Admittedly its kind of cheating to make a sad game about death and grief, try to make a sad game about the Zucker Brothers and there's a challenge! But seriously this game came to me at a particularly challenging moment in my life when I lost my Dad, and it helped me through some personal stuff.

It also does so without being a walking sim or visual novel, no, this is a game that uses its game mechanics to help tell it's story whilst being compelling gameplay wise. This game accurately recreated the experience of losing a loved one unexpectedly through the medium of videogame in a way that was both clever and utterly devastating to me, in a good, cathartic way.

More importantly it's a game about death which is sad precisely because it isn't miserable, much like we only feel the pain of losing a loved one because we had good times with them, Spiritfarer achieves its melancholy by being a joyous , humourous game about celebrating life as much as it is mourning it's ends. There are some gameplay and story niggles but ultimately I don't want to get bogged down in them because they are unimportant, spiritfarer is an utterly unique experience I will think about for the rest of my life

Great openworld detective adventure game (with light platforming elements of all things). The atmosphere is top notch, the characters are all interesting and well designed visually, the soundtrack is absolutely superb and the mystery unfolds in a way that is paced surprisingly well for a game structure that has a habit of tossing such things in the bin in search of player freedom. This game also has a tropical setting, which reminds one of danganronpa 2, except paradise killer is actually good.

One thing to keep in mind however, is that Paradise Killer is much more a game about investigating than solving a crime if that makes sense. The great paradox in detective games is that (and I have played a lot of them) no one has ever quite figured out the way to craft one where the player can figure out a mystery and convey it to the game without cheating or causing frustration. PK sort of sidesteps this issue by having the mystery sort of solve itself and even not really checking if you made the right decision (its complicated and nigh impossible to explain without spoilers). Dont expect an Ace Attorney/Danganronpa etc hour long trial where you have to cross examine every piece of evidence. Fittingly for the vibe of this game, this is much more laidback and casual, which may turn some people off but I particularly think it works fine

An odd game. Playing for many hours I was thinking internally "This is pretty good, it has the rpg elements, multiple ways to approach quests, the loot system is improved from New Vegas, it has a satirical and darkly funny tone, so why am I not enjoying it that much?".

In truth I think it lies in 2 aspects. 1) The satire is a lot less subtle and is more substanceless. For all the anticorporatist /anticapitalist tone of it all you are heavily punished for going revolutionary or trying to find an alternative for the future of the colonies. The game is made by either centrist liberals or fabian socialists whose idea of nuance is "radical change bad".

2) There is only ever 1 correct choice to a quest. For every major struggle for which an interesting choice has to be made, there is a third option which is just objectively the better, middle ground option. This again reinforces the point that this game was designed by dumb centrists and basically ruins the replayability or even the struggle of finding the best of a bad bunch of options, no one will disagree with the correct choice if made aware of its existence.

Ultimately the Outer Worlds is a game which is fine, it is competently made and I had some fun with it but it will not be remembered and I doubt many will ever replay it, I certainly doubt I will.

I am very torn on sable. It's on the one hand a very pretty game with a fun, meditative quality to its low stakes gameplay but on the other hand it has an inexcusable amount of technical issues. My first playthrough I had to find a way to "cheat" past all the physics puzzles which refused to work. It also doesn't really pay off much of your final choice but it's kind of intentional, "the journey not the destination" etc. The game can also straddle the line between tranquil and boring at times, depending on music and landmark frequency.
The observant among you might have caught however, that I said "first" playthrough i.e I have played it more than once. This is exactly what I mean, clearly I enjoy this game on some level but its flaws keep me from recommending to any but the patient among you

An undertale-esque rpg about being stuck in a time loop at the end of a quest. Speaking as someone who didn't like Undertale, but loved this, I appreciated the lack of the awful bullet hell combat, just mostly straightforward Turn based combat and an interesting setting that didn't take ages to get going.

I found the dialogue quite charming and funny, though I can see it not being to everyone's taste. And most importantly I felt something at the end of the "true ending" so I guess that's a recommendation from me.