While I appreciated how much of the world Alt Shift got right, the experience never felt quite as harrowing as its premise promised. So much of the pressure and drama in Scattered Hopes comes from management systems that feel very sterile, while the combat is the only part that feels tense and decisive in a satisfying way.

A multiplayer game lives and dies by its population. I can jump into the server browser and see less than 100 players (right around 90) playing right now across the servers. It is Monday night, but even peak times on the weekend weren’t that populated–not to mention the wasteland of EU and Oceanic servers. I really hope this changes and Blue Dot Games can make ‘83 the game it has the potential to be.

There’s something nostalgic about Moomintroll, even if I don’t directly remember it before playing the demo for Winter’s Warmth at the Steam Next Fest. Created by Finnish-Swedish author Tove Jansson in 1945, the Moomin franchise has steadily evolved from beloved children's literature into a multi-generational global empire.

Games like Frostpunk turned resource management into life-and-death affairs—and I’m done with intense decisions that can lead to a cascade of death and failure. I’d rather have something a little more cozy. So I was excited when I heard about Above the Snow. It’s a resource management game that doesn’t make it feel like what you’re managing is going to fall apart at any moment.

There’s a part of me that associates video games with platformers and shooters, despite the fact that I spent a chunk of my childhood playing narrative-heavy games like OPUS: Prism Peak. Prism Peak, on the other hand, deals with a very human journey while incorporating spirits and Japanese folklore elements to tell its very earth-grounded story.

While MINOS isn’t exactly the "Balatroization" I was hoping for (that’s a real word, I swear), it is a competent tower defense game with roguelite elements and some synergistic fun.

I don’t want to be too hard on developer Calibus Creations. I’ll admit that I sometimes judge indie games on a bit of a curve. I’ll let things like production value go as long as the gameplay is good. Ember Island doesn't really have that going for it. There’s a lot of 'okay' there, but not much good, and nothing I could qualify as “great.” It doesn't just lack polish; it lacks a soul. It looks exactly like the uncanny video an LLM spits out when prompted to generate a "retro

Somewhere in my awareness, I knew the Telltale Sam & Max games had been remastered, but I didn’t expect Skunkape to bring Poker Night at the Inventory back into the hands of modern audiences. While their mainstream relevance might not be what it was in 2010, the crossover still works, and underneath the nostalgia is a surprisingly decent game of poker.