2022 Year In Review

Review: I loved every single thing about CrossCode. If I had to pick just one favorite game, it would be this one.

You play as Lea, a woman who has lost her memory, and she's been logged into a super high-tech MMORPG called CrossWorlds in the hopes that it will help her recover. The way the devs handled the "game-within-a-game" trope was, in my opinion, brilliant. They created an engaging sci-fi story full of twists and some of the best characters I've ever encountered in a game—they truly feel like real people who are other players in this MMO. The puzzles are clever and challenging, and so often look absolutely impossible—but once you figure them out, you feel like a genius. The combat is equally fun, with many options to accommodate different playstyles, and each enemy has its own specific weaknesses that you can figure out to make defeating them much easier. It gets even better when you start unlocking the higher-tier combat arts. My personal favorite is the giant ice turret that pummels your enemies full of ice shards and slows them down >:-D

And the music! The pixel art! The exploration! The collectibles! The massive skill tree! The side quests! The extensive statistics section that lets you track almost anything you could want to track! Well, like I said... I absolutely adore this game, and I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life trying to chase down other games that feel anywhere near as special.

I played for about 150 hours to complete the full storyline (I like to take my time and explore every nook and cranny, so this is almost certainly longer than the average playtime). The game won't be for everyone—the puzzles in particular seem to be something that people either love or hate. But the entire experience as a whole just made me feel some type of indescribable way. Luckily, I still have the DLC to finish!

Review: I really hit it out of the park last year with randomly picking games to play on a whim, because that led to me playing CrossCode and Spiritfarer back-to-back. And just like CrossCode, Spiritfarer quickly shot to the top of my favorite games list.

In the game, you play as Stella, the new Spiritfarer, who is accompanied by her cat, Daffodil. The job of the Spiritfarer is to help lost souls fulfill their final wishes, and when they are ready, to ferry them to the Everdoor on a magical houseboat. Why has Stella taken up this role? It's a mystery and you have to play the game to find out ;-)

First off, I have to say, the art and animation in Spiritfarer is ABSOLUTELY TOP-NOTCH and GORGEOUS. I personally think it should be played by everyone just for that reason alone. The characters are wonderful, each distinct in their own right, and you will definitely feel Emotions about at least some of them. (I stan Giovanni and Stanley is my son, never speak to him or me ever again.) Even the "generic" NPCs you meet throughout the game are so full of character.

There's plenty of other stuff to do as well—meet new souls to bring onboard, upgrade your boat and add buildings, explore the entire map, find collectibles, fish, farm, craft, cook, change your clothes, or just give everyone a hug.

Aside from the platforming/gliding/ziplining sometimes being a bit finicky, I don't think I can find a single fault with the game. Well, aside from the fact that it doesn't last forever. I never wanted to stop exploring that world—it was truly a beautiful experience.

Review: Swords & Souls: Neverseen is one of those simple games that's just fun. It's a follow-up to a flash game called "Swords & Souls." In S&S: Neverseen, your ship crashes onto the shore of a distant land and you are immediately enlisted into training by a strange being named Sir Pupset. You need to become a hero to save the Neverseen from the Evil Witch Queen! And fast!

The most unique aspect of S&S: Neverseen is the training mini-games. Instead of passively leveling up abilities, you actually "train" in them yourself. There are skills for melee and ranged attacks, defense, magic, and agility. In addition to leveling up the overall abilities, each mini-game has its own "sub-goals," like "get a combo of X length" or "don't make any mistakes for 30 seconds." It's a lot of fun, but can also get very challenging, especially at the higher levels. I was playing on Steam Deck, but notably, at higher tiers, training the ranged skill is nearly impossible without a mouse and keyboard.

When not training, you go out into the wilds and fight a mostly-linear set of battles until you ultimately reach the "boss" for that chapter and get one step closer to the Witch. The combat is a sort of real-time/turn-based auto-battler hybrid. Your basic attack goes off automatically at certain intervals (same with the enemies), but you can also actively manage a wide array of other skills, such as shooting your bow, casting spells, drinking potions, blocking/dodging attacks, etc. Each melee weapon has its own manually-triggered special attack, as well. You can also eventually recruit mercenary companions and pets to fight alongside you. I found this sort of hybrid combat to be really enjoyable. It made me feel like a powerful badass ;-D

The graphics are colorful and lighthearted (some may feel they have too much of a cartoonish or "mobile game" look), the characters you meet are funny and charming, and the gameplay loop is rather addictive. Between training and fighting, you can also fish, upgrade your gear, and fill in collections at the museum (always gotta have a museum).

You won't find complex mechanics or an intricate story in this game, but if you are more of a completionist or collectathon-type player, and don't mind a bit of a grind, then I recommend checking it out!

Review: Luna's Fishing Garden is an adorable casual game about a little girl who gets caught in a storm and finds herself on a set of mysterious and magical islands. From here, she embarks on an adventure to help restore the islands to their former glory, in the hopes that it will allow her to get back home. Gameplay consists of cultivating various plants and animals on the islands, fishing, and completing simple quests. There is a small cast of delightful characters to interact with, and I thought the dialogue was great—very clever and sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny. It's a short and sweet game that I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys a wholesome slice-of-life experience or lovely pixel art.

Review: I found this science-fantasy visual novel to be rather fascinating. Although the writing isn't always that great, the lore of the world is incredibly rich, and once I started reading I really wanted to know more.

The story starts by throwing you right into the action. The princess (Selphine) of a kingdom being taken over by a coup has been cornered by those sent to kill her, and in a moment of desperation, her extremely loyal bodyguard/friend (Ritona) uses some sketchy teleportation magic to get them both to safety. Unfortunately, now they have no idea where they are. Upon reaching a town, they find out they are in the area of the world where mana is extremely scarce. The people here have managed to harness the small amount of mana they can access to basically create "electricity" and other things that we would consider to be modern scientific advancements. But there's a dark story behind how this all happened.

Soon after arriving in the town, the two travelers meet a sweet but mysterious girl who shows them around and is incredibly helpful. But when they try to meet up with her again the next day, she's nowhere to be found. Selphine and Ritona decide to stick around and figure out what's happening.

The structure of the story is a bit odd, as it really becomes focused on unraveling the story of this mysterious girl and her family, and almost nothing happens to actually move forward the story of the two main characters, who urgently need to find their way back home. Nevertheless, I found it interesting and enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to playing the second game in the series. I just hope that one focuses a bit more on the fates of Selphine and Ritona!

Review: Oh man, I'm not even sure where to start with AI: The Somnium Files. It was a wild ride and one of the best games I played last year. It's essentially a murder mystery VN set in the near future, but it also has a sigificant gameplay element where you can enter a memory, or "Somnium," of someone else in order to find clues that might help solve the mystery. Each Somnium is timed, in a way, but time only passes when you take an action, and each action takes up a certain amount of seconds. So it's more of a time-management puzzle than anything that requires quick reflexes or fast thinking. I personally found the Somniums to be a little stressful (thanks, choice paralysis anxiety), and I was always enjoying the story so much that I didn't want to interrupt it with a Somnium event. But that's just me being weird, and they were still really fun. There are also some quick-time-ish events like shooting a bullet or punching someone at a certain time, and there are interrogation scenes where you ask people questions.

You play as Kaname Date, a rough-around-the-edges detective with a prosthetic eye that houses a snarky AI named Aiba. The banter between Kaname and Aiba throughout the game is hilarious (and full of puns). Honestly, I loved almost every single one of the characters (especially Mizuki <3). The voice acting is phenomenal (everything is voiced), the story is brain-melting, the art is beautiful. I had a blast with every second of it, and it kept me guessing till the end. There are multiple routes/endings, but the game takes you through them in a relatively structured way (e.g., having to reach a certain ending to unlock a different route), and it's all shown to you in the form of a flowchart, so there's no guesswork involved in experiencing every part of the story (which I appreciated).

This game comes highly recommended from me if you're interested in sci-fi, murder mysteries, or something a bit off-the-wall and experimental. Or if you enjoyed other Spike Chunsoft games like Danganronpa or Zero Escape. I recently bought the next game in the series (nirvanA Initiative), and I'm super excited to play it!

Review: I was really looking foward to Beacon Pines after playing the demo on Steam, and the full game did not disappoint. Sometimes described as "Winnie-the-Pooh meets Stranger Things," this charming-creepy-cute storybook adventure ended up being one of my favorite games of the year. The characters and writing are fantastic, and the hand-painted style of the art is really beautiful. The game's main mechanic is a branching storyline with multiple endings (literally "branching"—it's a tree). You unlock new branches by finding objects in the game world that provide a word you can plug into the story, which actually gets "written down" into a storybook as you go. There is also a voiced narrator who does an excellent job of setting the mood throughout the game.

Beacon Pines is relatively short, but the experience is well worth it. I also loved that it came out at the end of September last year—it was the perfect way to usher in the autumn season. Anyone here want to start the Rolo Fan Club with me? XD

Review: I initially didn't pay much attention to Echo Generation, thinking that I didn't like the graphics (it's made by the devs who created Riverbond, and uses that same Minecraft-y voxel style). But when it was announced to be leaving Xbox Game Pass, I decided to give it a try—and I'm really glad I did! Turns out I just didn't like the model for the main character that was used in all the key art (I dunno why, he just looks annoying lmao), and in-game you can choose your character's appearance. Glad we were able to get past that stumbling block, lol.

Anyway, here's another game that gives "Stranger Things" vibes (I should mention, I haven't actually watched the show, but I'm saying this based on what I know about it XD). You start off just running mundane errands with your little sister, but things quickly spiral out of control into a grand adventure involving...well, I'll just say "the supernatural." It's not the world's the most creative story, but I think it's a lot more fun to be surprised by what happens, so I won't say too much :-)

The game makes use of that familiar mechanic of "chaining" quests together, e.g., you need a bus pass to get downtown, but in order to get that, you need to obtain some other object, the person who has that object needs you to do something for them, etc. Some people may not like this quest-dependency sort of thing, but I rather enjoy it. There's a handful of different areas to explore, with lots of interesting and funny characters to talk to (the dialogue is very clever), some puzzles to solve, enemies to fight (including bosses), and more.

The combat will probably be the most engaging part of the game for many people. It's turn-based, but each character gets a handful of moves (more are unlocked as you progress), and each move has an associated mini-game. Your success in the mini-game determines how much damage you do. I had a lot of fun with this, although eventually it's pretty clear that some abilities are strictly better than others, so there's not much incentive to mix it up once the "good ones" are available to you. Different moves use up differing amounts of your action points, so there is some level of strategy involved when it comes to orchestrating actions for your entire team. I really got a kick out of watching the various goofy attack animations.

I will warn that there is a quite of bit of walking back-and-forth through places you've already been, and the game can also get a little grindy—monsters respawn in certain areas, and there were times when it was literally impossible for me to win a fight that was necessary to progress until I fought those respawning enemies for a while in order to level up. I personally did not mind this, but I'm mentioning it because I know it could be a turn-off for some players.

All in all, I had a great time accompanying my character and her lil sis on a wholesome yet spooky retro adventure and I'm definitely going to be following what these devs do next! (How did this end up being my longest review??)

Review: Omno is a pleasant game with no dialog in which you play as someone going on a sort of "spiritual journey." It's interesting to see how the devs were able to relay a story without any characters speaking (though there are some little lore entries that help make up for it). The gameplay essentially consists of traveling through several different biomes, recording new creatures (and plants, I think? It's been a while lol), solving some relatively straightforward environmental puzzles, and finding collectibles. The scenery in each biome is quite pretty, the creature design is unique, and you eventually get a cute little companion that looks like some kind of flying squirrel.

I did enjoy the game, but I'm giving it a 3 out of 5 because, relative to other games I've really liked, it doesn't particularly stand out in my mind. I won't be raving about it to anyone, but it was good. My favorite part by far was skiing around on my little magic light staff. That brought me a lot of joy :-D