Tag game review

Space Gladiators from Thomas Gervraud was first released on Steam in 2021 and has finally been released on consoles!

Space Gladiators is a side scrolling game where you must run through a gauntlet to reach an arena where you fight a boss wave. Each wave gives you options of prizes like extra gold or new abilities to choose to determine what foe or foes you’ll face. The tutorial you start with covers the full range of controls quite thoroughly and does it in a way that is simple to follow without neglecting any of them. The only thing missed is to tell you what the importance of the blue butterflies are- I still haven’t figured that out for myself. My guess is that they feed some of your abilities and help you charge them up faster.

The art style reminds me of the early works from The Behemoth and their later Battle Block Theater but without the chicken they are so fond of. Thomas Gervraud is known for Brotato, Space Gladiators, Lost Potato and Potato Tactics. This game includes a space potato as well. I feel like there is an underlying obsession with potatoes going on here. Thanks to a well made tutorial and smooth controls the game is easy to play but due to my own panic I still died. A lot. Overall I found the game chaotic, but in a fair amount of challenge kind of way, and a great deal of fun. The $14.99 price tag is a little on the steep side but not unreasonable either.

Evil Dead The Game has returned with the Game of the Year Edition from Saber Interactive!

Ash Williams has returned for Evil Dead The Game GOTY Edition, from Saber Interactive, and is bringing the fight to the deadites! Players choose up to a handful of heroes or enemies to try to secure or steal the Necronomicon. As the deadites you take control of the Kandarian Demon to kill the heroes or as the heroes you must survive the deadites and recover lost pages and the Necronomicon itself.

Visually the game is stunning and the gore effects are realistic and exactly what you would expect to see in an Evil Dead or Army of Darkness game. The execution animations are fantastic and I could hear a younger version of myself hooting and hollering at each brutal hit. Atmosphere is off the charts. Seriously. Between the fog, the music and the sounds of monsters in the night, not to mention the fear system, this game does a fantastic job of building the tension, even in the tutorial. You are nearly invincible in the tutorial and yet once it introduce fear to your game it gave me chills.

I had two primary complaints with the game. The first is that the online community is practically dead already but I’m hopeful that this edition will bring others out to play it either again or for the first time. The second complaint, and this is nearly a deal breaker for me, is the controls. You can’t modify them and the melee combat system feels slow due to the buttons being moved to triggers where nearly all games that play the same has the melee mapped to one of the four main buttons. It put a major damper on my overall enjoyment and left me wanting to play something else at the end of my session instead.

Gematombe is an Action-Puzzle-Versus game from Ratalaika Games that is a hybrid of several classic puzzle titles.

What happens when you take a fighter like Street Fighter Puzzle Fighter and blend in controls from Bubble Bobble? You get Gematombe from Ratalaika Games. Controlling one of six Greek entities, referred to as the daemons along with a hidden seventh character. Working alongside Pandora you are sent to help capture all of the evils in the world.

The game plays like Bubble Bobble in terms of controls and stage layout but with a slight twist. In BB you would shoot bubbles of a specific color to pop similarly colored bubbles that were already there or add additional colors to existing ones. With Gematombe, the bubbles you shoot hit and bounce off of different bubbles or blocks and as long as you hit two or more it will pop all connected bubbles of the same color. Each stage is a battle between you and one of the evils. Winning is done by either clearing your board OR banking enough combos to generate extra bubbles for the evil you’re facing to deal with.

Conceptually the game is quite simple as are the controls. Quickly planning combos though is where the real skill lies and I don’t have it. I was fast enough to clear my board on each level but could never bank the high points and deal damage effectively. The game is a fun game that is easy to play in small doses or longer runs. I feel like most games these days strive to increase the time needed to play a single level and draw out that conclusion. This is definitely not one of those games. In a matter of 10-15 minutes, tops, I was able to complete the first two stages. This game is perfect for my wife who is great at recognizing patterns quickly and I am excited to see how well she fares.

Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story is a side-scrolling aerial combat game by Houndpicked Games and is a pun filled battle full of food.

Do you like puns? Do you like fast paced action? Do you like food based jokes? Do you enjoy explosions? If you said yes to any of those questions then you should take a look at the latest game we had the pleasure to review from Houndpicked Games– Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story. The game is a pun filled side scroller full of over the top bosses and weapons. The enemies range from single shot jets to massive tanks full of turrets and many variations in between.

Visually the game is crisp with each sprite hand drawn and it really shows. Controls are quite simple to learn but as the screen gets closer to being overwhelmed panic may ensure which results in the wrong attack button being hit on occasion. Myself and my family are connoisseurs of puns and loved the abundance contained within the game. Overall we had a great time and look forward to trying some of the levels again to try to score the full five stars on them.

Ultra Pixel Survive is a two dimensional side scroller that looks and plays more like Minecraft than it does Terraria.

Ratalaika Games brings us Ultra Pixel Survive, a game about crafting and survival. When most people think of games like Minecraft they typically think of Terraria. Terraria is also two dimensional but has always felt like it was more about the survival aspect than the building a world. This game is more of a happy medium between the two. Unlike these two titles though your tools never break.

Players choose between one of close to two dozen characters, each with their own abilities. You must unlock almost all of these characters though. You unlock them by purchasing them with red gems which are earned by opening chests. Chests in this game were the bane of my existence, at first. You see, there is an achievement related to opening one that I was trying to get since the beginning. The trick here lies in the house you have. STAY OUT of the house. This resets the period of time you must survive to earn the daily chest. That means you have to stay outside and remain there for 24 in game hours straight to have the chest appear. When it does appear though it is almost always offscreen.

Graphically the game is quite simple, leaning into the traditional 8-bit look and feel. Controls are quite simple and feel organic. I loved the simplicity of the game and had an absolute blast playing. I want to see what some of these other characters are capable of too. My only complaint is on the chest mechanic; I feel that going into the house should only pause the time and not reset it, other than that, the game was great.

HEROish is a tower defense game from Sunblink Entertainment that features six epic heroes and card that summon troops to defeat your foes.

In the world of HEROish players control a champion and a handful of cards. Each card holds a power or a troop unit and can be upgraded to make them more effective. Sunblink Entertainment are the masterminds behind this tower defense game and were kind enough to share it with us. You start the game with a set number of points and each card you use is worth a set number of points. The main objective of the game is to save the kingdom and defeat enemy heroes. Each hero has a deck of cards to use and depending on how many points they save then put them into sending waves of troops at the other.

Multiplayer can be done with with bots and gets quite hectic as your opponents send waves after waves of troops after you. You will still earn rewards for your fight if it’s only against the bots but that doesn’t mean they are going to go easy on you. They made me work hard for that win.

The graphics are crisp and look like a very similar style to either the Skylanders games or Disney Infinity. The controls are quite simple to learn and feel natural. The game is full of jokes and over the top characters making this perfect for me. I had a great time playing it and spent many more hours than I expected killing everything I could. If you like a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously and art that pops like a comic book then you’ll find something to like with this game.

Atari has given another classic the Recharged treatment with Caverns of Mars where you fly ever deeper into the core of the red planet.

Originally developed by Greg Christensen, Caverns of Mars was the first vertical scrolling game and a smash hit on Atari. Prior to receiving the Recharged treatment I had only heard of the title but never played. The concept of the game is that you are rapidly flying towards the center of Mars and ammo is limited. You must defeat your foes and reach the reactor before your fuel and ammo run out. Conceptually it’s quite simple. The gameplay is less so.

While it is a vertical scrolling game you don’t have much control on the vertical movement other than slowing it with firing your guns. You do have control over your horizontal movement though. As you descend further in to the planet there are more and more enemies and obstacles to avoid. In short time it will become quite chaotic.

Visually the game is crisp and highly detailed for the world around you and the world can be blown away to clear you a path but a slight shift in direction can spell your doom. The game is easily played in short spurts and a hell of a lot of fun despite the frequent dying.

Wayfarers of the South Tigris is a game of discovery and trade from the minds at Renegade Game Studios and Garphill Games.

Wayfarers of the South Tigris from Renegade Game Studios and Garphill Games is a resource management game using dice and cards. Players take turns placing workers, resolving their work or resting. Points are scored based on your upgrades, card combinations made and more. The idea of the game is to travel and trade along the South Tigris, collecting resources and building your empire. As you progress you must complete journal entries. Those entries each have their own requirements in order to complete each of them.

With tales of trade from the past there are always tales of bandits and thieves plaguing the path. Not really the case with this game. Sure there are obstacles to complete requirements of but the game is virtually void of real action. For someone that prefers their games with a fast pace and conflict of some sort, this is not the game for them. This game is aimed at people that enjoy games like Solitaire where most of the work is done alone and the joy is in the completion. Maybe an expansion one day could feature a way to pillage from your fellow players. The quality of the pieces and rulebook are superb but the organization of some of the rules and the lack of clarification on others does leave something to be desired. In short it is high on quality, low on action and close to two hours for a single play through means multiple play throughs won’t be happening on the same night.

Ratalaika Games returns with Steel Defier, a game about escape from a prison ship full of traps and augmetics!

Sometimes a game comes along that sucks you in so much you can’t stop playing it. Steel Defier from Ratalaika Games was one of those titles for me! You wake up aboard a prison ship and manage to escape your cell. The security gets stronger and more aggressive as you progress through the ship. If you manage to escape then you will unlock endless mode and that’s where things get really interesting. Each room you must collect fifteen security cards to proceed to the next. The controls are easy to learn and upgrades you find add further complexity. Some upgrades make gameplay easier like double jump or slowing time. Others feel more like a novelty like the running boost. Running is already fast enough in my opinion, most deaths caused by greed and impatience more than anything else.

Overall the game is fun yet challenging, providing increasingly difficult rooms. Graphics are a blend of the retro 8Bit style we are used to from Ralaika but blended with three dimensional devices that are trying to kill you like spinning blades. At $4.99USD this game is well worth the price tag and is an enjoyable yet easy 1000 Gamerscore!

The Guise from Ratalaika Games is a game centered around the fall of the All Father and the rise of monsters and orphans!

The All Father has left his children to protect the world but like every story of old gods things eventually devolved to infighting and eventually allowing the world to fall in the process. Ratalaika Games are notorious for their retro-esque titles with a twist, each game looking and feeling like a game from my past. Like how Go! Go! Pogo Girl‘s world was reminiscent of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game. The Guise is the first title I’ve played of their that feels entirely unique in terms of story and world. The controls are fluid and easy to learn for the most part. Some actions are not included in the controller settings list and you can’t replay the events where you learned how to do them. I’m specifically referring to the absorption ability which allows you to recover health, on Xbox you tap B repeatedly.

The story starts with a group of kids in an orphanage, the oldest leaves to run an errand, reminding the others to stay out of her room. See this opportunity to snoop in the normally locked room they ignore her wishes. You play as Ogden after he puts on a mask that the older girl had in her room. He is instantly transformed into a spike covered monster set on a quest to turn yourself back into a boy and destroy as many monsters along the way you can. The combat is quite simple where attacks are telegraphed making avoiding them quite easy. If you play like I do though that won’t matter and you’re going to die many times. The game has a world that is full of history and danger with an art style like no other I’ve seen. Overall I found the game to be intriguing and looking forward to the next time I load it up!