Inestimate's Game Reviews

Console: Steam, Switch, XB1, PS4, PS5, PSVR2, Quest 2, Quest 3 Developer:  Origame Digital Release Date: May 19th 2020 (Macro DLC released November 7th 2020) Umurangi Generation  is a first-person photography game all about artistic expression, exploration, and masterful environmental storytelling. Developed by solo Māori developer Tali Faulkner in 10 months, Umurangi Generation  is visually reminiscent of the PSX-era of games: low-poly, low-res, and blocky with mostly flat textures, but with tons of visual charm anyway. However, it very much plays like a modern FPS game, and the tutorial even says so. Just replace the guns with camera lenses.

Console:  Switch, XSX, XB1, PS4, PS5, Steam Developer: Pixadome Release Date:  September 1st 2022 Chenso Club is a roguelite platform brawler with cute pixel art, charming characters, and a focus on difficulty. The second release by the now-dormant Pixadome, Chenso Club  makes a good first impression, but struggles to keep the momentum going and ends up stifled by its own design choices. Chenso Club 's key mechanic is its difficulty counter: whenever a world is completed, the difficulty counter goes up by 1 and all enemies grow stronger and tougher. Upon death, as is typical of a roguelite, all powerups and upgrades are lost, and the difficulty counter returns to 1. The game also boasts four difficulty settings to allow the player the customize their experience, but it's quite clear that the target audience is firmly players who enjoy a difficult game, as the game can give you trouble even on Casual. Counting its final world, Chenso Club  has six unique worlds: the ...

Console: Steam, XB1, XSX, PS4, PS5, Switch Developer: Foreign Gnomes Release Date: March 4th 2021 Everhood is a rhythm-based RPG with strong narrative leanings focused around immortality, death, and goofy characters. Created by Chris Nordgren and Jordi Roca, Everhood  takes massive inspirations from multiple indie games, but none are clearer than Undertale  and Yume Nikki. Yet, I think it mostly succeeds at being its own thing. While I would typically avoid drawing comparison with other games so early on in the review, Everhood 's inspirations are so blatant that they are part of the first impression of many players, and some can't go past this impression judging by its comparatively few negative reviews.  Indeed, the wacky cast of characters reeks of Undertale , down to the point of giving each character a "voice" with text noises. Similarly to Undertale  as well, this is a game more based on its narrative than gameplay, despite having unique gameplay. And the narr...

Console: Switch, XSX, XB1, PS4, PS5, Steam Developer: Froach Club Release Date: April 6th 2023 Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories  is a narrative adventure game made in RPG Maker with a distinct art style reminiscent of a classic Game Boy game, complete with a green monochrome look. This is, as far as I can tell, the first "big" game released by Froach Club, with the rest of their catalog being on itch.io.  While this isn't made particularly clear, this is actually Melon Journey 2 : the original Melon Journey is available for free on their itch.io page, or the remake Melon Journey Pocket , playable on a real Game Boy, is available for $5 USD on Poppy Works's itch.io page. It is a 30 minute trade quest made in RPG Maker that actually introduces a lot of the characters and worldbuilding, as well as some inside jokes. It's hardly necessary to play it before playing this, but the game does take place after the first game. From this point forward, "Melon Journey...

  Console: 3DS Developer: Intelligent Systems Release Date: December 8th 2011 Pushmo , known perhaps more fittingly as Pullblox  in PAL regions, is a puzzle game with platforming elements centered around solving puzzle box-like stages by pulling and pushing blocks. It's an eShop exclusive for the Nintendo 3DS, and the first of a quadrilogy. The  Pushmo  series is one of Nintendo's lesser-known first party franchises, as the entire series was comprised of eShop exclusives.  It seemingly was designed to be a bang-for-your-buck type of game, as despite being simple and straightforward, Pushmo  boasts 252 stages and even comes with a robust level creator. In  Pushmo , the player controls Mallo, an adorable, squishy looking red sumo wrestler who must rescue trapped children. The game is based around a single mechanic: pushing and pulling blocks. What counts as a "block" is a solid shape of the same color, so a block can theoretically be of any sha...

Console: PC, PS4/PS5, XB1/XSX, Switch Developer: Geometric Interactive Release Date: September 29th 2023 Cocoon  is a puzzle game centered around navigating worlds inside worlds. It's the first game by Danish indie studio Geometric Interactive, formed by Playdead ( Limbo , Inside ) alumni Jeppe Carlsen and Jakob Schmid alongside a few others. Cocoon  was nominated for Best Independent Game at The Game Awards 2023 and won Best Debut Indie Game at the same event. This playthrough stemmed from me watching that award show: as far as I was concerned, Pizza Tower  was the sure-fire winner; there was just no way anything else came close to that in 2023. And yet,  Cocoon  won. I was utterly shocked and felt like it was a massive snub, like many felt. How could some random game I've never heard of be considered better than the frantic, exciting  Pizza Tower ? So when it went on sale in early January, I decided to buy Cocoon  and play it for myself...

Console: Nintendo 64 Developer: Nintendo EAD Release Date: November 23rd 1998 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a third-person action-adventure game with a focus on an open world, puzzles and simple combat. Ocarina of Time needs no introduction: it's widely considered one of the greatest games ever made, is very likely one of the most influential games ever made, and... it's a game I'd never played start to finish before this year. I'd always stop somewhere around the third dungeon of the game. I've played my fair share of Zelda games, both 2D and 3D, but even though the N64 was my first console, I actually have never played through both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask , though I have watched playthroughs and speedruns of both, and watched countless videos about them. As a result, while this was a first full playthrough, there were no real surprises, as I knew mostly what to expect in terms of story and gameplay. Still, I was curious to see just how I...