The Smogon mod team is insufferable for the most part but the website itself is extremely useful.

Errrm you like spore? Mods, ban sleep! (Amoongus drops to RU)
Errrm you like rain? Mods, ban Archaludon! (Forever cursed to UUbers hell)
Errrm you like a balanced physical wall? Mods, ban Gliscor! (Still have no idea why this ever happened)

It's weird. Movement is your basic 8-directional WASD. Only one button is used to interact with the environment. Yet Cocoon ends up having some of the most complex and thought-provoking puzzle mechanics in any game to date.

It's weird. Cocoon is literally Inception as a video game. The core idea is that multiple worlds exist simultaneously, and you have the ability to jump between worlds, into a world, out of a world, out of a world again, out of a world again... Worlds can be placed inside each other, leading to some mind-boggling puzzle design.

It's weird. The world (or should I say worlds?) is vibrant and bizarre, teeming with extra-terrestrial life- some of which is essential to solving the many puzzles that obstruct your path. Cocoon has no dialogue, no instructions. Yet it feels as if you have lived in these worlds all your life. Picking up worlds and interacting with these alien mechanisms all felt like second nature to me. You don't learn how to play this game. Cocoon doesn't tell you how. You teach yourself.

The powerful, cosmic soundtrack follows you throughout your journey. And it very noticeably plays a short crescendo each time you complete a puzzle. Almost as if to congratulate you on your success. On a sheer game design level, Cocoon is flawless. There is not a single point in the game where you become deadlocked and have to restart from a previous checkpoint. If you're unable to complete a puzzle, you're not thinking hard enough.

But it's still weird. I've been singing nothing but praises so far, yet I'll tell you right now that I would probably never replay this game. I like this game, and yet I sometimes can't stand it. Is that weird? I love the concept of jumping between worlds, the boss fights that each utilized their own unique gameplay mechanics, and just the overall tone of the game- one of a surreal, exotic alien universe with unfamiliar creatures and mechanisms. But still, puzzle games aren't exactly my cup of tea. I can't deny that it definitely felt like a slog at times, with the gameplay loop really only being puzzle after puzzle broken by the occasional boss fight. Thankfully though, Cocoon doesn't overstay its welcome, only totaling about 6 hours for completion.

Yeah, Cocoon is weird. But a good kind of weird. Definitely give it a shot.

Not entirely impressed with this one. While the music is electrifying and the game carries a unique aesthetic, the story was too weak for me to really care about it. The gameplay is brutal and tactical, but will take a few levels to really get accustomed to. I did like how fast-paced the gameplay is, even though I died a fuckton. Being able to equip different theme masks is a cool way of having unique skills, though I don't think anybody bothered to try on a different mask after unlocking Tony. The gameplay is best when you're clearing out full houses of goons, but when it comes to the boss fights it fucking SUCKS.

But onto the story, I don't really see why this whole "violence in video games" is praised so much, it doesn't seem to explore any of its themes too deeply and instead drifts off into some weird political agenda by the end of the game. Undertale did the violence in video games shit wayyy better. And yeah that conclusion was pretty terrible, but HM2 will likely build on the story more.

Overall its fine, I would recommend it for the difficult gameplay alone as it is easily the hardest top-down shooter I've played.

A simple Madoka Magica hack-and-slash game. There is no story in this game, though each level is designed after one of the witches from the show. There aren't really a whole lot of combos you can pull off but I do like that each character has their own skill set. The graphics and character animations are cute, and the music is very reminiscent of the Madoka Magica show as well. I only played the first few levels, unfortunately this game is quite poorly designed as there isn't a save option or anything so you basically have to beat all the levels in one run. The "difficulty" in this game is just making the enemies have more HP, which means you'll be standing in the same room for a minute slicing away at the same crowd. There isn't any complexity in the combat system, no skill tree or anything, just spamming the same few buttons over and over.

Overall, this game is just a small getaway for Madoka Magica fans so they can cope over movie 4 never coming out.

Spent about 3 hours in this game and still have no idea what it's about. The story is nonexistent because it's trying to be meta? Ok but the only 'meta' I've seen so far are shitty narrator jokes and me getting teleported to the home screen. The combat is not terrible but it's nothing to write home about. Not to mention the enemies are scaled super weird, they all seem to have absurdly high amounts of HP and barely recoil from most of your attacks. Icey can do some pretty cool combos though. Anyways a boring story carried by it's fairly average hack-and-slash combat is not a good fit for me. I may or may not finish this game.


This game may be below average but good lord the Icey fanart...

A big step up from the first game, milk outside dives even deeper into our protagonist's character and thought process, with numerous different endings to wrap up the story. As we all know from milk inside, the girl's behavioral characteristics are quite different from the rest of society. Without spoiling anything too deep, we can see that our protagonist suffers from a mental illness, maybe more than one. Conversing with her throughout the game was actually more entertaining than I had expected. The way she thinks and talks is different, yet still understandable. I'm not one for the horror genre, but this game didn't place much of a focus on that at all.

The highlights of the game were definitely the 5 unique endings. I'll keep it real with you- I'm not gonna even pretend like I understood all the endings fully, but they were each still very interesting in their own right. I honestly didn't expect them to be as confusing as they were, since the game up to that point had been pretty straightforward in what it was trying to convey. Not only were they confusing, but they all cut very abruptly, leaving the rest up to the player's own interpretation. Just my opinion, but I would have probably preferred if the endings were explained better instead of being left in such an open-ended manner. The final scene of the game also feels a little unfinished, I mean there wasn't exactly any real closure for the protagonist. Indicating that there may possibly be a third game? (Might just be reaching)

TL;DR it's a short 1-2 hr psychological horror game that tackles themes of mental illness, so if that is appealing to you definitely check it out.

Can't say i've played this game enough to give it a star rating but there is a few reasons why I decided to drop it. Usually with murder mysteries you would expect a small cast with a linear sort of way of deciphering clues. Obra Dinn makes you work backwards, starting the game off with the ending and then eventually working your way towards the beginning it seems. That part isn't a big problem, but what is a problem is the way the game makes you decipher clues.

First of all, the cast is HUGE. There are 60 characters, and you have to determine the name of each one, how they died, and who killed them. It's not easy. In fact I would even go so far as to say it's quite tedious work.

The concept here is really cool though, going back in time to see the memories of what happened during that exact moment. The graphical style used in this game is fitting, yet at the same time makes things a little more difficult for the player. It's pretty hard to make out faces when everyone is pixelated and in black and white.

Anyway most of these criticisms might be baseless considering I've only spent an hour in this game. Think of this as just my first thoughts (probably also my final thoughts.) It just didn't seem appealing enough for me to continue any further than this.