Recent reviews by Struggler

one of the clearest labor of love games, and it's held its ground as a solid more-arcadey space game at sizable scope

Great advancements on the excellent Strange Horticulture formula.

The game before Silksong

(previously completed on Switch)

Great atmosphere. Fairly chill yet foreboding. with lots of room for speculation, deduction, and decent player engagement in mystery unraveling.

In fun ways, the game builds upon memory commitments and organization/categorization choices, and the game is relatively free in the timing of when players can solve riddles.

It does a good job of allowing you to feel smart, when you actually are being a bit smart.

“Sweet happy endings,
gloomy bittersweet endings,
hopeless bad endings, all.”

(patched)

great narrative with a strong, atmospheric setting, and great audio design

an absolute top indie title as far as overall execution goes, with my only nitpick being that a small handful of sequences may feel like they lean too strongly on formulas overused in weaker, smaller scope indie titles. these portions are limited though.

probably a game that will stick in people's minds for decades

a solid animu romp w/ decent psychological horror, and a high amount of care towards quality in interactions and presentation

Extremely chill incremental game primarily controlled by just pushing your mouse, while also not requiring you to constantly be pushing your mouse.

Maybe my top recommendation among idler games when it comes to mechanics, for situations where you are super tired and just need to stay up a couple more hours for sleep schedule adjustment.

Main caveat: no endgame, making this good for just a single nice sit-down

Balatro's chill, has excellent visuals, a soundtrack that's hard to get out of your head, and it offers up complexity and variety that you can choose to care about as much or as little as you want.

Play the same mode over and over to master it, or bounce around to challenge different variations, it's all a good time.

While it can be hard to keep track of what strategy you were aiming for if you pause and come back to a run much later, there's generally no time pressure anywhere in the game.

Overall, it's so unique and well executed that I can't help but just blanket recommend it.

"Like hell I was gonna stay outta the loop any longer!"

Easy recommendation for fans of Phoenix Wright games, Spike Chunsoft games, or other games with heavy story and character focus.

Expect strong, increasingly ramping immersion, with the characters and story well-integrated into the light yet meaningful game aspects.