Hellishly mesmerizing, like peering through a microscope into a pulsating, "glow-in-the-dark" party for bugs. Psychedelic, kinetic and exhilarating through and through. Akin to Thumper and Post Void with it's antagonizing vibes and visual obstruction used as difficulty. Gotta be honest, Barely know what the hell is going on 80% of the time. A layer of esoteric rules and game design that leave me confused; like, when do I actually die? Does my health regenerate? What exactly do the power-ups do?
Highly recommend to not listen to the lies and deceits (recommended to play with gamepad) and just play with keyboard and mouse. Felt like my brain split into two while with a gamepad and I genuinely started to get headaches after 20 minutes. Worth it doe, these shapes and colors be POPPIN!!!

I DID IT I FINALLY BEAT MY FIRST JRPG

This has been a genre that has eluded me for far too long. A lot of things factored in to that, most of it being the ungodly long runtimes and my former distaste for turn-based combat, but something about Mario RPG made it all click for me in a way I never thought possible.

Most of the time, when I went to try a JRPG, it would be Pokemon. I don't know why, but for some reason I thought that would be the best path in. It's an IP I'm already incredibly familiar with, so that would help. What those games (falsely) taught me was that JRPG combat is bad, but you get through it for the other stuff. I don't even know if I could consider Pokemon combat "bad," but it's not for me.

Mario RPG showed me what a good turn-based combat system can do. 1v1 battles are boring as hell turn based, but with a full party you have so much more room to actually do some minor strategizing, even if it's not all that deep. Combine that with the slightly more active and "skill based" timed attacks and you have a recipe for something that will actually keep me engaged across a long runtime.

But that was the other huge thing: by presenting a great JRPG in a short (sub-20h) context it manages to make me feel so much less stressed about how many other things I could be doing instead. This thing is also paced immaculately, where no matter what was happening in the game I couldn't wait to pick it back up every day.

There's also just... So much charm here. They do SOOOO much with so little in terms of animation and sprite counts, and at least once every dialogue I said to myself "wow, I never would have thought of that." The visuals are charming, the music fantastically catchy, and the dialogue is witty in all the best ways. I wanted to spend even more time with all of these characters. Geno and Mallow are so much more fleshed out than they have any right to be, and I love how all the legacy characters get characterized here with funny, very stylized dialogue.

I feel like this game has opened Pandora's box for me. I'm going to spend a little more time with Mario first, diving into Paper Mario, but I'm finally starting to feel ready to dive into a "true" JRPG. I can't believe it.

By the heads of tha polarizing group Arcane Kids (idk, you all can make an opinion on them) comes a Fetus of a would-be game: An alpha, locked inside the internet archives while Arcane Kids fizzled out of existence to make big commerical games like... Donut County... and Neon White... :(.
Stumbled upon it after watching the postmortem/making-of of Ballistic Zen, Perfect Stride is a love-letter to the "weird shmooving" sub-genre, offsprung by the lovely engine quirks from Quake, CS and tha classics, blessing us with cool stuff like bunny-hopping and surfing. You surf (literally on a board) around, horizontally ungulate the mouse to gain more speed to be more, well, rad. Cruising through the kaleidoscopic-esque landscape, smokin a cig, just vibe. For what the game is (unfinished), it's remarkable, it's admirable. Yet, it always feels like it's about to burst from it seams. It's an alpha so i guess it's expected for the game to feel fragile. Just dont stare at it for too long, or else it's evaporate :).
Also I gotta preference this since it's nowhere really said, but
MAJOR EPILEPSY WARNING
The game starts by throwing you at a triangle of RGB pixels before barraging you with a swarm of quotes and flashing colors and the game just doesn't say like "hey yeah this might not be cool for you"

[Some epic music starts playing]
████████████████ 100%
▬▬ι══ 𝘽𝙄𝙂 𝘼𝙎𝙎 𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙍 ═════ﺤ

At it's best, Granblue Fantasy Relink is a highly-concentrated, epic action RPG that keeps on one-upping itself in it's grand vistas and even grander bosses with one-off mechanics, over-the-top encounters and oodles of giant creatures to fight and besiege. At it's worse, Grandblue Fantasy Relink is this👇

³⁰⁰ 💥₄₅₀ 🔥 ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
🗡️₂₅₀💥.... ݁⊹ . ݁˖ . 5600 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚

████████████████ 99%

For my first-venture in the Grandblue-verse, I was taken aback by how honest and by-the-book the narrative and it's depicted cast are: A ragtag group of happy-go-lucky friends that all bond over their love of helping and venturing forth, with a villain who seeks to destroy the (rather standard depiction of a fantasy world) world over selfish gains. I admit, 'twas refreshing at first, but after Vyrn's 10th dumbass quip I lost all the spark the game's setting hold one me in an instant.

₄₅₀ 🔥³⁰⁰ 💥⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
³⁰⁰ 💥⁴⁵⁰💥.... ݁. ݁˖ . 5750 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚
████████████████ 98%

Granblue hooks people with promises and comparisons of "Monster Hunter"-akin combat ('least, that's what I keep hearing people comparing it to!) And I mean, it has big bosses! Big bosses of epic proportions that stomp, slash and shoot about, creating a mini-circle-hellscape to push through. Beautifully telegraphed with the occasional exciting scripted sequence and some really engaging attack patterns that get better as the story progresses. "Get better", as unfortunately the beginning til middle point devolves into your eyes fixating on the upper half of the screen, rhythmically pressing Light or Heavy Attack and a well-timed dodge or two, watching in dread as the bosses health bar is shrinking at a snail's pace no matter what you do.
And I want to circle back to the "Monster Hunter" comparison that keeps popping up: I don't see it. Sure, it has late-Game quest-grinding, co-op hopping big monster slayin, but is that really the Monster Hunter experience? There aren't any nuances or prep-work going into a battle, just punching and slashing til it's healthpoints reach 0%, which takes a... while...

³⁰⁰ 💥₆₀₀🩸⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
₄₅₀ 🔥₄₅₀ 🔥... ˖ . ݁5370 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚
████████████████ 97%

Gorgeous visuals and set-pieces that are often just a sad backdrop for the corridors and circle-arenas of the mission. Variety in characters and trees, yet limited on what one can actually do, while the trees, resources and level-ups beckon you to the horror that lie beyond the final boss (Repeated Grinding and optimization). A beautifully rendered cast of Skydwellers that play it surprisingly straight and "honest-core" (?), yet remain too one-dimensional for any sort of depth or attachment to be made. From the glimpse I have taken into the endgame, it is a purely self-indulgent grind, as every quest is just stripped down skinner-box version of it's story-quest counterpart and, yeah, no thanks.

There is a lot of qualm's I have with the game, but the biggest is probably the fact that a game very much focused on it's combat and big encounters, said encounters are so- OH WAIT LESGO I CAN DO FULL BURST LESGO

݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ 🔥¹³⁰⁰ 💥₄₅₀ 🔥₁₄₅₀ ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ 💥₁₂₅₀💥₁₂₅₀ 🩸₁₆₀₀ ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . 𝙁𝙐𝙇𝙇 𝘽𝙐𝙍𝙎𝙏 ݁ ₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ .
݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ݁ ₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ .
.⊹ 55600 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚
...
..
.
███████████████▒ 95%
▬▬ι══ 𝘽𝙄𝙂 𝘼𝙎𝙎 𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙍 ═════ﺤ



...fuck this imma go to sleep 🛌

Everything, everything
Everything, everything
In its right place, in its right place
In its right place, in its right place

Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon, yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon, yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon

Everything, everything
Everything
In its right place, in its right place
Right place

There are two colours in my head, there are two colours in my head
What, what is that you tried to say? What, what was that you tried to say?
Tried to say, tried to say, tried to say, tried to say

Everything
Everything
Everything
Everything

Not a review. I just feel obligated to add to the meagre content warning for this shit because the Developer seemingly did not want to directly tell the people who might download this that there will be pop-up images of GORE that flash across the screen.
I mean legit live leak/rotten.com stuff.
My guess is that the Dev did not want to "reveal their cards" by giving a heads up for this,
like they didn't want to soften the impact of god-dam UNCENSORED IMAGES OF CORPSES by warning that they will randomly appear.

I'm certain there is SOMETHING here, conceptually at least. If only this idea was executed by someone who wasn't such a massive prick.

Early in the game you have to make friends just to get rid of them to move on, and I'm sure something else was meant by it, but it feels like Notch admitting to using other people to get ahead. Fitting for a person who became rich after making one of the most popular games of all time, only to spit in the faces of those who got him where he is today.

Edit: Honestly don't bother with this, its a waste of time and there's no point giving any attention to the ass who made it.

HEY do you like MOON?! do you like CHULIP or CHIBI-ROBO?! Do you like QUIRKY and WEIRD and HEARTFELT?! Play 24 Killers!

It's super easy to look at 24K and just call it "indie 2023 Moon Rpg" and write it off. However, I think this game uses this very obvious love-de-lic inspiration and creates something new that can stand on it's own legs.

Everything in 24 Killers feels dreamlike. From the music, to the art, the dialogue, and even the dream-logic of the world and puzzles. But 24k never feels "lul random xD" because the game has a very stable internal logic.

The very opening moments of the game are bizarre but setup consistent world-building and character moments. We learn about Johnny Puzzle (the puzzle and contraption-loving dog), Mole (a giant friendly mole), Moon (some sort of extraterrestrial being calling the shots), and finally the player character Home.
Home is an echo. You don't really know what an echo is at the start, but you know it's a hand with an eyeball on it and a little wiggly tail. And you dive right into the corpse of a soldier. Home doesn't like this and wants to get away from all these annoying monsters ("mons" in the game's lingo) and starts to fight off all of them before Moon knocks them out.

Usually in love-de-lic games and other "cozy" games like this, the player character is nice, but Home is kind of a jerk! And that's what makes this game so nice to play. Seeing how Home reacts to the shenanigans, seeing how they grow and learn. Helping uncover this mystery. Diving into the bizarre dream-logic world and trying to genuinely help these people. When the sentient spider-mocha pot tells you that it's depressed and lost in life because the coffee plant outside is dried up and dead, it's not a random joke but a problem that you want to solve.

24 Killers isn't a very long game. That's a plus for me, I'm an adult with little time. I completed the game in about 8 hours and there is some.... very interesting replay incentives, but I can see that being a turn-off for some folks.

I adore this game and I want more like it. Games like this inspire me. To be more creative, to be more honest, to be more genuine, to be more weird, to love myself and others more. It's a beautiful game.

Remnants is about a person going deeper and deeper into a hole, discovering remnants of the past and other mildly weird things. It creates a strong and creepy atmosphere with very little, thanks in part to the excellent execution on the sound and art design. The context bubbles the player gets when interacting with the environment create a good sense of character and also develop the game's world + narrative quite well. I love the title/name each room is given (reminds me VVVVVV). The bold and vivid colors create both an alien-like an nostalgic scenery.

While I would've wished for a more fleshed-out/fulfilling ending (or perhaps a crumpet of gameplay), I enjoyed this experience quite well.