire magic stat; anything actually written in the book is just decoration. There is no reason *not* to just cycle through opening and closing each book in Skyrim and slurp up those delicious bonuses. Mimetically, what does this represent? The character is an instant speed reader with perfect retention, like Johnny-5 in Short Circuit, a trait not necessarily befitting a rugged adventurer, bordering on the supernatural.
It trains the player to exhaust all dialogue and exploration options in a way that offloads knowledge of the world to the avatar, increasing the psychological division between the player and character. Tokenized “knowledge” becomes like a currency resource; there is no reason not to maximize it when it can be obtained for free. Blake Manor’s time limit encourages the player to be choosy with the lines of investigation she chooses to pursue. Since every question asked and each object inspected counts against a limited total, investigation is driven by intent. The player is encouraged to have a reason to pursue strands of her curiosity.
If I suspect that a character’s belief in Irish mysticism is relevant to a thread within the case I’m currently investigating, those angles in conversation become valuable and worth the time expenditure. It breaks the habit of maximizing knowledge tokens in an unmotivated manner.
The formation and presentation of hypotheses still does fall into some familiar traps. Each hypothesis is presented as a sentence with particular blanks that must be filled in with collected evidence and collected verbs / nouns. The construction of these sentences sometimes gives away their intents. If a sentence says “She ___________ from her captor, the ___________” with choices for the first blank being [fled / hid / traveling] and the second blank being [butler / landlord / Daryl], we can eliminate “traveling” and “Daryl” for breaking the grammatical flow of the sentence. It’s not uncommon that this convenience allows us to back our way into a correct answer (or at least discourage certain trains of thought) before a player reaches the conclusion naturally.
Though this can sometimes undercut the need to fully internalize some of the smaller mysteries throughout the adventure, the central mystery is more subjectively-approached. Throughout the game, certain pieces of key evidence (usually obtained at the resolution of a smaller mystery) contains information about the perpetrator of the game’s core case. The player is encouraged to regularly check this evidence against the whole list of characters and make educated eliminations of whom the player believes is or is not involved in perpetrating that central crime. It plays out like a game of Guess Who. The player may discover that the perpetrator [has facial hair], [is afraid of the dark], and [has traveled internationally] (not real evidence, to avoid spoiling the game) and can make educated guesses about which hotel guests and staff members it eliminates. The player is prompted to present a single suspect towards the end of the game, a task that is easier if she has been regularly culling the number of possible suspects throughout the game rather than leaving the entire task until the end. Because the accuracy of eliminations are not confirmed or denied, and because some of the eliminations are based on subjective inference rather than being directly stated outright, it gives players a chance to use their own judgment rather than being guided to obviously-correct answers.
My only objection to the presentation of this challenge is that it makes some logical leaps in an effort to condense possibilities. Some of the evidence that the game attributes to the central mystery does not necessarily have to point to the one, central perpetrator. Certain evidence of struggle or misdeeds could very well be coincidental or separate from the central crime. In a setting brimming with characters who all have separate objectives, secrets, and actions, evidence the game attributes to the central perpetrator could have, in many cases, just as easily been an unrelated occurrence by a separate party. But making the logic absolutely water-tight would perhaps over-simplify the story, so I don’t begrudge this particular contrivance.
The art style is striking. Characters are presented in stylized illustrations reminiscent of comic book characters, hearkening back to an era of pulp detective comic books, with dark-black shadows and angular features. The characters are presented as billboard sprites in fully-3D environments. There is the slight awkwardness of seeing the 2D characters snap between illustrated poses as they are viewed from different angles in 3D space, but this comes across as more of a stylistic choice, heightening the detective-fiction unreality of the scenario.
The 3D spaces are given similar flat and dramatic shading, matching the comic book stylization of the characters, in a manner that was more successful than I was expecting. Standing still, each room looks like a 2D illustration; the 3D never compromises this.
Even more impressive is the transformations that many (most?) of the rooms go through throughout the day. Each hour that passes sees the world progress from morning to night, and the way that the sunlight catches each room or outdoors area exposed to natural light is extraordinary. The way in which the sunlight pours into each room feels very intentional, so it can be surprising to come back to a room an hour later and see an entirely different arrangement of light and shadows that looks as striking and beautiful as the one before. The intentionality that went into the environmental art consistently caught me by surprised and impressed me throughout my time with the game.
Ultimately, I found the resolution of each of the game’s mysteries to be satisfying. The cases all have interesting twists and turns but remain logical and well-setup, such that I never felt thrown by a twist in a way that I felt was unearned (which can encourage a certain amount of “I’ll see where this goes before I spend too much of my own brainpower on it” passivity). Characters are distinctive and layered and backed up by strong voice performances and illustrative flourishes. And the hotel itself has a lot of character; it was consistently interesting to explore, and the revelation of its many secrets felt well-paced.
Innovation the game introduces: The balance of mundane and supernatural elements was intelligently incorporated into the moment-to-moment gameplay. There are plenty of “blink and you’ll miss it” ghost appearances; things that you’ll see out of the corner of your eye, or things that appear out of place that make you ask, “was that sitting like this when I entered the room?”. These momentary visions feel well-suited to the twitchiness of mouse control, in which you feel the distinctive sharpness of jerking your head back to double-take at something you may have seen or may have imagined.
What I'd like to see from future games: Full-game time limits can be discouraging, particularly for real-time timers, as I feel pressured not to think and reflect, as that runs down the clock in a way that may inhibit my progress later. Blake Manor’s time limit “by steps”, in which time only moves forward incrementally upon interactions and effectively freezes indefinitely between interactions, feels like the ideal balance.
Lineage and legacy: The earliest deductive / detective mystery games include The Portopia Serial Murder Case, the Famicom Detective Club series, and Mystery House (itself a successor to a long line of mystery games in the point-and-click adventure genre, including the Laura Bow, Discworld Noir, and Tex Murphy series). Would pair well with predecessors Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol, Disco Elysium, and The Wolf Among Us (with its matching comic book-inspired heavy-line-and-shadows shading). Contemporary of Blue Prince, which also embeds much of its mystery in the physical exploration of its mysterious mansion. Released during a wave of deductive mystery games in 2025, including The Roottrees Are Dead, Type Help, Asbury Pines, Strange Antiquities, Expelled!, and DLC for The Rise of the Golden Idol. Blake Manor specifically references the developers’ previous games, the Darkside Detective series of mystery-based point-and-click adventure games.
Score: 92
BALL x PIT 🟩🔁
2025
Pit e-party
Genre: Arcade, shmup || paddle game, roguelite
Played on: PC (game key received for free from developer)
I returned to BALL x PIT for the Regal Update and the new characters and features it introduces. The new characters are a mixed bag: the Falconer is a fun addition, shooting balls from either side of the course like jets in a Jacuzzi. The Carouser less so -- balls orbit around him and stay locked in that orbit for a long time, so he becomes more like a melee character, having to get in range of enemies to damage them (and, unfortunately, within their attack ranges as well). When I'm playing as him, I specifically choose to pair him with characters that counteract or minimize his ability, which doesn't feel like the sign of a great character.
Endless mode is a lot of fun as well, and it certainly makes it easier to pursue those remaining entries in the encyclopedia. A great game made even better; I'm excited to see what future updates hold.
Innovation the game introduces: The pairing of characters and synergizing of their character-specific abilities is an inspired choice.
What I'd like to see from future games: If this takes primary inspiration from Arkanoid and Breakout, what other classic arcade staples could be so radically reinterpreted like this. Like, what could you do with Klax? With Libble Rabble?
Lineage and legacy: Inspired by Breakout and perhaps more directly by previous reinterpretations of the formula like Breakout (2000), which translated the arcade classic's gameplay into action game-style challenges.
Score: 86
Sometimes to Deal with the Difficulty of Being Alive I Need to Believe There Is a Possibility That Life Is Not Real ⬛
2019
Unreal tenement
Genre: Adventure || exploration adventure, artgame
Played on: PC
Surreality as a movement (or at least an aesthetic touchstone) in games creates a different experience than in other mediums. Whereas surreal paintings invite viewers into illogical worlds and resist logic being imposed upon them, surreal games have to be based in some form of logic, at least at a constitutive level. Games are, fundamentally, aesthetic expressions of logic and structure. Thus, the basic assumptions of performing specific actions or overcoming obstacles to progress in semi- or multi-linear narratives typically holds true, even for games with aesthetic markers of surreality.
This game is a part of Jeremy Couillard's series of alien adventures (JEF, Escape from Lavender Island, AlienAfterlife...), this time co-developed with Ireneo Mercado. It is more like immersive theatre than a traditional game; while there are traditionally game-y sub-activities to perform, much of the game revolves around the observation of and eavesdropping upon the alien members of Polyp's Pond. And like interactive theatre, the presence of other players is important to shaping the experience of the Pond for each observer.
Though the game can and will usually be played single-player, there are multiplayer options for its play as well. In fact, the game's free "strategy guide", a 100-page manual detailing lore, character profiles, and game mechanics, has a dedicated section detailing how the game should be set up across four computers in a gallery installation. One computer allows the player to control the Tulpa ("a spiritual being you make with your mind that acts independently from it") while the other three computers passively follow the other lead character NPCs (Smerga, Kaotoa, and Skalitir) as they independently go about their business.
Even in a single-player setting, the game can be played online where other players appear as wandering Tulpas in the hub space, intermixed with computer-controlled Tulpas. The player can observe and interact with these Tulpas as well and can earn points for determining whether or not one is being controlled by a real human player.
Thematically, the game engages in 'stoner existentialism', questioning reality in a medium in which players are intentionally engaged in a false reality. It's a reality that embraces your passive observation -- the avatar will even behave autonomously if left without controller command for long enough and the camera will follow him around cinematically -- but it resists active participation. The camera feels too sensitive; one of the core activities of the game even seems to be "broken", such that the area in which a series of collectables needed to complete a challenge are held is inaccessible due to the presence of collision objects that you can aaaalmost squeeze past.
Other minigame activities are underscored by characters giving long, existential rants, apparently in crises of will. The game derives its name from a conversation between two of the characters:
Kaotoa: Sometimes like, my life is so hard there is part of me that needs to believe it's not totally real in order to cope with it. Smerga: Yeah totally. It’s like, so crushingly difficult it can’t possibly be a real thing. Kaotoa: Maybe it’s just a probabilistic simulation and when I die I’m going to wake up in a high def projection cube on a distant planet in another dimension Smerga: Maybe when I die I’ll wake up in the back of a taxi cab driving through a ravine on one of Saturn’s moons. Kaotoa: Just imagining these possibilities helps me get through the day. Smerga: This can’t possibly be all that there is. The mere thought terrifies me.
The characters consider what of their own hearts and minds constitute themselves and what is a compulsion of the body; a product of evolution and instinct. "I wonder if I died, left my body, hovered around and saw a beautiful girl, if I would glare at her lustfully. [...] Are we saying our true self is not part of our body or daily concerns?". This particular exploration is interesting to have as a simulated being with limited expressive capability because the Tulpa is actually compelled by a force other than its own consciousness -- the player -- even though the Tulpa expresses the capability for free will outside of direct player control. The player animates the Tulpa, and the Tulpa compels the player to engage with the space in an objective-driven, game-like manner.
While successful in creating interesting alien spaces in which players can find quiet corners to consider life as the rhythms of aliens in crises and intergalactic reggae bands echo in the background, interaction with the game feels a bit insubstantial without the accompanying downloadable manual (available on the game's website but not directly pointed towards in-game). There are interesting sights to see and amusing writing to read, but I did not feel that most of its minigames drove home the themes of self-alienation.
Innovation the game introduces: I spent a lot of time trying to get past the heads in the "The Founders of Daytona Beach Also Founded Dayton Ohio" level. The fact that the way is obstructed by something that feels passable if I just wriggle between rogue geometry made for a compelling type of frustration and envy.
What I'd like to see from future games: Frankly, a walking simulator starring a man-sized pizza slice muttering to itself has enough promise to built an entire game out of.
Lineage and legacy: Descended from a lineage of "trippy" stylized games (primarily exploration adventures) starting with LSD Dream Emulator and most recently exemplified by the work of Cosmo D and Sam Atlas. Would pair nicely with Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor.
Score: 58
Isopod 🟩
2025
They see me rollin'
Genre: Platformer || 3D platformer
Played on: PC (game key received for free from developer)
Isopod is a follow-up to 2021 2D platformer Webbed, a physics-based platformer starring a little spider with a central mechanic of swinging on webs and propeling oneself through a miniature world of platforming challenges. The physics- and momentum-based gameplay was loose and expressive, and it encourages the player to find creative and daring ways to zip through each level. It's the kind of game that is easy to play but has a potentially very high skill and creativity ceiling.
Following that up with an open-zone 3D platformer isn't the obvious choice, but I'm pleased to find that it's built on the principles of momentum-based, creativity-forward physics platforming. It follows in the tradition of marble games, like Marble Blast, Marble It Up, Super Monkey Ball, and Venineth in which building up perilous speed and creatively launching yourself off of pieces of rogue level geometry can be used for the purpose of highly-creative and unconventional platforming.
Besides rolling, the pillbug hero can walk as normal using his legs as well. An option that is a bit too slow for extended use in the game's large environments but is useful for repositioning oneself on narrow platforms.
It feels great to play, and each of the game's (sparse but welcome) unlockable mechanics adds a fun and expressive dimension to the movement system. It all feels very fluid and open-ended. Speedruns are going to be thrilling to watch.
The free and expressive movement is complimented by a fiercely anti-capitalist story about breaking free from the oppression of capitalist control. The story interacts very little with the actual play of the game; you are not compelled to unionize or work as a team with other bugs -- gameplay is still fiercely individualist. But it's well-written and regularly quite funny.
Overall, it's very charming and quite fun. It doesn't feel absolutely vital, but it's a good time for fans of the genre.
Innovation the game introduces: A magnet makes for a great, multipurpose power-up, and the flexibility of its use (attracted to any point on a metal object) gives it a lot of expressive versatility.
What I'd like to see from future games: Better use can be made of the momentum-based movement. Let momentum get out-of-control.
Lineage and legacy: Follows a lineage of games involving physics-based rolling of a marble or other type of ball, such as Marbe Madness, The Incredible Maze, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble, Marble Blast, Marble It Up!, Monkey Ball, and Rock of Ages. It blends that lineage with an open-world exploration platformer in a manner similar to Venineth, The Ball, and Snake Rattle 'n' Roll. It shares its anti-capitalist sentiment and comedic tone with Another Crab's Treasure. It releases amidst a small movement of games that involve play at a shrunken-down, bug-sized scale, such as Grounded, Supraland, and It Takes Two.
Score: 72
Babushka's Glitch Dungeon 🟩
2025
A sweeping epic
Genre: Platformer || 2D platformer
Played on: PC
This 2D platformer sees an old woman cleaning up her video game dungeon, currently besotted with glitches. Platforming around the space must be done by utilizing these glitches, which act as transient movement mechanics. The woman can “remember” two glitches (mechanics) at once. These mechanics can be moved between areas, giving the player a certain amount of freedom to tackle platforming challenges in different ways.
Routes between areas are usually blocked by clouds that cause the woman to “forget” her carried glitches, wiping the slate clean and letting the developers reintroduce only the allowed glitches around which the upcoming challenges are based. But these clouds of forgetfulness are spatially-bounded objects, and clever players can often find ways to circumvent them, bringing glitch mechanics into areas in which they are not intended to be and allowing for alternate solutions to challenges.
This is the most successfully-transgressive element in the game ostensibly about breaking the rules of a digital space. I respect how possible it is to break this codified rule, though I also respect that the game never suggests it or makes it too easy for the player to accomplish (the implicit permission-giving would spoil the transgressiveness of the act).
Allowing for player transgression is a tricky balance. It should always feel against-intent, but if the player misses out on the possibility of transgression, she’s overlooked a significant portion of what I think makes this game special.
Innovation the game introduces: While Metroidvania-style games usually aim to impress with web-like, interconnected worlds, the unpretentious “hub and spoke” layout of the Glitch Dungeon keeps navigation relatively simple, allows for players to opt out of particular challenges to return later, but also gives the levels greater contextual interconnectedness than a level-select screen. It’s unshowy but friendly to the purposes of this game.
What I'd like to see from future games: I appreciate the game’s diegetic contextualization of “glitches”, but these are straightforward (though transient) Metroidvania mechanics. They do not include the risk or chaotic unpredictability of actual glitches. They are reliable and consistent. It would be great to see games that reward the use of glitches (even if not actual glitched behavior) that actually feels dangerous and prone to failure in the way that real glitch exploitation (in the speedrunning community and elsewhere) does.
Lineage and legacy: Would pair well with contemporaries MotionRec, ANIMAL WELL, or artgame The End of Gameplay, which similarly encourages the player to make use of “glitches” to proceed through 2D platforming stages. Follows a lineage of games that have made use of the aesthetic and (il)logic of glitches in the construction of gameplay challenges, such as Strawberry Cubes, Pony Island, FEZ, Axiom Verge, There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, and Doki Doki Literature Club!. For more daring use of glitches (in collision behavior, in particular, see the upcoming pondlife: discone (a videogame).
Score: 71
Wheel World 🟩
2025
Virtual wheeality
Genre: Racing, sports || BMX
Played on: Xbox Series X via Game Pass
Wheel World, known as Ghost Bike before its release, is an open-world BMX-racing game with a cartoon-like artstlye and a sly sense of humor. From its opening moments, it feels good to ride the bike. The physics are well-tuned and authentic. Cornering, riding over different terrains, it feels good from-the-go. Perhaps the only criticism I could level at it is that the feeling of riding does not significantly evolve throughout the game.
In the tradition of modern open worlds, alternate bike parts can be won in races, purchased in shops, and found hidden throughout the continent. These parts provide minor upgrades, but upgrades are so subtle that it can be hard to discern what difference they make. I'm sure there would be recognizable difference between my bikes at the beginning and end of the game, but the progression is so minor and slow along the way that it feels unnoticeable from moment-to-moment. It dulls the feeling of reward upon finding new upgrades, but the races are relatively unchallenging -- I do not feel at great risk of losing or need for any additional edge on my opponents.
The detail that I find the most interesting is the color-grading. Most open-world games, particularly racing games set in lush, outdoor environments are paired with bright, sunny colors. The color palette of the sunny opening island is decidedly dimmed and yellowed, as if the world is being viewed through sunglasses or viewed in an old photograph. It's an odd decision but one that tinges the space not in the refreshing vibrancy of the outdoors but in what feels more like a wistful nostalgia. A bold choice to stylize the world for a mood of longing memory rather than go with the bright SEGA-blue skies that I would have expected.
Innovation the game introduces: Races have multiple concurrent optional objectives. Besides finishing quickly, you may choose to collect three letters during each race, hidden off-course. It can be fun to keep an eye out for these letters, but most races are only two laps. If you miss a letter on your first lap, you only have one more opportunity to collect it before the race concludes.
What I'd like to see from future games: The late-game bicycle humorously made of human body parts is a grim but funny visual gag. An entire game could be made of this detail alone.
Lineage and legacy: Emerges from a legacy of open-world racing games with side-activities and upgrades to find throughout the map, such as The Crew, Forza Horizon, Need for Speed Underground 2, and Burnout Paradise.
Score: 77
UNBEATABLE ⬛
2025
Dance dance revolution
Genre: Rhythm, adventure
Played on: Xbox Series X
I've been a fan of oddball rhythm games for my entire life, and I've never seen such a wealth of new releases as we got on the week of December 6th, 2025, in which Rhythm Doctor hit 1.0, Bits & Bops released, and the highly-anticipated UNBEATABLE came out. UNBEATABLE, in particular, had been on my radar for a long time -- it made quite a splash with its [white label] demo in 2021, and I was eager to see how it had evolved in the time since.
The gameplay in the [white label] demo seemed to be based on 2018 Chinese rhythm game Muse Dash, with two horizontal lanes of notes that an on-screen character jumps between to smash oncoming notes. I remember being slightly annoyed at the time that controls were not customizable beyond selecting from a number of preset control schemes in the settings menu -- the one that most closely resembled the familiar Muse Dash control scheme had the buttons for playing notes in the upper and lower lanes reversed, and it was puzzling that I couldn't switch back to the scheme with which I was familiar. Besides that hangup, the demo looked incredible and the Muse Dash formula was as fun as ever.
More than four years later, with the full game in-hand now, I find myself rather lukewarm on it, which I take no pleasure in saying, since it is obvious that the developers put a tremendous amount of love into every aspect of the game. It's just not what I expected that it was going to be, and I've had a hard time adjusting to what the game insists on being instead.
I'm okay with rhythm games having story components. PaRappa the Rapper was one of my favorite games growing up. But the rhythm-to-story balance in UNBEATABLE is baffling. It is almost exclusively a visual novel with extremely intermittent rhythm minigames, some in the Muse Dash style and others in dynamic, full-screen action setpieces that require responding to rhythm patterns a la Rhythm Heaven.
Indeed, most of the game is spent running around a visually-resplendent world, having conversations with characters and often performing rather menial tasks to progress the story. The story is quite large in scale -- involving rebellion against a fascistic government, incarceration, and police chases -- but it often falls into patterns of deliberately-unfun repetition in order to represent the quiet oppression the characters experience -- the status quo they must break. Though it makes sense as a framing element, the repetitious elements drag out the pacing and make each chapter feel like it's stretched farther than it can support.
The characters are all well-drawn and visually-expressive, but everyone is written in a particular disaffected style. There are a lot of ellipses, a lot of sighing, frequent conversational apologizing, extremely gentle sarcasm. It reads as very "human", but the problem is that all of the characters read as the same human, and the constant exasperation and disaffectedness causes the dialogue to take a laborious pace.
The infrequency of rhythm gameplay gets to be a problem for me, because, as I mentioned, the controls are opposite of my trained muscle memory, so I have to readjust every time a rhythm section comes up. Unlike the [white label] demo, the full game does not offer different controller configurations; rather, all configurations are active at once, so you can hop between whatever control scheme best suits your style of play (though the fact that there is no way to, in-game, manually configure or even look up the controls is disappointing).
Though multiple control schemes are active during rhythm gameplay, the game frames as the default (through button prompts and tutorialization) an RB/R1 and LB/L1 control scheme, with LB associated with the lower track (ground-level notes) and RB associated with the upper track (jump notes). The obvious problem here is that the two tracks are vertically-oriented while the bumpers are horizontally-aligned. Which is "upper" and which is "lower" are arbitrary, but it still feels like the choice was made incorrectly. Muse Dash uses D-pad (left of pad) for the upper track and face buttons (right of pad) for the lower track, such that, if you were to hold the controller up to the screen and rotate it to align with the tracks, the notes would be moving towards the correct side of the pad, respectively. It is the opposite in UNBEATABLE; you would have to hold the controller away from the flow of notes (in the default configuration, though it switches sides occasionally) for the controller's buttons to align with their respective inputs. It makes it feel just one step further away from being intuitive.
The rhythm gameplay itself works pretty well. Tracks are readable but still dynamic, and it will often switch chart orientation and patterns mid-song, requiring the player to be alert and adaptable. The music, though, tends to be rather dreamy and shoegaze-y with more smooth sounds and long transitions than the clear and distinct electro beats that power many Asian-made rhythm game peers. I am all for representing different genres of music in rhythm gameplay and don't mean to frame one as a platonic ideal, but the music doesn't quite insist upon itself quite as much as I am used to in modern rhythm games, making the act of following the beat feel a bit less natural and propulsive.
The most striking element of the game is that it looks incredible. Characters all have highly-appealing, personal designs, sprites and the occasional full-screen scene are beautifully hand-animated, and the settings in which the characters find themselves, evocative of lightly-detailed anime backgrounds transitioned into disciplined 3D spaces, compliment the style well. Without reservation, UNBEATABLE is one of the best-looking games of last year. Animations are punchy (ideal for rhythm gameplay), and the UI has an aggressive, well-designed zine-punk style, making the entire experience feel very soulful, authentic, and rebellious.
I encountered some issues with gameplay progression in my time with the game -- some technical and some design. One scene early in the game nearly soft-locked my progression, as the camera (that moves between fixed perspectives based on location) failed to update to a critical part of the environment, meaning I had to navigate a portion of the game world completely blind (referencing a YouTube video to form a mental picture of what I was supposed to be able to see). In other instances, roaming the open world, I was frustrated by the lack of ability to check what the next objective is supposed to be in order to progress. If you weren't paying attention to a conversation or came back to the game after a few days away, it will not remind you what to do next; it's up to you to click around, directionless, until you happen to trigger the correct interaction.
It's a minor quibble, but I also find it annoying that the game does not support Xbox's auto-resume feature. Booting up the game forces me to go through logos and the menu every time. Given that auto-resume is a system-level feature, it's disappointing to see it excluded.
In fact, I concluded my time with the game not able to boot it any longer. The "press A to start" prompt no longer works, even after closing and restarting the software, so I appear to be locked out of the game.
Overall, I respect the ambition of the project, and if it was billed as a visual novel with light rhythm gameplay elements instead of as a rhythm game, I may have felt more positively towards it. I find the balance of story to gameplay misjudged, the style of the writing irritating, and the non-configurability of the controls disappointing. But the game's masterful, hand-drawn animations, confident musical identity, and dynamic rhythm gameplay push me to give it a mildly-positive assessment. There's a lot of talent and passion in this one; I just wish the final game was as focused as [white label].
Innovation the game introduces: Switching between chart types mid-song is an inspired choice, as it transitions between horizontal-scrolling tracks (which, themselves, can transition between the right and left sides of the screen) and vertically-scrolling charts during moments of hand-to-hand combat. It puts me in mind of the differing gameplay styles of Gitaroo Man stages or the dynamically-growing and shrinking charts of VOEZ.
What I'd like to see from future games: If the developers wish for the game to switch between genres, it might be better suited to switching to a genre with a rhythmic gameplay core, like fighting games or beat-em-ups. The art and beautiful animations would suit these well.
Lineage and legacy: The core rhythm gameplay is an evolution of Muse Dash. Some setpiece rhythm exercises are inspired by Rhythm Heaven. Would pair well with No Straight Roads.
Score: 52
Tall Trails 🟩
2025
Golem? I hardly know 'em
Genre: Platformer || 3D platformer
Played on: PC (game key received for free from developer)
This follows a particular lineage, a movement of cozy, deliberately childlike 3D platformers in large, open spaces in which players are given the freedom to pursue challenges in any order and utilizing whatever strategies they please. These games, exemplified by A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game, employ the climbing and stamina system from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild almost directly, capturing the core aesthetic of freely exploring the outdoors and paring away Zelda’s challenge in favor of more relaxed, affirming adventures.
Tall Trails adopts an evocatively-minimal visual aesthetic that brings to mind crayon drawings and Play-Doh sculptures brought to life. It sets the tone for a “don’t take it too seriously, we’re just here to have a pleasant time” adventure while being scalable enough to accommodate the game’s expansive, procedurally-generated endgame (more on that later).
The gameplay loop is simple and unpretentious: arrive on a new island that features a central mountain, additional peaks hosting other random platforming challenges, a campfire circle in which you may shop or receive additional quests, and a randomly-paired biome, which decides what kinds of flora and items populate the island. The avatar golem can carry a limited (but upgradable) number of items in its pack. Some will have passive effects (like samaras, which will slow the golem’s fall and allow it to hover over long distances or spiders which allow the golem to swing on webs like Spider-Man), and all can be launched out of the bottom of the pack to propel the golem upwards.
The randomization of available items gives each island a different rhythm of play, and the flexibility of the simple mechanics gives a fair amount of expressiveness and player-choice to the open-ended navigational challenges.
Following the achievement of the game’s primary goal, an endgame opens up, presenting the player an endless progression of procedurally-generated islands of randomized biomes and challenges. Amongst these challenges are climbing objectives, in which the player must reach the top of what appear to be 3D scans of random objects — a toilet, a man in a suit, a hurdy-gurdy — which feels like a clever way of getting additional gameplay challenges without having to specifically design bespoke climbing geometry. It provides an opportunity of a “close reading” of the physical forms of these familiar objects in a way we don’t often get. The high level-of-detail of these 3D scanned objects makes for a humorous juxtaposition with the deliberately-simple art style of the rest of the game.
Innovation the game introduces: Its cleverest challenge is a “floor is lava” challenge, in which the player must get as far as possible from an origin point without ever touching the ground. Because of the semi-random construction of each island, these challenges are improvisational and open-ended. And because the challenge involves getting as far away from a specific point as possible rather than racing to a specific point, the player can move in any direction and strategize her own path forward.
What I'd like to see from future games: Following on from that last point, how about a racing game that involves getting as far away from a specific point as possible? Perhaps starting in the middle of a continent and racing to the coasts. My biggest complaint about racing games is the prescriptiveness of their routing; the player doesn’t often get to make interesting decisions with regard to the geography of the course. Even open-world racing games, like Burnout Paradise, allow for alternate courses in point-to-point races but do not make it advantageous to utilize one’s knowledge of the island, as the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so there is often an ideal route, even if you can deviate from it. If the goal is just “the outside borders”, it opens up the possibility space tremendously.
Lineage and legacy: A part of a movement of cozy 3D platformers that starts with A Short Hike. Games in this movement include Lil Gator Game, Valley Peaks, Haven Park, and Smushi Come Home. Most of the games in this movement adopt the stamina and climbing systems from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Score: 79
Grapple Dog 🟩
2022
Swoop doggy dogg
Genre: Platformer || 2D platformer
Played on: PC
Grapple Dog is a pared-back, simplified 2D platformer with a bold aesthetic and a great hook. Its quite measured jump and movement is complimented (contrasted, even) by physics-based rope swinging. The momentum of the swinging feels good, but the binary ground-based movement speeds feel restrictive in conjunction.
It's a solid platformer. Well-designed. Relaible, but never transcendent. Evolutions and innovations are as-expected; it does not surprise, but it makes good on its original promise. I am eager to see what the sequel delivers, with the devs having had more time to meditate on the formula.
Innovation the game introduces: Once I reached the end of the game, I had not collected enough gems to engage the final fight. I realized that I had accidentally skipped the entire second world. I respect that it let me do that! (And, of course, going back to the second world, I ended up with more than enough resources to finish the game properly).
What I'd like to see from future games: There is room for the on-ground controls to feel slightly more daring to match the (relative) expressiveness of the swinging mechanics.
Lineage and legacy: Though 2D rope swinging goes at least as far back as Bionic Commando in 1987, Grapple Dog's implementation feels like it hearkens back to the Ninja Rope in the Worms series, which spawned a community of Rope Racers in Worms Armageddon onwards.
Score: 62
Nikoderiko: The Magical World ⬛
2024
Nivodereview
Genre: Platformer || 2D platformer, 3D platformer
Played on: Xbox Series X (played the Director's Cut)
This is a game specifically built in the tradition of Donkey Kong Country (though more specifically the Retro Studios titles rather than the Rare games) and Crash Bandicoot, games with which I have a lot of history and fondness from my earliest days of console gaming. Nikoderiko has many of the trappings of the Donkey Kong Country series, such as blast barrels, enemy types, and collectable patterns nabbed directly from Returns and Tropical Freeze, but it controls much more like Crash. Unfortunately, the floatiness of the Crash controls doesn’t always play nicely with the tightness of design and demandingness of execution of DKC-inspired courses.
It’s a lovingly-crafted blend, and the game has a great visual aesthetic with a lot of personality and storybook detail, but I ended up opting out of finishing this one for “life’s too short” reasons. The game never hooked me. The looseness of its controls — particularly mid-air — led to most deaths feeling unearned and more frustrating than motivating. It keeps the pace of play feeling more careful than propulsive.
It’s a shame, because just a bit more in-air control could drastically improve the experience of play. It’s close to being a much better game. But this edition of the game is already labeled the Director’s Cut, leading me to believe that all improvements they noted were still needed from the game’s initial launch have already been accounted for.
Ultimately, this game lost me with its frustrating control imprecision, but there is clearly enough talent and love poured into the game’s visual stylization and scope that I have to respect it as a holistic project. It’s not for me, from a play perspective, but there is a great deal of goodness on display.
Innovation the game introduces: The shift between the game’s primary 2D gameplay and the Crash-inspired 3D hallway segments draws design parallels between Rare and Naughty Dog’s work, highlighting overlapping design decisions.
What I'd like to see from future games: Ease of control in platforming is a tricky balance. On one hand, platforming should not be effortless or automatic. There has to be a sense of risk and danger. Making the avatar land where I want her to land should be a test of skill, just as jumping precisely requires skill and practice in real life. But when I feel my intent and execution are disconnected, it draws me out of the projective-embodied state. The avatar feels more like a slippery vehicle rather than an extension of myself. There are platformers with “looser” controls that I do enjoy quite a bit (like Rayman Origins and Bionic Bay), but these games have quite a few allowances to make up for “mistakes” or improperly judged trajectories, making them feel improvisational rather than punishing).
Lineage and legacy: Directly inspired by the Donkey Kong Country series, the Donkey Kong Country Returns series, and the first three Crash Bandicoot games. Is a part of a wave of recent 2D platformers that are directly inspired by Donkey Kong Country, such as Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Kaze and the Wild Masks, and Windswept.
Score: 44
to a T 🟩
2025
Not my cup of T
Genre: Adventure
Played on: PC via Game Pass
Keita Takahashi has a talent for expressing kind-hearted but complex philosophies through simple and appealing gameplay. Katamari Damacy expresses a philosophy of collective interconnectedness and of the value we imbue upon objects transcending their physical forms. Noby Noby Boy is a meditation on collective action that transcends communication. Wattam is about identity and sometimes poo. With his newest release, to a T, Takahashi sets out a clear statement of intent with regard to philosophical exploration: it's a game about disability and thriving despite (and because of) differences. But the directness of the metaphor ends up confusing the message as more and more complicating elements are added to the mix.
The story involves a teen who goes to school and tries to live a normal life despite being stuck in a T-pose with her arms outstretched to either side at all times. It is a strange disability, yet a kind one to choose for this story, as it does not map closely enough onto an existent disability that it feels as if it points too specifically toward one particular disability. It is a flexible metaphor that allows a great number of disabilities to be mapped onto it, and the game goes to great lengths to demonstrate the challenges it imposes and the manners of assistance others (particularly the teen's dog) provide to allow the teen to live a normal life despite her condition. It does not 'other' the teen or frame her disability as an impedement; only a challenge to be overcome with love and planning.
Problems start to emerge when the game becomes interactive, though. The Saturday-morning-cartoon-like town is packed with lovingly-assembled details that would be a joy to explore were it not for the strictness of routing and awkwardness of navigating the space. Despite the town being presented as an open world, it is only ever passed through, directly from one point to a specified destination. The player is never given reason or opportunity to freely explore and feel like a part of the community.
Navigating the town is also awkwardly accomplished with a fixed-camera-angle, side-on perpsective. The avatar may pivot at every intersection, but she runs every block from left-to-right or right-to-left. It makes navigation difficult, since orienting oneself toward a cardinal direction seems arbitrary and points of reference cannot be seen. It requires constant checking of the map to navigate the grid of streets, despite the town's layout not being complicated.
Gameplay challenges are either maddeningly simple or weirdly challenging in ways that feel unintentional, and the amount of time it takes to pass between areas of interest is far too great for how little there is to do once you arrive.
The game looks nice. Simple character models are complimented by soft edges that gives everything a toybox look and a very appealing Ben-Day dot shader. It's a unique look that suits the art style well.
The story, presented in short episodes like a season of a TV show (with each episode also accompanied by opening and closing theme songs), has a slow and meandering start. It is intended to establish the norm through slice-of-life vignettes before bizarre variations are introduced, but the slow pace and the relative inconsequentiality and mundanity of early story beats makes it feel a bit boring. The story picks up considerably in the game's final two episodes, but it almost feels over-stuffed at that point.
If the central metaphor is one of disability, what do we make of Teen's ability to fly? Her alien parentage? The alien's obsession with imposing 'perfection' on the land by conforming all being and objects (a weirdly eugenics-adjacent turn for a story about disability to take).
Innovation the game introduces: My favorite small touch is the menu birds. The main menu sees all of the menu's options (New Game, Conitnue, Settings, Sound, Visual, Accessibility) accompanied by a different type of bird, perched outside of Teen's house. When the game is paused, these birds fly in from off-screen and perch on teen; a very cute, Cinderella-like variation of the typical pause menu.
What I'd like to see from future games: More games can benefit from the use of a Greek chorus-like small group of omniscient narrators, hidden throughout the world and seeing all.
Lineage and legacy: This is in the distinctive style of artist and Katamari Damacy designer Keita Takahashi, and the game features a sly reference to Katamari in a plot-relevant giant mushroom that is stylized like the King of All Cosmos. Stylistically and thematically, this more closely follows on from his 2013 game Tenya Wanya Teens.
Score: 40
PIG in HELL ⬛
2024
Pork souls
Genre: Action, shmup || dodge-em-up
Played on: PC
A short-but-demanding dodge-em-up. You are a recently-deceased pig, aiming to escape the underworld by tricking the devil into stamping your release papers. A series of attacks comes at you in a particular order, each dodged in a different manner. One of the attacks is a stamp that descends from the sky. Bait it to land in one of three randomly-placed squares. Have all three squares stamped, and you win -- but surviving for even a few seconds can be quite the challenge.
The construction paper aesthetic is appealing and readable, and restarting is quick -- accompanied by a merry jingle. Free-to-play on itch.io; it's worth a look.
Innovation the game introduces: Baiting attacks into specific portions of the screen is a clever risk vs. reward mechanic that requires planning ahead and nimble execution.
What I'd like to see from future games: The sweep attack that must be jumped over feels imprecise and inconsistent. That could be slightly improved.
Lineage and legacy: Follows in the legacy of dodge-em-ups such as Geballer, Soft Body, Don't Die Mr. Robot, and Disc Room. That subgenre is related to the more recently popular Survivors-like, following the popularity of Vampire Survivors; not strictly a dodge-em-up variant, but close enough that the popularity of the genre likely influenced the decision to create this game.
Score: 66
Lil Gator Game: In the Dark (DLC) 🟩
2026
Learn to become an ally gator
Genre: Platformer || 3D platformer
Played on: PC
Lil Gator Game is a terrific, casual platforming adventure with a great conceit: you're playinng as a child in a game of make-believe with his friends. Rather than seeing the game as they imagine it, you see the rough construction of all of its game elements: monsters are crayon-drawn on cardboard, and collectibles are craft materials like construction paper. Everyone speaks in a combination of in-character and out-of-character speech, and everyone has a slightly different idea of the rules of the mimetic fantasy entail.
The game's first DLC moves the adventure into the island's underground cave system, replacing the sunny forests of the overworld with the dank and spooky caaverns underneath. The caves are full of things to do and discover, but they are a bit more challenging to navigate than the above-ground areas. Whereas mountains and other towering landmarks helped orient the player in the above-ground map, sightlines underground are short, and the DLC's series of caverns are connected by rather indistinct tunnels that makes navigating to specific areas difficult.
The underground introduces a series of a new mechanics bound to special items which allow the gator to perform new actions such as forward-flipping, hovering, and swinging on webs like Spider-Man. Though these new abilities are useful and quite fun, they strain the credulity of the imaginative play conceit as we witness the avatar doing things that are physically impossible.
The story revolves around the discovery of a new faction of children on the island who call themselves villains, led by a socially-awkward, impulsive pig named Buddy. The story is empathetic to buddy and told in a wonderfully kind-hearted manner. Not a life-changing narrative, but certainly brings a warmth into the heart of the player.
The new DLC is fun and well-written and will surely appeal to fans of the base game, but its space is comparatively difficult to navigate and orient oneself within, making discovery of the cave's final challenges and collectables a bit of a chore.
Innovation the game introduces: The final act is initated with an empathetic section of gameplay involving taking on a different character's perspective. It's a section that was done quite well; no better way to understand a character's perspective than to walk a mile in their shoes.
What I'd like to see from future games: Setting a new adventure in a space alongside the original adventure is one of my favorite tricks. It is reminiscent of the "just on the other side of that wall" adventure of Banjo-Tooie or the underworld space in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Lineage and legacy: A part of a movement of cozy 3D platformers that starts with A Short Hike. Games in this movement include Valley Peaks, Haven Park, Tall Trails, and Smushi Come Home. Most of the games in this movement adopt the stamina and climbing systems from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Score: 85
Demon Tides 🟩
2026
Surf 'n turf
Genre: Platformer || 3D platformer
Played on: PC
Nothing excites me in games quite as much as an expressive movement system, and this is the stated purpose of Demon Tides' creation. This massive, open-world 3D platformer calls back to the structure of Bowser's Fury, with individual islands holding complex platforming challenges connected by a freely-traversable sea. Every moment of the game is optimized to feel great -- from the technical platforming to the extreme speeds at which the transforming avatar, Beebz, can cross the ocean.
There are two ways which micro-expressivity (expressive moment-to-moment gameplay, typically in avatar movement) can be achieved: through the versitility and flexibility of few mechanics or the multitudinous layering of mechanics. For example, the movement system of Super Mario 64 is simple but versitile; it allows for a great deal of situational improvisation with the flexibility nad maneuverability of each jump. Street Fighter III is expressive by way of its complex ability sets, giving players an expansive set of tools with which they can respond to diverse situations mid-fight.
Demon Tides strattles the line between both. Its movement mechanics are flexible, well-tuned, and responsive to player inputs. It also has a rather complex arrangement of movement mechanics involving multiple transformations and differing movement and attack trajectories depending on the order in which those forms are invoked.
At first, it can be a lot to keep track of -- a memorization test of which buttons and triggers to hit in which order to achieve the jump that you want. Over time, it becomes more natural and fluent. Once the systems are mastered, the number of options that the player has at any given time feels nearly endless, and clever players can find ways to circumvent many of the game's challenges.
The flexibility of the movement system is amplified by a modifier loadout system. There are dozens of talismans to collect across the world which can modify the behavior of particular abilities or alter the mechanics of the game itself (such as lowering gravity or temporarily slowing time). This makes for an extraordinarily personalizable gameplay toolset.
This is complimented by the ever-present availability of a speedrunning metagame. Upon completing an island's challenges, you're given the option to reset the island and speedrun the challenges as quickly as possible, and the time in which you can complete them is ranked on global leaderboards. The most impressive of times are accomplished by finding efficient and unconventional flows through each island, supported by the flexibility the mechanics allow.
The game looks great, with a bold, stylized, cel-shaed aesthetic with distinctive characters. Character animation has an appealing cartoon style and highly-expressive facial performances. The spaces are always readable and distinctive, with each island holding some kind of interesting twist or secret.
There are some QoL touches that I greatly appreciate. You can invoke a Crazy Taxi arrow any time that points you towards the closest uncollected gem, making the task of hoovering up all collectables in sometimes quite expansive spaces entirely doable. The Ori and the Blind Forest-inspired mechanic by which the player can drop respawn checkpoints (nearly) wherever she wants makes the game's most devious challenges quite approachable and friendly. It's a great system.
The game is not without glitches, but most are rather minor and unobtrusive. Most commonly, when fast traveling to another island, the avatar loads in faster than the island does, loading the avatar under the ground of the island. Most of the time, this can be remedied by jumping and shimmying, but sometimes it results in getting stuck and having to fast-travel again. Other times, particular mechanics, like camera control, stop working until a room is reloaded.
All-in-all, this is one of the finest 3D platformers I have played, gratifying in every moment from beginning to end. I cannot recommend this game highly enough.
Innovation the game introduces: Some of the best levels in the game take place in areas where time is frozen, allowing for the placement of contextualized platforming materials suspended in space in a beautiful and dramatic fashion, but also allowing stories to be inferred through the placement and posing of these highly-expressive characters, frozen in time. I've thought about setting an entire game in a frozen reality and the loneliness involved with being the only unfrozen person. Imagine the kinds of fun Where's Waldo?-esque visual gags that can be pulled off.
What I'd like to see from future games: I would love an update to this game similar to the post-game green star challenges of Super Mario Galaxy 2. Rather than creating entirely new platforming courses, hide an assortment of collectables on each existing island in odd, difficult-to-reach areas and let us figure out how to reach them.
Lineage and legacy: Demon Tides is a direct sequel to Demon Turf. Its lineage stems from 3D platformers with expressive movement systems, such as Super Mario 64. Particular mechanics, such as rail grinding, are borrowed from Sonic Adventure and Ratchet & Clank, and its climbing system follows the example of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The developer cites inspiration for the islands-in-the-sea world construction to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, though the game more closely follows the example of Bowser's Fury. It launches amongst a wave of 3D platformers with expressive movement systems, such as A Hat in Time, Big Hops, The Knightling, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, Penny's Big Breakaway, Wavetale, and Pseudoregalia. It also hits during a time in which many 3D platformers are designed as large, nonlinear open worlds, such as Donkey Kong Bananza, Super Mario Odyssey, and Sonic Frontiers. It is being followed in the same year by Bubsy 4D, which shares not only its developer but also similarities in its expressive movement system and Tides' distinctive graphics engine.
Score: 97
Mini Motorways (Hong Kong & Cape Town updates) 🟩
2026
An angel at my Table Mountain
Genre: Simulation || city building
Played on: PC
I love Mini Motorways, and I have a lot of respect for the amount of post-launch support they've given the game. The mechanics remain relatively consistent, though, meaning that achieving the par scores (2,000 in normal mode, 500 in expert mode) doesn't require drastic realignment of strategies between locations. Hong Kong mixes it up a bit with the introduction of the boat lane, which essentially makes half of the water that separates the north and south portions of the map impassible.
Despite not having any overt limitations like that, I had a much harder time achieving 2,000 in Cape Town, even when I was getting pretty lucky with building placements. Perhaps the size of Table Mountain crowds so much of the available land that everything else is rather squished in.
Solid maps, but they do not drastically change gameplay.
Innovation the game introduces: Impassable boat lines
What I'd like to see from future games: I would like to see future updates to Mini Motorways mix up the gameplay a bit more. Maybe there's a wide-open desert map in which cars need to refuel at certain intervals, making certain choke points inevitable. Maybe we get into fictional cities and have to plan the routes through Gotham City, taking into consideration crime and crime-fighters.
Lineage and legacy: Mini Motorways is a direct sequel to Mini Metro. It's loosely inspired by classic city-building games like SimCity, but more specifically by games that focus on the construction of roads and traffic management (like Cities in Motion) or train route management (such as Railroad Tycoon). It is a contemporary to several games that make light, arcade-y puzzles out of traffic management, such as Freeways, Does Not Commute, Max Traffic, and Traffix.
Score: 88
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