The Void, also known as Tension or Turgor, is an adventure…horror…survival…thing made by Ice-Pick Lodge, the same people who made Pathologic, which you’ve probably never played either. Unfortunately, though it improves on almost all of Pathologic’s faults, I do not have nearly as high of an opinion of it. (Also, naked women herein.)
To start with: the presentation of this game is gorgeous.
A hobo epidemic simulator.
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Oxenfree is a neat little indie horror adventure game that I’ve bought on a sale for, like, two bucks. I’m not entirely sure it’s worth the full price, but as it is, it was enjoyable.
The game is free on Steam and takes about five minutes to play, so do so if you care about spoiler since I’m going to recap the whole thing under the cut.
Stuff I’ve consumed recently. Horror-adjacent.
In The Fall you play as ARID, a combat suit’s operating AI. Your pilot is shot out of the sky and is knocked unconscious in the titular fall, thus activating your control of the suit. You have to navigate the facility in which you’ve crash-landed and find medical treatment for your injured pilot.
This review will be spoileriffic, as I’ll be going over the entire plot. If you want the cliff notes: don’t buy this, it’s one of those “to be continued!” scams and is essentially just the origin story for the real game. The controls are also awful and it’s full of bizarre frustrating adventure puzzles. Watch a playthrough on YouTube if you’re interested. The story does some interesting things with AIs, but I found the execution very lacking. It also does the “we’re going to force you to do something horrible and then insist you’re horrible for doing it” thing, which is just so lazy and trite and I am so numb to it at this point.
Our sacred holiday tradition continues! I got so many this year that we get to divide this into recs and pans. Most of these are puzzle games; I suppose those are the ones that go for cheap.
Inside: Hollow Knight, Recursed, Ittle Dew 2, The Dweller, Zasa: An AI Story, NO THING, Quell, Qbik, Reveal the Deep.
I also got Hue, which Act already reviewed. It is wonderful and I second her recommendation.
Continuing where we left off. A much weaker showing this time, with a lot of games I couldn’t even finish.
Inside: 9 Years of Shadows, Cookie Cutter, The Captain, Sunless Skies
So uhh I really miss this. Plus Steam doesn’t let you write reviews for games you own on other platforms which is annoying. I have been upkeeping a curator page in the meantime.
Please don’t start sending me hatemail again though.
Anyway, this stupid terrible amazing game.
I had the fortune to have to undergo a bilateral masectomy in June, so I’ve spent months barely able to do anything at all. I’ve played a lot of video games. Enjoy the forthcoming waves of game recs. Not a lot of pans though — the bad ones I played were mostly just boring and bland, not really bad in a way that was interesting (with one notable exception, which I may get to later). I may put up blurbs on the curator page later just to remind myself what they were. Anyway.
Also these got long and aren’t really “quick” anymore but whatever I’m not splitting them now.
Inside: Unholy Heights, Deiland, Wavetale, A Monster’s Expedition
I play so many bad games, but the sins of the bad games I’ve played over the past 6 months are largely of the boring and bland variety and don’t seem any more interesting to review than they were to play. Nonetheless, here they are with a sentence or two about why I disliked them.
I originally thought this post would be far longer but it turns out there’s a good deal of games I marked as disliked that I just straight up don’t remember.
Inside: Little Wings Deliveries, Newt One, Planet of Lana, Bugtopia, Grapple Dog, Spells and Secrets, Flooded, Jusant, Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles, One Lonely Outpost, Kamaeru: Frog Refuge
Big big rec for Paws of Coal. Absolutely amazing.
Inside: Blackwell Legacy, Fayburrow, Paws of Coal, Detective Grimoire, The Last Express (kind of)
This game is a masterpiece. I put 15 hours into it over the course of two days staying up til like 3 AM each time because I just couldn’t put it down. There’s really nothing better than a good ghost story.