Bear With Me: The Lost Robots
This is a first impressions style of review, as I haven’t finished the game, and I’m part way through what I guess is the prequel.
Firstly, I love the art style. Growing up, seeing some Don Bluth animations, and Space Ace / Dragons Lair arcade games, the cartoon quality animations always made me go “wow”. Now we take it for granted. However this is one of those games that makes you go “wow”, with the film noir 1930’s / 1940’s style, with the modern animation. I really do like it. And surprisingly, the grey scale works amazingly well and fits in with the whole style.
– Real player with 26.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Female Protagonist Story Rich Games.
A trully masterfully made little game that at first glance seem to have no right to actually be as good as it is.
Bear with me is a mix of a noir style detective narrative, with some clever humor sprinkled in that at times is way to cynical to be targeted at children, so don’t be fooled by the graphics style. To top the noir atmosphere there’s a very layered narrative that can be enjoyed both by kids on a surface level (with the cute looking characters) or on a deeper level by adults who might reminis about their past. The DLC even has a bit of twin peaks thrown in for good measure and is generally darker than the main game.
– Real player with 24.8 hrs in game
Contrast
Before I begin the review proper, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge what a complete f*cking idiot I am.
When I first played this I went through it entirely using mouse and keyboard, despite the fact I was frequently grumbling about how heart-breaking the controls were and the slight but still awkward disconnect between button press and character. But I still persevered because, well… sure, I do have a control pad, but since the mouse and keyboard were already hooked up and I was already in my pyjamas, I was hardly going to lean over a couple feet to my right to grab and connect a controller now, was I? But before writing this review I decided to give it a shot just to be sure, and damn, am I a complete f*cking idiot. It was a revelation. The difference might be small but the impact is massive, and that tightening of movement and control pretty much eradicated the major complaint I had about the gameplay. So I’ve learned my lesson, control pad for 3rd-person games from now on. Though, whichever control method you use, you should still find a lot to love about this game.
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Female Protagonist Indie Games.
Take a moment here to remember your childhood. Remember how afternoons after school could be filled with fantastical worlds brought forth from the trees, the rocks, the tall grasses in the backyard or the field near your neighborhood: all you needed was your imagination. Remember as you went to sleep at night and stared at the shadows in your room, sometimes in wonder, and sometimes in fear of the shapes they made. Remember how life could be magical in the most ordinary of things and how, as you grew older, you longed for the days when reality didn’t have to be so damned real all the time: homework, bills, politics, relationships, family…
– Real player with 8.8 hrs in game
Emerald City Confidential™
Emerald City Confidential is an enjoyable romp through the land of Oz, set 20 years after Dorothy’s initial visit to Oz. In those 20 years, a number of things have changed, and although a number of the character names will be familiar, their personalities and motivations have changed.
You take the role of Petra, a Detective, who is initially hired to find a missing person. That goal expands throughout the game. There also is ANOTHER underlying more personal case for Petra that spans the entire game. As Petra, you will not only visit the Emerald City, but you will also visit other lands of Oz as well
– Real player with 19.8 hrs in game
I can’t recommend this hidden gem enough.
Pros:
Setting, the game is set in a dystopian adaptation of the Wizard of Oz. Many years after the adventure of Dorothy Gale and her ragtag group, the city of Oz and the surrounding world has taken a very dark turn. The Ozian empire suffered a catatrosphic attack by foreigners that nearly destoryed the country, magic has been outlawed and punished harshly (even death in some cases) and the world has become corrupt and dark. Many of the characters well loved in the original story have become tainted. New characters added could have been in the original story as they fit into the universe perfectly.
– Real player with 12.6 hrs in game
Black Closet
Are you good enough to get into a prestigious college?
Well, you better hope you are, because that’s your ultimate goal as Black Closet’s main character Elsa Jackson. Actually achieving that goal requires a successful term as president of your school’s student council, and achieving that goal requires putting the lid on several potential scandals without damaging your own credibility too badly. Let me tell you, there are a lot of potential scandals, and other forces at work may end up making your life more difficult. But first you need to identify and neutralize the traitor within your ranks…
– Real player with 104.5 hrs in game
Black Closet is one of my favorite games. The characters are interesting and sometimes complex, the story is entertaining and contains some interesting branches, and the gameplay is a really fun application of resource management to solve mysteries.
Elsa, the player character, is the president of the student council and must strategically deploy her “minions” (the other student council members) to resolve various crises so that their fancy private school remains respected while also trying not to ruin the student council’s reputation with the rest of the student body. These crises vary from mundane (the daughter of someone important might be failing a class) to serious (a student has gone missing). You need to assign the right minion for various investigative tasks that match their personal skills (for example, you don’t want to send the nice friendly girl to yell at a culprit or send the introvert to gather info via a friendly chat with a suspect) while also balancing your minions' needs because they will be temporarily unavailable if their workload causes too much stress. The cases are randomized, so this is great for replayability!
– Real player with 66.2 hrs in game
Blackwell Deception
Rosangela Blackwell is a struggling author living in New York, and a medium. Enter Joey Mallone, a ghost and spirit guide tied to the female members of the Blackwell family. When Rosa’s aunt, Lauren Blackwell, passes after being in a coma for decades, Joey is ‘released’ from Lauren and enters Rosa’s life. Details are revealed throughout the five installments of the Blackwell series regarding the female members of the Blackwell family, how Joey came to be, what happened to Aunt Lauren to trap her in a comatose state, etc. Together, Rosa and Joey seek out and help tormented ghosts trapped in the physical world cross over to “the other side” throughout the series.
– Real player with 18.6 hrs in game
Blackwell Deception is the 4th game in the Blackwell Series and so far I think it’s actually my favorite! What really stands out to me is the story. I feel like the makers have begun to really hone their story telling abilities. This game feels like the climax of the overall story arc. It draws in elements from all the previous games and builds on them and though some parts were predictable (many P&C Adventure games are) it did manage provide some unpredictable moments that I didn’t see coming.
– Real player with 11.0 hrs in game
Blackwell Epiphany
Rosangela Blackwell is a struggling author living in New York, and a medium. Enter Joey Mallone, a ghost and spirit guide tied to the female members of the Blackwell family. When Rosa’s aunt, Lauren Blackwell, passes after being in a coma for decades, Joey is ‘released’ from Lauren and enters Rosa’s life. Details are revealed throughout the five installments of the Blackwell series regarding the female members of the Blackwell family, how Joey came to be, what happened to Aunt Lauren to trap her in a comatose state, etc. Together, Rosa and Joey seek out and help tormented ghosts trapped in the physical world cross over to “the other side” throughout the series.
– Real player with 35.3 hrs in game
This fifth and final installment, Epiphany, is the culmination of all that the Blackwell series has been building up to. The art has really come into its own after a poor showing in the last game, and a focus on exterior locations has resulted in some truly beautiful backgrounds. Puzzles feel completely natural which could be an effect of the game design changing so little between Epiphany and Deception or simply from the fine tuning done over the past four games.
This is also by far the longest of the Blackwell games. The story focuses on the job ahead of our heroes this time rather than mystery of the duty itself, but still manages to be epic. As a spirit medium, Rosangela is involved in the most important moment of each of these peoples' lives (existences), which is brought home by another string of excellent voice performances. Those individual stories are then woven together to create something that not only hits harder than it ever could have alone but also provides answers to what has become the Blackwell legacy.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game
BUSTAFELLOWS
Probably the highest quality otome game that’s been localised into English so far. I have yet to play a game with this many immersive elements, I’m shocked that this isn’t the standard. There’s animated CGs, dynamic voice work, characters with multiple outfit changes and poses. Their eyes even move to the speaking character if they happen to be on the same screen. This game has THE smoothest intro to main menu transition I have ever seen in my damn life.
So let’s look at our lovable cast:
- Limbo is the confident and suave type who always seems like he’s in control. He’s funny, and supportive, but he’s actually a lot more childish than one would think. He’s a really good poster boy.
– Real player with 118.2 hrs in game
In short, I like reading Bustafellows. Although it has many places where it underwhelms me.
The stories in this game are kind of all over the place. It seems there are too many topics the game wants to tackle on, but fails to do so in depth.
A lot of the settings are far-fetched and unrealistic, like Crow being a super genius all-powerful hacker. The existence of magical plastic surgeries. Our 5 fixers, who are supposed to do things hidden, expose all of themselves to the enemy, or even worse, to the internet. Villains who conveniently put everything that would prove them guilty in a nice
! USB drive for us to read.
! Nanobots entering one’s body, powered by “body energy” which the only plausible meaning is glucose in the blood (right?), but they stopped working after the person goes in to cardiac arrest, but in no sense would going into cardiac arrest take away all the glucose in the blood. I know I shouldn’t expect realism in this kind of games, but not doing so would require me to lower expectations.
– Real player with 51.4 hrs in game
Knee Deep
Knee Deep is a point and click adventure game revolving around a murder mystery. Set in a small backwater town called Cypress Knee in Florida, you control the three main characters as they investigate an actor’s murder, digging deep into a world of political corruption, blackmail, intrigue and even a bit of sci fi weirdness. The story is accompanied by nice graphics, atmospheric music and a unique take on gameplay where the story takes place as if it was a theater play complete with moving sets and all. The game is available on PS4, XBox One, and PC via Steam, which is the version I played for this review.
– Real player with 19.0 hrs in game
DISCLAIMER: This is a review of the first episode. No score will be given. A full review of the entire season will follow once all three episodes have been released.
It’s a good thing that I’m playing this game on a hot summer evening. It’s also interesting that I live just a few miles away from one of the largest swampland areas in Europe and the humidity, as always, is unbearable. It’s just curious that there are no mosquitoes tonight. All in all, a perfect situation to immerse myself into Knee Deep, a self-proclaimed swamp noir in three acts. And I am immersed in a matter of seconds. The first thing that strikes me is the music, a brilliantly moody mixture of American folk and blues. I start the game up and I am immediately seated in a theater. I silence my mobile phone out of respect for the actors. As the curtain rises on the stage, I find myself in a backwater Florida town of Cypress Knee. It’s a grim start as a washed-up actor has hanged himself from a tower next to a local inn.
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
Piroku
The Corporation swallows everything. It crawls into every household. It clouds the mind and sucks the life out of us. It steals our dreams, replacing them with consumerism. It’s time to put an end to this!
To fight evil, good guys must have fists. Better yet - a katana. But you gotta have one more important thing to defeat the bad.
Piroku is the adrenaline driven dance of death. Every moment can be your last. Hordes of enemies are only hurdles on the way.
Defeat the army of the possessed and stop the Corporation.
Features:
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dynamic fights and liters of blood,
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atmospheric soundtrack,
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an immersive story about a girl trying to defy a powerful corporation,
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minimalistic comic book style graphics, easter eggs and an advanced neural network, calling itself the Elder.
Release date: Q1 2021
The Slaughter: Act One
The Slaughter is a noir point-in-click adventure game from Brainchild, which is a one man team I might add. It’s reminiscent of old adventure games like Monkey Island or Full Throttle, and more recently, it reminds me of The Blackwell Legacy (which also took inspiration from those classics).
In The Slaughter you play as Sydney Emerson, a down on this luck, behind on his rent detective-really is there any other kind-living in London in the East End in 1880. The story opens with Sydney on his side in a dark alley getting beaten by a large man named Sallis and his diminutive employer Mr. Finch. You luck your way out of that situation and you soon get a case to work on. There is a serial killer roaming the streets and a client is paying you for you private detective services.
– Real player with 18.5 hrs in game
BRAINCHILD, we need more!
This little point-and-click is dark and adorable, funny and unique, and super entertaining! I couldn’t resist playing the whole thing in one sitting, but that being said, it is reletively short. Being hooked, I started reserching the game, and realized that this seems to have been a solo project of BRAINCHILD, which makes it all the more impressive.
| PROs | CONs |
| Entertaining story with adult themes |
– Real player with 8.0 hrs in game