Category: Puzzle Platformer

Christmas Steam Games 2018: QuickRecs

  04/10/2019       St. Elmo's Fire      18 Comments

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.

(more…)

   Action, Adventure, Horror, Platformers, Puzzle, Puzzle Platformer, Recommendations, Video Games      , , , , , , , ,

Games For Racial Justice and Equality (Part 1)

  08/31/2020       St. Elmo's Fire      4 Comments

So, itch.io ran a bundle to fundraise for Black Lives Matter, offering over a thousand games for only $5. As a fundraiser, I found the ethos… questionable (“Give us money so we can do actual activism while you play video games”), but it was a good deal, so I got it.

A good chunk of the items included aren’t actual games; they are either assets or tabletop RPGs. There are still a ton, though. Here are my thoughts on the games I’ve gotten through in the first half of the year:

(more…)

   Platformers, Precision Platformer, Puzzle, Puzzle Platformer, Recommendations, RPGs, Sim, Video Games      , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Games for Racial Justice and Equality (Part 2)

  11/30/2020       St. Elmo's Fire      Add Comment

Continuing where we left off. A much weaker showing this time, with a lot of games I couldn’t even finish.

(more…)

   Adventure, Horror, Metroidvania, Platformers, Puzzle, Puzzle Platformer, Recommendations, Roguelike, RPGmaker, RPGs, Sim, Strategy, Survival, Video Games      , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wandersong

  07/14/2021       St. Elmo's Fire      Add Comment

jegus why are there so many innocuous-looking fantasy titles that are actually incredibly depressing

Wandersong is an adventure game where, instead of an action hero, you play as a bard whose only ability is singing. You’re told that the world is ending and the only way to save it is to sing the Earthsong, which can only be taught by the spiritual overseers of the spirit world, so you have to go on a quest, solving all your problems along the way with singing.

The story takes a big swerve about halfway in and is actually incredibly dark and bleak, with later segments even borrowing elements from horror. This isn’t one of those fantasy stories where the apocalypse is an all-or-nothing abstract threat; the world and the overseers are slowly dying and you see them deteriorate in real time, all while the protagonists and NPCs contemplate the end of existence. It got to the point where I was genuinely expecting the ending to be “LOL j/k, world ends everyone dies.”

(more…)

   Platformers, Puzzle Platformer, Video Games, Walking Sims     

FEZ

  09/17/2021       St. Elmo's Fire      4 Comments

FEZ is a game I got years ago, but was unable to play until now because it used a really specific graphics renderer that wasn’t supported by my crappy hardware. Now that I finally have a proper graphics card, I decided to try it out.

The premise of FEZ is that it’s a puzzle platformer where you move in 2D but can rotate the environment in 3D. This allows you to use perspective tricks like bridging platforms that are far apart at one angle but close together at another.

Unfortunately, this is not the actual gameplay of FEZ.

(more…)

   Platformers, Puzzle, Puzzle Platformer, Video Games     

QuickPans: Extremely Quick Edition

  11/30/2025       Act      4 Comments

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

(more…)

   Adventure, Deckbuilding, Farm Sim, Idler, Indie, Platformers, Precision Platformer, Puzzle Platformer, Roguelike, Sim, Video Games      , , , , , , , , , ,