Recent reviews by Endyo

Spilled isn’t a complicated game, or a difficult one. You can’t really even lose when you play it. But what it does provide is a nice escape from sweaty, competitive, and emotionally charged games with a cozy, pleasant experience that makes you feel like you’re doing something good.

Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/9ratLf0SXzQ

The premise of Spilled is straightforward. You wake up in the role of a small boat in an oceanside region that has been heavily polluted, and your task is to clean it up. Thankfully, this boat is apparently purpose-built to do such things, and as you putter around the starting area, the scoop on the front of your ship will suck up oil floating on the surface of the water.
Once you’ve filled the tank visible on the back of your boat, you can take it to a recycling ship to deposit it and receive compensation that you can immediately use for upgrades. These upgrades will make your ship faster, capable of holding more oil, and equipping it with a larger scoop to more effectively slurp up that oil. When you’ve completely cleared the starting area and rescued the various animals trapped in it, you’ll remove a barrier to a new area to start the whole process over.

As you progress through the eight zones, you’ll also unlock more functions for your ship. The water cannon allows you to spray oil off the beach to be collected, as well as putting out fires on the shore. You’ll also gain a dredging magnet to pick up barrels from under the surface. As you upgrade your front scoop, it gains little arms on the edge to help you with the floating debris that you’ll also need to clean up to reveal the pristine ecosystem under the waves.

Removing the oil and garbage from each of the zones slowly reveals sea creatures and vibrant reefs, making the process immediately rewarding as you go. The pixel art design of the world makes the transition from a dreary, spoiled environment to a beautiful, colorful one, appealing to behold. And it’s all wrapped in a cozy blanket of relaxing music to reinforce the pleasant experience.

The only problem with all of this is that you can easily knock the whole game out in an hour. It doesn’t really have any built-in replayability, so the only thing you can do is just start the whole thing over (which isn’t a bad thing). However, I think the game would benefit from having some gameplay after you reach the end. Even something as simple as a time attack mode for the whole game or certain regions, or some kind of scoreboard to compare how fast you are at cleaning each zone. The gameplay mechanics are satisfying to use, and it seems like it would be enjoyable to have larger (perhaps procedurally generated) areas to clean up as well. When I think of something like PowerWash Simulator, a game that has a similar cathartic “cleaning” design with no failure state, it makes me feel like there’s just as much potential here for a game that could entertain for many hours.

Yet, for only six dollars – and including a small sea life charity donation – there’s not much to complain about. Wanting more of what is available is generally a pretty good problem to have for a game. Hopefully, the success it has seen will motivate the developer to build more content as DLC. I’d gladly pay another six dollars to continue to revitalize ocean environments. Especially if it also continues to benefit the real sea life of the world.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

I’ve never been a massive fan of Battle Royales or Extraction Shooters, but when you bring giant mechs into the equation, I’m always going to give it a shot. Steel Hunters has plenty of mechs and mech-associated chaos, and it did open the door to this merged genre, but this early access experience feels like it was accessed a little too early.

Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/xV4AVXh22AY

The combination of elements from Extraction Shooters and Battle Royales makes Steel Hunters an interesting concept. Those genres already overlap quite a bit just in the core design. In this combination, after selecting one of the current seven mechs (of whichever you’ve unlocked) you’ll be able to join the only available multiplayer game mode and drop into a map of a dozen players each split into teams of two.

Your immediate goal is to take on NPC drones in your area and loot from their corpses various stat-increasing objects of RPG-styled color qualities that automatically pop into your Hunter's six slots. You’ll also need to pick up consumables like repair kits and ammo, as well as collect “energy” that takes your duo to the maximum level of five. Each match typically has a few scheduled tasks in the 10-15 minute runtime that try to draw the players into conflict, like drop pods of loot, special drones to fight, and ultimately the extraction zone at the end.

You and your partner will run around taking advantage of these until you encounter one of the other five teams – which usually happens pretty early – and engage in the meat of the game. The ultimate goal, much like most Battle Royales, is to get as stacked with power as possible, survive until the end, and take out the enemy in the process. However, you can also simply go to the extraction zone when it appears, activate it, and wait out the timer for a relatively peaceful victory. You don’t even have to be in the zone that is quickly populated by “aggressive drones” unless an enemy comes to claim it. But once you get out of the early (and pointless) bot-riddled matches that plague account levels 1-9, you’ll most likely never extract uncontested.

Steel Hunters has some really enjoyable elements to it. The game is, at its core, a great concept, and the combat against the players delivers some solid tactical action that’s fun to engage with. While the mech “Hunters” you control only have a single main weapon and activated two abilities, one of which doesn’t unlock until you’re level 3, there’s a lot you can do with what’s available. Some of that comes down to the logistics of reloading and limited ammo (that can be generated with a cooldown and found), but it also leans heavily on the map design.

Much like Wargaming’s World of Tanks, unique terrain formations like hills, trees, and buildings serve as destructible and indestructible cover and also use a similar “spotting” mechanic to hide units out of range or blocked by objects. You can make use of this both as enemy fire cover and visibility cover to ambush, flank, and retreat – which is something you will have to do to properly revive your partner if they go down. The dynamics of this duo partnership are also shared in how you equip the loot you find. While it is a pretty generic gray-green-blue-purple-orange lineage of bonus armor, shields, and damage, there are almost always fewer high-quality modules available than can fill the 12 slots between you. If you scoop it all up, your partner is only left with scraps and won’t be able to help as much.

Making decisions on what you do, where you go, and when/how you engage with enemies and drones is a big part of it, too. While communication is limited and the ping system is clumsy at best, when you do manage to coordinate to some degree, it can be very rewarding. Especially when you overcome what appears to be opponents that are just as or more coordinated and ready to kick your ass. Some will kick your ass, but sometimes you'll do things just right and claim victory.


Even when you consider that this is an early access title, there are a TON of day-one issues – that were also present in the lengthy alpha/beta – that make the experience much less enjoyable than it could be. In my video, I mentioned that it felt “undercooked,” but that doesn’t even account for the problems that have become more apparent since I published it. It’s more than just the fact that it feels like there aren’t enough Hunters, and that matches seem very similar on limited maps with simple stat boosts as 99% of the pickups, and the lack of objectives or NPC variety doesn’t help that at all. Yet, when you stack that on top of the easily fixable crash that persists for AMD users because it not only allows you to select DLSS but doesn’t maintain your selection when you change, it seems like they’re not even trying. That’s not even addressing the less common but equally devastating bug where the framerate suddenly drops to 1 or 2 and never recovers without any strain on the GPU or CPU.

Then you have somewhat more mundane, but equally annoying problems like the game lacking a colorblind mode, which is a simple accessibility fix for the UI and markers already present in other Wargaming titles. There’s also a bug in the mission system that isn’t allowing players to complete weekly missions – yet that’s the only way to progress through a time-limited Battle Pass. And then there’s the fact that the whole progression system seems hamstrung, so once you unlock three of the hunters, you need to play dozens of matches to get the next one. Maybe more than a hundred since the unlock resource is only available as an account level reward – that is only increased with your mech levels – and that becomes exponentially slower as you level up.

There are just so many problems ranging from the basic to the ridiculous, including some that feel like the work of amateurs. This is crazy coming from a company with decades of high-profile development under its belt in a game that has spent no less than two years in alpha/beta development that I occasionally participated in. And it’s even crazier that this huge company with millions of dollars in revenue can’t afford to pay voice actors for the handful of voice lines in this game and instead uses AI generation. That’s just sad.

While it does have the makings of something that could and should be pretty fun, it’s not there yet. And if they’re willing to launch a game with a major game-breaking crash in it for AMD GPUs and still not hotfix it three days later despite the solution being so simple, I’m not sure if it’s ever going to get there.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

A cheap game with a weird premise is a shortcut into my Steam library. I'm always looking forward to checking out something that might not be like anything I've played before. Sometimes it turns out incredible, and other times, it just doesn't quite live up to my expectations. Not because it's terrible, but sometimes you just want a little more. This is one of those games.

Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/T5_4XE3Y5Mo

A Game About Digging A Hole is exactly what it says in the title. Your singular goal is to dig a hole as deep and as fast as possible in your backyard. After finding a listing for an exceptionally affordable house with the promise of treasure buried under the lawn, that's where you'll ultimately be breaking ground. You'll take on this task with some kind of battery-powered shovel – or I suppose a trowel at first – that you'll use to take chunks out of the earth that disappear into the ether. You won't make much progress at first, and your tiny crater will only reveal a handful of rocks.

The rocks and other materials you find are a commodity that you can take back to your little homebase shed and immediately sell for cash. Cash that you can use to purchase upgrades for the tools you need to dig further and faster. You can increase the size of your shovel, the battery that mysteriously powers it, the battery-powered jetpack you ultimately need to get out of your hole, and the inventory that contains the stuff you find. As well as recharging your battery and healing any health lost falling in the hole like an idiot.

This is essentially the entire gameplay loop. Digging with progressively more capability to grab and return the rocks and minerals you find to purchase upgrades and refresh your digging power. You'll also be able to obtain key consumables like dynamite used to break through (entirely obliterate) bedrock and lights to make it so you can actually see what you're doing.

What you're doing in this hole-digging adventure is a bit more than just digging a hole, but not much more. The bulk of the game is making your way ever deeper, bursting into caverns giving you a bit more depth, and widening your perspective on your underground journey. As you carve your path, you'll occasionally have a sort of radar tracker pop-up that directs you to a certain area within the soil. Digging toward that will eventually reveal a secret, whether a suitcase of cash and tools or a special stabilized "mineshaft" area that contains a chest – which also has cash and tools in it. There are also hidden keys you can find to open a mysterious locked chest in your homebase shed for a pretty mediocre reward.

The one to two hours you'll most likely spend doing this has that classic cathartic feel to it that sits somewhere between Minecraft and Powerwash Simulator. It's a game where practically every action you take is progress toward the end. The problem is that the end comes pretty quickly, it's not particularly interesting or surprising, and the journey to it doesn't offer much variety.

Strange little games like this thrive on twists and turns. Being surprised by the outcome or discovering little mysteries along the way is often the best part. Games like Inscryption and Is This Game Trying to Kill Me give you relatively simple enjoyable gameplay, but also constantly leave breadcrumbs indicating something more is going on than what is on the surface. That isn't in this game, and it feels like it should be. You still have a game that's reasonably rewarding to play and worth recommending on that alone, but one that feels like it was one ambitious writer away from being exceptional.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

Rail shooters are fun. So are rhythm games. So, it stands to reason that their combination would also be a pretty good time. It turns out, that is the case, at least in this particular instance, and while it doesn’t do either one as well as a more focused game in either genre, it puts them together in a way that is enjoyable and engrossing without being too complex.

Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/qY4vga9wHVA

I enjoyed the first Aaero, but it’s been the better part of a decade since I played it, so I wanted to go back and see what had changed. Outside of the two-player mode of the sequel, which I never managed to match with anyone to try, it’s all very familiar. Just like the original, every level is bound to a single song track and lasts for its duration. Your goal is to align with the glowing ribbon that sort of brings the song to life while also fighting off enemies that fly up and start attacking you in and around that ribbon-dancing process. The ribbon aspect is almost unchanged between the games; however, combat is where things get a little more involved.

The original game worked a bit more like Rez where you only needed to hover a reticle over enemies to build up locks and hitting the trigger would blast them with a respective number of beams. Aaero2 now gives you two weapons, a similar locking missile system and a heat-limited machine gun. The machine gun works simply, you aim at the enemy and can shoot it limited only by heat – which is usually enough to take down one average enemy on screen. The missile system uses a lock-on similar to the first game, except you have to squeeze the trigger to enable it and release it to fire missiles that wind toward the target.

The missiles also introduce another rhythm mechanic to Aaero2 as well. The firing mechanism has a metronome that synchronizes to the beat of the song track and releasing them in the center area of it makes your missiles fly faster and do more damage. For most of the game, at least in the lesser difficulty levels, this level of precision isn’t required to complete the levels, but it will help you get a higher score and more stars which are necessary to unlock the tracks in your progression. These new additional mechanics make the already complicated idea of moving your ship to the ribbon and aiming at enemies with the other stick a fair bit more challenging, but in a way that still feels accessible with a little practice.

The one thing that was most apparent in the transition from the original to the sequel is that the movement seems slower and the perspective a little wider. This gives Aaero2 a more open and relaxed feel that offsets the upshift in difficulty a bit. The visual distinction between the enemies and the backgrounds is also more apparent, but that could just be the result of eight years of improvements in graphical fidelity.

Yet, that increased challenge and depth also helps to make a game that is relatively short with only 18 tracks a bit more replayable. The four difficulty modes also help with that – taking the game from a relatively peaceful romp through a musical tube to a chaotic assault on your senses with a requirement for precise ribbon riding and more enemies at the least opportune times. And this was only the third difficult level. You’ll also have random secret items you’ll have to spot and fire at throughout each track. In early levels, these are fairly easy to spot and hit, but as you get closer to the bottom of that track list, the ones I have managed to find were visible for a fraction of a second. So you’ll definitely need to repeat tracks just to pull off the hits.

However, the dynamic nature of the challenge and the secrets to be blasted are only part of what makes this replayable. There’s also the fact that the game is built around a great collection of songs that have pretty engaging and visually appealing levels. These tracks seem a little more diverse than those in the previous game and the levels have a lot more going on in the background. Yet, what both Aaero and Aaero2 have in common is that both are simply fun. I hope that, like the original, this title gets additional tracks added in the near future.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

I’ve played many “Hero Shooter” games since the Overwatch popularized the genre. Not all of them are great, but each puts its own sort of twist on the concept, and Marvel Rivals is no different. Yet, outside of palette-swapping some characters or pulling the camera out to the third person, it takes one big step that does a lot to separate it from its contemporaries – creating synergy between heroes with a team-up system.

There’s a lot of Overwatch in this game. Some characters have abilities and attacks that seem like they were lifted straight from the source and pasted on existing Marvel designs. It does make some sense though given that Netease has been distributing Blizzard games in China, including Overwatch, since 2008. And given that they broke off that deal (at least for a little while), it’s not surprising that they’ve released a game so similar that they directly compete with it.

However, those similarities aren’t necessarily what makes it good. The third-person perspective of Marvel Rivals does a bit to provide a distinction, but what it does best is open up the gameplay to melee characters that work and feel good to play. A game that balances melee and ranged mechanics such that they can directly compete with one another is rarely done well. Still, there has obviously been a lot of time taken to make it flow well with map design and mechanics that give both options a chance.

Of course, what takes this over the top and makes it work better than any changes Overwatch 2 made in an attempt to balance the character class participation, is the team-up system. Giving players the option to pick classes that work well together and getting bonuses complementing the “anchor” bonuses of core classes works to self-balance the team roles. Moreover, shifting the distribution of players beyond the typical 2-2-2 tank/DPS/support roles can be an effective strategy in certain situations. Rather than railroading players into immovable role queues, someone falling short in one role can easily switch to another. This flexibility is not only important to success in competitive matches but also makes the entire game feel more dynamic and fun.

Any multiplayer game that has even somewhat asymmetrical player characters is going to have to contend with balance. The fantasy of “perfect balance” is all but impossible with the breadth of player skill levels and the now 35 characters available to everyone. And given that there’s been relatively little time since the release of this game, it’s frankly kind of amazing that it works as well as it has since its launch. However, the pace and quality of changes thus far have been a little lackluster.

The developers seem to see most of the issues with characters, but they also seem to have based many of the changes on win ratios rather than the experience of characters in the actual game. For instance, Hela and Hawkeye had their damage reigned in a bit and core synergies that were often eliminated by the (Diamond rank and above) ban sessions were addressed, but they still missed some annoyances like Luna’s ultimate ability that just halts the game for 12 seconds while she does a little song and dance.

Yet, the softness of the character changes in the most recent patch highlights how strong the initial game was. With thousands of characters in the Marvel universe, they have plenty of room to expand this roster with unique heroes and abilities – just like in Marvel Snap – but hopefully without ever locking them behind a paywall or random chance. Right now, you can get every character without spending a dime. However, you can spend a ludicrous number of dimes if you want cosmetics for them, though. This is probably one of my biggest complaints about the game. Unless you’re cool with the specific things you can get from the standard-price battle pass, you’ll be spending $15-25 or more for just one character’s cosmetic pack. And then you also have to be ok with supporting a multi-billion-dollar Chinese conglomerate, but aside from the CCP, that’s not much different than supporting Activision Blizzard.

What you do have is a game that’s just as, if not more, “free to play” than Overwatch 2. With a lot of Overwatch’s mechanics baked in, plenty of improvements on the formula, and still possessing a huge breadth of quality visual designs and lore. You have simple arcade modes and quick play if you want to relax in your experience or as much sweaty competitive play as you can tolerate with a robust ranking system. Overall, it’s not yet as robust as its inspiration, but seems well on its way to catching up with characters, maps, and unique game modes. So, it’s easy to recommend at the moment, and, as long as they don’t start swinging a sledgehammer at core gameplay designs like Blizzard did, it will probably stick around for a while too.

Marvel Rivals Review Video: https://youtu.be/RhqR24BJyx8

I’m spoiled by innovative puzzle games. I used to avoid this genre, but when cool ideas are put into practice, it makes the whole idea of sitting around thinking about why you can’t move forward a lot more appealing. Is This Game Trying to Kill Me has tons of those cool ideas, and they’re implemented in a way that stationary contemplation seems like it’s not the worst thing you could be doing with your life.

Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/1V0f_x0WH3U

This game poses a question with its very existence, and it doesn’t take too long before you experience the answer. Not only from the initial presentation of an evil wizard that says he’s going to kill you (eventually) but actively shows you how it will do that not long into the playthrough. The premise is straightforward, you wake up in a cabin and your singular task is to play this game (within your game) on a PC sitting in the middle of the room. As you start doing this and come across some of their very first inhibitors in your efforts to exit the dungeon, you’ll encounter the game’s twist: actions in the game can affect the cabin you’re currently trapped within.

This exciting revelation ultimately works both ways – where the cabin and the game you play are entwined in a wide variety of mysterious ways. Opening a chest in the game will unlock a chest in your room, while in another area, adding light bulbs to a grid will manipulate the lighted path for you to take inside the game. You’re required to jump back and forth between this 2D dungeon crawl and the 3D “real” world to make your way forward through each. And as you forge new paths within the game, you’ll also unlock new rooms within the small cabin – each filled with new bits and pieces you’ll use in later puzzles.

This connection between the game and the “reality” also extends to the title's premise: dying in the game will kill you in the cabin. There are a surprising number of ways this occurs and even moments where triggering an action on the PC will force you to race around the cabin finding the solution with your life on the line and a timer ticking down. Not every failed solution to a puzzle is instant death, and those deaths are rarely much of a setback considering that returning puts you just before the fateful decision, but it can be pretty interesting to see the ways you’re taken out… at least when it’s not frustrating.

Unique design can only take a puzzle game so far. At the end of the day, it’s all about how engaging, challenging, and enjoyable the puzzle experience really is. Is This Game Trying to Kill Me is certainly delivering here, for the most part. The majority of the puzzles are intuitive without being too easy and some of them are downright gems in their design. There are some, especially early on, that are pretty obvious, but eventually, every room will offer a new set of challenges that will have you swapping back and forth between the game and the room trying to discern and ultimately execute that solution. Sometimes it requires moving pieces or finding hidden codes, other times it’s a more active situation of timing and precision. Yet, the most important aspect is that it’s never boring. This relatively short game gives very little downtime, and it makes every puzzle feel like an important part.

There were a handful of puzzles that did seem somewhat unintuitive to me though. However, in these instances (and on all puzzles) there’s a fairly gentle hint system that will provide several images that you can unlock one at a time to give you an idea of what you need to do – with each being a little more revealing of the final answer. So, if you feel you need help, you might only display one of the three images to get you on the right track and keep at least some of that feeling of accomplishment.

Yet, there were at least one or two scenarios where color played an important part in determining the solution to a puzzle, and being colorblind, I had an extremely tough time figuring out the solution. At this point, color deficiency should be an easy disability to surmount for developers. After numerous deaths, I was able to figure these out, and of course, there were no detrimental aspects in retrying it. Yet, it’s something that should be addressed by the developer either by adding different symbols rather than colors or adding a colorblind mode so that the colors can be changed to something more visually distinct.

Is This Game Trying To Kill Me is a fairly short game, only clocking in at a few hours at most, but since no part of that time is disappointing, it’s still well worth the price. Outside of being a bit longer, there were a few places where the game could have benefitted from some extra attention. For instance, some of the puzzles, especially a bit later on, kind of neglected the benefit of backtracking and using multiple features from several rooms in the cabin. Some did this, and those were especially entertaining, but most of the time you’d enter a new room and everything you needed would be in there for the next portion of the game. It also felt like the various boss fights you have in the game were out of place and mostly involved doing the same minimally puzzling tasks for each one, at least until the final boss fight.

However, my feelings about the game's length and desire for more from the boss fights extend to the ending itself. There are some really cool aspects to the way the game ends and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring it, but just when it seemed like I was about to get into some expansive Inscryption-like new world, it shuts down with little fanfare. It just felt like there was a ton of potential there for something mind-blowing and instead, it was more like “Well that was fun.” It was not a bad experience, though, and didn’t take anything away from a great game. One that is easy to recommend even for exceptionally mediocre puzzle solvers like me.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

My first hour or so with Frostpunk 2 wasn’t great. In fact, I stepped away from it for a while thinking that it wasn’t for me. But when I did get back to it and committed to spending at least a few hours in the harsh winter wasteland, it grew on me and now the only thing I can say is: “I want more.”
Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/TfKST1AlCq0

Despite the familiar aesthetics, setting, and even the UI to some degree, Frostpunk 2 is a pretty significant departure from the original game. Where the first game puts you in the role of guiding the first survivors of a frozen apocalypse to the tenuous safety of a town built around a giant coal furnace, the second launches you into a situation where you’re essentially taking over from the best-case scenario of your previous efforts. You return to a city that has filled the crater you sought refuge within and spilled out into a much broader region where you will continue to expand.

Now, however, instead of building individual structures and pathing road grids with heating conduits, you’re laying out hexagonal blocks of districts that construct a collection of numerous buildings in that region. This process quickly expands the already significant footprint of your city, which generates a larger population and more pressing demands from all of the many resources you’ll need to keep it running smoothly. The focus of this sequel is less about fighting the fundamental forces of nature (though they’re still prominent), and instead gives a much larger role to maintaining the flow of a variety of resources and maintaining the positive disposition of the people.

People, in general, are the most important and most fickle resource you’ll have to deal with. Instead of just accepting and reacting to whatever laws you pass, everything must go through a congress that only meets occasionally over time. And within that congress, there are usually several factions represented that each have their own preferences, ideals, and demands. This means that what you might think is the best course of action for the city can be overruled by the majority that can easily check your power without kicking you out – though that may still be the outcome if you’re running things poorly.

With all of the new mechanics and challenges presented in this shift from the first Frostpunk, I was not always successful. I actually failed in the prologue because I had confused two resources and put myself in an unwinnable situation. With most resources once again being finite, it’s easy to get yourself in a scenario where a single one is hindering all of your other efforts, and that happened to me here. Yet, that wasn’t the only time I failed.

Even trying to track the demands of housing, workers, food, coal, oil, prefabs, materials, goods, and the dynamic of overall city temperament, you’ll also need to balance the specific mood and demands of the factions within your population. Even smaller groups can cause chaos if they get angry enough to riot – which will start shutting down districts and causing cascading effects that make it easy for people to justify tossing you out into the snowdrifts. All of this still occurs in the frozen wasteland of the environment, which means that it also tends to erect new hurdles in your path as you shuffle onward toward your various goals. Things like whiteouts and random temperature drops can throw wrenches into the wrench-filled machine that you’re forcefully willing forward through the onslaught.

While Frostpunk 2 takes a bit of a left turn from the original game and focuses on an experience that feels more managerial than survival focused, it adopted some of this design from another game in this genre. Ixion took a lot of cues from Frostpunk and created a game that had a great concept, but ultimately disappointed me in its execution. One of those aspects that I felt didn’t work well was the chapter design, and Frostpunk 2 had adopted that. Instead of being a single scenario that could take 6 or 7 hours, it’s a five-chapter journey that could easily take twice as long to complete. However, unlike Ixion, it seems perfectly viable to go back to a save before a failure and make enough changes to survive and continue. Or at least I was able to the one time I was ousted during the campaign.

Yet only a month after release, the developers rolled out an update addressing tons of quality-of-life issues and requests like being able to cancel frostbreaking, adding edge schooling, and adding options to enhance visibility and performance. Stuff that didn’t necessarily bother me when playing through the campaign, but things that are great to see. And things that should ultimately make the game more appealing to the broader audience that enjoyed the original game.

In the end, when I reached the fun little montage explaining the outcome of the choices you made for your city, I only wanted more of the game. However, there aren’t any additional scenarios available right now. The only structured gameplay option you can do right now is replay the main campaign – which is much more viable now considering the (somewhat) branching paths afforded by event choices, random factions, and an expansive research tree. I tried the unlimited mode option that is also availabe, but without the motivation of distinct events and the lack of map diversity, I wasn’t compelled to keep going with it. Yet, this does make me excited to see what the DLC scenarios deliver, and I’ll be happy to return to try them out.

While I enjoyed my time with Frostpunk 2, the price makes it a little more difficult to recommend. If you get sucked into the unlimited mode or enjoy replaying the main campaign, it might be more reasonable to spend $45 for a 10-12 hour game. But if you’re expecting similar value to the first Frostpunk game with all of its DLC, it isn’t at that level currently. Thankfully, it is on Gamepass, which adds a lot of potential value if you already have that. It’s a no-brainer to try it out if that’s an option.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

Nomada Studio is in the business of making you feel things. Gris hit me like a sledgehammer and I still consider it one of my favorite games even though it only directly impacted my life for a few hours. Neva wasn’t quite as hard of a hit, maybe just a standard 3 lb. drilling hammer, but enough to make a crater that more than justifies a recommendation.

Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/IY7J7wAyVWE

Much like its predecessor, Neva is a beautiful game. The premise puts you in a variety of outdoor environments during four distinct seasons and each one is expressed in exquisite color-appropriate detail that made me want to stop and stare at the background rather than finish the game. The effort taken to create areas that are visually appealing, but also functional, is clear to see throughout the game. The dense forests of Summer lead into the vibrant autumnal leaves of fall, and there are actually plenty of surreal moments depicted within these seasonal transitions that provide their own spectacular designs for you to enjoy.

This is all coordinated with a surprisingly expansive soundtrack that feels like it has a new audio treat for every single scene that takes place. For a game that once again can easily be completed in four or five hours, there are 36 tracks that, put together, run for nearly two and a half hours. With this combination, from an audio and visual perspective, Neva is among the most appealing games I’ve played this year. Yet, that wouldn’t be enough to earn a recommendation on its own and of course, it’s not the only reason I am giving it one.

There is technically a narrative in Neva in that a single word is spoken in the entire game: “Neva.” You can say it whenever you want with a dedicated button to call your antler-topped wolf creature to you – though it is almost always following you close by. Much like Gris, the story is the foundation of the experience and the true reason to play the game. However, in a change of pace, your effort to care for and raise your orphaned wolf creature is a much more grounded and stated premise than the somewhat abstract initial experience of the previous title.

Without getting into any spoilers, the story and progress within the seasons convey every plot point through the world, creatures, sounds, and music exclusively. There’s no text or voiceover, just your understanding of the events that are happening in front of you. This is a great way to experience a story, and it lets you interpret things as you encounter them, however, it also leaves a little ambiguity and had me confused for a second at the end simply because I wasn’t paying attention. However, despite its sullen introduction and journey through an increasingly hostile world, the story was still the most compelling aspect of Neva. The subtle interactions with the world and Neva (the wolf) add just enough nuance to the story to make it captivating and hard to put down.

The one aspect of Neva that doesn’t soar to the same heights as the story, music, and visuals – and the biggest departure from Gris – is the combat. It’s not a bad experience, even when it can be a little clunky with hit recognition and determining if you have dodged an attack. Yet, it didn’t feel that exciting to me or have much depth at all. Your character’s move set is practically set from the beginning, the only thing that expands is what you can do with Neva as it grows. You’re relegated to light short-reach swings of your sword – which you use against everything from the simplest enemies to the final boss.

Despite your repeated encounters with combat and being the driving force for your progression through the game, it doesn’t bring down the overall experience. It feels like something you have to do to get to the more interesting parts with mild puzzles and platforming and, of course, exploring the beautiful world you get to do that within. It’s hard to describe exactly what makes Neva so enjoyable without spoiling it, especially because it’s so short, but I can say that it is well worth it to check out. Whether you want to spend $20 for something that’s only four or five hours is up to you – but at the very least, keep it on your radar and get it when you can.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

I’ve always had an interest in rally racing games, and it’s probably the only type of racing game where I find the more realistic versions as enjoyable as the arcade versions. #Drive Rally skews more toward the arcade side of the spectrum, and it also tries to throw in a little comedy as a bonus. It does this well enough to be fun, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing, and this early access badge should serve as a warning rather than just a label.
Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/vLbQTo2MR3E

With such a descriptive name, you should definitely know what you’re getting into with #Drive Rally. Within the two game modes, championship and quick play, you’ll approach the standard gameplay you’ve probably seen in countless rally racing games of the past. The championship puts you in a series of races split into stages that take 2-5 minutes to complete with your total time determining your placement in the competition. Each has you winding through the countryside on roads that regularly change between dirt, gravel, and paved surfaces with a moderate amount of characteristic distinction between them. The quick play option is only a single stage of these races, but you’re able to select you’re the car you use to participate in them.

The championship mode is the bulk of the experience. You’ll start by selecting one of the four teams, each with its own set of vehicles to be unlocked and a co-driver personality to ride along with you announcing the turns. Each is also relegated to a single map with a static biome and weather type. So, it seems that the idea is to play through all of their 27 stages and then move on to a different team. It is possible to step out of one team’s championship and into another at any time while returning to your progress at your leisure.

For all that Drive Rally does to present itself as a standard arcade rally racing game, it also does a bit to try to stand out, for better or worse. One small aspect of it is that all of the cars are from the early 1990s or prior and it seems the game is built around an early ‘90s aesthetic. It’s not heavily positioned in this era or anything, as the menus and UI kind of have that familiar clean graffiti look that seems to have influenced so many racing games over the past decade. However, its use of the era is harder to notice mostly because even modern rally racing games tend to use cars that look very similar.

The “big” distinction that Drive Rally delivers from its contemporaries is that your co-driver who dishes out your navigation through pacenotes is sort of a caricature representing the team. The German team has a guy speaking with a thick German accent, the American team has a generic cowboy personality, and so on. These are fun in concept, but the execution isn’t all that enjoyable once you’ve been at it for a little while. The random quips and phrases they throw out in response to you being ahead, behind, or sliding off the track get repetitive and the turn callouts have only a handful of iterations haphazardly strung together.

While some, or maybe most of the co-driver voices and lines are reasonably entertaining, some are kind of annoying, at least to me. I like that there’s some personality to it, but what I don’t like is how often these voice lines break a key aspect of the game – the pacenotes. Far too frequently the random quips and comments the co-drivers make for comedic effect disrupt upcoming callouts for turns, sometimes erasing the callout entirely. The pacenotes system is already fairly inconsistent when addressing numerous consecutive turns and moving at high speeds resulting in the same delayed or missed callouts.

There are also some other issues with the game like time penalties issued every time you simply graze many of the track boundaries. This is an effect that, at least from my research, isn’t a part of actual rally racing, so I’m not sure why it’s so strict. However, since there’s no indication of where this penalty time is applied and the overall challenge of achieving first place by large margins is pretty low, it’s hard to call it a real problem. I also noticed that there were some bugs like certain sounds cutting out and the track edges occasionally crossing over the road surface. I also played most of the game without a ghost car existing at all despite it being enabled in the options, however after a couple of hours in the game, one just showed up out of nowhere. I didn’t see an update associated with it, so I’m not sure how that happened.

Drive Rally also has some areas where I think it could be made much more appealing that I hope are implemented in the early access process. The first is that you can’t seem to retry any championship races or go back through the championship process once you finish it. That’s a strange choice. It would also be nice if we could customize our cars in the championship mode as we unlock new parts – instead of that only being an option in quick play. The game would also benefit from at least a rudimentary damage model so that you can appreciate the bumps and crashes you have in each stage. And perhaps add some optional music while playing because a good soundtrack makes everything better.

However, with all of the issues and desires I have for Drive Rally, I still had fun playing it. It’s accessible while still requiring a delicate touch, especially in faster vehicles. The design aesthetic is strangely appealing and resulted in some fun tracks. It would be nice if there were dynamic weather effects or something to spice up those tracks (at least per stage), but what is here is engaging. It’s probably a bit steeply priced at $20 for what you get right now, but I’m going to keep an eye on this game and see if this early access process delivers a gem or if it remains just a regular nice-looking rock.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews

I don’t think I have any desire to go into the “van life” world, but I do love seeing a cool van. Especially when that van does some cool stuff in addition to being a rolling box. Caravan SandWitch gives you a van almost straight away and, while you don’t spend a ton of time in it and it doesn’t quite do as much cool stuff as I had hoped, it still opened the door to me to check out a good game I might not have otherwise played.
Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/8KlxTqVcJVo

The premise of Caravan SandWitch is straightforward, at least in the beginning. You’re dropped into the role of a girl on a mission to find her missing sister after a distress signal mysteriously pops up six years after her disappearance. It takes only a moment for you to navigate the intro and make your way from a space station to the planet you grew up on to begin your journey. Of course, like most games, your important mission almost immediately takes a back seat to the dozens of random tasks the handful of residents lay upon your shoulders.

In general, everything that you do in this game involves platforming to and through various locations and solving basic puzzles to make your way in this manner. Your character doesn’t have any elaborate move sets, just walking, running, and jumping, so the puzzle element is the core of the gameplay experience. Not long after you start, you get a scanning function for your van that will allow you to highlight the various items you’ll need to collect. Most of these are different rarities of circuit board pieces that serve as the currency that you use to upgrade your van with new parts. However, you’ll also need to keep an eye out for several different quest items as well as the handful of jammer towers that provide a Ubisoft-style map unlock functionality.

This puzzle platforming and gadget unlocking cycle is pretty compelling, especially when you’re first venturing into some of the points of interest on the map and exploring the ruins of abandoned industry. However, this design also forces you to do a lot of backtracking – where you’ll visit a location and get as many resources as you can only to hit a progression wall. Then when you upgrade with a new feature like a grappling hook that can open doors and crates, you must return to explore what you’re now able to unlock. At least until you hit the next wall.

Despite being more noticeable as you get deeper into the game, the progression gating doesn’t really break the experience. That’s partially because many of the events have a solid chunk of the narrative woven into them. It’s a bit strange that seemingly most of the side quests are optional. Not just because they’re especially exciting, but because so many of them have a noteworthy piece of the story within them. However, the game does prompt you to do the more ‘tertiary’ quests as you approach the chapter end – which happens every time you upgrade/add to your van loadout. Yet, it seems like it would be such a waste to miss out on learning about the characters in the game and the environment that you explore.

The stories told aren’t exceptionally deep or complex, and I don’t think there’s space for them to be that way within a ten-hour game, but I found that half of the fun was exploring the nuances of the characters they created in their limited moments in the spotlight. There’s a surprising amount to uncover with the indigenous species, nomads, and the history of the Consortium that previously ran the planet. All of that ties into who they were, why they left, and what remains in the locations you explore. It makes what would otherwise be a basic puzzle platformer into something that’s far more engrossing and a bit more meaningful than I expected.

Aside from the eventual frustration of backtracking, there’s only one other part of Caravan SandWitch that I thought brought the experience down a bit. It’s always inherently a little difficult to tell a cohesive story in an open-world game. There were parts that felt significant that I completed relatively early and parts that seemed redundant that I finished much later just because of the way I chose to do the quests. The gating does allow for some control over that, but it still seemed like when I reached the end, the majority of the twists were dumped on me in the last 30 minutes, and some of it seemed like reiterations from optional bits of the game I discovered. That took some weight away from the revelations and made it feel like the game needed to be longer to accommodate more. Also, the ending itself even seemed to be set up for a sequel or just more of the game, which felt a little awkward.

Yet, what is here is thoroughly enjoyable even if it doesn’t present a great deal of challenge and has no real failure state. It’s “cozy,” even as much as I don’t like that descriptive term for a game. Caravan SandWitch even manages to look cozy with its lovely environments, soft colors, and numerous lofty areas you can climb to for a cinematic view of the world. And while all of the platforming, visuals, and even the (occasional) music make it worth playing, the part that takes it over the top for me is the excellent world crafting established through exploration and narrative.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo's Indies, Abbreviated Reviews