The farming & life sim aspect of a Stardew Valley mixed with the unique world and characters of Eastward makes this the perfect DLC for me since I love both of those things.

It starts a bit slow with only a few things to do, at least until you unlock a few more tools, machines and areas. Once it reaches its flow and you’re taking care of your crops and animals, fishing, mining, cooking and growing your community, the game gets hard to put down. Story wise it didn't grab my attention the same way the base game did but that wasn't really a dealbreaker since it's mostly there to progress the farming and community.

The DLC has a few problems going from some QOL to it crashing a few times throughout my playthrough, mostly when using the fasttravel system or during the fishing game, and I'm currently experiencing a bug where certain NPC's don't show up locking me out of 100% completion (need one more crop, two friends and a few recipes and I'm assuming they're all related). But besides those things I'm impressed with this DLC especially at its price point!

Edit: the bug with the NPC not showing up is fixed so now I have that sweet 100% completion

I don't think there has ever been a game that made me as frustrated as Cuphead but at the same time made me come back for more over and over. Boss battles often tipped their toes into annoying/frustrating territory without ever feeling unfair (no matter how many times I yelled "This is some unfair bs"). It's the type of game that I would think about all the time and when I wasn't playing it, I was craving to fight the next boss. I do wish there was something more to do between said bosses, but that's more of a personal preference and I'm not sure if it would've made the game better in the end.

Great game that overflows with care and passion from the devs but made me a bit too frustrated at times to truly love it.

For a moment it felt like Spirit Tracks was an improvement on Phantom Hourglass but then it just kept going downhill. Traversal with the train feels better than the boat but it's still boring, slow, and takes forever to get somewhere. The returning dungeon isn't as bad as the temple of the sea king but it is probably one of my least favorite Zelda dungeons. The worst thing Spirit Tracks does is not knowing when to end. It just keeps going and going. And don't get me started on the parts with the flute!

Spirit Tracks has the same charm as Phantom Hourglass but the gimmicky gameplay (why is every single action tied to the touchscreen???) just isn't fun to play with and I'm glad that it's only those two games that are like this.

There's not much I can say about a 26 year old beloved game that hasn't been said before but I had a great time playing this classic for the very first time.
Still, I had to start three playthroughs before realizing how much I like this game. The first two times I didn't get far and I think it has to do with the stiffness in the movement and just had to get used to it.
Even during my third playthrough it took a while for it all to really click, it all came together after I fought the doppleganger for the first time. At that point the Castle started to unfold itself for me and let me tell you this castle is pure joy to explore. It's filled with secrets and cool things to find. Once you start having good equipment and you get a bit OP, it becomes so much fun slashing your way through enemies while exploring. The upgrades to make the traversal easier are amazing. How is it that every metroidvania keeps using the double jump but none of them gave us the power to turn into a bat?? There are some low points with a difficulty spike (that was mostly my own fault) and the boss fights that aren't anything special, but everything else in the game outshine those things completely. Loved this game so much.

Having played the two grandfathers of the metroidvania genre with Super Metroid and SotN and through a good chunk of both series (mainly the Igavania's when it comes to Castlevania) I still prefer the structure and gameplay of the Metroid series but SotN placed itself above them all.

Going into this I was not sure what to expect. With the previous titles, I had at least some idea of what the game was going to be. It being a Zelda DS game is all I knew about Phantom Hourglass. Now that I have finished the game I have to say I was mostly pleasantly surprised with it. It's a cozy cute lil LoZ adventure that at times feels a bit gimmicky with the touchscreen controls. But besides the multiple returns to the temple of the sea king, I had a decent time with this.

I really want to play The Wind Waker now, please Nintendo make it accessible.


Pretty good game. Starts off strong with the village and I was into it until the later parts of the castle where it started to feel like a drag. This feeling only kept getting stronger all the way through chapter 5. Might be because I just played through RE2 and 3 and the RE fatigue is starting to hit me, the lack of any puzzles or the constant fighting of enemy after enemy.
Loved the different setting and the more cult-like vibes, it creates an atmosphere that is top notch and weirdly enough works with the cheesy storyline.
I'm glad I decided to play this before the Remake and am very much looking forward to it.


RE3 feels like it's going in a different direction compared to the previous two games while at the same time still feeling like a Resident Evil game. The maze-like interconnected levels are switched for what feels like something more linear and the focus from exploring and puzzle solving is shifted to a more combat-focused experience. But I didn't mind any of that because the game is a ton of fun. Going a bit faster through the levels was a nice change of pace. Still, that doesn't mean there's no room for exploration. Leaving no stone unturned gets you rewarded with all kinds of ammo, healing items, weapons, and upgrades so you can keep kicking Nemesis his ass.
Switching between former S.T.A.R. member Jill and Umbrella's professional hot boy Carlos keeps the game interesting and I enjoyed their dynamic. The story felt a bit too similar to RE2 which makes sense since they're (almost) happening at the same time.

Don't really have anything more to say besides that I'm really enjoying these games and RE3 continues just that.

As someone that was burned out by the rogue-lite genre so much I couldn't even enjoy Hades, playing Cult of the lamb felt like a breath of fresh air. It barely feeling like a rogue-lite might've helped with that lol.

Cult of the lamb reminded me a lot of this game called Moonlighter, which also mixes the rogue-lite aspect with some management sim gameplay. This time you're managing, what else could it be, a cult. Growing your following and ensuring they have a place to sleep and enough food to keep them fed, performing sermons and all kinds of rituals to further develop their belief in you is something I really enjoyed and where the game really shined for me. It scratched the itch I've had for a Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing-type game.

While it is advertised as a rogue-lite, don't go into this game expecting some deep rogue-lite experience with synergies and all kinds of gameplay mechanics, because CotL doesn't offer this. Runs are short and not difficult at all and they're separated in those 4 biomes with their own enemies. What burned me out on the rl-genre is starting at the beginning when you die and having to do everything over again. I never felt that in this game and I had this constant feeling of making progress. Don't think this will stand among the greats of the genre but it did enough for me.

Sadly, it gets held back by a few things, performance being the biggest. I played the game on Switch and the game freezes a lot during specific moments (change from night-day for example), but also during moments where a lot of stuff is happening at the same time. I died a few times because of this during boss battles and it sucks.
The weapons and skills feel super unbalanced with some being so OP compared to others (heavy-slow-poison >>>> anything fast). Most of the bosses felt underwhelming and easy but especially the final one. Despite those few annoying things I still had a great time with this game. I can definitely see myself going back to it when they release some DLC.

TL:DR
Super fun rogue-lite mixed with some management sim that gets held back by poor performance and balancing.
I also going to need more games like this and Moonlighter, why isn't this a genre yet? (pls let me know if there are games that are similar to those two)

Even though my score might not reflect this, I have never felt as conflicted with a game as I did with Cyberpunk 2077. It’s no secret that Cyberpunk’s release was rough and even now after all the updates and patches it still has some of that roughness. But in between those rough edges lays a game I couldn’t put down and loved playing all the way through.

Cyberpunk’s strength lies without a doubt in its quests, both the mainline and side ones. They’re filled with amazing stories, well-written dialogue, and characters that you’re going to fall in love with no matter what. The gameplay that accompanies you through those quests is fun enough, nothing ground-breaking but it does its job. Shooting things felt good and while it took me some time to get used to the driving it also became fun after a while and I choose driving everywhere over using the fast travel system.

The game is marketed and pushed as an RPG, but it rarely feels like one. The skill tree doesn’t have any meaningful impact on your gameplay, or at least it didn’t feel like it had, and the same goes for the implants except for maybe the gorilla arms and double jump (seriously a double jump makes any game at least 95% better, that’s just facts). I think the game could’ve been a lot better if they merged the skill tree with the implants but did not have both at the same time. Make it so that the implants really change how your character plays and looks, make synergies between implants, let the player do an ‘implant-less’ run, etc. Go full Cyberpunk with those implants. Right now it feels like they have a lot of missed potential and that’s kind of disappointing. In general, Cyberpunk could use a lot more customization and variety. That goes for weapons, clothing, and cars, … Maybe that’s all too ambitious for the game, but isn’t that what they promised us?

But even with those lacking systems, some glitches, visual bugs, and my game crashing multiple times throughout my playthrough, I could not put the game down. I really enjoyed being in Night City and getting to know its inhabitants and learning their stories. From a cop looking for his nephew with one of the most disturbing endings ever to a rogue AI-cab-company-thing that needed your help. I loved going through all of them. A cool thing Cyberpunk does, and one I wished more games would do, is keeping you updated on those characters through text messages and phone calls. It made the relationships you built with those NPCs feel more important and real. I even completed all the gigs and NCPD missions and had a ton of fun doing them. There’s something within Cyberpunk that hits just right but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I’m going to think about this game a bit more and my score might change over time, but I’ll settle on this right now. If I could, I would give this an 8.5 but since we're stuck with a 5-star rating system this will do for now. With all the problems I had with the game, it might seem high but it somehow feels right, don’t know if that makes sense. I really loved this game, ok?

TL:DR
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game with some high highs and low lows but for me, the highs had a lot more impact on my enjoyment.

In Return of the Obra Dinn you play as an insurance investigator trying to figure out what happened on the Obra Dinn, a ship that disappeared and came back without its 60 crewmates & passengers. Your only tools are a 'magic' death compass and a book which contains some information about the passengers (name, why they're on the ship, and their origin), a few pictures of everyone and some other useful information.

It is your job to figure out who everyone is and how they died with those tools. When you use the compass near a death body, it sets up a static scene with a few lines of dialogue that show what happened at the time the person died. With those scenes and the information in them plus the book, you get all the information you need to figure out who they are and how they died. But that information can sometimes be hidden in plain sight. It could be someone's accent, or their location on the ship, what they're wearing or who they're talking to. You have to pay a lot of attention to every small detail and it's really not as easy as it sounds but it is fun and creates some of the best EUREKA moments I've ever had in a game.

The first thing that caught my eye is the very unique 1-bit art style that comes straight out of an old computer. This style combined with the amazing soundtrack creates a mysterious atmosphere that fits so well within the game. Obra Dinn tells its story in a very untraditional way, it's like you go back through the story, and I love it for that. We really do need more games like this one.

Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing murder mystery/puzzle game that I absolutely loved playing.

Hotline Miami is one of my favorite games because of its fast-paced, instant-death combat accompanied by a great soundtrack. There are a lot of games that try to mimic that Hotline Miami feeling, but not a lot of games come even close to it but Katana Zero does. Instead of a top-down view, Katana Zero takes the 2D approach and it works so well. But to say that Katana Zero is nothing more than a 2D Hotline Miami clone would be wrong. It does enough things to set itself apart.

You start every level by taking on a contract containing a target. To get to the target and kill it, you need to fight through these well-made levels. You can slash, dodge and slow down time to take down the enemies in those levels. But take one hit and you start back at the beginning of the room. I really like this gameplay loop and it's fun to find a path that works best for you. Sometimes it felt a beat cheap during the few boss fights or when you get killed by an enemy that's offscreen for example.

The story itself is interesting enough. It follows an assassin that's trying to figure out its past by taking on those contracts. The story can be a bit confusing sometimes and when I felt it was finally going somewhere, it ended with a 'To be continued. The ending left me with some questions that I would've liked to be answered during the game. But apparently, the devs are working on some DLC for the game so it's not that big of an issue for me.

TL:DR: Katana Zero is a fun fast-paced action game that ends abruptly. Recommended to fans of Hotline Miami.

The original Alan Wake is a game I've always been interested in but never played. I completely missed its release on the Xbox 360 and after a while, I had no decent way to play it. Over the years my interest in the game kept growing especially after I played Control, the latest game by Remedy games. So when the remaster was announced, it felt like the right time to finally play Alan Wake!

Now that I have played it, I feel a bit conflicted. On the surface, AW is still in an interesting game but it never goes deeper than that. Especially with its gameplay and story.

Using your flashlight the get rid of the darkness in the taken (the enemies) so they're weakened and you can kill them with your gun is fun at the start of the game but it gets boring really quickly and it's like that for the entire game. There is some weapon variety (shotguns, flare guns, flashbangs, etc) but they don't make it more interesting but instead give you a way to kill them quicker. It becomes extra tedious when Alan Wake loses his flashlight and all of his weapons MULTIPLE times throughout the game and you have to look for the different equipment you had before again.

The story was interesting enough to keep me going but it also didn't blow me away like I hoped it would. The premise is that you (Alan Wake) wrote a manuscript without knowing it and that story is actually happening IRL and now you're living through it. It is a cool idea but it became predictable fast. None of the characters really stood out, even Alan. I did like how the story was told like a tv series with different episodes.

As I said, I never played the original game but I do think this is a good remaster. I played on the PS5 and visually it looked good, especially for an 11-year-oldgame. I didn't run into any bugs or glitches, so that's always good. The haptic feedback made using the flashlight a bit easier. It's also not that expensive for a remaster and if you own the PS4 version, the PS5 upgrade is free.

In conclusion, I'm still happy that I finally had the chance to give Alan Wake a fair shot but overall it was a lukewarm experience. Maybe it's because I've built up some mental image of the game over the years and the game didn't match that idea or it's just not that good of a game. I do believe there is a foundation for a good game and what they said after the credits make me believe they're working on a sequel. If they flesh out some of the ideas of the first game in the sequel it might actually be a good game but for now, I've had enough Alan Wake for a bit.

Unsighted came out of nowhere for me but when I first saw it, I almost immediately knew it was a game I would enjoy.

The game takes a lot of ideas from the Metroidvania genre and throws it into a top-down action game similar to Hyper Light Drifter or Crosscode and it's the best part of the game for me. Like every Metroidvania, you collect power-ups throughout the game that let you explore areas that were of limits to you before. But those power-ups don't limit themselves to exploration but can even be useful during combat. The interconnected world slowly unfolds itself with each power you get and my god does it feel good. At the end of the game, you almost fly through the game and it's amazing. Everything in Unsighted also looks so beautiful because of the pixel-art, which is always a plus.

Besides exploration, there is of course the combat. During most encounters, the combat feels tight and responsive, especially later on when you're a bit stronger and got some of the more interesting weapons and tools. There is however one thing that annoyed me, the parry system. When you perfectly parry or, twice for bigger enemies/bosses, an enemy's attack you can kill them in one hit or do a huge amount of damage. This works for most of the time and often feels very satisfying to pull off. But sometimes it feels like the combat is relying too much on that system and it makes that you almost don't do any damage without the parry. It gets annoying the more enemies you have to defeat at the same time. There is one (optional boss) where you can only damage that boss after a few successful parries. At the same time, they keep throwing minions at you, that you also have to parry. It gets overwhelming and made the fight almost impossible to the point where I had to lower the difficulty to beat it (the only boss where I had to do that). I would've given Unsighted 4 stars if the parry system wasn't such a huge part of the game.

The story follows Alma in the city of Arcadia. When you first start the game she wakes up in some lab and she remembers nothing. When you finally arrive above the ground you only see the ruins of war. That war happened between humans and automaton's, androids that gained consciousness through anima. At the end of the war, the humans sealed away that anima which led to the automatons that ran out of it to become Unsighted (He said it! He said the thing!). So every character you meet in the game, including yourself, has some sort of timer that stands for the amount of anima they have. When that time runs out, they become unsighted and that again includes you. Luckily you can find piles of anima throughout that world that give you an extra 24 hours, which you can either choose for yourself or extend the time of the other characters. I however decided to turn off that timer for my character because it gave me anxiety. I did end up enjoying the story and caring for quite a few characters and especially Alma.

TL:DR
Exploring in Unsighted is the best part and it creates some of the best moments in the game with all the power-ups you get. The combat is tight and responsive but gets held back by the parry. Following Alma while she's trying to figure out what happened to her friends, herself, and the city of Arcadia was a story that kept me engaged throughout the game.

Unsighted was unfortunately overshadowed by some bigger releases and went under the radar for a lot of people. So hopefully my review gets some people interested enough to at least try this game because the team behind it deserves it!

It also has a demo if you want to try it before making the purchase!!

After playing Paratopic and Fatum Betula I went looking for games that looked similar or had a similar feeling to them. In this search, I stumbled on Sagebrush. And while its not nearly as weird as the previously mentioned games, its Lo-Fi aesthetic created a similar feeling and almost creepy atmosphere.

Sagebrush is essentially a walking sim in the same vein as Firewatch or What Remains of Edith Finch. At the start of the game, we have just arrived at this compound that looks to be entirely abandoned. Walking through this place you find little hints about a cult that used to live here, who they are, how they lived, and what eventually happened to them.

While everything looks open to explore, you'll soon realize this game is rather linear. You'll enter a building, find some bits and pieces of the story, find a key or something similar, go to the next building that you now can enter with the key, and do the whole thing again. I personally didn't mind this 'gameplay loop' since it worked in favor of the story. You constantly find things that give you information (whether it are letters, books, or audio logs) to unravel the mysteries surrounding the cult. It grabbed my attention all the way through its 2-hour-ish runtime. The Lo-Fi style of the game works perfectly with its themes and the story it's trying to tell. It does go in some disturbing directions with the story and it sometimes felt unsettling to me.

I played the game on Nintendo Switch, it's rather cheap on there and goes on sale a lot (I bought it for 1,79 euro), it runs great but the cursor to interact with things feels a bit wonky sometimes.

TL:DR: Sagebrush is a walking sim with some dark themes. The story made this a fulfilling experience, while its short runtime in combination with the simple gameplay left me wanting (a bit) more in the end.

I would suggest playing this game if you're a fan of walking sims and looking for a short interesting story, but not without a trigger warning (minor spoiler): the story has some suicide-related themes, so be aware if that's not something you want to be confronted with.

Two months after finishing Outer Wilds I'm still not over this game and its ending. Only now do I feel ready to write my thoughts on the game down. For the people who never played this game before, I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. Also, I don't want to sound cliche but go into this game completely blind, that will give you the best experience.

In Outer Wilds, you play the newest recruit of the Outer Wilds ventures (a space program) and you're tasked with exploring the solar system. The only catch? (small spoiler ahead) The solar system, including you, is stuck in a 22-minute time loop. So you can explore the solar system for 22 minutes and then you restart at the beginning. But not empty-handed. Every little thing you learned while exploring the solar system and its different planets you take with you, with that knowledge you can start your next expedition. For example: Maybe you learned something about the location of planet B while exploring planet A, so now you want to use this loop to explore planet B. This is the Outer Wilds gameplay loop, use knowledge to find new and more knowledge so you can solve the 22-minute loop. This may sound boring in an action game-filled world, but it's super satisfying to learn those different things and solve puzzles to get new information. There is this 'map' in your ship that keeps track of all the information you find and it's one of the best feelings to see it all coming together.
All this information combined creates one of my favorite gaming narratives.

The beauty from Outer Wilds for me comes from its 'simplicity. The tools you get at the start of the game are the same tools you use to end the game. No unnecessary upgrades or annoying RPG-style skill trees like the latest God Of War. You get the tools you need to explore the universe and it is more than enough. It was really refreshing to play a game that does not have tons of side content that are just copy-passed and brings nothing interesting to the game. It let's you be free to explore at your own pace without pushing you in a direction. You choose where to go and when. There are no giant markers pointing you in a direction and it made me feel like I was exploring this solar system and not someone guiding me through it. The only game that gave me this exact feeling was Hollow Knight.

So I've talked about how great this game is and how unique it is. But I've not mentioned the BEST thing about this game: the soundtrack. The soundtrack is not only beautiful but it is also weaved in the narrative as I've never seen before. Even now when I hear certain songs, I become emotional because they're connected to certain parts of the game that left a huge impression on me.

Outer Wilds has some flaws, like the controls can be a bit awkward (especially in the beginning), and sometimes you need to be at a certain point, on a certain planet, at a certain time to solve a puzzle and it can be a bit annoying. But these flaws are so small compared to all the good things.

There are a lot of things I haven't mentioned, like the different planets and how they work, but I really don't want to spoil these things. Arriving on a planet and seeing how it works are very special moments and you should experience them for yourself.

So in conclusion, I LOVE Outer wilds (if that wasn't obvious yet) and it has become one of my favorite games. Months after finishing the game I still think about it almost daily. I can't wait to see what Mobius does next and I'm very excited to see what they do with the (at this points unanounced and only leakd) DLC for Outer Wilds.