Recent reviews by Calculated Risk

Mina is a great follow-up to Shovel Knight from Yacht Club Games. It's a top down action/platformer this time, with an aesthetic that will remind folks of their GameBoy days, but with a ton of modern sensibilities and controls. You play as Mina, a confident mechanic and "hollower" tasked with repairing six spark towers on the island of Tenebrous. While the story isn't very deep, the cast of characters, humor, NPC quests and interactions are plentiful and make the game feel gigantic in a map that that isn't that big.

It's a great game, with a few minor issues. At the time of this review, the main issue I have is how the fast travel is discovered. The game kinda disincentives you from doing the thing that will open it up. It's weird. And as much as the game loves paying homage to this era of games, there's 6 sequences in the game that pay homage to the mode 7 graphics that I could have done without. The second one can be improved through the game's incredible amount of accessibility modifiers, though.

One of my all time favorite games is Link's Awakening, and while this game is more Bloodborne than Zelda since there really isn't any puzzle solving, it scratches that itch overall. Interestingly, this year presented me with two games that did that, the other being Tearscape (go play that too, if you liked this).

Overall I enjoyed this. A very pretty isometric stealth game that is mostly a vehicle for the narrative, it mostly kept me engaged for the whole game. Right up until the last sequence, I felt I could solve everything without trial and error, but some of the mechanics were finnicky in said sequence. I wasn't the biggest fan of it, but it didn't detract from the entire experience. There's some gorgeous visuals to go along with a pretty compelling narrative about family, class warfare, and politics. My one caveat is to try to find it on sale. While it does enough to not overstay its welcome, there isn't a on of meat on the bones here to justify $40.

A neat twist on minesweeper, I get a lot of enjoyment out of this great little logic puzzler. The music and visuals take the game up a notch, as by completing islands you end up creating some beautiful sceneries, and by the end of each level you have a pretty landscape to admire.

A 2D Zelda-like adventure with anti-capitalism themes and fun combat driven skills involving a yo-yo instead of a sword. There's a lot contained in this little game, and a lot of mileage drawn from the abilities you gain for traversal from a simple yo-yo. You play as Pippit who is tasked by his disembodied aunt (now with her soul stuck in your yo-yo) to gather four batteries from some opportunists to get her body back, and the story doesn't get much more in depth than that with a lot of decent but straightforward humor. The real meat is in the combat and traversal, with which I had a ton of fun. Worth a buy

My first console was a GameBoy. The first game I had was Link's Awakening. Neither of these were the first console or game I ever played, but they hold a special place in my heart as the first that belonged to me. Tearscape takes me back to that time with an aesthetic and design very reminiscent of the GameBoy and specifically Link's Awakening. There's additional inspiration from Bloodborne, down to the obvious homage to the Hunter and pary mechanic, but at it's soul is the feeling you have exploring a large map and finding weapons/tools/keys to unlock your way through it and discover ways in which it interconnects.

Tearscape is an achievement in delivering on that promise. The map is large enough with many dungeons and iterative with it's Zelda-like tool progression to keep you going for 10 hours, and doesn't overstay itself. There are two major puzzle variants that are just difficult enough to force you to think for a bit. While enemies repeat, there's often a new one in every new map to spice things up. And the bosses are all challenging enough that you can't just grind or spam your new tool to breeze through. Not to mention, there are no runbacks to the bosses.

All in all, this game wears its inspirations on its sleeves, while utilizing a lot of modern sensibilities to reduce the kind of friction that could make people bounce off it more easily. If there was a nitpick, the map itself makes retracing a bit hard buy revealing itself all at once without a fog of war. Not the worst thing, but it meant sometimes I wasn't sure if I had explored an area or not. Overall, amazing experience and hope this game gets more visibility that it deserves.

I first played this game a decade ago, and enjoyed the combination of class/mood stats, multiple branching paths and deaths that you can encounter. Coming back to it now, it's still a fun visual novel adventure, with a lot more depth than I remembered. There's a lot of interesting choices and outcomes (there may even be new ones since the last time I played). Still a recommended game, and look forward to the new game from the devs.

A neat concept, a 3D puzzle platformer where you can modify the world with photos you can take with your camera. Pretty short, and maybe a little underbaked at times as some of the challenges didn't really seem to push the game mechanic as far as it can go, but overall and enjoyable experience. Hope to see this iterated on.

Rejoice, we got a game that is for the wikipedia rabbit hole delvers in us all.

Jokes aside, this was a lot of fun in a low stakes detective game where you research everything you can to fill out information in a famous family tree. It took me a bit too long to start using the notebook to keep track of stuff, but otherwise the game does a great job of signposting what you need to look up and where for crucial information and photos.

It's a lot of reading, cross-referencing, and deduction via process of elimination that also doesn't overstay it's welcome. There's also essentially a "sequel" built into the game that got close to that, but ultimately brought the game to a satisfying ending.

Highly recommend this to anyone looking for a fun sleuthing game done right.

Strange Jigsaws is a game

Someone made this game

You can play it

And have fun

What a fun game. Didn't think bullet hell spaceship zelda-like was gonna be on my radar, and I'm glad I picked this up. It's short and sweet, with a fun progression system and pretty good challenges with both the races and the boss battles. There's also some surprisingly deep lore to explore. Well worth the price for a couple of days of fun.