Roundabout
Roundabout is a cheesy low-budget FMV game starring a limousine driver, a mechanic, a lady in a hat, and a $40 skeleton bought off of Amazon.com with surprising entertainment value.
In Roundabout, you control a constantly rotating limousine. You play as Georgio Manos, the world’s first revolving limousine driver. Your limousine is constantly rotating at all times, which forms the core of the game’s gameplay – you know how to get from point A to point B, but your constant revolution makes your life a lot more difficult. Early on it is fairly simple, navigating your way around stationary obstacles, but as the game progresses, things get increasingly more difficult, with moving obstacles, barrels which cause you to bounce in the opposite direction after striking them, platforming (done while spinning all the while), and the odd unique gameplay challenge to make things harder.
– Real player with 21.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Driving Indie Games.
Most of us have been gaming a super long time by now, and anyone who’s been around can tell that ideas are slowly running dry. Innovation is something more or less absent from the game industry as we see the market pump out bland shooters, uninspired retro platformers, Diablo-likes, or roguelike-likes sticking with elements they know sell while struggling to find ideas that haven’t been exhausted already. Every great once and awhile a game comes a long and changes everything capturing the hearts of players everywhere by simply presenting us with a mechanic so strange and simple yet is an absolute blast to play. A game that makes the player stop and ask “Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?”
– Real player with 16.0 hrs in game
Wheels of Aurelia
Some people complain that there’s no innovation in the AAA games anymore, just TPP loot crafting shooters with stealth elements. Well, on the other side we have Wheels of Aurelia that is trying super hard to look like nothing else, combining a racing game with visual novel. Too bad it fails at pretty much everything it tried to do.
We’re a rebelious women that doesn’t need no man, a feminist (or the one that only looks like one) that picks up another chick at the disco. Both then decide to have a long ride to France along the Via Aurelia road, having all kinds of topic to talk to - abortion, kidnappings, abortion, family issues, music, feminist movements, traditional values, abortion etc. If I’m being not clear enough, the game has a statement to make, and the year of the game isn’t random. It encapsulates two main events from 1978 that have taken place in Italy - Moro kidnapping and legalisation of abortion. Both of these topics will be pretty much on our tongues no matter where we’ll ride or what hitchhiker we take next. No matter what you’ll get ‘strong independent womyn’ vibe from the protagonist, Lella, that is as rebelious as annoying. Every once in a while you’ll have an option to pick up a topic for conversation or your passenger will ask you a question about another topic. These can then be answered in one of two ways, and it can be summarised by ‘yes’, or ‘sarcastic yes’. Many topics present no real input on the conversation, your answers will always be in the spirit of the defined character, later even called a communist. Opinions of your character will always be skewed in one way - someone said something controversial and you want to disgree? Nope, you can either agree or say something mildly controversial too. Question about abortion is a prominent example - you can say it’s either just a medical operation or it might be a traumatic experience. Other time you can say that men are no longer needed. The whole story feels like it’s been written by a raging feminist who tried to put as many leftist ideas as possible. Later in the game (as 10 minutes later) you can ditch your friend for different kind of passenger, a priest or a has-been race driver, and these conversations aren’t that bad, but first couple of runs you’ll probably keep Olga till the end and you’ll get sick of woke comments.
– Real player with 10.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Driving Indie Games.
This is not a game. It’s a visual novel, with somewhat mature topics. (TL;DR: read the last paragraph in my review.)
If you are curious about the driving sections… They are extremely basic, they’re just a mildly interactive background scenario for dialog choices.
In this visual novel, you have the following kinds of control:
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Pick which car you want to start with.
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Pick one of three dialog options when asked. (Or don’t pick one, and go with the default answer.)
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Choose between stopping to give a ride to hitchhikers.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Titan Chaser
A mechanically rough Early Access with a great concept and surreal mood about finding and rescuing giant titans roaming the land using all kinds of bright lights.
Your only two companions are a run down, beige coloured Chrysler K platform car that’s held together by glue, droplets of constant fog and the sheer enthusiasm of the main protagonist and a mysterious, freakishly tall hotel manager named Jasper. He’s also your main contact when your car decides to bunny hop down a hill and gets stuck on the train tracks or you decide to test how far into the water you can drive.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Driving Walking Simulator Games.
This modestly priced Early Access walking sim has some great ideas at its core and even though I am not huge on buying in before the product is complete, I feel like I have already got my money’s worth and could quite happily recommend this to a walking sim fan who wants something a little bit different.
PROS
- unexpected. You can almost count the versions of a walking sim on 1 or maybe 2 hands. Angsty teen, space station, psychological horror, but never have I played a walking sim where I basically have to drive around and shoo-away monsters.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
Super Hiking Simulator 2020
Up front: While I enjoyed it, you get what you pay for.
This game is not a technical marvel. It is not polished or fully-featured, or realistic, per se. In fact, it’s a little janky. Don’t expect AAA anything, or revolutionary anything. But you can probably figure that out from the description. You can probably also figure out that it has a sidequest (
! that, in fully-intended irony, eclipses the main trail in terms of content and interaction). I enjoyed the game because of its unique charm and atmosphere.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
yes
– Real player with 2.1 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
Super Night Riders
My first reaction to this game was: this game can only be valuable for nostalgia/historical factor, and I can’t honestly recommend it to anyone else. But then I played it a little more, and it got me thinking.
This game faithfully recreates the gameplay of 80s arcade racers with all the important details, but with more modern visuals. The visuals are not mind blowing, but they look pleasant and are not dull.
The gameplay doesn’t have a lot of variety, unfortunately, even compared to the 80s racers. There’s only one vehicle you can choose, one type of “enemies”, no unexpected nasties like an oil spill and such, and the track variety is pretty much limited to the visual theme. The tracks are handcrafted though and are nicely tuned in terms of the difficulty curve and the challenge.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Super Night Raiders is my first racing game that I’ve managed to finish. Actually, it isn’t exactly a racing game - you aren’t trying to be the 1st but complete laps under a given time, depending on the difficulty setting you choose. While you are driving you are encountering other freeway bikers which are supposed to be obstacles that you aren’t supposed to hit - if you hit them you get a massive speed penalty which can ruin your run. One or two mistakes is actually ok, but if you do more than that you probably won’t make it on the normal mode. Easy mode is exactly the same, except that it grants you more time to finish each lap so you are allowed to make more mistakes, but you don’t get achievements.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Cloudpunk
This game is great!
The game does a great job of taking an idea of a society like the one seen in movies like BladeRunner (or fuckin Pluto Nash) and expands on it. The world has enough new elements to make it stand out.
The main characters are great and you really do end up loving them. The side characters are also great in how funny or wacky they are while sometimes being effectively used symbolically to highlight real world issues and topics.
While the controls of the ships can be a little wonky everything else is pretty spot on.
– Real player with 49.7 hrs in game
Full game video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcXZO2_mCgg
I had my reservations about this game to begin with, I thought it was going to be yet another 8 bit style game trying to be something more impressive. Well, I was quite wrong, this is a good game with a good storyline and impressive graphics with out of this world lighting. My only criticism is the rigidness of the story every answer and every question is already planned out, now normally I wouldn’t mind that layout but I feel the game deserves more. There is a lot to love about this game, I felt sorry for control and was invested in Rania’s life enough to keep playing. A good game with good characters and fantastic lighting, man I love that lighting :-). One last thing to add, the city is glorious, fascinating to drive around and big, very very big.
– Real player with 23.7 hrs in game
Project Voxel Miami
Welcome to Mimai
It’s the 80’s and you’re a mafia in Miami.
Who will do the tasks given to the mafia first? Fulfill the task given to you before your opponents to win. Whoever made more money at the end of the game will be the best mafia. Explore the Miami inspired voxel map alone or with friends.
This game is a multiplayer action shooter where you can fight with your friends or against them, clash with weapons.
Wasteland Angel
This game somehow reminds me of the mid-90s sci-fi flick Tank Girl, but maybe the similarity begins and ends with the post-apocalyptic setting, the cartoonish art style and the main characters, both girls whose favourite activity seems to be shooting mutants. You take on the role of Angel, who drives around in her car and saves the inhabitants of post-world war III settlements from mutant attacks. So much for the backstory.
Gameplay wise, Wasteland Angel is a no-nonsense top-down shooter. You’re looking at a desert landscape from an isomotric perspective, drive around with a car whilst shooting at other cars that likewise shoot at you. That’s pretty much all there is. Your main armament consists of two fixed guns, additional weapons can be aquired by driving over power-ups. Each level has three stages and, after you defeat the stages final boss in the third, a short bonus stage that leaves the top-down view and switches to a first-person perspective. The game never breaks from this pattern.
– Real player with 10.6 hrs in game
Honestly, this game is exactly what it presents itself as - a fast-paced, post-apocalyptic arcade-style game focused around vehicular combat. Within that mold, there’s some aspects I appreciate quite a lot.
- Civilian towns. The primary objective is not just to survive against all comers, but to protect towns full of civilians - this often, at least for me - created situations where I had no choice but to hold off on blowing up targets trying very hard to kill me in order to protect civilians. This particular feature just seems very well designed - you’ve got enough heallth to sacrifice some if you have to in order to protect civilians, the game smoothly increases complexity from one town on a flat map to multiple towns on a map covered in impassable terrain obstacles, etc. If a bunch of civies are walking back to town after the transport which took them is exploded and you or an enemy runs them over, they die, etc. It’s little things like that which make a good game a great one or a bad game okay.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Lake
*This review contains plot spoilers, read at your own digression.
I’m not usually one to write a review recommending against a game, especially one I went to the trouble of getting all the achievements for, and spending almost 13 hours in.
But Lake, much to my absolute dismay, just falls very short in the places where I had thought it was meant to shine.
The charming little town of Providence Oaks, is, on paper, an alluring display. For aesthetics, Lake hits the mark. The game is beautiful, the scenery is relaxing, the aforementioned Lake is gorgeous, and at the end of 13 hours I felt a little bit sad at the thought of Meredith Weiss leaving her childhood home.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
💌 Score: 4/10
I was SO excited about this game, but … when I played it.. ehh…
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good game - or… is it? I am not too sure anymore! Let’s take a look at a pros and cons list:
Pros
✔️ Relaxing, though a little monotone gameplay
✔️ Good atmosphere, especially loved the sound of the rain!
✔️ Good stylized graphics, pretty scenery
✔️ Good characters with good character design, loved that we got two love interests
✔️ Good voiceactors (with the exception of Mildred, what the heck was that lady on-)
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game