this one seems to have garnered a fair bit of praise from indie horror fans upon its release in 2019, but after spending a few hours playing it, I'm honestly not sure why. Sure, a sci-fi take on Norse mythology is novel territory for a horror game (though not for gaming in general, though surely nobody likes to be reminded of Too Human), but otherwise, it's just dull all around: from the level design, to the exposition dumps, to the enemy design, to the unenjoyable stealth mechanics, to the "shoot green energy" mechanic for environmental interaction. Save points can be fairly far apart too, which is frustrating when enemies kill you quickly (even on easy difficulty) or you accidentally stumble into into a bottomless pit. Recommend playing these devs' previous horror game, Unforgiving: A Northern Hymn, instead.

Solid third-person walking simulator/exploration game with nice visuals (character models aside) about piecing together various flying vehicles. Some rough edges (unskippable walkie-talkie conversations that keep you from jumping or interacting with the environment for their duration, and the controls for grabbing objects and platforming generally aren't as tight as they should be), and the more open-ended third area probably could have used more signposting, but still a decent short play overall.

also recommend playing with Brazilian Portuguese voice acting instead of English, because the latter is... not great

Not nearly as polished as its obvious inspirations of Doom 2016/Eternal - it suffers heavily from stutter on PC, many of the gated combat encounters go on for way too long, I encountered some bugs with certain attacks not working properly, and it doesn't feel like combat makes full use of the traversal moveset (the fact that the grappling hook only works on the weakest enemy types is a major missed opportunity) - but the combat and gimmicky platforming setpieces are still pretty damn fun regardless.

A co-op puzzle game (which can also be played in SP by using one controller to control both characters, a la Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which is how I played it) where two characters must manipulate a light orb around a labyrinth to avoid deadly shadows. Love the art direction and it's a solid enough premise, but unfortunately didn't care for the execution of the shadow mechanic; the fact that falling into shadow will kill a character near-instantly (sending you back to the most recent checkpoint), and especially that one playable character can cast a lethal shadow on the other, results in far too many accidental deaths even when just doing extremely basic navigation around the level to figure out a puzzle. Ultimately, I just found it too frustrating to recommend, let alone to finish; it might be better in co-op, but I imagine the shadow mechanics would still be an issue.

Very Edith Finch-inspired walking sim set around an old theater after the death of its featured playwright; as you explore, you'll find various masks, each of which sends you into a fantasy world inspired by one of the plays, with each world having its own distinct gameplay mechanics. Not nearly as good as Edith Finch, unsurprisingly (the "plays" feel very little like anything that could have been performed on a stage, and their central mechanics are nicely distinct from one another but don't tie into the story nearly as well), but it's still an admirably ambitious walking sim for a project that I imagine was developed on much less resources than Edith Finch, and manages to be polished enough to warrant a one-sitting play.

Extremely flawed, to be sure: the art direction and atmosphere feel like they'd have better suited an abstract narrative told largely through implication (like Heart Machine's previous game Hyper Light Drifter) than the fully voiced, dialogue-heavy story here; enemies kept knocking me to the ground or killing me during platforming sequences when I had to get lucky just to successfully attack them; and while I somewhat respect the minimal handholding aside from a few objective markers, I felt I still ended up spending too much of my playtime aimlessly wandering around for a path forward. And all that said, the excellent traversal, great art direction, and Shadow of the Colossus-meets-Journey -meets-Mario Galaxy-meets-Zelda gameplay were enough to keep me playing through the end. A qualified recommendation, but even with its frustrations, still worth trying if that mix of influences sounds compelling.

The Norwegian setting and crude low-poly visuals are mostly charming, and the "teen boy investigating his grandfather's past with a magic bracelet" setup has potential. unfortunately, it seems like most of the game is set on one island, which you're asked to explore without any sort of navigational aids - no objective markers, no fast travel, not even an in-game map - and the island map is already large enough to make backtracking tedious; the fixed camera and awkward controls don't help in orienting yourself, either. maybe I'll give it another shot at some point, but that's enough to turn me off from this game for now