Video Games

As regular readers will know, I am at least as big of a board game fan as I am a fan of video games. In fact, whilst I probably spend more hours actually playing video games, I cherish the time sitting around my table with friends as more…

Project Warlock 2 aims to take players back to the shooters of yesteryear. With its blend of retro shooter gameplay and a few clever twists, developers Buckshot Software aim to capture the same blood, bullets and badassery from the classic…

Have you ever found yourself in a strange place, alone and lonely? Even though you know that the world is just as weird and strange as anybody might find you, you just can't seem to connect with others. In Birth the solution is simple, to…

If you asked me to take the mythos and style of the legendary Thief games (excluding the crap 200X remake) and build an isometric Desperados style stealth game out of it, I’d bite your hand off at the chance to see the outcome. And so here…

By Christ, this is a good one. I was more or less raised by Gothic literature, as a precocious/pretentious kid, from Poe to Shelley, to later works by Stephen King and Shirley Jackson. The haunted house story is practically engraved in my…

Sometimes a game comes along and it's boiled down tropes into something so simple that it almost seems brand new, but then you blink and realise that what you're looking at is closer to the point of origin for the whole thing. Ozymandias…

Imagine if anyone actually knew much more about the legend of King Arthur besides something about knights and a round table? Imagine if the legendary wizard Merlin were the original Doctor Strange? Well friends, imagine no more — because in…

Citizen Sleeper, from Jump over the Age games, is a mixture of science fiction visual novel and dice management game that will draw you in with its rich atmosphere and excellent writing.

Having recently reviewed Crusader Kings III on Xbox One via GamePass, my appetite for console-based grand strategy simply cannot be sated. With the modern political landscape as tumultuous as it is, I’ve been seeking something a little more…

Sometimes you get to play a game so ostensibly intriguing, so fully singular in it’s identity and style you just have to sit back a bit and go “games really are amazing.” Cosmic Top Secret, a highly personal, autobiographical game where you…

Jump from shadow to shadow as a Schim, a shadow-surfing frog, in the cool 3D puzzle game of the same name. I don't know about you, but with me there are games that simply keep cropping up. You spot them early in development and then they…

I both love and hate games like Per Aspera. I love the deep, complex simulation that comes with such games, and in this case, I love the rich and interesting story about an increasingly sentient AI called AMI. But, I hate how hundreds of…

I’ve said before that the days of half-baked real-time strategy and management sim conversions to console are long gone — perhaps with the exception of some of the more grand features in mega-games like Stellaris or Civilization VI.…

Among Trees is a survival experience for those of us who can only cope with so much stress in their lives. Wander a pleasant woodland, collecting items to help you build up your cozy cabin and just generally have a very nice time.

Right from the off, this game feels very similar to Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay, with a 3D field to explore, and stars to collect. My Little Pony does things a little differently though. Rather than individual levels to…

Tunic is a lesson in tempering expectations for me. First shown off in teaser form back in 2017. Tunic promised ambient music coupled with gameplay through a familiar inspiration. All was quiet until a couple of years later, ISOMETRICORP…

In the future when you need to ship something intergalactically you'll do so using appropriately labelled, painted, stamped and marked cubes. In Hexahedra you're the person who codes the machines to create those crates, although there's a…

Recently I have been really enjoying simulator games, and so when Winkeltje: The Little Shop came to Xbox, I was interested in downloading it and seeing what happened. This little shop game has a lot of different options, things to manage,…

RICO London removes pretty much everything I liked from its predecessor. I really rather enjoyed RICO, the 2019 roguelike first person shooter. Your cop, with a friend in tow if you wished, would choose missions to take on in apartments,…

Synthetik 2 is Berlin-based Flow Fire Games follow-up to the 2018 cult hit Synthetik Ultimate. Like its predecessor, Synthetic 2 (currently in Early Access) is a top-down action rogue-like with striking style and a tactical core. It’s a…