This was a charming little cooking game and the perfect Game Pass drop. I think that the short runtime helped this one in that it does not at all overstay its welcome, but still tells a heartfelt story about an immigrant family and the challenges they face. You can tell how personal the narrative is for its lead writer. The cooking gameplay guides you along with simple puzzles, and is effective in making Indian food look delicious. Definitely not a game to play if you're really hungry! Overall I had a fun morning with this and the ending especially was very heartwarming and cozy.

I feel like a lot of cutesy indie games are trying to capture the exact feel of A Short Hike, often to less success. This excellent title is a compact little adventure with a fantastic sense of progression as your character, a little penguin named Claire, decides to hike up Hawk Peak.

Despite having a short runtime, this game manages to feel like you went on a journey all the same, meeting lots of different characters and participating in fun little activities to earn feathers, which let you flap your wings and get up cliffs of increasing size. At no point in A Short Hike did I feel lost or frustrated, not knowing how to progress, but always enjoyed exploring around and finding all sorts of little details.

The writing is mostly whimsical and humorously quirky, and even gets a touch sentimental toward the end. Without giving anything away, that payoff at the end of your hike feels like the ultimate reward for your efforts and a splendid ending to a cute little game. This was my second time visiting A Short Time after having already experiencing it on the Switch, and I'm sure I will be back at some point to enjoy it again.

I thought that this tiny visual novel seemed to mean well, but it comes off as melodramatic at best and perhaps even problematic with how it handles sensitive issues. The game intentionally tricks and manipulates you on your first run-through to make its point, since you don't know what the main storyline is really supposed to be. This sort of material is told much, much better in other places. It is only about 20-25 minutes to see everything, though, so it won't take a lot of your time if you're curious.

Kind of a meme game but also sort of a fun challenge at the same time? There are two gameplay modes for this- online which makes pulling the sword out of the stone harder for everybody who succeeds, and then offline which gives everybody the same level of difficulty. When I played this, the sword was at a pretty hard level online so I only gave a few attempts. Patience and endurance is really the name of the game here as you drag your mouse in a repetitious pattern to slowly make progress, hoping that you're getting closer to the sword's point. I did think the payoff was rather nice with a fun cutscene rewarding your efforts. For a free aside, it's a funny little novelty.

I have to assume that the student team behind this got an A+ on it considering they were able to craft a fun little 15 minute slice of 2D platforming with a charming short story. I'm not sure how they got Nolan North himself to sign onto this but obviously that gives them some gaming gravitas right out of the gate. I enjoyed how meta this was with the environment changing all around the character. It's simple and tongue-in-cheek but gives a great excuse to string together different gameplay ideas in the context of the narrative. The parkour gameplay reminded me a lot of the surprisingly fun Mirror's Edge iOS port. I'd recommend this to anybody who has even a few minutes for a quick little bite of gameplay, and I wouldn't mind at all to see this fleshed out into a full project. Bonus points for the interesting design concept videos and tests playing over the credits that gives you a glimpse to how it was made.

Enjoying this quite a bit so far, especially as a GamePass title. I could definitely see this one getting old rather quickly but it feels like more than a hollow cash grab just capitalizing on the success of Dead by Daylight.

Texas Chain Saw has an interesting asymmetric set-up in that the title is 3v4. I was wondering how they could possibly make it for the victims to have any chance at escape, and the family members indeed have a fairly large advantage. Even so, it's just possible enough to escape that playing as the victims is fun in its own right. I liked how easy it is to hide in this game and would often find myself ducking into the brush and having a pursuer run past me and lose my trail. Standing out in the open is also intensely exhilarating as you try to accomplish tasks- with the risk/reward system of making noise proving an effective mechanic since you don't want to alert your foes.

Playing as the family can be fun too, though the gameplay is definitely a bit simpler as you're mostly running about searching for the victims and then slashing away at them as they frantically try to get away. Weirdly I had the least amount of fun with Leatherface compared to the other family members as he is rather slow and can't get through smaller spaces, though revving the chainsaw as you chase somebody is definitely fun.

The presentation of this title is actually pretty nice, though the environments can all look the same after a while and make them easy to get lost in, even if you're the family member, which doesn't seem quite right. Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the perfect game to hop into a few rounds with your friends ever now and again, though I'm not sure it could justify a sizable price tag.

Very short, moderately enjoyable science fiction experience. It Comes In Waves nails its atmosphere, making the most of its lo-fi graphics to give a feeling of isolation out in the desert as your lone traveler struggles to survive while picking up pieces of a plant for reasons unknown until the end of the game. You're given a gun and can find better ones but enemies put up little resistance as you just blast them away. The real focus is exploring but staying on the move and thinking a little bit about when to use the water caches you find as your water levels are always depleting.

This game has no saves but it also short so that isn't a huge issue. The first time I played I was just getting my bearings so I ran out of water, and the second time I was testing out the geometry and died from fall damage (which can be really finnicky, by the way). On my third run, I beat the game with almost full water and health and never felt in any real peril. My total playtime clocked in at under an hour, but at just a couple of bucks and with some moderate enjoyment I figure I won't refund the game and support the indie developer on this one.

It Comes in Waves is an alright short experience and really gets the atmosphere down. The pretty straightforward narrative seems to be really resonating with other players, and while I liked the ending, it was a little too barebones for me to really get into. Still, I'm glad I played this one and enjoyed exploring the limited amount it has to offer.

Y'know, for a corporate marketing gimmick, this was actually sort of fun to play for what it was. I think my favorite levels were the first two with the skateboard grinding mechanic, but I enjoyed the little bit of variety we got along the way. The chiptune music was fun and I enjoyed the challenge factor in trying to collect all the Grimace shakes in the allotted time. I didn't particularly like the sparse moments of dialogue between the characters as it tried to be too trendy and modern in a bit of a corporate cringe way. Overall though this was this was very believable in what one might've expected from a licensed Game Boy game of that era and I'm glad it was part of this year's dumb Grimace campaign.

Played this at like 2 AM so that might've helped with its effectiveness, but Fears to Fathom surprised me as a free title with several surprisingly effective jump scares and some genuine tension in moments. It really captures a sense of impending doom as a home invader actively intrudes and you scramble to hide and approach the situation correctly. It has those lo-fi graphics that are so popular in these little horror games but overall does the same things better than most of its contemporaries. Interested to check out the follow-ups.