Screenshot: Soggy Froggy Playdate Season 3 is here. And even though the console and all of its accessories are currently sold out on the Playdate store—which is a bummer; I went to buy a pizza box cover just to discover that the entire storefront is empty—Panic plans to have more hardware available later this year. In the meantime, current owners can look forward to their weekly Season 3 deliveries, with the first two games dropping just yesterday. One of those launch titles

If you’re a fan of retro game content, video game history, or just curious about Alien Breed, you should definitely check out this title. I don’t want to get on anyone’s bad side, but I never thought the Alien Breed games were great even for their time, so you sort of have to go into the whole thing with academic curiosity or some thick nostalgia goggles.

Insomniac aimed for a prestige, character-driven blockbuster, but missed the mark, leaving players with a flawed brawler that never quite figures out who its hero is supposed to be.

Like its predecessor, Toem 2 highly encourages thorough exploration. While you don’t have to complete every quest in an area to move on, you’ll probably want to. After all, who wants to leave a startled bear without his jam, or refuse to help a worm control the growth of strange vines that make her sneeze? The sequel includes larger areas with different themes than the original, making for even more joy in discovery.

I’m going to be keeping an eye on anything Torchlight Games does in the future, because False Hero is a brilliant game. It’s easily in my top games of the year list, and made me feel that sense of wonder that Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls did all those years ago.

Therefore, the IGS Classic Arcade collection is a rare opportunity to play these Taiwanese arcade games that you might not have ever heard of. Which makes sense, because a lot of these games were released around the time when games–and arcades especially–were transitioning to 3D graphics.

I’m not going to keep you in suspense here, not that you necessarily were in suspense if you have any familiarity at all with John Neumeier or the Joffrey Ballet as a whole. From top to toe, they’re masters of their craft and Liliom is absolutely a reflection of that. It’s a masterpiece. It transcends. It’s stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful and absolutely heartbreakingly tragic.

Screenshot: Cosmic Fear While I’ve played a few great games that could be classified as “walking simulators,” the vast majority of these types of games aren’t great. Sometimes it's the indulgence in the surreal, or the lack of meaningful progression or meaningful impetus to see what’s behind the next door, et that kills it. Cosmic Fear isn’t the best of the genre, but it’s a rare example of a game that sits in the middle ground. It doesn’t fall victim to the worst of the over

Because Brazilian Drug Dealer 4 just reskins a lot of weapons and enemies to function like their Quake counterparts, I felt right at home running around and blasting… okay, whatever the hell it is I’m blasting. Honestly, I have only a vague clue as to what’s happening here. While I think being Brazilian might help a bit with the context, even then the entire thing feels like an inside joke I’m not a part of.

The most chilling thing for me watching Death of The Pastor’s Wife isn’t that it happened, it’s that it didn’t surprise me one bit.

A Brand New review of Brand New Day.

Screenshot: Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia Before I played this game, I had no idea what a marsupilami was. I thought it was a novel character created by developer Ocellus Studio for their Donkey Kong Country-like Marsupilami: Hoobadventure, and that Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia was just its follow-up. It turns out, in fact, this is a character that has been long established. Which, honestly, is a bit how my Moomin knowledge was before I played Winter’s Warmth. I guess if it’

Look at that guy. This little Onion just wants to do one thing, and that’s boil cabbage and make soup. (Is that two things? Or is it one process? This idle game is a cute (if somewhat spastic) desktop companion Onion that does nothing but make soup, spasmodically dance, and feed hungry travellers.

Screenshot: PixArk I’ve never played PixArk before now, but I have played Ark. And while I know it has a cult following and established fanbase, I never saw the appeal. I wrote a review for Ark back when it hit 1.0 and the entire game felt waterlogged. Bloated and cumbersome, like something that is overcomplicated and literally slow because of how badly optimized it was. But I have to admit that premise is compelling, and I love me some open world sandbox games with breadcrum

Screenshot: Blood Dungeon I’m not a huge fan of the survivors style autoshooter/bullet heaven games. Before Blood Dungeon, I probably had the most fun playing Deep Rock Galactic Survivors–and that was just as much because of the theme as the gameplay. Blood Dungeon takes the survivors-type formula and adds a genre twist: sidescrolling. On its face it doesn’t seem a significant swap from top-down to sidescroller, but it completely reinvigorates the genre. In fact, Blood Dungeo

So why is this getting released now? Nostalgia, surely. But also because Aspyr parent company Embracer now owns the rights thanks to their acquisition of Middle-earth Enterprises in 2022. That means there’s a possibility that more WB Lord of the Rings games will be rereleased by Aspyr, so this could be the first of many.

Starting out as a prototype in the Big Mode Game Jam in 2023, Backpack Boy has had a multi-year journey to make its way to 1.0. The first commercial game of developer Chuck & Niles Games, Backpack Boy isn’t going to redefine the sidescrolling puzzle genre, but it’s a charming game that does a whole lot of things right.