Recent reviews by Monica

This game is great - it's an extremely queer PSX-style horror game in the vein of Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but with a neat third-eye mechanic, and where every character is very *Gender* 🌈 (and to be clear, I mean this in a positive way). The character design is fantastic, the music (especially for the boss battles) is great, and the story is really interesting (even if the pace is a little uneven at times). If you're queer you'll probably love it, but even if you're not it's an extremely solid action/horror game. Highly recommended.

I've had this game in my library for a really long time and I wish I'd played it sooner. It's a really fascinating look at queer life (and specifically, the life of a trans woman) in 1993 Ireland. It hits particularly hard as a trans woman myself. It's short, cheap, and I very highly recommend it, especially if you're queer, but even if you're not.

After playing their previous game, Sayonara Wild Hearts (and becoming one of my favorite games of all time) I was extremely excited for Simogo's next game. And though the gameplay is very different, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an absolutely amazing puzzle game, and like SWH, unlike anything I've ever played before. If you enjoy puzzle games or adventure games, you owe it to yourself the play this game, it's absolutely fantastic.

Harold Halibut is an absolutely beautiful game, and definitely one of the more unique experiences I've had in gaming, even if the pacing of the story and gameplay is a little off sometimes. This game is definitely a slow burn, and chapters 2 and 4 (out of 6 total) drag on especially long with a lot of backtracking. But honestly I feel it's worth it for the beautiful hand-made claymation graphics and sweet little story. It's about 12 hours long and frankly should probably have been half that length, but I enjoyed getting to know the residents of The Fedora and exploring everything. If you like walking sims or weird artsy adventure games, this one's for you.

This game is absolutely beautiful. It's a short art piece and I loved every minute of it.

This is one of the weirdest games I've ever played. It's free and you can beat it in like 15 minutes so honestly just go for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I really enjoyed Maquette. The puzzles are absolutely brilliant, it's a really cool concept, and the game is short enough that it doesn't outstay its welcome. I love these kind of cheap, short, interesting games that explore a novel concept like this. To be honest the story was kind of bland, but it didn't really get in the way of the puzzles so 🤷‍♀️. It may not be up there with like, Portal or Talos Principle or the Witness, but it's still a cool, well-made puzzle game that's worth playing.

This is an absolutely lovely lesbian romance story. The setting is really unique and interesting, the art and music are great, and the writing and romance are (from personal experience being hella gay) relatively realistic, especially compared to a lot of other VN's.

Even if you're not a lesbian, the atmosphere and writing are still really good and it's still worth playing through. If you *are* a lesbian then I 1000% recommend it because the yearning is off the charts. 🥺

Sayonara Wild Hearts is genuinely my Game Of The Year 2019. I played it when it came out on PS4, and bought it again on Steam for that 1440p/144 Hz (which looks *really* nice with this game).

But yeah, this is a psychedelic pop album in video game form. It's like they just kept asking "What's the coolest thing that could *possibly* happen right now? Let's do that". It's a wild, constantly changing roller coaster and it's AMAZING. The A E S T H E T I C is strong in this one and, the colors and art style are a joy to behold.

It's a short game (like 60-90 minutes to play through) but it's highly replayable like an arcade game. I *love* cheap, short, interesting games that do something out of the ordinary, and this absolutely fits the bill.

Sayonara Wild Hearts was the best game experience of 2019 for me, and if it looks at all interesting to you I *highly* recommend it.

This game is basically targeted directly at me - both as a millennial who was Extremely Online as a kid in the late 90's, and as a trans woman. This game perfectly captures the feeling of that era of small, close-knit message board communities, hanging out with a dozen or two "regulars", writing collaborative fanfics and RP's, etc. And following along Alex's journey as she figures herself out made me burst out in tears *so* many times while playing this. It's so relatable it hurts. Though in my case I didn't figure this stuff out until much later in my life T_T.

If you like games like Emily Is Away or A Normal Lost Phone, you'll like this. And even if you're not trans, it's still a really lovely game and a touching story, and I highly recommend it.