You ever try to review white wallpaper, this feels like that.

It's perfectly good wallpaper, but like, how am I supposed to talk about it?

Surely if you grew up with THIS SPECIFIC wallpaper you'd have hundreds of stories about how all the tiny imperfections used to become wonderful illusions in your minds eye and therefore this is the best white wallpaper of all the white wallpapers.

I hate to say it's just you but...

I certainly enjoyed NSMB Wii, I just don't know how to review it beyond trying to make jokes or worthless analogies.

I played it with my boyfriend who grew up with the game. it was nice having that experience with him but it still didn't give me the tunneling brain parasites for this game.

gets a bit bullshit by the last few worlds.
the propeller hat is nice I guess, going back to other Mario games I found myself shaking the ds expecting a spin jump... so there's that.

My only complaint is that this game didn't come out years sooner.

Planet of Lana doesn't just learn from the history of cinematic platformers. It masters the genre.

Take the concept from Another World and perfect it.
Take the theme from Limbo and perfect it.
Take the visuals from Inside and perfect it.
Take the gameplay from Heart of Darkness and perfect it.
Take the soundtrack from Far:Lone Sails and... well come close to it, we can't be perfect at everything.

Sadly for me this game came out in 2023, and I've already played all of the above and then some. Almost nothing in this game was wholly new to me. It was done better here, but I still felt like I'd done it before.

I envy the folks who've never suffered through a cinematic platformer from the 90s, this game is going to be their masterpiece.
For me, I can look at it objectively and say the tiny Swedish dev team made some incredible, that I certainly enjoyed my time with. A game I will definitely replay long before I reach for the older titles in the genre.
But I will never know what it's like to have everything in this game feel NEW to me.

Now that I've thoroughly poisoned the well, lets talk about whats here.

The superb 2.5d visuals are a pinnacle to the years of Unity-based indie games. 3d objects that clearly define depth, and 2d artwork overlaying them. The technique is both efficient and drop-dead gorgeous.

The gameplay is a slow but meaty evolution of classic cinematic platforming and basic puzzles centering on your companion Mui. The puzzles are engaging and I can only think of one that actually overstayed its welcome due to an odd mechanic, and another that I was overthinking after I'd missed something obvious.

The story is the indie-game standard, silent protagonists vs scary world and shadowy monsters. Our innocent heroes tug on the heartstrings by having incredibly simple yet deep relationships portrayed through visuals alone.
To clarify, the people do talk, but it's in a made-up alien language, which is neat. You will come to understand a few words by the end, so I guess it does subvert the silent indie gris formula.

The music is also quite good, there are four or five tracks that absolutely captivated me. Nothing quite reaches the heights of Far:Lone Sails but it comes close in one particular scene that I wont spoil.

Overall I was moved by this game, and I absolutely see it as the new standard for indie cinematic platformers.

Maybe next we'll get a double A or even Triple A one of these and put the genre to bed. either by being so good everyone backs off, or so bad everybody stops taking it seriously.

It feels like an extremely polished peak for the Bioware style RPG with 5e tactics gameplay, fairly simplified all told but far from simple.

On the whole, it's fun, there's certainly a lot here, but the depth can feel like it's puddled in very specific places.

It's probably a great game but I feel like I only like it while I'm playing it, the moment I step away I feel like it's aggressively mid.
No idea why, just can't shake it.

Something's missing... but this is the sort of game we need to encourage.
A team that's clearly passionate and capable of taking their time to make a highly polished, and entirely finished video game.
no DLC, no microtransactions, no bullshit.
just an actual game.

Many of us are too young to remember that before it was live-service/micro-transaction hell, we had clone games.

the many pong clones of the first gen, the many pacman clones of the second, etc..etc... down the line to the shooter wars of the seventh gen and the BR wars of this gen.

Sandtrix harkens back to the era of tetris clones. a bit reminiscent of pyramid in a way.

Completely bonkers as a concept, had it been released back in the day it would have been a minor riot, but as a modern gag game for itch.io, it's absolutely adorable.

Everyone learning to make games should try making their own version of tetris with a bonkers gimmick.

I don't recommend you actually beat this game, but you really should at least pop open an emulator and play it.

Valhalla Knights is a strangely compelling little action RPG with little to no story, VERY PSP graphics, and slightly clunky gameplay.
Crucially, however, it's fun.

There's nothing quite like this game mechanically except maybe its sequels.
It's a big team dungeon crawler with shockingly harsh leveling and economy, there are no random battles, it spawns enemies in that you can mostly avoid if you have to.

The dungeon crawling part consists of pathing out small levels, finding switches to open locked doors, and occasionally finding quest objectives.
The quests give you zero guidance and little reward, except the ones that randomly award you a party member that's absolutely essential.

Almost everything about this game is extremely obtuse, but I kinda just love it.

Combat has a surprising amount of strategy and fun to be had, the atmosphere is perfect.
If you're nostalgic in any way for ps1/psp graphics, this game can be a treat to look at.

I dunno, definitely don't try beating it, after the halfway point the game absolutely DEMANDS you grind your way to max level, which takes literal hours of tedium.
but the first 15 hours is genuinely enjoyable. Just know that the story isn't getting any better than the first hour of nonsense and call it a day.

I've played some wildly inadvisable games on PSP but this takes the cake.

First off take a look at that cover art and take a wild guess what type of game this is... I'll wait...

Didya guess marble platformer? no? well me neither.

Ok fine, I'm a fan of venineth and marble madness, I'll bite... actually it's sort of a marble... suggestion game...

no really, you don't actually play the marble, you play a column of light that DIRECTS the marble, awkwardly.
You can increase or decrease your influence on the marble and even toss it a tiny bit by hovering over it directly. It's one or the other tho, you can't exactly tell it to jump one way or another all that well.

On the whole, a monumentally bad way to control a video game. I cannot imagine this had a very confident development cycle.

Also, the end gates have a massive hitbox meaning you'll finish levels whether you want to or not.