For starters, I’m no Buffy buff. I never watched the show growing up, nor did I as an adult. That’s okay though, as there are many great video games based on movies and TV shows that are fun without needing to watch the material it is based on. Buffy seems like this kind of game at first. While it’s clearly geared toward fans of the show, I have no idea what’s going on in the story. You are basically trying to stop some evil vampire spirit from ending the world. That’s literally it. You chase him around as he possesses various characters from the show. It’s dull and rather uninteresting and the game is also poorly written. Buffy’s one-liners get old as all five of them repeat constantly throughout the game and so do the one-liners from the enemies.


That’s just the beginning. Buffy has an array of acrobatic moves and they are actually quite good for such an early 64-bit era game. The animations are well done and the combat, when it does work, is pretty awesome. Buffy can punch and kick and execute enemies with a wooden stake. She also has Slayer Power which allows her to add-on some powerful moves at the end of combo chains. This, again, seems great on paper, but it’s poorly executed. While the animations are nice there’s constant knockback and you can’t interrupt the enemies’ attacks. This is the key flaw in the entire combat system. There’s no dodge button, no parry, and no way to counter attacks at all. You just have to take it and fall down and get back up, but some enemies will stomp you, and then multiple enemies join in and you end up dying and losing health over cheap gameplay mechanics. The game is just very cheap all around.

Another issue revolved around this is the terrible jumping and extreme distance you get knocked back at. This leads to cheap deaths off cliffs as some of the fighting areas are tiny and are not designed around how far Buffy can be thrown. I would make it to the end of a level and die just because I got picked up and thrown off of a cliff due to the poor level design. It’s everywhere in this game including platforming segments that shouldn’t exist here. I never finished the game due to the second to last level having so many cliffs of death, tiny arenas, and platforming woes that after the 7th time dying from a cheap death I put the disc back in the box and shelved it. I’m not missing out on much anyway.


If that isn’t painful enough the level design is boring and trite. You walk down boring brown or gray hallways, fight a few enemies, flip a switch, and move on. The level design is just bad and every location is so uninteresting. A foundry, a high school, a sunken church, all just blandly designed. At least the character models look decent and the voice acting is all right. This also leads to healing and other items which leads to the biggest flaw this entire game has, and what I think, completely breaks it. All these other things would be doing if you didn’t have to execute every enemy with a stake. You can knock them down to no health and they won’t die until you execute them. This leads to more cheap deaths as instead of them dying when their health is down you then have to break through their constant blocking, get knocked around more, lose more health, just to get in an execution. They will not die unless you have a stake or the glaive. Enemies block every single move you do, making combat take way longer than necessary, and they also shouldn’t take so long to die. For a beat ’em up enemies should have more balanced health bars.


There are also items like holy water, hellfire, and a super soaker that contains both. This is a completely useless tool as it depletes within seconds and requires fonts to replenish and only a few levels have them. It’s mostly used just to take down certain force fields. Seriously, what a waste of time and effort. And that’s pretty much all Buffy has to offer. Some decent combat and animations are all the game has going for it but is horrendously broken with terrible gameplay mechanics throughout the entire game.

I honestly can’t recommend this to anyone unless you are a Buffy fan, and even then you aren’t missing out on much at all. The story is boring, the level design is uninspired and bland, and the game is nearly broken thanks to poor design decisions.

It’s almost impossible to avoid the regurgitated tropes stuffed into horror games nowadays. This especially applies to the indie scene, where soulless projects can be thrown together in no time to make a quick buck. There’s a serious lack of originality or innovation in the genre; I suppose it’s just easier for devs to lean into cheap scare tactics and dime-a-dozen ghost stories.
September 1999, on the other hand, is a free horror game with a surprisingly interesting and well-told story - one that’s neatly wrapped up in the span of five minutes. While I won’t spoil much, I will say that I really enjoy the narrative that this game chose to tackle, and I think it was done well. There are clear comparisons to make to American Psycho; and obviously September 1999 isn’t nearly as complex or innovative, but it’s a refreshing idea to bring to horror games in particular. This isn’t any old dime-a-dozen haunted building simulator with a Samara ripoff.
You take the role of a man living alone in a small house. The first-person view is overlaid with VHS grain - even the time and date are stamped in the corner, a useful tool for tracking the chronology of September 1999’s events. The game doesn’t solely rely on this VHS gimmick, though; its entire visual style is actually quite amazing. Perfect realism is far from my favorite aesthetic, but it worked very well here I think. I almost felt like I was looking at real video footage sometimes! The only thing that struck me as a strange (and quite funny) choice was the protagonist’s apparent obsession with framed pictures of budgies.
There are a handful of little details to notice, too, such as the tape placed on one of the closed doors (if you’re not aware, this is done when someone wants to ensure that the person inside the taped room can’t leave without their knowing.) I’d even overlooked a few things my first time around that I only noticed on a second playthrough. An impressive amount of worldbuilding was done here, and in such a minuscule span of time!
There are some delightfully creepy audio cues scattered throughout the game, too. September 1999 plays with volume in very interesting ways; certain noises are so subtle that you might think it’s in your head at first, while others viscerally destroy the stillness of the house. Nearly all of the frightening moments are in large part thanks to this sound design.
In fact, September 1999 never once relies on anything like garbage jumpscares to make its point. Instead it utilizes visual storytelling and atmosphere! There’s not even any dialogue - something I think is really neat, as it means that anyone can experience the game fully without language hindrance.
Of course, there’s not really any ‘gameplay’ to be found in September 1999. You simply observe the story as it takes place around you. Actually, it can sometimes take a bit too long for the game to transition itself into the next scene; this can easily turn into a nuisance when you’ve already seen everything you need to, and you’re stuck waiting for things to automatically progress.
Still, that small annoyance didn’t hamper my overall enjoyment of September 1999. This isn’t a life-changing or genre-defining piece of work, but it’s something I really appreciate for what it is. It commits completely to story and quality over reusing tired old tropes. I definitely recommend checking this out, especially since it’s free and very short!


Visuals: 4/5
Sound: 4/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 0.5/5
Worldbuilding: 4/5
Overall Game Score: 3/5 [3.2/5]

A great game, an infinite King's Field experience, with approachability first and foremost in its vision. A treat to play for newcomers and old-timers alike. A wide array of dungeon tile-sets, weapon-types, true dual-wielding, spells, enchantments, and much more. Where it falls short is it could've used a few more tile-sets and a bit more to its few unique locations like the starting village. Otherwise, a joy to play, even if only for 40 minutes or for 4 hours straight. Check out my review if you wanna know more! https://youtu.be/yi2ZzW-FLJE?si=LD0BlAyaEhs4MmEK

As someone who is generally very shit at puzzle games, I actually had a good time with this. The story and the philosophical discussions you have with "Milton" are some of the best parts of the game. I do admit I had to get help with some of the later puzzles, especially when the record feature was in play, but I genuinely had a great time with this and completed all of the endings. It's just a very addictive gameplay loop as the puzzles are not too long and the small dopamine hit you get when solving them makes it all worthwhile.
I did try out the "Road to Gehenna" DLC as well that comes packaged with the PS4 version of the game, but I was literally lost from the first puzzle already, so I think I'm just gonna skip it.