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Short Review: Nurse Love Addiction

By: RJ (@rga_02)

Nurse Love Addiction
Developer - Kogado Studio
Publisher - Degica
PC

I tend to treat my VNs (Visual Novels) like how my mother treats her telenovelas. Go in with the highest expectations possible only to be disappointed in the end. Nurse Love Addiction was a shakeup to that formula. I came in expecting nothing due to it being a Yuri based (I’m no fan of both Yuri and Yaoi genres). I’ve always had some sort of perception that both genres were nothing but just filled with nonsensical fanservice to the brink – and that gets boring very fast. However Nurse Love Addiction turned out to be a sweet heartwarming story.

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Short Review: Blade Ballet

by Omar (@siegarettes)

Blade Ballet
Developer- Dreamsail Games
Publisher- Dreamsail Games
PC (Steam), PS4

At its most chaotic Blade Ballet is a whirlwind of blades and robotic debris, attracting and repelling, scattering across a hazardous dance floor. It’s a show of light and sound that earns its name. Most of its appeal, in fact, is wrapped up in its color. Take for instance, its title theme, Contradanza Robotica, whose melody is taken from the Habenera aria of the opera, Carmen.

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Dex Enhanced Edition Review

By Omar (@siegarettes)

Dex Enhanced Edition
Developer- Dreadlocks Ltd.
Publisher- Dreadlocks Ltd., Techland
Xbox One, PS4, PC (Steam, GOG)

Cyberpunk is a volatile thing. Conceived in a time of growing corporate power, technological advancement, and social turmoil, cyberpunk was largely concerned with a dystopic vision of the future where “progress” had overwhelmed our ability to contain it. So what does it look like in a world where those concerns have arguably come to fruition?

This is what Dex comes into. Following in the template of the genre, Dex presents a messy world of hacking, conspiracy, and urban decay. It has an obvious reverence for cyberpunk, to the point where it makes a point to straight up call residents of its world “cyberpunks”. In a way, that is indicative of the tone throughout, a straightforward, obvious allusion to its predecessors.

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Runner’s High: Welkin Road

By Omar (@siegarettes)

Welkin Road
Developer- Gregor Panič
Publisher- Nkidu Games Inc.
PC (Steam)

These impressions are part of Runner’s High, a series that takes a look at the state of first-person platformers, the simple joys of moving from one place to another, and what we can learn from each of them.

It’s easy to find the genre tropes within Welkin Road: abstract environments, high contrast use of colors and the usual suite of platforming maneuvers. What Welkin Road demonstrates, however, is how of a game’s aesthetic is held within the way it treats your presence within a space. The first-person platformer has always been held together with a volatile alchemy, and for good and for ill Welkin Road demonstrates how much that formula can fluctuate.

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Videoball Review

By Omar (@siegarettes)

Videoball
Developer- Action Button Entertainment
Publisher- Iron Galaxy
PC (Steam), PS4, Xbox One

Videoball seems so simple you’d think it had effortlessly popped into existence. You play as one of two teams of triangles, and you shoot out triangles in order to hit a ball into the other side’s goal. Despite that, Videoball has taken two years of refinement until it’s hit this final release, and prototypes of it have been around since 2013. And for those tuned to the minute aspects of design, the work put into it shows. It’s in the ripple of the stage as balls bound off its borders, the fighting game-esque hit pause that occurs on contact, the timing needed to get off each shot. That’s the kind of ludicrous tuning that you get after two years of filing down the edges.

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Single Press: How much can we learn about someone from A Normal Lost Phone?

By Omar (@siegarettes)

Single Press is a series of short writings on small games. It is made possible through the support of our Patreon.

In some ways, technology has become invisible to us. In our tech centric world, where computers and digital devices have become ubiquitous, we’ve stopped thinking about the devices that we operate on an everyday basis. Instead these machines have become interfaces to the world, connections with people, and pockets of personal expression. But when we leave them behind, what kind of personal detritus do we leave with them? What’s in your old family computer, those discarded thumb drives? What’s in the phone that you just lost?

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Short Review: Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure

By: RJ (@rga_02)

Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure
Developer - Cowcat
Publisher - Cowcat
PC/Vita

To be completely honesty, I went blind with this game. I had no clue what to expect. For all I knew, I thought I was going to play some western inspired jRPG. Then I realized it was a point-and-click videogame.

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Auralux: Constellations Review

by Omar (@siegarettes)

Auralux: Constellations
Developer- War Drum Studios/ E McNeil
Publisher- War Drum Studios
PC (Steam), also coming to Android and iOS

Within an hour of Auralux: Constellations I had already gotten into petty fights with the AI. They’d made a habit of taken the small planets that I’d decided were strategically relevant, and I continued to trade ownership of the planet, too stubborn to let it go. From there it got messier. I desperately fought off attacks from multiple sides, set up feints for territory, and let others fight only so I could swoop in for victory. Or at least, that’s the story that I wrote for it in my head.

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