keroblin
My heart yearns to go back to that summer. I want to stay there.
Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 is a beautiful game full of so much heart. You spend a summer as a child, called Boku, staying with his aunt and uncle in a small island village by the sea. You spend your days fishing, swimming, catching and fighting bugs, the usual holiday fare.
But you also form deep connections with everyone on the island and their visiting friends and relatives. You help so many people with their issues. No one is surface level, everyone is genuine and well thought out.
This game gracefully and realistically explores aging population, neglect, death and grieving, love, crime, cultural differences and more.
You have no goal in this game. You can choose to, or not to do any of this. Its entirely up to you what you do with your summer holiday. But its hard, truly to do nothing. There is an undescribable amount of love and care put into every element of this game, it feels me with deep peace and joy knowing that something like this is out there and was highly popular in Japan.
Play this game if you want summer, if you want to swim, if you miss home, your family, childhood, if you miss humanity and colour and you find yourself drowning in the greys and cruelty of the city. Go and spend your summer in the country.
Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 is a beautiful game full of so much heart. You spend a summer as a child, called Boku, staying with his aunt and uncle in a small island village by the sea. You spend your days fishing, swimming, catching and fighting bugs, the usual holiday fare.
But you also form deep connections with everyone on the island and their visiting friends and relatives. You help so many people with their issues. No one is surface level, everyone is genuine and well thought out.
This game gracefully and realistically explores aging population, neglect, death and grieving, love, crime, cultural differences and more.
You have no goal in this game. You can choose to, or not to do any of this. Its entirely up to you what you do with your summer holiday. But its hard, truly to do nothing. There is an undescribable amount of love and care put into every element of this game, it feels me with deep peace and joy knowing that something like this is out there and was highly popular in Japan.
Play this game if you want summer, if you want to swim, if you miss home, your family, childhood, if you miss humanity and colour and you find yourself drowning in the greys and cruelty of the city. Go and spend your summer in the country.
Really really loved the world of this game, super beautiful and melancholic.
I would never like a game about coping with loss! Ever! Obviously lol
Fr tho this game is just so effortlessly beautiful, the art style is great and the world feels so distinct and lived in. There are so many little interactions and experiences to be found just from appreciating it's beauty. The characters are wonderful and I cried a lot talking with them tbh.
I don't want to say too much to spoil it but if you need some time in nature, in quiet and connecting with your past, play this game. And then go and touch grass and your community.
ALSO PLAY WITH DUALSENSE IF YOU HAVE THE OPTION I WONT SPOIL WHY BUT KEEP AN EAR OUT
I would never like a game about coping with loss! Ever! Obviously lol
Fr tho this game is just so effortlessly beautiful, the art style is great and the world feels so distinct and lived in. There are so many little interactions and experiences to be found just from appreciating it's beauty. The characters are wonderful and I cried a lot talking with them tbh.
I don't want to say too much to spoil it but if you need some time in nature, in quiet and connecting with your past, play this game. And then go and touch grass and your community.
ALSO PLAY WITH DUALSENSE IF YOU HAVE THE OPTION I WONT SPOIL WHY BUT KEEP AN EAR OUT
2020
Imagine I-Spy mixed with Ghost Trick mixed with an MRI machine
This game is incredibly heartfelt and authentic down to every single cross-section. It's story is so genuinely touching and you really feel connected to each and every person we explore and the island itself.
The puzzles are fantastic and full of fun Easter eggs along the way, cutting through cans and bins and lunch boxes and ship in bottles to find treasured items long lost. I genuinely don't understand how some of the objects are made! And the like memory kaleidoscopes??!? The level of detail in each environment is staggering and you will be drawn to go into every single object to check for secrets.
The sound design is gorgeously done and hearing every object being peeled away is so satisfying.
I cried a bunch during this game, but I'm pretty sure they were all happy tears. This game beautifully and gracefully explores the concept of death, the afterlife and what we leave behind in just the kindest most sweet way.
ALSO THE SOUNDTRACK IS GREATTT
SIDENOTE: I have lived near the general area where the game is set and holidayed there all my life and it's been a real nostalgia trip looking back into how these communities work having since moved to the city, its lovely c: feels like home
This game is incredibly heartfelt and authentic down to every single cross-section. It's story is so genuinely touching and you really feel connected to each and every person we explore and the island itself.
The puzzles are fantastic and full of fun Easter eggs along the way, cutting through cans and bins and lunch boxes and ship in bottles to find treasured items long lost. I genuinely don't understand how some of the objects are made! And the like memory kaleidoscopes??!? The level of detail in each environment is staggering and you will be drawn to go into every single object to check for secrets.
The sound design is gorgeously done and hearing every object being peeled away is so satisfying.
I cried a bunch during this game, but I'm pretty sure they were all happy tears. This game beautifully and gracefully explores the concept of death, the afterlife and what we leave behind in just the kindest most sweet way.
ALSO THE SOUNDTRACK IS GREATTT
SIDENOTE: I have lived near the general area where the game is set and holidayed there all my life and it's been a real nostalgia trip looking back into how these communities work having since moved to the city, its lovely c: feels like home
2016
It feels like co-operating with a real animal, and like ok it can be annoying at first, but I feel wholeheartedly that it is intentional. Trico listens to you more and becomes more responsive as the game progresses and you build a bond. I have never felt so emotionally attached and invested with characters in a game before I wont lie.
The world is just incredible. It is beautiful and terrifying and cryptic and so mysterious and ethereal, it feels so close to a real society but so different from anything possible to mere humans or mortals. It is breathtakingly beautiful and every area and creature and type of level has a striking visual identity. It is a living breathing realistic world, but we never really know its origins.
The puzzles are joyous and playing and communicating with Trico is as intuitive and human as training a real animal and its lovely. I haven't experienced anything quite like it. There are so many reactions and responses it just feels real.
I love this game, so much
The world is just incredible. It is beautiful and terrifying and cryptic and so mysterious and ethereal, it feels so close to a real society but so different from anything possible to mere humans or mortals. It is breathtakingly beautiful and every area and creature and type of level has a striking visual identity. It is a living breathing realistic world, but we never really know its origins.
The puzzles are joyous and playing and communicating with Trico is as intuitive and human as training a real animal and its lovely. I haven't experienced anything quite like it. There are so many reactions and responses it just feels real.
I love this game, so much
I really, really like this game. You will too.
This game is (most of the time) the most mechanically simple I have ever seen and yet through lovely mixed media art and clever, silly characters and world's made from them, it really pulls off something I'm not sure I've ever seen and not sure how I can truly describe.
I played this game during one of the worst periods of dissociation in my life and it pulled me out real quick, it's such a labour of love and has such an essence of fun and creativity. It's one of the most surreal games I've played and is somewhat similar to Subway Midnight (although this came before) in it's mechanics and perspective switching and it has that same kind of clear creative exploration from the designer that makes the game feel really human.
I really can't provide too much I'm afraid y'all are gonna just have to play it lol
This game is (most of the time) the most mechanically simple I have ever seen and yet through lovely mixed media art and clever, silly characters and world's made from them, it really pulls off something I'm not sure I've ever seen and not sure how I can truly describe.
I played this game during one of the worst periods of dissociation in my life and it pulled me out real quick, it's such a labour of love and has such an essence of fun and creativity. It's one of the most surreal games I've played and is somewhat similar to Subway Midnight (although this came before) in it's mechanics and perspective switching and it has that same kind of clear creative exploration from the designer that makes the game feel really human.
I really can't provide too much I'm afraid y'all are gonna just have to play it lol
1997
I spent every christmas while I still had connections with my family playing snake competitively all around a CRT with a Nokia set top box that just so happened to be packaged with a TV remote version of snake. We would put all differences aside and cheer each other on and everyone could play, no matter their age and it is so simple and so fun and so intuitive and its lovely! It is the least flashy and most basic arcade game but for me it was the perfect and accessible family party game (at least before the Wii)
2009
I love this game. So much. Everything about it is perfect and it holds up to this day. The art is so surreal and eerie and strange and the compressed to heck bitmappy art and animation and odd little sound effects are so intensely charming it has stuck with me since I was a child and I have seen nothing similar since.
It is so mechanically simple but yet manages to do so much with what is essentially just moving a mouse around and clicking when you see something, it plays with how you view things a lot and Walter Wick as always is masterfully hiding objects.
Every time I play this game its like I'm playing it for the first time, the puzzles hold up so well.
I just love it!
It is so mechanically simple but yet manages to do so much with what is essentially just moving a mouse around and clicking when you see something, it plays with how you view things a lot and Walter Wick as always is masterfully hiding objects.
Every time I play this game its like I'm playing it for the first time, the puzzles hold up so well.
I just love it!
2020
Half-Life: Alyx is the first VR game that feels like a VR game (for me anyway) and not just a tech demo and its great. It is honestly my favourite Half-Life game!
It has that lovely Valve level design philosophy of just always keeping you learning no matter what and everything you do learn feels so new and different.
You can really tell through so much of the game that the level designers had so much fun just playing with this new way of input in the Half-Life universe, playing with light and dark and inventory management and horror and Operation-style precision puzzles. But it doesn't miss on the FPS elements either, you really really feel the tension with limited inventory and very sparse healing stations making combat a wonderfully stressful experience. Reloading the gun is unique for each and all guns can be upgraded with newer abilities as you progress which would be awfully generic in any normal game but the simple challenge of learning the new inputs as muscle memory to reload and accommodate these abilities is so fun in itself.
The horror segments of the game are incredible, and some of my favourites. Through having to really work to move doors, throw things, pick up things and more, you are constantly making noise that could alert enemies, so you have to be so so careful what you do and its perfect.
Picking things up is so great, "it really makes you feel like Spider-Man"! But for real though fwipping things over to you is a great time and is so intuitive I find myself using this ability in dreams because its that ingrained
The characters, as always, feel so real, you always feel observed and reacted to as a player with all voice lines, including Alyx yourself, feeling so natural and coupled with the animation it feels like you've stepped into a Pixar film.
In conclusion, it is a wonderful and prime example of how intuitive, responsive and full of character and immersion triple A VR games can be and the plot twist? Well you'll just have to play it to see but it is major.
It has that lovely Valve level design philosophy of just always keeping you learning no matter what and everything you do learn feels so new and different.
You can really tell through so much of the game that the level designers had so much fun just playing with this new way of input in the Half-Life universe, playing with light and dark and inventory management and horror and Operation-style precision puzzles. But it doesn't miss on the FPS elements either, you really really feel the tension with limited inventory and very sparse healing stations making combat a wonderfully stressful experience. Reloading the gun is unique for each and all guns can be upgraded with newer abilities as you progress which would be awfully generic in any normal game but the simple challenge of learning the new inputs as muscle memory to reload and accommodate these abilities is so fun in itself.
The horror segments of the game are incredible, and some of my favourites. Through having to really work to move doors, throw things, pick up things and more, you are constantly making noise that could alert enemies, so you have to be so so careful what you do and its perfect.
Picking things up is so great, "it really makes you feel like Spider-Man"! But for real though fwipping things over to you is a great time and is so intuitive I find myself using this ability in dreams because its that ingrained
The characters, as always, feel so real, you always feel observed and reacted to as a player with all voice lines, including Alyx yourself, feeling so natural and coupled with the animation it feels like you've stepped into a Pixar film.
In conclusion, it is a wonderful and prime example of how intuitive, responsive and full of character and immersion triple A VR games can be and the plot twist? Well you'll just have to play it to see but it is major.
2004
This game was the first time I'd been told to get back in the kitchen and make someone a sandwich. But I still love it. GMod had an abhorrent sexism problem the likes of which I've never seen but it was so creative and you could just leave or literally build something to get your own back, you had so much power. All of the games were greatly unique and while there were so many gross people I met some wonderful people who hung out with me all the time, hopping through servers, trying out mods together, making weird stuff, it was so fun! GMod was an accessible and wildly popular platform for game designers, artists, programmers and more to share and transcend what was just a mod, but to create fully fledged experiences, and with the tools given even the most inexperienced could have fun with physics and learn how games work by just playing around with tools and making weird things.
2021
This review contains spoilers
The game's Twitter handle and assumedly original name is Unpacking a Life and yes that makes so much sense but I can see why they didn't choose it. Unpacking presents as a chill little wholesome game where you just happily place objects around. And it is! This is the only mechanic! But through very clever item changes over time, constraints, room designs, and adding more items, we learn, through their possessions the entire coming of age process of a young woman eventually meeting her wife. And it's really touching. And we hate people (the boyfriend >:c ). But literally all we are doing is Unpacking, and that is beautiful. We are given an emotional narrative through item sizing, area constraints, rules about what we can and can't move, tiny images, time progression and hobby objects and it's amazing! Go play this game!
2019
Mutazione is a game about family. Perhaps not by blood, but with love, any community can be a family and any family can feel like home. The inhabitants of the town have gone through a lot, are still going through a lot, and so are you. But as an outsider, you have to really break down these walls.
Mutazione is described as a soap opera and I can see why, but to me its almost as much that as a meditative experience? Apart from the literal imagery in the game, coming into somewhere new as an outsider, with no judgement unto you, and being able to just help, unbiasedly help all inhabitants deeply and spiritually is lovely. Planting plants and singing to them helps beautify the area and gives you materials to help more. Just helping an entire town, alongside your playable character grow and change and move on from pain and seeing the physical space grow with you is awesome.
The soundtrack is absolutely paramount in this experience and coupled with the art creates the most calming, surreal experience. I love this game.
Mutazione is described as a soap opera and I can see why, but to me its almost as much that as a meditative experience? Apart from the literal imagery in the game, coming into somewhere new as an outsider, with no judgement unto you, and being able to just help, unbiasedly help all inhabitants deeply and spiritually is lovely. Planting plants and singing to them helps beautify the area and gives you materials to help more. Just helping an entire town, alongside your playable character grow and change and move on from pain and seeing the physical space grow with you is awesome.
The soundtrack is absolutely paramount in this experience and coupled with the art creates the most calming, surreal experience. I love this game.
Chicory makes creatives create again. Chicory is so low stakes in its art and so limiting, no one has to feel bad in what they make, everything is art and everyone should feel free to express it.
But while this is shown clearly mechanically to us players, Chicory’s characters are going through a lot of the same issues, a lot of the same anxieties about art. And they push everyone away. And it hurts. But we never hate them. Chicory is as much about burnout and expectation and the weight of the town, the world than it is a stunningly designed Zelda-like RPG puzzler.
Using painting, that saves for every tile, in every part of the world, on every object, sign, character and even the sky is wild to me.
It is a playable colouring book with tools to help you colour even better, but it is also a dungeon crawling puzzler, fighting against doubts and worries and pain and using creativity to get there. Chicory expertly teaches you mechanics and naturally gates progression, it is incredibly accessible and has helpful hints along the way, but only if you really want to access them! It has so many settings and can be as easy or hard as you want it to be. Unlocking customisation as we go encourages our creativity to flourish as we gain confidence in our art and its a lovely reward!
The puzzles are meticulously crafted with your paintbrush upgrading to unlock new properties and abilities to help you access new areas and new people. Using plants to fling yourself along, to grow them as platforms, to create paths under small gaps, up vines, and more, they feel super satisfying and while lots are optional, they reward highly. Speaking of people real quick theres loaddddsss of lovely sidequests that actively affect your relation with people and they feel great and they’re all super fun!
Oh and we are gender neutral as a player c:
But while this is shown clearly mechanically to us players, Chicory’s characters are going through a lot of the same issues, a lot of the same anxieties about art. And they push everyone away. And it hurts. But we never hate them. Chicory is as much about burnout and expectation and the weight of the town, the world than it is a stunningly designed Zelda-like RPG puzzler.
Using painting, that saves for every tile, in every part of the world, on every object, sign, character and even the sky is wild to me.
It is a playable colouring book with tools to help you colour even better, but it is also a dungeon crawling puzzler, fighting against doubts and worries and pain and using creativity to get there. Chicory expertly teaches you mechanics and naturally gates progression, it is incredibly accessible and has helpful hints along the way, but only if you really want to access them! It has so many settings and can be as easy or hard as you want it to be. Unlocking customisation as we go encourages our creativity to flourish as we gain confidence in our art and its a lovely reward!
The puzzles are meticulously crafted with your paintbrush upgrading to unlock new properties and abilities to help you access new areas and new people. Using plants to fling yourself along, to grow them as platforms, to create paths under small gaps, up vines, and more, they feel super satisfying and while lots are optional, they reward highly. Speaking of people real quick theres loaddddsss of lovely sidequests that actively affect your relation with people and they feel great and they’re all super fun!
Oh and we are gender neutral as a player c:
2011
This review contains spoilers
Portal 2 was a big turning point for me. Before Portal 2 I had only played Nintendo, Sega and weird little child friendly indies for DS, Wii and PS2. But one year I got an Xbox 360 with Kinect (kinect is great dont @me) to share with my brother and I was allowed to pick a game. I judged a game by its cover: omg i get to be a robot and go through a portal that sounds great why is this so dark and murky hmm somethings up
And i was right! I was never allowed like anything horror until this point, I had watched Coraline the year before and Monster House many years earlier but that was as far as it went. I was 11, my brother was 13 and had seen every classic horror under the sun and played Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies with me on that Xbox against the rules so he could have help.
But Portal 2, was weird. Portal 2 was every little ArmourGames and AddictingGames and Newgrounds game I had played: it was a mind bending puzzler, but it was like Call of Duty (my first fps); It had.. graphics. I felt wrong playing it, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I hadn’t played the first, so I didn’t know who anyone was. There was just this huge unease, the decrepit, destroyed sentient wall panels and this unending blackness all within Aperture Science property. And the NPCs…. they were rude! Sonic wasn’t rude! Eggman was a little rude but, nothing personal! And I was the ONLY human?!
Progressing through Portal 2 was tough as a kid but it deeply affected me, I had never seen something quite so eerie and off and like no one wanted me there, no one wanted me to play it, even the UI was barebones.
Portal 2’s puzzles are genius and I have played through the game so many times now but even before then, Valve teaches mechanics in such interestingly, clearly philosophised ways that just naturally build and build without ever holding your hand that they just stick, like forever. When levels combine every mechanic, you feel like a genius, you get so zen but Valve always give you more to learn through the whole experience, you’re never left to get too comfortable in its uninhabitable worlds.
Old Aperture turned me into an actual conspiracy theorist, learning about Cave Johnson and Caroline and the Borealis and who the heck is Black Mesa anyway. After completing the game I searched for hours, clinging to any modicombe of wider worldbuilding knowledge from Half-Life. I needed to know more, it was so bizzare, there had to be more, but there wasn’t. Everything that needed to be told in the story was and it was satisfying, I was just so in awe of the clear depth of this world hidden beyond reach
I loved it. I loved Portal 2, I love that every menial thing is inexplicably sentient, I love that everyone actually despises each other, wittily showing it, I love that turrets sing melancholic songs, I love that after Glados shows a modicombe of kindness we are chucked into an empty field with nothing to help us in the middle of nowhere, and with Half-Life for context, into a literal apocalypse. We are doomed, and its hilarious.
And i was right! I was never allowed like anything horror until this point, I had watched Coraline the year before and Monster House many years earlier but that was as far as it went. I was 11, my brother was 13 and had seen every classic horror under the sun and played Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies with me on that Xbox against the rules so he could have help.
But Portal 2, was weird. Portal 2 was every little ArmourGames and AddictingGames and Newgrounds game I had played: it was a mind bending puzzler, but it was like Call of Duty (my first fps); It had.. graphics. I felt wrong playing it, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I hadn’t played the first, so I didn’t know who anyone was. There was just this huge unease, the decrepit, destroyed sentient wall panels and this unending blackness all within Aperture Science property. And the NPCs…. they were rude! Sonic wasn’t rude! Eggman was a little rude but, nothing personal! And I was the ONLY human?!
Progressing through Portal 2 was tough as a kid but it deeply affected me, I had never seen something quite so eerie and off and like no one wanted me there, no one wanted me to play it, even the UI was barebones.
Portal 2’s puzzles are genius and I have played through the game so many times now but even before then, Valve teaches mechanics in such interestingly, clearly philosophised ways that just naturally build and build without ever holding your hand that they just stick, like forever. When levels combine every mechanic, you feel like a genius, you get so zen but Valve always give you more to learn through the whole experience, you’re never left to get too comfortable in its uninhabitable worlds.
Old Aperture turned me into an actual conspiracy theorist, learning about Cave Johnson and Caroline and the Borealis and who the heck is Black Mesa anyway. After completing the game I searched for hours, clinging to any modicombe of wider worldbuilding knowledge from Half-Life. I needed to know more, it was so bizzare, there had to be more, but there wasn’t. Everything that needed to be told in the story was and it was satisfying, I was just so in awe of the clear depth of this world hidden beyond reach
I loved it. I loved Portal 2, I love that every menial thing is inexplicably sentient, I love that everyone actually despises each other, wittily showing it, I love that turrets sing melancholic songs, I love that after Glados shows a modicombe of kindness we are chucked into an empty field with nothing to help us in the middle of nowhere, and with Half-Life for context, into a literal apocalypse. We are doomed, and its hilarious.
2004
“Lets roll up to make a simple star in the sky!”
How the heck did they model that many cute little items?! This game and its music are so charming and silly, it exudes fun and playing it shows me artists and level designers giggling away at silly easter eggs and placements of objects. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about its control scheme but like im not gonna lie chief it feels like how it feels to push a ball around
How the heck did they model that many cute little items?! This game and its music are so charming and silly, it exudes fun and playing it shows me artists and level designers giggling away at silly easter eggs and placements of objects. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about its control scheme but like im not gonna lie chief it feels like how it feels to push a ball around
2008
Have you ever played a better Rhythm Game with more charm and uniqueness and iconic songs? Yeah yeah, I suppose you would say not. Its wacky and cute and the UI slaps and you can get really satisfyingly good and all the games feel super different from each other. They do a lot with only 4 input types (tap, hold, swipe, drag)! I love this game deeply because it was clearly made with love and is full of ideas