Recent reviews by no_a

The people calling this pretentious are the people who this game is about.

A good idea well executed. One of the better meta games about the medium.

Cute idea. Unfortunately, it's not very well executed. Messy on the technical side as well.

A unique point-and-click. The writing and the world building are very much the highlights here. It has something to say about our world and its future. I was constantly reminded of Jeff Vandermeer's books (like Annihilation, Borne, and especially Hummingbird Salamander), with a little bit of Disco Elysium's wry humor sprinkled on top.

I don't necessarily think it sticks the landing with how specific the ending is (in all its vagueness - I hope you know what I mean once you get to it) but the journey there is well worth it.

A neat stealth puzzle platformer with pretty good writing and a surprising amount of choice.

It's a fun puzzle game about trying to capture squirrels on video - with an environmental bend and a visually stunning filter.

Food, family, and feelings. The story of an immigrant family in Canada told through dialogue and cooking minigames. Simple gameplay, short and sweet.

It's not perfect. The controls and UI don't feel intuitive and the decisions about which features to include in the base game as opposed to the DLCs are questionable. After a while the available items and furniture will feel stale and limited.

I still had a lot of fun cleaning up and decorating the different houses and played the game for a few weeks before I got bored.

The world of Cloudpunk is a little too clunky to explore, both on foot and in your flying car. There is no challenge here - most of the game consists of simple fetch quests - but I still enjoyed my time in Nivalis.

The characters are endearing. The world building kept me interested to see it through to the end.

And I got to convince an elevator to stop eating people and accept ramen as payment.

Cute, creepy, and a lot fun. It's like Pokémon Snap: Take photos of all the spooky animals that live in this abandoned nature reserve / theme park. Can be challenging but the upgrade path keeps it from being frustrating.