Panstasz’s spine-tingling 1 to 2-bit horror game, World of Horror, originally launched in early access in 2020. Now, it has finally arrived on Steam and modern consoles, ready to haunt your dreams. The Mysterious Town of Shiokawa: A Sinister Setting Step into the eerie town of Shiokawa in May of 1984, where World of Horror plunges you into the shoes of an Investigator. Your mission? To thwart one of the Old Gods’ sinister schemes to awaken and unleash terror upon the Earth. To accomplish this, you must ascend the ominous Shiokawa lighthouse, but there’s a catch. You must first solve…
Author: Kyle Clark
One of the many demos featured at Steam’s Next Fest that I had the chance to play was Supernova Game’s upcoming title, Cupid Island, where you assume the role of an anxious Cupid who has recently started residing on the titular island. At the start of Cupid Island, you can customize both your Cupid and the island’s name and appearance to your liking. However, your primary goal is to collect love from blossoming human relationships to sustain the world of Angels. You achieve this with your trusty Cupid’s arrow and the assistance of your new angelic friend, Graciel, who lends…
After some time in Early Access, developer Yongjustyong is releasing the launch build of their deck-building adventure, Sigil of the Magi. During this period, updates and feedback shaped the experience for the full release, and it shows. That said, post-launch updates may be needed for this game to reach its full potential. Sigil of the Magi casts you in the role of three Adventurers embarking on a journey across the land to find the Tomb of the Magi, which bestows great power upon its discoverers. Using cards, the adventurers battle various monsters and foes obstructing their path as they seek…
Buff Studio’s newest game takes you on a musical-themed adventure filled with jazz, finding love, and facing the fear of the future. Blue Wednesday centers around a pianist named Morris who hopes to one day make it big in Evans City. After getting fired from his recent job at a supermarket, Morris gets the chance to fulfill his dreams as a pianist, which leads to him joining a band in a nightclub called Birds Club. He becomes closer to the other members of the group, most notably a saxophone player named Angela, as he tries his best not to let…
Following the shutdown of the Friday the 13th game, publisher Gun Media has since moved on to another iconic horror franchise alongside developer Sumo Digital to release The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This title offers a similar asymmetrical experience to their previous game but with a few notable differences. https://youtu.be/oA7eT8n0sWo The Texas Chain Saw Massacre takes place before the events of the original 1974 movie. The game sees Ana Flores and four friends leading a small search party for Ana’s missing sister Maria. However, Maria had come face to face with the Slaughter Family, and she sadly won’t be found…
A school-based Disney manga that’s based on the Mobile Game of the same name, Twisted Wonderland Vol. 1 introduces Enma Yuken, captain of a kendo team who has magically whisked away from his regular life in Tokyo on the eve of an important kendo tournament to an academy called Night’s Raven College located in a world known as the titular Twisted Wonderland, after coming across a strange carriage on the way home. It isn’t long until Yu’s life becomes chaotic and adventurous as he tries to find a way back to Tokyo while also learning about the world of the…
I found myself heading down the rabbit hole of demos during Steam Next Fest and stumbled across Spells & Secrets. Developed by Alchemist Interactive and Rokaplay, this game has you create your own character to become a student at the magical school of Greifenstein. https://youtu.be/2WjAIksxym4 Spells & Secrets begins as you’re traveling to the academy. However, upon arrival, it soon comes under attack by a mysterious group known as The Crown, whose main goal is to bring chaos to the school grounds. Armed with your trusty wand and a few spells, you set out to rescue the various students and…
Action games tend to reuse many elements from some of the more popular series. However, with that, I enjoy it when developers take a chance on blending genres to keep gameplay interesting. Developer Sunnyside Games delivers a unique action experience with puzzle elements that center around brightening up a world consumed by darkness. https://youtu.be/gkrF7oWcbQk In Nocturnal, you play as a soldier to the Enduring Flame named Ardeshir, who returns home to his native Island of Nahran and finds it under attack. The invading army is aided by a powerful dark force taking the form of a deadly mist that consumes…
After a long hiatus, SHODAN is back to create further terror in the universe as the classic space horror adventure System Shock gets a new terrifying reboot with Nightdive Studios at the helm of development. Being a remake of a classic that blew many gamers away with its physics, shooting, and gameplay system, this release has a lot to follow up with. Thankfully, the best parts of this adventure are still intact, with a focus on preserving what made this adventure so memorable almost 30 years ago. System Shock introduces a familiar story of an unnamed hacker waking up in…
Developed by Firechick and Rokaplay, Super Dungeon Maker has you play as an anthropomorphic and adventurous chicken named Fink as he sets out to explore the various dungeons created by the game’s growing community of adventurous players. This lays out a unique experience that is really unlike anything you’ve played within this genre. Each crazy-designed dungeon of Super Dungeon Maker has Fink face various obstacles and hijinks that torment him before he can reach the golden egg to progress. Prior to release, there was a lengthy Early Access period that allowed players to create the foundation of what the…
Originally released on Steam in 2018, A Light in the Dark has arrived with a new port for consoles. This is a visual novel set in Taiwan where Protagonist Hao-Chen Jiang is kidnapped by a mysterious and threatening Woman living in poverty with her younger sister. The Woman kidnapped Hao-Chen due to his wealthy background, hoping that she and her younger sister could make off with a large amount of money by holding Hao-Chen for ransom. A Light in the Dark opens as Hao-Chen is tied up in a rundown room in an unknown location. The only thing he can…
Terra Nil is different from developer Free Lives’ previous titles. In their newest entry, they swapped out dirty jokes and violence for a peaceful game where your goal is to bring new life back to an Earth that has long since been abandoned by humanity through terraforming, finding wild animals in each region for research purposes, recycling, and bringing humidity back into the air. Terra Nil is more of a strategic experience than a terraform creation sim where you bring about wildlife in an abandoned polluted wasteland. Bringing life to the map is a puzzle, especially when considering the…
The country of Petria makes a return in the prequel to Road 96, appropriately titled Road 96: Mile 0. Players assume the role of Zoe, a character that players will often encounter in the original game as they make their way to the border. This Prequel showcases her life in the luxurious town of White Sands before she eventually ran away to set out on the open road. Road 96: Mile 0 changes a few things from the original as it focuses more on making choices than keeping your characters alive or being detained since Zoe still lives in…
This review contains spoilers for Paru Itagaki’s main series that takes place in the world of Beast Complex, Beastars. With the second volume of her series, Paru Itagaki’s Beast Complex continues to expand the creative animalistic world of beastars, even if it’s only a little of the intriguing world that Paru had created since the original series. Beast Complex Vol. 2 continues to tell anthology tales around the city where beastars occur. This volume is notable for not only putting the focus on a few residents of the Beast Apartment. This apartment building was featured in Beastars, the series protagonist…
A prequel to the 2021 release, Backbone, Tails: the Backbone Preludes explores the backstory of the protagonist, Howard Lotor, along with three other characters named Clarissa, Renee, and Eli. Through the choices you make across various acts, the four playable characters will change as you go through their lives in a dystopian-styled Vancouver. For better or worse, they will either come out as the good people they started as or became corrupted by the influence of those around them. Like with Backbone, Tails: the Backbone Preludes has you make various choices through dialogue and spend time talking with your…
For fans of Demon Slayer who are looking to know a little more insight into the Demon Slayer Corps other than their quest to take down the Demon King Muzan or are just waiting for the third season of the anime to air, then this story can help shed some time while waiting for new content. Set before and between various arcs in the series, Demon Slayer: One Winged Butterfly mainly tells stories related to members of the Hashira and those related to them, with Tanjiro and Nezuko often appearing a few times throughout each story. However, their scenes are…
The Knight Witch takes to the skies of the underground in Super Mega Team’s newest release. The game sees you playing as Rayne, a knight witch in training, who lives in an underground city known as Dungeonidas that houses the last bastion of various races following a devastating war caused by a family known as the Daigadai that a team of witches known as the Knight Witches led by a woman named Robyn was able to end. https://youtu.be/KJN0IiLIGso As the city celebrates the day the war ended, it is attacked by Golems that took part in the fight against the…
Monster Rancher has always been a franchise that I wanted to check out, and thanks to the newest release in the franchise with Ultra Kaiju, I finally had the opportunity to do so. https://youtu.be/sOkSnN2MQt0 Developed by Bandai Namco, Ultra Kaiju sees you playing as a Monster trainer set on the Island of Istur, which used to be home to numerous Kaiju, some of them similar to previous monsters in the Monster Rancher series. At the same time, some are actual Kaiju seen from the Ultraman movie franchise, such as Zetton or Gomora. However, due to the kaiju’s size and destructive…
I’ve seen a few previews of Storyteller, and I’m pretty intrigued by the story-based puzzler the game has set out for itself. So I was happy to learn that Storyteller was among the demos available through Steam’s Next Fest event. Developed by Daniel Benmergui, Storyteller has a simple premise in which you create your own story at each level to meet the level’s objective, such as a romantic story involving a couple getting married or a tragedy in which one of them dies. https://youtu.be/Zrde767Iaws To create a narrative, you must drag each character and scene the level has into story…
The Metroidvania genre has always been open to including elements of shoot ‘em ups gameplay, and The Knight Witch capitalizes on the intersection of these two genres. Despite these two genres’ focus on gameplay over story, I was also surprised to see a wider focus on the story and world of The Knight Witch. The combination of these three elements made for an interesting experience. https://youtu.be/_qfgeCBWF5Q The demo opens up with a re-telling of a past war, which opens up the perfect opportunity to let us test a fuller version of the gameplay mechanics before reverting us to the bare…