Game Reviews
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Cascadia Review – Home on the Range
Cascadia is essentially a double-layered tile laying game. You have terrain tiles on the bottom and will score points at the end for your largest group of each terrain, plus a bonus if you have the biggest group of that type. Each terrain tile also has 1-3 animals that can be played there, though, and…
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Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! Review – Incremental Mastery
Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master is the first Taiko game for PC and the first recent game (after the very underwhelming Drum ‘n Fun and ports of two 3DS originals) to be released in the West on anything other than Switch. It was released on Gamepass, which was a good decision for its visibility,…
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Paradise Marsh Review – In Which Frogs Are The Greatest Foe
Paradise Marsh is an exploration game about collecting animals in a swamp. Your primary objective is to catch a certain number of each of twelve swamp-y animals with your net. Each animal has its own behaviors that make it slightly different to catch than any other, and many of them only spawn in specific sorts…
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Merchant of the Skies Review – Profits Sky High
Merchant of the Skies is primarily a trading game of the sort often seen in space games. You’ll sail from port to port buying what’s cheap in one place and selling it where it’s more expensive. As the game progresses, you can take quests to supplement your income and eventually even buy islands to build…
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If On a Winter’s Night, Four Travelers Review – Tollway to Hell
If On a Winter’s Night, Four Travelers is a point-and-click adventure that actually only has three travelers, although the game presumably counts the incredibly short Act IV to arrive at its title. It is a framed narrative in which the travelers tell their stories to an old woman on a train in sequence, and it…
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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Review – Ritualistic
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a metroidvania that, unsurprisingly given its developer, is much more on the “vania” side of the equation. You’re primarily exploring a giant gothic castle, there are enemies who are disembodied flying heads, you can fight with a whip, and there may even be vampires involved. It isn’t trying to…
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Field Command Review – Chess with Cannons
Field Command is a board game from 1991, making this review a whopping 31 years late. I bought the game on a whim at a used game auction because no one had met the minimum $15 bid and it seemed worthwhile risk for a game with loads of minis and 3D terrain. It looks like…
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nirvanA Initiative Review – An Enlightened Sequel (no spoilers)
nirvanA Initiative – hereafter AI2 – is the sequel to 2019’s AI: The Somnium Files. That was a very good detective game that was nonetheless slightly disappointing because, with Uchikoshi and team having previously made three of my six favorite games ever in the Zero Escape series, the bar for his work had been drawn…
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Two Point Campus Review – Remedial Classes
Two Point Campus is the follow-up to 2018’s Two Point Hospital, itself a spiritual successor to games like Theme Hospital. I’ll say upfront that I didn’t particularly enjoy TPH and probably wouldn’t have bothered with TPC at all (certainly not at launch) had it not been included with Gamepass. TPH was a silly, fairly lightweight…
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Curse Crackers Review – With Curses Like These, Who Needs Friends?
Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils is the second game from Colorgrave, makers of Prodigal. That was a reimagining of GBC-era Zelda with modern design sensibilities and slightly more advanced graphics, and this gives the same treatment to GBC platformers like Shantae. You play as Belle, a former acrobat who can throw her friend…