Recent reviews by Flom

This is a review focused on the Pen (trivia) mode - there is also a Sword (tactical RPG) mode, but I haven't tried it.

The Girl Who Sees is a simple adventure game, not a blanket recommend for all players, but enjoyable when approached with an inquisitive mind. It's an adventure/trivia game (or adventure/RPG, depending on your mode) set in the Philippines during Japanese occupation, touching upon colonisation, culture, language, food, history and more, through the eyes of a young child trying to help the people around her. Given that I only played around 2.5 hours, the game mostly serves as an overview, but I was happy for what I learned. It was especially interesting as someone from a different Spanish-colonised country, seeing the overlapping effects on language, religion and more.

The game's audiovisual presentation is relatively simple, effective without any issues, with the main point of interest being the character (and mythical creature) illustrations.
The Pen mode shorter and mechanics-light - just gathering/using items and answering questions. I knew there wouldn't be combat, but it's a shame that there wasn't any reason to make potions, either - it would have helped break things up, and been a reason to care about enemy drops. (I still could make potions in Pen mode, they just don't have any effect).

Unreal Life is a sweet, smooth adventure game.

While most of what you do is slowly walk around, interact with scenery/objects and play spot the difference, it never feels like a chore, thanks to its UI and design. When you've got a handle on what's going on, you can let the narrative and mood carry you along, and when you're feeling stuck, you can check your text log, memories and thoughts, which usually give you a good nudge in the right direction.

Aside from one interaction (the jealous cruelty of your school "friend"), I enjoyed what the story had to say about art, stories and connection, and the characters were fun and likeable. Appropriately, the art is also quite a highlight, from its cute item menu bag and animal friends, to the pixel illustrations for more serious or dark moments.

A quick an interesting branching game. Given how short it is, I found it had a surprisingly humane core - it highlights people's struggles, their willingness to help, but also their cruel and discriminatory sides (without condoning them, in my opinion).

There aren't any content warnings in the game, but I would potentially mention there is one homophobic rant, and characters who talk dismissively about "Asians", including about person who is killed - though these things aren't immediately condemned by the game, I don't feel the framing condones them.

On Steam Deck the font looks a little garbled (though still quite legible), otherwise it works perfectly.

This is a soft negative review - this isn't a bad game, but I wouldn't recommend it.

On paper, there's a lot I should like about GGG - it's a game all about words which has plenty to say about media, representation and history, and the art, music and animation are wonderful. But I didn't enjoy the game's design, or the story and characters. Despite feeling I should align with the game in many ways, the narrative felt like you were shouting broad slogans at people with your megaphone (appropriately enough) rather than delving into the issues beyond a surface level. Often bigger plot points were solved by telling people to just... go back to the way they were (despite having an area about history and the past). The tone and humour didn't work for me, and I found myself clicking through text faster and faster as the game went on.

Whenever I knew what to do next or had ideas to try, the game felt... like an ok trade chain. And when I didn't know, it was frustrating, thanks to the limited inventory, little reactiveness to wrong answers (ie, shooting close-ish wrong answers wouldn't help guide you to the right answer), and the hint mechanic being more of a reminder of what you were asked to do than actual hints. The combat replacement felt quite awkward, like trying to score a goal while crashing into other bumper cars, and sometimes I was sure I had the answer but it was the right line said by the wrong character, which threw me off the answer.
The whole thing was lock-and-key instead of feeling like I could actually play around in the space, and maybe this is more about my expectations and the fact that there were some more reactive instances here and there, which made me think the game would be more reactive.

I think there's still plenty to this game that people would enjoy, and my hope with this sort of review is that it can help others figure out whether these things would bother them, or they would have a great time with the game nevertheless.

A really fun and stylish floating platformer. Come for the art and sound design, stay for how good the dash-roll-bounce action feels.

A touching queer narrative game with some light combat elements.
I really liked the themes and characters' stories! Make sure you play both books - Return to Otherwhere is where things really started to shine for me, building on the foundations of the first book. There were some lines I found especially resonant, like becoming less joyful because you're trying to manage how people see you, and parents "wanting their smiling child back", someone's insistence on using a birth name instead of a character's new name because it would be disrespectful of the parents' choice, etc.
I had a few quibbles with the game, but nothing that really affected my experience. The writing itself wasn't super polished, the combat felt clunky, and I found the first book's premise both a little straight-forward (in a hero's journey sense), and confusing (a lot of time/text was spent on the houses when I didn't feel the details added much to the narrative). But overall I found the game very easy to play through, and worth the time spent on it. I even restarted the game o I could see the beginning framing section again, now with added context.

(I couldn't figure out how to play the Winter's Fair DLC, though it may no longer be available)

A cute, frenetic game with a solid concept and nice aesthetics.

Arco tells an affecting tale from multiple points of view, about people fighting for their land and survival and those caught in the crossfire. Exploring the setting is a joy, with evocative visuals and music, as well as engaging fights you can approach carefully and methodically... or by smashing your face against the problem and learning from your mistakes. I liked the level of challenge, and quick resetting that made even restarting longer battles not feel frustrating. There are also character-unique mechanics (narrative and otherwise) that really make each chapter sing.

And personally, as someone from Latin America, I appreciated the feel of the game - part of what pushed me to buy Arco was using it as a counterpoint to the various MMOs I played recently which took place in LatAm-inspired fantasy lands, but weren't created by LatAm devs. Unsurprisingly, there's a resonance in Arco I couldn't feel in other games.

If you're at all tempted, try the demo - it gives you a good idea of the game loop, and if you enjoy what it's doing, I'm sure you'll find plenty to love in the full game.

Neo Harbor Rescue Squad is a collection of medical microgames with triage multi-tasking management and visual novel scenes in between - if you're not a fan of hectic microgames, you might struggle to enjoy (or possibly complete) the game.

...If you are a fan, though, this is an enjoyable game! The microgames themselves have (almost) enough variety for the 8-ish hour playthrough, choosing the order you treat patients and whether you use shields or not is an interesting challenge, and the narrative gives the game more context. The story is straight-forward, though the main characters were sweet, and I did appreciate seeing the scrappy emergency services doing their best even when their efforts weren't appreciated. Then there's Neo Harbor itself, a lovely city brought to life by its varied locations - I wish I had more time to stop and enjoy the isometric rooms while I treated patients!

I found the game as a whole relatively smooth to play through, not too difficult but with high scores to aim for. Playing made for a relaxing break, even when in narratively and mechanically tense situations.
That changed for me in the final emergency, which spiked in both difficulty and length. This was also where I encountered a few bugs (though likely because I was returning to the main menu and coming back in - quitting the game fixed this). Others might enjoy the rise in difficulty at the end of the game as a send-off, I just would have liked more of a ramp up to it.

Asterism is a very unique game, like a CD whose music videos you direct.

There's so much wonderful variety here! Every level is not just a different setting, mood and mode of interaction, it's often a completely different art medium, which does a great job of getting across the feeling of the song. Despite all this variety, the game as a whole still feels cohesive, and boasts some amazing handicrafts (and wonderful guitars!). Thanks to the button indicators, you always know how to interact, so even as the scenes change, you what you're able to do.

You can play Asterism however you want - don't press any keys and just listen, use the actions to express yourself or how the music feels to you, or play it like a game with its own sub-goals. There are many layers to each song, so there's plenty of reason to replay, too (I know I regret not paying more attention to the lyrics the first time around - but there was so much to do and see! The game's namesake sequence alone is worth a few trips.)

Also, while the game doesn't list controller support, I played the whole thing with a controller. A few menus were a little awkward, but nothing that really got in the way, and they seem to have fixed themselves as I kept playing.