I knew I was going to enjoy this one and I absolutely loved it. The visuals, music, and emotion. Funny enough I didn't know Spanish illustrator, Conrad Roset, assisted the team as creative director on this project beforehand. I knew of his work for a few years and this game blissfully shares his art style - now I know why.

The game is stunning: pops of brightly colored watercolor, whimsical environments, and flow of emotion.

There's no dialogue in the game; yet it shares deep, personal emotions. The visuals and music wonderfully showcase a vulnerable character. I don't want to share too much but closer towards the ending, I felt like I needed a good cry. An ugly cry.

I enjoyed most of the hours I put into this game; once I hit 32 hours, the game was losing it's charm. It became tedious and the end play was bare.

Let's start with positives first. I adore the art style of the game: bright colors, animal designs for the spirits, and interesting locations to explore. The music was uplifting and I found myself humming to the song when I wasn't playing the game. Exploring new islands via boat was awesome; you can get off the boat and run around. That was my favorite part of the game: exploring. Helping the first handful of spirits was a rollercoaster of emotions. Through their quests and short conversations you start to learn more about them as individuals. When you have to say goodbye, it hurts.

Unfortunately after maybe the fifth spirit, the rest felt bare boned. It made me care less and less the further I went into the main character's story. The final two spirits (which are optional) did NOT feel worth the challenges. It was very disappointing to play while I felt punished by the game. The last spirit was extremely rude, self centered, and if you fail one of their challenges they became verbally abusive. It made me feel AWFUL. I have no idea why they added this character? The game calls itself cozy...it's not cozy to be told I was terrible. The end of your story went where I feared...and I was disappointed by that.

Don't mistake this game as story heavy. It can be an emotional toll but it doesn't give you a full story. It's a management game. You may be puzzled on a few points. If you want the full story and explanation of the characters...you have to buy their art book for ten bucks. The player should be able to understand the story well enough in the game that you shouldn't have to buy something else to understand what you just played.

I played the first Grim Legends back in 2018 and loved it; so I bought the other two in the series. None of the stories connect, so you don't need to play them in order.

The story and world building of Song of the Dark Swan kept the fairy tale style as the first. Kings, Queens, dragons, fairies, "good" and "dark" magic, kingdoms, etc. I did like the creators spin but the story was too predictable. I'm bit bummed they didn't keep the domino mini games; I enjoyed those matching ones. Your helpers were adorable and extra puzzle solving.

The artists always do a fantastic job on the digital art of the environments and hidden object puzzles. Kudos to them! The animations worked better here than in previous installments. The voice acting for the adults was alright. However, for the children.... oof. My only big complaints were the voice acting for the children and the story was bland. The extra mission added more gameplay and story telling for a character. It was a nice treat.

This installment of the Grim Legends does not fit with the other two. The story and world felt more like Assassin's Creed meets Van Helsing. That didn't make it bad; I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm just confused why they made it part of GL.

They could have easily made this a starting point of its own series. So that threw me off a bit when I started the game. You don't get helpers like the previous games and again no domino mini game. :(

Instead you have mini fight battles. It was unique to other hidden object games. This felt more "actiony" and built urgency to what was happening in the story. I was afraid this story was going to be super predictable, but that wasn't the case. My first guess was wrong, so yay. The end was open and did not feel like an ending. You have to play the "extra" mission to figure out what happens. That should have been included in the main game. The voice acting and animations seemed to improve in this game.

I have never played TCGO before this summer. I have collected physical Pokemon cards since the late-90s but didn't get into playing the card game. I have been buying recent card packs and in each booster you get a code to open a digital pack of Pokemon cards. I held onto them for a long time before deciding, screw it, I'll try it.

I'm at the point where my challenges no longer count against AI. It can be fun or frustrating, depending on your cards and RNG.

My biggest complaint is it's tough starting out PVP. Unless you have codes with REALLY great cards that work in a deck, you're going to lose...a lot. There's no matchmaking. You'll have some "baby" cards getting destroyed by a player with 4 VMAX and 4 GX cards (whatever they have on hand). Until you can purchase decks and booster packs with in game currency. Then you can slowly build your digital collection of Pokemon cards and win battles.

Loved this game. You wake up as Abigail, a ghost searching the remains of her family's mansion. Through notes and puzzles, you piece together what happened after you passed away. The story is more twisted, the puzzles difficult, and many note readings.

No voice acting but the game doesn't need it. Instead it has some music (including music puzzles) and ambiance noises in the background. The atmosphere throughout the game is FANTASTIC. There's a constant feeling of isolation and dread as you're searching for your family. It felt eerie nearly the entire game. Wonderfully done compared to scary or horror titles that rely on cheap scares. This is how you set the mood.

I like that you're not locked to one area. There's five different zones in the game and if you're stuck on a puzzle in one area, you can try your luck in another. You can go back and forth freely. There's even fast travel. The animations, art style, and writing were well done. The control of the mouse can be finicky when you're viewing or placing objects.

My only big bummer with the game was both endings have to be done separately. I got the good ending first so in order to get the bad ending, I had to speedrun the game again. I didn't HAVE to do that, but I wanted all the achievements since I really enjoyed the game. Highly recommend this one if you enjoy challenging puzzle games.

Very stylistic game set in the 1920s. You're a PI detective on your first real case. Point and click game with a focus on questioning suspects; like a 2D LA Noire.

I like the Saul Bass art direction and the animations were well done. The artists did a great job showing emotion in a silhouette form. I wish we got some kind of music from the era.

The story went further than I anticipated, which is welcomed. But it didn't feel memorable.

A factory simulation game where you can work your employees to the point of passing out. They never get sick or leave the factory! But completely run on caffeine so be sure to have that stocked in the break rooms.

You can expand your factory size, hire/fire employees, promote them to special units, sell items in bulk or start timed contracts. The skill tree surprised me. I wasn't expecting to level my factory in the game and you can choose what to upgrade. Eventually you can unlock all the skills so nothing is left locked from you.

I do wish there were more decoration items and a way to split the workload on the planning screen. It made me take a couple of extra steps. Otherwise I never had an issue with the game.

Fairly average ARPG. I like the cartoony graphics; the pets are the highest positive mechanic in the game. They help fight, they can share buffs, but most of all they sell your crap to the town without you going any where. The story is whatever; you're not going to play for that. The action is alright, fun to bash my hammer into the ground to create earthquakes.

However, the classes felt very limited. I was lucky with my class that I only needed a really good 2H weapon. My partner used shotguns. If you had an outdated one, it really hurt. There was some issues with lagging. Not sure if that's a server problem?.

It was hard to play this one and not compare it to Grim Dawn or Path of Exile. We had more fun with both of those titles. This felt more dull and pushed you to gamble for equipment rather than playing the game and getting drops. The drops were really disappointing after boss fights.

This game....yikes. Before the final boss, I was going to be kind and say this title is average with much needed polishing.

Through the majority of my time, I generally enjoyed the game. It has problems but I was trying to get passed that with the game's charm. The graphics are fun. I love the bright colors. I love the character designs for Yooka and Laylee. I like that you can eat berries and get powers.

Some of the puzzles were enjoyable. The level designs were fun to explore and the DNA ray was hilarious in each level.

But $%^&*@!&, the controls are abominable. The boss fights are not fun. The minigames were...okay at most. Awful other times. The arcade games...just why. You have to play them twice. They're so long and dull.

The final fight is what absolutely killed the game for me. I do NOT recommend this game even without chasing every achievement BECAUSE of the final boss fight required to beat the game. I really, really wanted to like this game. I was trying to enjoy myself past its shortcomings. It just did not hold up.

The fight was incredibly unfair with terrible game controls. (In 2017 how in TF do you have a game with no healing, no checkpoint between boss phases, or even a boss health bar?) Play something like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or hell even a turn based RPG for a rewarding boss fight. Not this garbage. You want to play a game with collectibles? They exist. You want a game with 90s feel? Play the Spyro or Crash Bandicoot trilogies. But FFS not this title. I was letdown with this one. Please, just pick something else up.

A crime thriller FMV, you play an unlucky chap trying to survive through a heist. This played like a movie with the occasional choice. It ran solid; I had no issues with stuttering. The acting was good.

I'm guessing the studio had a healthy budget. There were expensive cars, homes, sets, costumes, etc. They give much credit to the services that helped made this possible. I was really impressed.

My main negatives would be to add a fastfoward/skip mechanic, chapters system, or a manual save. Trying to hunt the achievements and the seven different endings was a bit of a drag. You have to watch the ENTIRE run each time. It would have been greatly appreciated. The writing doesn't always make sense. Very questionable at times.

My second Choice of Games title. Personally I enjoyed this one slightly more than Choice of Robots.

Entirely text based, you are a doctor sent to a town to stop a new plague. You have stats and relationships (business and romantic) throughout your story. Incredibly detailed story, fleshed out characters, and a wide array of elaborate endings. The story is broken down into 12 chapters; it is a long read. There are a few points that happen regardless but your actions (and stats) will significantly change the outcome of the story.

There's tons of replay value. I wish there was an option to manually save but I don't believe the developers do that for any of these games.

My only negative is trying to view all the different outcomes for achievements. The author, Peter Parrish, made a couple achievements too precise to unlock. I had difficulty replaying the story over and over with different choices to no avail. Thankfully Parrish is active on the official Choice of Games forums and was super cool to give players hints that were stumped, like me. They apologized that those paths were too narrow and specific to follow. They said they have learned from this (I believe this is their first story with CoG). I'm looking forward to their next story that's in progress.

I had so much fun playing through the feats (achievements) and expanding my digital world. Once you expand and upgrade tools, there's a HUGE jump for grinding. There's no ending, you can keep playing and jump into a never-ending procedural dungeon. I loved playing through the game: building my factories, upgrading tools, solving puzzles, and buying new land. The art style is adorable. The rewards for completing feats were customization of your character and I loved that. There are some bugs still in the game you may have to work around.

But the grinding really killed it for me. The money feats were too much. I have read players that have put hours into this game just to AFK for the banks or set weight on their mouse to auto click. That is not gameplay. Minimizing the game to let it play itself isn't rewarding. You don't have to complete these feats, but if you're an achievement hunter, godspeed to you.

A roguelike, pixelated game that you can run solo or with friends. I played solo, so my review will only reflect on playing solo.

This game requires you to play through multiple times. You have three days to explore and build stats while you're preparing to fight the sun cult. You can unlock events, characters, costumes, and new locations for future runs. The pixel and watercolor illustrations look fantastic for the whimsical, spiritual adventure. The music and sound effects are great. I really love the main song of the game. It fun playing through and getting new events.

The biggest downfall was combat. Again, I was playing solo and not every class is equal. You will struggle playing a couple of the classes solo. But the combat is sluggish; the AI is either dumb (will stand still so you can easily shoot it) or OP (will shove you in a corner to three shot you). The maps are too large. You will run into many dead ends and it will feel like you're wasting time.

The game could use more polishing for combat and tighten the maps. Otherwise fun experience. Maybe more fun with friends.