OneShot is a wonderful little RPG where you guide a child character through a world filled with a quirky ensemble of characters, with some neat puzzles, fourth-wall breaks, and a bullet-hell battle syst--... wait, scratch that last one.

Yes, comparisons to Undertale are inevitable; both have a similar writing style and were released close to each other. Undertale's unfathomable popularity leaves OneShot feeling a bit neglected, but it has strong points of its own. Niko's personality is well-written, managing to keep a curious precociousness without tipping too far into immaturity. The game's soundtrack is a soothing, minimalistic, almost lo-fi swirl, pairing well with the somber world.

Without spoiling anything, some of the game's unique puzzle mechanics are a bit obtuse, and I needed a guide to get through some of them. Nothing that ruined the game experience, but some did feel more like gimmicks put in because it was possible to implement, rather than ones that were satisfying to solve. (Though I will admit I'm not the best at parsing everything that's being telegraphed at me.)

The story is quite lighthearted, even as it can dip into heavier tones. I personally think the Solstice expansion, while definitely expanding on the world in a positive way, undoes part of what makes the endings of the original form of the game work. I don't feel overall soured by the change.

Overall, I think its strengths still shine (no pun intended) through its weaknesses and can still recommend this charming little game.

A wonderfully crafted technically-a-first-person-shooter puzzle-platformer, with decent comedic chops and lots of interesting mechanics expanded upon by the community.

Note that I played Portal 2 first and Portal after. The tone is a lot lighter in the newer game, further detaching itself from Half-Life. Some mechanics have been refined, the slow-moving energy ball now a laser, and portal shots traveling instantly to their destination. New mechanics, such as the speed, bounce, and portal paint, are introduced and iterated upon over the course of the game, but like the original, it does not overstay its welcome. (It's still about twice as long as the very short Portal.) Somehow, I have yet to actually play through the co-op mode, which by all reports seems to be another 8 hours.

Also like the original, Portal 2 is quite easy. Those looking for challenging puzzles may find more interest in community-made mods such as Portal Stories: Mel or Portal Reloaded, or community maps published on the workshop ranging from base-game easy to nightmarishly-difficult. A quick note on community maps: I highly recommend completely ignoring steam workshop votes and built-in discovery tools -- there is a lot of poorly-designed yet highly-popular maps there. Look for recommendations from humans, not algorithms. RedSilencer's Introduction to the Workshop collection is an excellent first choice on post-game community puzzles.

Portal 2 was the first game I played on my Steam account when I was 11 or so. It's not a long game, but I sunk many hours into it, playing through multiple times over the years and even longer just noclipping through the maps to see everything and listening to the developer commentary, always a extra treat in Valve games for budding or wannabe game developers. (Unfortunately: *gestures broadly at the gaming industry*)

There have been a lot of words spilled about Minecraft and its legacy on video games as a medium. As a result it's hard to give genuinely new observations about the game, so I will simply describe my experiences.

My memory is hazy -- I remember first encountering Minecraft on a friend-of-a-friend's Playstation Portable at around 10 or 11, but the game was never released for that console. (It might have been a phone, or as was the case for me, an iPod Touch.) Either way, I was mesmerized by the ability to build or destroy basically anything in the explorable voxel world. Later I would find Minecraft: Pocket Edition Lite (probably 0.5.x or 0.6.x) and the free browser version of Minecraft Classic (the creative-only browser Java applet version of 0.30), happily playing with my siblings and friends at our church and on whatever Classic multiplayer servers were up. Sometime at age 11, I got the demo, and shortly thereafter the full paid version of the Java Edition, known then simply as Minecraft.

In the coming years I and my siblings would play across dozens, if not hundreds, of survival worlds, each filled with tiny stories. My brother would build elaborate, walled castles of cobblestone in his survival worlds but never fill in the creeper craters scattered around it. I built smaller, minimalistic homes and focused on fancy tunnels and paths connecting points of interest.

Beyond singleplayer worlds, we played thousands of games on multiplayer servers. My sister loved Hunger Games, a community-created multiplayer mode loosely inspired by the Suzanne Collins book series of the same name and a staple of any game-focused server. I and my brother spent hours defending forts in the LihP server network's Dwarves vs. Zombies.

Even to this day, I still watch Minecraft lets-play channels on YouTube (namely Ethoslab) and occasionally participate in private community servers run by my friends, helping to gear up new players and construct elaborate buildings, farms, and transporation networks. Though I no longer follow the game as it updates, I doubt I will ever truiy be done with Minecraft.