ChristopherAndSarah

Although it's been compared to deduction-based adventure games, Emio is more of a visual novel with minimal player interaction through the command system. The word 'detective' in the title describes the setting rather than the gameplay loop, and shouldn't colour the player's expectations too much. However, having the player select commands does deepen the level of engagement one has with the story and characters in comparison to the most straightforward and linear visual novels. The plot has its twists and turns, generally reserved for climactic moments, but upon seeing all the story has to offer, it is primarily anchored by three all-too-human situations: the death of Eisuke Sasaki, the history of the hardened detective Junko Kuze, and the oscillation between the myth and reality of Emio, the smiling man. The writers handle with tact all the nuances of these grave situations, shedding light on what the game describes as the fragility of the human experience. Throughout the player's investigation, they come to meet characters impacted by each of these main overlapping anchors, obtaining clues and noticing inconsistencies which are either: satisfyingly resolved through both the end of the protagonist's investigation and the adjoining epilogue, or should be read as character features/flaws that enforce the overall theme of the game. The players who care about the story and its characters are rewarded with comedic and tragic elements core to the human experience through to the end. Also noteworthy: The writers do not overly psychologize/pathologize any characters, which is refreshing and progressive. The story is able to walk the fine but morally necessary line of showing sympathy for peoples' circumstances while condemning certain actions or transgressions. The Famicom Detective Club games are quite far removed in terms of tone and thematic depth compared to the rest of Nintendo's catalogue. This endeavour is welcomed and encouraged.

An exploration of grief, complacency, ambition, and barbarism, packaged into a top-down action adventure game inspired by the traditional Zelda format. You’ll interact with the world and its characters through responsive and deliberate melee combat, ranged spells you acquire through mostly-guided exploration that will vary your options in combat in addition to acting as keys to access optional areas, and speaking to the uniquely designed, humorous, and well-written inhabitants of this melancholic world, giving and receiving aid from them along your journey. While the combat can look intimidating, it’s important to note how beautifully designed the world and structure of the game’s mechanics are, making the experience feel very considerate to the player despite its challenge. This extends even to how the game handles its secrets which, when pursued, offer a significant gameplay reward or satisfying story addition. Experiencing mourning while navigating their relationships to perpetuity and finitude grounds many of the characters’ experiences, both in large ways and small, which in turn results in actions or events that diminish their humanity. The player character reminds them of this either through sheer force or unanticipated charity and leadership, leaving some characters as well as the player with the warmth and hope that - in spite of the horror of mortality - community, freedom, and the fidelity to truth are essential values worth defending when and while we can. Overall, the visual presentation, score, and design culminate in the ability to evoke emotion, whether that be from the explicit story the two-person development team crafted or simply overcoming a challenging obstacle or stumbling across an area previously inaccessible. Death’s Door captures the best parts of what people traditionally think games are, while subverting expectations regarding gaming’s limitation as art or literature. Turns out there was beauty in those old formulas all along.

Among the ruins of an ancient mantis civilization lies an object of immense potential: a boomerang which grows in power as the player grows in the mastery of its technique. Striving for this growth is appetizing, but the environments and NPCs, living or dead, serve as caution against ungrounded ambition and power, illustrating its cost as black plague-like enemies which laid waste to the island’s previous inhabitants and also serve as your main obstacle. At its core, Boomerang X is a wave-based arena FPS, where the player manages essential versus surplus enemies, traversing and maneuvering in order to strike the weak points of otherwise impenetrable foes, which flavours the combat with light puzzle elements. Arenas are separated by moments of serene tranquility and beauty, always somehow leading the player to The Tuning Court, a space designed to exemplify the musical history of the island’s inhabitants and, more concretely, provide new abilities. Any one of the abilities acquired through the linear trajectory of the game might feel unremarkable, but it's the speed at which you can connect them to move yourself and dispatch enemies that makes the mechanics stand out. While thematically and structurally familiar, what is striking is how the visual presentation and score represent radical otherness or alterity. The sublime designs are strengthened by the moving outlines around every object in the scene, lending it an eerie, dream-like quality. The score adds or takes away elements depending on the arena which gives the impression that the space you inhabit is truly ethereal. To return to The Tuning Court, like the game has you do time and again, by falling as if into a dream, illustrates the relationship between dreams as the space of the unconscious, the nature of power and the desire for control, and the fantastical medium of video games that the developers wanted to convey when playing Boomerang X. It's a DANG! shame they aren't together to make another game.

Life flickers, like the embers of a flame painting the world with colour and shape, and fades, with only impressions left behind. This journey is a compassionate, complicated exploration of life and death, with puzzles symbolizing the anxieties and desires of those burdened with the disease called freedom. Playing as Ember, one among many, you are accompanied by narration reflecting the dynamics of these emotions as you encounter challenges posed by the solitude of interiority and its power of imagination and connection, integral to aiding those you find along your way. Untangling the knots of each lost soul has you retracing your steps, a mechanic which brings forth a theme best exemplified by the Beckettian motto of “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” You traverse the world with your physical force or by moving obstacles otherwise insurmountable with your song. The former represents the power of one’s resolve; to do things others cannot with care and empathy. And the latter, the power of art - transcending the finitude of the bravest or meekest. The wanderer acts as a ‘distorted mirror’ to the player character, missing the point of the necessity of loss as they become fixated on their initial abandonment. They mistakenly attempt to enforce permanence, quickly devolving into an exploitative hierarchy based on a play of shadows. Acting to protect others from feeling how they felt, they are unable to see the inescapable nature of feeling disjointed in the world, and that this abyss into which we are thrown does not preclude ethical life, change, and hope, but precisely affords us these opportunities. The player Ember shows how life is worth living, even if the universal nature of our original traumatic encounter means that it must end without a satisfying resolution. The answer the game provides is to go through life as a community bonded by materialist solidarity; together. Atheism without nihilism, courage without callousness, hope without delusion.

From the labyrinthian feeling of walking through modern metropolitan areas, to the impossibility of travelling through suburban and rural areas efficiently as a pedestrian, geography defines our quality of navigation in everyday life. The Pedestrian expertly explores how the arrangement of the physical world impacts our movement and the planning of our routes. Through its puzzles, confined to materials in view of the sweeping and dynamic camera, the player is asked to define a path for their stick person protagonist by rearranging the placement of traversable areas by linking doors, ladders, and connections to find a path forward. The integration of the in-game world ‘background’ and the flat surfaces upon which the character can move is well elaborated on, culminating in a true fusion of the game world. Each puzzle segment introduces new mechanics district by district, with the right amount of non-verbal or textual tutorialization of the foundational knowledge required to make full use of the tools available as you proceed. Jumping in and out of controlling the character to arrange links of logic is reminiscent of the constantly-changing character of modern cityscapes (with their ever-multiplying high-rises and gentrification), thematically resonating with the way The Pedestrian transits the player from place to place in the metropolis. Functionally, the puzzles require thinking old problems anew in each district, leaving behind previously codified rules in order to leapfrog new barriers to movement, which often necessitates a total rethinking of the player’s order of operations. The presentation of the player character: an ordinary, recognizable, and generic citizen, encourages us to challenge the status quo of what constitutes a livable and traversable community, and reminds us that we have the power to both reinforce old rules and hack/break them to form new, more inclusive principles of planning and design - ones that leave no one and no thing behind.

What’s a simple messenger to do in the face of “da A-POCKY-LIPS”? Well, when the core tension between people and between gods in Great God Grove is honest and vulnerable communication, your role as a substitute mailman armed with a lip-shaped megaphone turns out to be exactly what this radically strange place needs. This game embodies the phrase, ‘you just stole the words right out of my mouth’ with its inventive dialogue-as-item mechanic. Outside this system, it is a fairly traditional puzzle adventure game, with the usual occasionally-obtuse leaps of logic required to match the right item or string of words with the right person or place. But the in-world hint system nudges the player in the right direction almost every step of the way if needed, and everything beyond this scope is so unique, vibrant, and interesting. From the way the characters speak and look to the visual design of the environments to the FMV puppet shows, Limbo Lane Games had an extremely unique vision for this world and executed on it superbly. Everything has an absurd, surreal quality, yet the characters that inhabit the grove are processing and dealing with all-too-human conditions, and the player’s task is to help relocate meaning with the situations the characters are subject to. Within and throughout the comical nonsense is the central tension that even those we idolize just want to be respected and heard; but relying on that feedback alone for one’s stability can lead someone to do things they regret. This balance of reassurance and feeling assured in oneself is a challenge in creative work that is also relatable on an everyday level, and requires the vulnerability to speak honestly and directly with yourself and others. The developers of Great God Grove have struck this balance, which allowed them to create a singular world, with the writing, art, sound, and gameplay mechanics all contributing factors. I hope they can continue to stay on their feet to keep players on their toes.

In our world, the wealthiest rely on everyday peoples’ labour to enrich themselves; in the world of Arranger, the people at the top demand static inactivity, isolation, and inaction from those below them to keep their vampiric and euphoric eternity to themselves. What we feel we can’t do gives them the power to manipulate us so they can do for themselves. That’s where the player character, Jemma, comes in, with the power to move the world with every step she takes. Concretely, Arranger has you sliding and swapping places with pieces of the tile-like play area to solve sometimes intricate yet never punishing puzzles. These puzzles focus on the theme of mobility, similar to the open-air Zelda games where the challenge is traversal. In a more limited but never less satisfying way, Arranger makes the player focus on their impact on the world around them, as every element of movement has the power to disrupt the layout of everyone and everything. Jemma's discoveries along the way speak to parallels in our own world: global capital's corporate hegemony and control over information and material resources flows, and subsequently increasing polarization driven by inequality and siloed algorithmic feeds which spiral into disconnection and distrust - in institutions and in each other. Arranger perfectly contrasts these themes of exploitation, ambivalence, and isolation with the way the gameplay operates, forcing the player to be conscientious and empathetic as they navigate and influence the world. The dissonance Jemma feels with the status quo affords her the perspective of seeking something beyond what is deemed possible by her adopted community. Choosing to continue to seek answers about her place in the world, she ends up rebuilding solidarity and social bonds, eventually disrupting this system of expropriation at the heart of the static nature of her world. This ultimately makes Arranger not just a game with great puzzles, but the right puzzle game for our time.

Our environs tell us things; some we see with superficial, tourist-like interest, and some we ignore, fearing the interruption to the routine of everyday activity and consumption. Ecosystems communicate, with each other and with interlopers like us, but they do not speak in the same way as us. NAIAD, a game primarily about environmental stewardship, demonstrates this through its player character, a bridge between humanity and the natural world we inhabit, exploit, and have the power to protect. Naiad the water nymph begins her journey with curiosity about the world she is thrown into: one of lush flora and frolicking fauna, represented with stunning colour and layered geometry conveying the depth of the ecosystems on display. As she flows downriver and time rushes onward, she learns about her unique role - caring for and helping life in all forms blossom, as it responds magnetically to her song. In contrast, most humans are oblivious to Naiad’s presence. The initial portrayal of quaint human activity tells us that the true antagonist is not humanity itself. Rather, as seen through creeping industrialization and its ecological consequences, the enemy is humanity’s imperative under global capital to produce, consume, and exchange in the interest of profit over sustainability. While its themes are poignant and pointed, NAIAD delivers them with a soft embrace; one that recognizes the tension between hope at nature’s vitality and resilience and suffering at the futility of individual actions in the face of climate catastrophe. Part of this approach is the use of poetry and music to communicate both the euphoria of life and the devastation of its loss. What Elwin Gorman (Hiwarp) has achieved with this beautifully moving, devastatingly brilliant game is a message of love for the earth and all its denizens. If only we could communicate clearly what will be lost if profit is not put aside for the gift of being in the world and acting as collective stewards of the planet.

While the story has a central antagonist who begins the player’s quest for revenge by leaving their titular gunbrella at the scene of a gruesome crime, the time you spend throughout each of the distinct locales reveals the system of exploitation and appropriation at the heart of this world. Flourished with supernatural elements, this centrifugal force or antagonism sets into motion each of the conflicts between the individuals and factions you come across. The player comes to learn that this system is upheld for many reasons: the vast degrees of inequality in terms of economic, environmental, and technological resources, but also to some degree apathy, ignorance, and disavowal. A previously abundant world ravaged by institutionalized greed in the form of excessive resource extraction and the ungrounded pursuit of “efficiency” and technological superiority should make for a bleak environment for the player to traverse. But the artists at Doinksoft, with a balance of explicit criticism and humour, have made the end times a joy to look at and listen to. The player character's default movement is weighty but quick and responsive, but add in the gunbrella and it becomes extraordinary - dashing and darting around, opening up new ways to explore, and blocking or evading bullets in the heated times of combat. Everything you do has a satisfying crunchiness conveyed convincingly through the game's audio and visual presentation. The theme of an individual’s power and responsibility to act ethically in a world that feels already far past the brink of saving, while being grounded in a passionate personal struggle, is especially resonant in our times. Given the role destiny and chance play in the plot, Gunbrella illustrates the precise and elusive domain of freedom at the level of the individual, subject to a system not (exclusively) of their making. It's so nice I’ve beaten it thrice.

What if a traditional top-down Zelda was reduced to only its constitutive elements that make up the experience of a whimsical adventure, while losing none of the charm or feeling of being immersed in a place, at the same time as introducing a horrible-yet-ingenious time limit that paces the player into learning their surroundings in order to overcome the obstacles set before them. Counterintuitively for a game with a built-in time mechanic, Minit exemplifies the best of what taking things slowly and densely packing secrets and puzzles into a game world can achieve in terms of impact and satisfaction. The challenge arrives not in the form of elongated puzzle dungeons or tricky bosses, but in how the player is expected to manage their time and set goals during each allotted segment of play time. Your sword acts as your action button; your method of self-defence in combat, as well as your main vehicle for collecting trinkets and solving miniature but intricate puzzles. Repeat play throughs strike the right balance between feeling like cheating given the previously gained knowledge about secrets and item locations, while being given different time pressure than your initial run - a testament to careful and intricate world design. With slight but impactful commentary on the environmental destruction concomitant with corporate greed, every character and piece of the environment feels purposeful: providing you with a piece of comic relief through witty dialogue, enhancing the feeling of being in a (sur)real world, or pointing the player in the right direction, both for progression and metaphorically, with brevity. If Link’s Awakening is your favourite Zelda, then Minit is its even funnier, more concise and re-playable half-sibling, and an absolute must-play regardless.

Good things come in twos. There are many binary divisions taken for granted which, under some scrutiny, exist more along the lines of a spectrum than a hard cutoff. Worldless is an exploration of binaries, uniqueness, and difference which leaves the player with the feeling that otherness can be respected without being essentialized or minimized. It does this through its character swapping gameplay; each player character has their own strengths which compliment each other during the Metroid-like traversal/exploration as well as the novel turn-based yet real-time-action and rhythm-infused combat. You are a constellation thrown into a world of chaos and conquest where different yet similar beings absorb one other for survival, created by forces unknown to them. From the structure of the world map to the way combat involves both traditional damage meters and unique absorption meters, everything combines to create a welcoming but simultaneously alien environment. Combat in particular takes time to understand its intricacies. Broken up into two phases, you have a limited amount of time during your initial attack phase to break an enemy’s guard, opening them up to receiving higher absorption damage, and depending on how well you time your guards and parries during the defensive phase, you grant yourself more time on the next attack. Without relying on overly intricate map design, exploration feels rewarding instead due to the sheer beauty and use of colour on display in the abstract minimalist look of the world. This setting, and the use of two distinct characters, allowed the developers to play with interesting traversal abilities and mechanics, making Worldless stand out in a very saturated genre. By remaining distinct, and in fact emphasizing their uniqueness, the player characters gain the ability to see each other in themselves and unite towards something greater. A sacrifice only capable by one, ends up being the difference that makes the difference.