Robot Daycare
A charming little visual novel about friends, philosophy, memes…oh yeah, and there’s also a robot!
Personally, I enjoyed the game, as well as both endings (for different reasons; something something spoilers). It’s a fairly quick playthrough (maybe 1~2 hours), so it doesn’t require a lot of your time.
Also, the couple of easter eggs I stumbled upon when naming the robot were amusing. :D
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cute Robots Games.
I truly cannot reconmend this game, and here’s why.
I appreciate a game that tries to deal with mental illness and depression. I believe that these are important issues to bring to light, and to have a conversation about. However, there are 2 things about this game that made it really hard for me to swallow:
1. The way that all of the characters related to one another and to each others' personalities and challenges felt very contrived, inauthentic, and ultimately without empathy. You have a charcter that in the beginning literally tries to program a robot to kill his friends laughing with them by the end, a character who fakes his own death, causes everyone massive trauma,. and is ultimately like “lol whoops guys should I not have done that?”, and folks modeling behavior that is absolutely not the right way to deal with or help someone dealing with mental health issues. Yes. The game makes it clear that there are no easy answers and that dealing with those issues is difficult. But I legitimately felt bad playing the game at some points because I had no way to choose better actions for the characters because you literally get to make like 4 choices in the entire game.
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
Saiko no sutoka
haha yandere with knife chasing around the school be fun
– Real player with 141.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Cute First-Person Games.
I know I’m supposed to be scared but I’m feeling a completely different……..emotion when I see Saiko. 10/10 would get stabbed again.
– Real player with 27.9 hrs in game
Bird by Example
What is Bird by Example?
Bird by Example is — and I say this with great passion — an RPG sandbox where all the occupying NPCs are grotesque birds who mimic your behavior with deep learning algorithms. Nothing is scripted! Everything is emergent! Be the bird you want to see in the world!
Steam has asked me to be more explicit with the game’s features:
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world
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objects
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jump
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crawl
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punch
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squawk
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bite
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physics objects
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other*
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stories??**
It’s an artificial intelligence sandbox acted out by birds with concerning musculature! Help them see, help them love, help them eat a big fat bug! Right now at this very second, the metaphysical bounds of this game hold a throng of hungry birds who wish nothing more than to be like you! Like Mama!
_*: Imprint psuedo-neurologically upon independent bird agents, using recurrent neural networks, gradient descent, and a custom-built system of semiotic metadata evocation (to afford transferrable behavior between distinct objects and agents which share characteristics along an n-dimensional space).
**: Isn’t life a story? Aren’t we all little stories, flying on this crazy rock?_
You said this was a game? Who’s Mama? I’m Mama? Who are you again?
Please pay attention. These birds are equipped with artificial neural networks that optimize themselves against your own actions! Using trendy deep learning algorithms found in a black box at the bottom of the sea, and something called ‘gradient descent’, they will try to become mathematically perfect distillations of you! It’s very computationally expensive and very math!
But what do you actually do?
Explore, follow self-imposed rules, and cultivate your flock! Tutor a bird to act just like you! By simply doing things, they will learn from you by witnessing your play! Bite an orange and you may start to see other birds doing similarly! Squawk at a another bird and watch your flock erupt into squawkage!
Oh! That’s interesting. So they have brains!?
Woah, strong word! Let’s avoid that word!
Have you ever played a game, and thought: “This is fun, but I live in such fear that I cannot enjoy it…”
Yes, I do live a life of fear! And thank you for blowing off my silly and ethically challenging question!
Yes, you do live in fear! You’re like any brain-wielding creature! But in Bird by Example there will be nothing to be afraid of! In bird world there is nothing to be afraid of! Nothing to be afraid of! Turn that brain off!
Okay. And the game is fun? It’s a game?
You must teach the rest of the birds basic life skills! If not, they will all starve to death!
Wait, you coded these birds to feel hungry but didn’t teach them how to eat?
That feature was out of scope! Please!!! Hungry!!!
Hold on… What’s a bird?
A bird is a fictional creature which came to me in a dream on a particularly cold night in February. I woke up in a sweat the next morning and quickly tried to recreate the apparition from memory. The results? Remarkable.
Earliest known footage of a “Bird” from that morning.
They were perfect. All they needed was a name.
The word ‘Bird’ is a mix of the word ‘word’ and the letter ‘b’ This is because I needed a word — or “wird” — to describe the birds. Sadly, a word using ‘a’ was already taken. It’s like gamertags!
I experimented for many weeks with flight, but no matter how much I stretched out their arms they would not.
Whatever. Doesn’t matter.
Read More: Best Cute Memes Games.
Duru – About Mole Rats and Depression
Tuli leads a simple life in the mole rat colony: she collects food, meets with her friends and paints the best pictures in the colony. All the while nobody but her sees the dark creature that makes each of those activities a near unbeatable task.
Duru is a 2D puzzle adventure about mole rats and depression. It shows how we all can help people affected by this illness.
Set in a West-African inspired mole rat colony you play Tuli, one of the gatherers of the colony. One day everything becomes harder as Bel, an AI companion and the personification of Tuli’s growing depression, joins the party.
While running, jumping and painting your way through the tunnels surrounding the colony you have to find a way to deal with Bel and its manipulative behaviour. Your constant companion moves objects you painted around, eats them and holds you back in which ever way possible. Learn to use Bels behaviour in a way that lets you progress.
In the mole rat colony that Tuli calls her home her friends notice that she’s acting strange. She’s less talkative, is always late and seems not interested at all in hanging out with them. Some of them get tired of her tardiness…
You can always see how Bel twists Tuli’s thoughts, how it makes her not feel worth being friends with. Through exploring the mole rat colony and interaction with the other characters you can find out which behaviours are helpful to Tuli and which just make Bel grow.
Follow the story of Tuli – a story about the struggle with insecurities, depression and friendship, told in a colorful, accessible way.
What awaits you:
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a puzzle adventure in a colorful, West African-inspired setting
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a story about depression told through animation and picture dialog to enjoy regardless of language
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an AI companion that works with and against you
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drawing objects to puzzle your way through a lovingly designed world
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cute characters of the mole rat colony to befriend and uncover their individual stories
my fluffy life
Update 2 (Late Autumn Update) :
Gameplay : The gameplay has improved very much. The seasons make every season change exciting. The new minigame introduced where you collect apples, pumpkins, and hiney to make jam is an excellent game. It keeps my attention and the art design is gorgeous. The amount of teddycoins you make from that game is also reasonable in my opinion. The way the minigames themselves make you gain happiness as well as working towards another minigame is something I very much enjoy. Growing chamomile bushes and collecting honey is also very relaxing! One thing I think that could enhance the game play of the jam-making minigame in particular though is being able to make multiple jams at once. By this, I mean that I can stack layers of apples and honeycomb to make several apple jams, similar to how you can stack items in Minecraft in the crafting table to make multiple of the same object all at once. Of course this is just a suggestion and I respect the vision pooftie wishes to create, so if she does not want to do this for any reason, I am fine with that!
– Real player with 64.2 hrs in game
este é o joguinho mais suave que já joguei .. ! ς꒰´ ˘ ' ς ⑅ ꒱ა ˒˒
é um adorável jogo projetado para interação e personalização .. os controles são fáceis e você pega o jeitinho do jogo muito rápido ♡ você pode enviar mensagens à outros jogadores, decorar sua casinha e seu meigo bichinho, e no final de um dia amável .. relaxar com as musiquinhas do jogo enquanto escreve em seu diariozinho ♡
me sinto com o coraçãozinho aquecido e completamente confortável enquanto exploro os cantinhos deste joguinho, e fortemente recomendo para quem deseja fazer amigos de uma maneira mais sutil ou está buscando um cantinho aconchegante para passar um tempinho .. ♡ ꒰ ᐟᐟ ´ ˘ ' ᐟᐟ ꒱
– Real player with 28.6 hrs in game
Wobbledogs
I don’t write reviews often, but this game is fantastic and I hope it gains more attention. I saw someone create an animation about this game, and I’m so glad I decided to check the game out. It’s simple but very calming and fun. Not to mention, it’s being updated pretty often. Also worth noting that the community in the discord server is very kind, willing to help out on anyone struggling to get achievements, and answer questions.
Gameplay
– Real player with 21.1 hrs in game
the best game ever
– Real player with 17.9 hrs in game
Rumu
(click ↑ to open if you don’t see a bullet list)
Basic things you should know:
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Despite appearances, Rumu is “not a branching narrative ” – none of the dozens of dialogue options you’ll be asked to click through influences the story.
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The game proceeds through “days,” and you can’t save anywhere mid-day. If you quit out and continue, you go back to the start of the day.
– Real player with 16.0 hrs in game
Spoilers ahead. In summary, the game is tedious, too short, (only around 2-5 hours of gameplay) and too predictable.
I’ll give props where props are do. The game did its job in surprising you, in some cases. It was also pretty interesting the first time playing. The graphics aren’t godawful, and the vacuuming parts were pretty satisfying. Now for my complaints.
The storyline was too predictable. There was so much foreshadowing in parts like how Sabrina stuttered a ton when mentioned David and Cecily’s absense. There was obviously something shady Sabrina did.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
Baklava Simulator
Really Amazing game with stunning graphics. Runs really smooth so far. Is really fun to get your own baklava shop and start managing it. I would recommend it!
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
Card of spirits(卡靈)
“Card of spirits” is a really novel and interesting game. It overturns the traditional rules of card games, but adding new elements I have never seen. The winning condition is decided by the common cards' values. Compared with other card games which all have the similiar minions and spells, this game has a simple and fresh rules, but not losing strategies. The art in this game also shows a different view to players. In collection part, “Card of spirits” did really give me a big surprise. With new models adding, I think this game can be popular.！！！
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
I’ve played some more of it & decided to change my opinion to negative - the points I was previously referring to as “a little irritating” now seem to really get on my nerves & bad for such a small project.
It’s a very small colorful card game (against AI) with unknown rules (rather simple so you can figure them out soon while playing). It runs in a borderless static window 800x600, so what you see there on Steam screenshots is just someone’s desktop wallpaper behind the game window in the center. It’s being controlled from keyboard with just 3 buttons: left, right, enter. The program looks, works & sounds nicely - fonts, ornaments, sounds etc.
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
Chess’Extra
Tried it out with a friend of mine, it isn’t very well made but gets the job done.
UI could use improvement, sounds could be introduced properly.
It’s free, but it’s a mixed bag. Leaving as “Not Recommended” since there are better versions for free or paid on Steam and on the Web.
– Real player with 14.3 hrs in game
_It’s Chess but with something a little Extra!
Haha! You see what I did there?_
– Real player with 10.9 hrs in game