Slowly this year is becoming the year of great reimagined “casino” games. Buckshot Roulette takes the simple premise of Russian Roulette and makes it an indie horror gem.

Gameplay is primarily passing a loaded shotgun back and forth between yourself and a dealer while using a mix of items and luck to turn the odds in your favor. A general run will involve chipping away at your opponent’s health bar before taking away life support to really up the ante. Once a run has been won you will unlock a double or nothing mode that spice ups items and become essentially endless if you are prepared to take the risk for bragging rights.

Buckshot Roulette seems to take place in some kind of secret backdoor Russian nightclub that lends itself greatly to the twisted washed-out horror aesthetic. All runs begin in a dirty bathroom as you pass through a walkway with loud thumping techno music before entering the dealer’s den. At all times you can almost always hear the music muffled through the walls as the sound design is honestly fantastic.

The simple premise makes it easy to pick up and the addictive double or nothing mode is great to try for a high score. With such a low asking price I can’t recommend Buckshot Roulette enough.

Children Of The Sun is a highly stylised puzzle shooter that takes the bullet time moments from Sniper Elite and develops the idea into a full game. Most levels consist of scouting the location and marking enemies before executing a Wanted style bullet bending blood bath.

The story is one of revenge that sees the protagonist taking her anger out on a cult that left her family in ruin and death. Children Of The Sun presents its story via brief comic style cutscenes providing short insights into the history of the main character and their relationship to the cult. Most levels are separate from the story and just see you taking down stronger and stronger outpost as you get ever closer to the cult leader. Occasionally however there will be a level that directly progress the story but these are few and far between and only near the end of the game.

Gameplay wise Children Of The Sun strives to take a small idea and stretches it as far as creatively possible. This leads to some fun and unique concepts that don't overstay their welcome. With the core mechanic being bullet time this idea develops and introduces bullet redirection, slow-mo and high caliber speed to tackle a variety of different enemy types and scenarios. Latter gameplay becomes more of a puzzle game as you try to solve who to kill first and who to keep alive for a latter redirection. I did find this to become quite tedious in particularly the last 2 levels as I got relative stuck for extended periods of time due to either poor puzzle execution or long distance aim (I was playing on my Steam Deck and may have had better luck with a mouse).
One of the biggest drawbacks I found was the mini games that were randomly thrown in. These were not good and felt really out of place. Thankfully there wasn't many and only 1 was particularly difficult, but I feel it would have been a better experience with the removed completely.

The mood and atmosphere for Children Of The Sun is great and can be particularly satisfying at times. However there doesn't seem to be much keeping me engaged. You can battle other players for a high score but apart from that Children Of The Sun feels very one and done.

The Zoomer younger brother of Lethal Company.
Content Warning is absolutely fun but it’s length becomes very dependant on 2 things, knowledge of the games monsters and how funny your friends are. Thankfully I feel like my friends are relatively funny so we got about 4 and a half hours out of this, but I could very much imagine it being a lot shorter for others. With the added bonus of such a small price tag it’s not much of an arm twist to get people on board for an afternoon or 2. On the flip side however as Lethal Company is significantly more popular the modding community is very small in Content Warning so there isn’t much point shopping around online for new things to do.
My recommendation would be if you’ve plaid plenty of Lethal Company with your friends and need a new game to scratch that itch this might hold you over for a weekend at best.