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Cool little metroidvania. Jumping and shooting are tight and crunchy (which is a weird thing to type, but that's how it feels), you have various characters with differing weapons and abilities you can use, you can find simple upgrades and additional specials for each character, and there are quite a few secrets to find. If you've played a metroidvania before you'll know the drill, you tend to explore a modest-sized map, find a mission critical item, and then move onto the next area, but you can come and go between areas when you like, usually to find upgrades allowing you to access things you couldn't access before. Getting lost or forgetting where to go next isn't a problem in this game. There are also two endings, the latter demanding full exploration.

There's some welcome variety in a few areas, controlling a stompy mech, or a submarine with slow missiles, a few bosses that rely more on problem solving than "gitting good", oh and the soundtrack is rockin'. I mean, it slaps. Good fun, good value, do it!

An excellent short horror experience that's best experienced without any fore-knowledge. It's all about the atmosphere and the anticipation, creating the maximum tension from a simple interface and setting, with some effective audio and your imagination doing much of the work. Being unable to see outside your tiny vessel is an effective way to create a sense of dread, and the anticipation of waiting for the grainy camera image (your only way of seeing outside your sub) only adds to that. Turn off the lights, put your headphones on, and prepare yourself. You probably won't ever play it again, but the experience is worth it.

This is a very promising 6dof / Descent-alike that's eminently playable right now, still has further to go, but is being updated on a regular basis. Most importantly, they got the feel of movement and combat right. So much so that you hardly notice the low-res placeholder textures. There are colourful lasers, beams, projectiles and explosions aplenty, lighting up cavern and spaceship walls alike, the enemies seem distinctive and make recognisable sounds when they spot you, and both combat effects and music are on point. It's all very Descent-ish, but there's some Forsaken DNA in here as well. Levels are procedurally generated, not sure if there are plans for meta progression but so far it's a tight, challenging and pure little Descent-like.

This is a masterpiece of gaming power fantasy. I mean sure, it's not the first game to cast you in the role of a dragon, but it is by far the most satisfying. It is stupidly fun, in large part because the devs mastered the feel of the dragon here; it's agile, diving and weaving with ease, turning on a dime where necessary while burning everything with a literal firehose of death. The early levels are pure gaming nirvana, wreaking destruction as you dominate the skies. Frying targets on the ground, seeing them burned to a crisp, vehicles exploding in graceful arcs while hearing the screams of men is extremely satisfying, but for me the dogfights with WW2 aircraft are peak dragon combat, planes exploding in a shower of metal, screeching and wailing as their tortured engines fall out of the sky. It's also a nice-looking game, well lit and sufficiently detailed to be convincing, and the dragon is nicely modelled and animated.

You run through a series of missions, 12 in total including the tutorial (which to be honest is the weakest part of the game, forcing you to fly through the tight spaces of a cave until the glorious moment that you emerge into freedom) and while they start off easy they get progressively harder. By the middle of Act II you'll need to think more strategically about how you approach each scenario or you'll crash and burn, and Act III really takes the gloves off on Normal. There's an Easy mode if you just want to burn fools, but Normal seems like the intended experience. It's not a particularly long game, 2-3 hours seems about right for most players.

It's not perfect, the main downside being the extremely limited graphics and gameplay options, but the price is right and if you go into it expecting a slice of awesome dragon action you won't be disappointed. It would be a shame if more people didn't discover this little gem.

An astounding piece of work from a single, passionate developer, and my favourite game of 2021. I learned about it purely by chance, through a passing recommendation on Twitter. The imagination and vision shown in this game is refreshing, the breadth of scenery, the massive scope of the game absolutely astounded me at times. And the title is perfect. You really do feel like you’re going on a journey, through different landscapes, different adventures, with incredible sights along the way.

What kind of game is Northern Journey? It’s not really an RPG because you’re not managing your inventory and upgrading your character or gear, but it still feels like one. In fact it reminds me of Morrowind the most, that sense of exploring strange, almost alien landscapes full of odd creatures. The mythology here, though, feels unique. It’s openly described as Norwegian, but it feels unfamiliar. It has gothic darkness and an inescapable sense that monsters lurk in every dark shadow. This is mostly a game of exploration, and what a place to explore. There is a stark beauty to the outdoor areas, almost photoreal in many places – I took 137 screenshots during the game, to give you some idea. It's also vast and incredibly vertical. You'll be climbing almost sheer cliff faces, looking down at yawning chasms, balancing along narrow wooden beams that some fool bolted to the side of a cliff face. I suffer from vertigo in games quite often, but strangely this didn't really trigger it. At times it almost has a Dear Esther vibe, the developer is absolutely not afraid to offer long stretches of nothing but beautiful natural scenery, the only challenge being to traverse it. How one dev made all this boggles my mind.

Characters you meet, whether friend or foe (and yes reader, there are plenty of foes) are quite the opposite; low-poly, angular, often quite ugly. It has the effect of making them very unsettling indeed, which matches the tone of the game. You don’t feel like you can really trust anyone, and – well – you shouldn’t. Dialog is often terse and standoffish, as though your presence is neither welcome nor appreciated. It’s really part of the feel of the game.

Although this is a game of exploration, combat certainly plays a big role. You’ll often encounter groups of creatures intent on nothing but beating you up. You’re assisted by a number of weapons to fight them off. There is no melee here, every weapon relies on range combat, and learning to hit things in the distance becomes a useful skill. Your enemies, on the other hand, have no problem getting in your face, and combat varies from picking things off at a distance to staying one step ahead of ravenous groups. Let’s be clear, this is not Doom Eternal. Combat is slightly awkward, and if you try to stand your ground you’ll often die horribly. There are boss fights as well, the good kind that seem insurmountable at first but once you figure out the best approach end up being quite manageable. This is no Dark Souls, but it's no walkover either. The enemies themselves are both numerous and diverse. But fair warning: if you’re an arachnophobe, you might want to reconsider this game! The developer has lovingly modelled all manner of arachnids and insects in an unsettlingly realistic way! You will know fear when being attacked by giant, blood-sucking ticks that drop from the trees. The developer mentioned somewhere that this was partially inspired by the critters in his basement, so I only hope he makes enough money from this game to rent a better place to live!

I could wax lyrical about this game for much longer, how every area seems to have its own theme or gameplay mechanic, how interconnected everything is, how you're constantly going "Oh wow!" every few minutes (although maybe that was just me) but I’m sure you all have lives to lead. Northern Journey is one of those rare games that make me glad people still make games like this, an ambitious project that won't appeal to everyone partly because it's full of imagination and passion. It almost feels too good, and the developer is far too generous selling it at such a low price! If there was any justice this would be an indie GOTY contender for 2021 for sure, but even if the masses don’t discover or appreciate it, know that some of us certainly did.

I'd better write a review before I forget about this game. You know when people say that Steam needs a "neutral" score instead of a straight Recommended or Non Recommended? Well folks, let me present Mars: War Logs. A game that I enjoyed for a little while but wouldn't actually recommend to anyone. To be honest it's better than I thought it was going to be, you start in a prison and gameplay involves talking to various NPCs, doing various fetch quests, and fighting a bunch of goons. The melee-focused combat is pretty good for what it is, fairly straightforward but with a few abilities and moves to add some depth. Upgrades add a few more abilities, nothing you haven't seen before. Once you finish the prison area, and face a boss fight, the game almost feels like it's done. In fact had it ended there I'd have been quite happy: a relatively short, moderately enjoyable lite RPG with some jank and dodgy voice acting. Recommended!

But no, we're only just getting started! And this is why I don't recommend the game. Instead of thinking "Oh great, another area here we go!" my thought was "Oh crap, there's more!?" The second area opens up even more into a different town setting, it's much larger, but it still involves the exact same gameplay except you're running over much longer distances between quest markers and getting into increasingly tedious but identical combat encounters. The only thing keeping it going, then, is the story and writing. No luck there, then! By the time I'd slogged my way to the end of the second act and learned there's yet another act of yet more of the same, I was done.

I respect what the devs were going for here, there's definitely a bit of enjoyment to be had with the combat and overall mood. It's a perfect sale title if you want to relive the glory days of brown textures. In fact it looks pretty good in places, and I even took a screenshot or two! It plays fine, it's just... well, I found it all a bit tedious and quickly wore out its welcome. Attempts to spice it up a bit with crafting and mild RPG elements don't add as much as you'd hope.

Cool little game which I picked up for a stupidly low price in a sale. A Limbo-like, by which I mean you make your way to the right, avoiding obstacles, jumping over platforms, and facing puzzles. Unlike Limbo this is a pretty chill experience, it's mildly challenging without being frustrating, the imagery and scenery are drawn in bold lines and colours, and the electronic soundtrack hits the right note. It also doesn't outstay its welcome, taking about 90 minutes in my case to tell its little story.

Imagine Hexen on a flat plane like Wolfenstein 3D, but on a much better-looking engine comprised entirely of voxels. That's my best one-line summary of Arkos. It's a pretty straightforward game, you have a wand that shoots fireballs, there are enemies that need fireballing, and you need to find keys and ultimately the exit to escape the level. There are a handful of levels per episode, and 5 episodes each of which ends with a boss fight. It won't take that long to get through on Normal difficulty, which really doesn't start to get challenging until Episode 4.

Although this kind of thing has been done before, it's never quite looked like this, and the dev has hit that "one more level" formula on the head. Wands aren't that satisfying to fire, but enemies sure are satisfying when they explode in a shower of voxels, painting the ceiling, walls and floor with voxelly ichor. After a big fight the entire room is daubed with voxel splatter like a child gone mad with a dozen pots of paint. The music is pitch-perfect, sounding like something straight out of Ultima Underworld, Heretic or indeed Hexen, as though someone reinstalled an AdLib sound card in your PC. Even better, each level has its own piece of music, it's like an old game! The sound effects are functional but they tell you everything you need to know. There are secret doors to find, subtly marked with a little visual clue, and not so hard that you can't ever find them. The wands all appear to get progressively better as you go, but you soon learn the strengths and weaknesses of each, and environmental effects and design encourage you to swap them around at times. Bosses are bullet sponges, but they're extremely satisfying when they pop.

There's no procedural generation, so once you've beaten the game the only option is to try again on the two harder difficulty levels. On Normal you rarely have to worry about running out of ammo (a shared mana pool between weapons), but on Hard you need to carefully watch it and how you use it, because enemies need more fireballing and yet you don't get any more mana than you do on Normal. There are more supplies in secret rooms, so finding those becomes important. Insane difficulty is... well, I guess you'll be running out of ammo a lot!

Anyway it's a great little retro shooter, highly evocative of the early-mid 90's PC DOS period, except with an engine and look that could only be 2021.

Wow, this was really great. It's a 2D platforming game where your main enemy is simply fire, and you have to put it out with your portable hose and backpack, refilling at regularly spaced stations. It works because the fire is alive, spreading up walls, across ceilings and into adjacent rooms as you'd expect, and you have to approach it tactically especially later in the game with more complex rooms, valves to open, gas mains to turn off, and more. From this simple concept the devs spin a solid two hour adventure, introducing a handful of extra abilities as you go, and really squeezing the maximum possible out of the core concept.

The graphics are nicely done here, especially in use of colour, light and highlights. When the fire is really raging, the screen glows an angry orange and you really start to feel the heat. And once it's out, a satisfying blue hue envelops everything. Music complements the action nicely.

If I had a criticism it would be a late-game addition that can be a little frustrating, often sending you back to the last checkpoint with little warning, but once you learn to deal with it, frustration levels subside somewhat. Still, it took many, many attempts to beat the epic fire in the penultimate area.

Props to the devs for including a kid mode, where the objective is to simply rescue some lost kittens from burning buildlings. You can't die in kid mode, and aiming and movement are greatly simplified.

At 2+ hours the game does perhaps leave you wanting at its conclusion, but it's such a great 2 hours that it feels satisfying and complete. There's some replayability if you want to find all the secret rooms and rescue all the kittens, and some difficulty tweaks in the settings, but it's going to play out largely the same.

This will be one of my favourite games from 2021. Quite evocative of the classic Zelda-style gameplay with its mix of combat, overworld exploration, dungeons and puzzles, the setting and execution are both excellent and make it joy to play. It also reminds me a lot of Hob, which is a good thing (Hob is amazing).

The setting is compelling, the story is gently told, details and layers are left for you to figure out yourself. Combat is slick and enjoyable; a mix of melee, dodging through invincibility frames, and longer-range attacks, each enemy you face has distinct behaviours which in a group can be a blast to overcome. There are a handful of challenging bosses and mini-bosses as well. These are inventive and a good time, hitting that sweet spot of needing more work than regular enemies but always with the feeling that they’re beatable. A couple of them approach Dark Souls level of retries (although that could just be me!) but I found it pitched about right. Death also puts you right around the corner for another go, most welcome.

There are also a great many secrets to find in this game. Exploration is very much rewarded. Even better, when you beat the game there’s a real incentive to keep going. It doesn't overtly lay this in front of you, but the clues are there if you're observant. It feels like a satisfying epilogue to a brilliant game.