Recent reviews by PhantamSam

An autobiographical WarioWare/ Life Sim. Others here have complained about the ending, but for my part I found it moving in the messy ways that people often don't have simple conclusions to moments in their lives. Jenny and Co. really made something special here.

Cosmo D meets Bennett Foddy. I am in romantic love with Arctic Eggs.

Already saw someone make the comparisons to We Know the Devil and Norco, but both feel very apt, with a healthy helping of Roadside Picnic. Excellent little visual novel/ ink game.

An embarrassment of riches. I've put 60 hours in and haven't even scrapped the surface of most of the games here.

Thirty Flights of Loving by way of Silent Hill

Not certain which Lord I pleased to get two Grey Alien solitaire games in one year, but I am not going to complain about even more Shadowhand alongside Regency Solitaire 2 earlier this year.

I can’t stop thinking about 1000xResist since playing it, and have struggled to put into words everything that the game made me feel. I think it is safe to say that it is a modern masterpiece, and I struggle to imagine another game dethroning it for my game of the year this year.

While the game absolutely holds up in its own right, and does not feel derivative of any particular other piece of media, I keep trying to think about it in relation to other works. Perhaps that started with a tweet from @Buliaros which is both very funny, and very apt “They should have called 1000xResist ‘Venba X Evangelion’”. There is a part of 1000xResist that feels very tied to grounded narratives about family, generational trauma, coming of age, and specifically immigrant experiences, things like Venba, Everything Everywhere All At Once, All Our Asias, or even 100 Years of Solitude come to mind. The game’s weaving between the mundane and the metaphorical, the plain and the poetic, the real and the magically real feels acutely linked to that particular vein of media, but it never quite feels as high brow as that connection may seem.Kentucky Route Zero and Norco also come to mind as the game weaves in and out of various literary modes, but never quite feels highfalutin or pretentious in that process, instead using the literary language to better convey a simpler truth. Or to just be funny.

The games other influences within the speculative fiction and sci-fi are the other half of the picture. The comparisons to NeiR: Automata and Evangelion are openly invited by the developers. I also found myself thinking about Transistor and Umurangi Generation. While 1000xResist engages with the apocalyptic melancholy of those first three, it is the apocalyptic anger of Umurangi Generation Macro and End of Evangelion that you can feel rising throughout. An anger that is sometimes righteous, sometimes furious, and other times just outright cruel. It is that cruelty that makes it effective as a non-combat game, that is conversely the most violent game I have played. In that when violence happens here, it is harsh and brutal and real in a way that a game where you are killing thousands of fodder enemies could never be. The game actively resists equating all violence. As in the real world, violence in 1000xResist is a powerful social and political force. Something that can be wielded on an individual, group, or state level, and with each comes different considerations in its use, its justification and its cruelty.

There are other themes and narrative threads that the game explores that I hesitate to even mention for fear of spoiling them, and the narrative construction is perhaps where the comparisons to NeiR are most apparent, as each layer deep you find yourself thinking “well there is no way this can go and further down” and each time you are proven wrong.

In summary: Play 1000xResist. It is genuinely one of the greatest narrative video games I have ever played and I need more people to play it so I can talk with more people about it.

I paused playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth to play this, because I simply love games about disruptive marriage proposals.

I am not exactly the target market for a Jane Austen inspired Solitaire game, but I have fallen in love with the work of Jake and Helen at Grey Alien games ever since Austin Walker at Waypoint recommended Shadowhand.

They have created the perfect solitaire experience, with just enough of a narrative hook to keep you invested in the process. While I adore the combat-solitaire that is in Shadowhand and Ancient Enemy, Regency Solitaire 1 and 2 have one of my favorite subtle narrative mechanics, by having characters associated with different cards that subtly point to their relationships to each other in within Regency era social politics. It s a small but beautiful touch. I also take pride in getting all achievements in these games, and Regency Solitaire II was no exception. If you have never played a Grey Alien game, give this a go, I promise that it will be well worth your time.

If Grey Alien released a solitaire game every year they would have a permanent place on my end of year list.

Stellar game from a stellar dev. Voice acting is absolutely top notch, music is fantastic, and I adore the whole aesthetic. Well worth playing through. I will likely come back to it when the projector acheivement is fixed and to get the second ending.

If you have even the slightest interest in folklore, Black Book is well worth checking out. The breadth and depth of stories, rituals, and histories told about this particular region in Russia made my religious studies heart very happy. They do an incredible job of making the many encyclopedia and story entries feel integral to playing the game, which serves to make you feel not only invested in the fictional world, but the real place and time that the game is set in. The combat and game play systems are solid as well, and I can see how the endless battle DLC they recently added would make many people very happy, but for me the game brought me back to my days of grabbing a dozen books from the library to pour over for a paper. I love it.