Category video game

Take up your sword and mechs in Chained Echoes, a roleplaying game that feels like a love letter to classic RPGs like Final Fantasy.

Ark Heiral crafted Chained Echoes, styling it to be similar to the classic Role-Playing Games from the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System). Visually the game looks and feels like those classic games, the characters especially remind me of the early Final Fantasy games. Those were some of my favorite games and this felt like the perfect homage to them. It was only missing a Chocobo and a character named Cid. Maybe I missed them in the game? Of course one big difference is the mech pilot combat.

The game follows a mech pilot and his comrades as they try to tear down the tyrant. With the mechs though your opponents will sometimes take to the skies, allowing you to enter the mech and go after them, adding a unique layer to the combat itself. Each fight is centered around the classic turn based JRPG styles prevalent in the industry but feels less clunky than others that have adopted it.

Overall I found the game to look and feel exactly like I hoped it would. However, it’s story didn’t suck me in liked the RPGs of the past did. This could be due to my no longer hoping every game was styled like this and the fact that even in an open war the action felt a bit on the light side, leaving me wanting more from it.

Swordship is a high speed boat ride that will push your reflexes and driving skills to the max. Do you have what it takes to deliver the goods?

The world has essentially ended, polar ice caps have melted and almost the entire world has been flooded in Swordship from Thunderful Games. The areas that aren’t flooded are barren wasteland and megacities have been build below the surface of the water. This game is centered around threats showing up to try to kill you and prevent you from collecting containers that you are trying to deliver to outcast groups. Each container can be traded to those groups for a higher score or used to unlock abilities and give you an extra life.

During gameplay the graphics are quite simple using mostly three dimensional geometric shapes for many of the enemies. You don’t have any real weapons so speed and quick reflexes will be your saving grace. Technically this isn’t a bullet hell game but sure as hell feels like it at times. The game can get truly nuts at times but the challenge of the stages leaves you wanting to keep trying it until you complete the level. My only real complaint with the game is the level up system. When you earn your first 500 points you gain a level, the next 500 is another level. That’s pretty standard. What’s not is the fact that if you die and have to start over your next level in that life will be 1000 points. This means you must be really good to get to higher levels. Despite this I found the game to be a ton of fun and more challenging than I expected.

Mode 7 and Ground Shatter are behind Fights in Tight Spaces, a game where you use cards to determine your actions in a brawl.

The folks at Mode 7 and Ground Shatter were kind enough to share a copy of Fights in Tight Spaces with us so we could share our thoughts. The game follows Agent 11 as he/she completes training and then works to take down various groups that are deemed too dangerous, starting with the Deaths Head biker gang. Each turn players are given a hand of cards, each card has an action that allows them to combat their opponents. While travelling across the campaign map you must balance your damage output with your total health.

Overall the gameplay is simple to play but hard to master. Much comes down to luck of your draw and energy conservation to execute the combos you need to win. Through the map you will find locations to improve either your deck or your health. Improving either requires money earned by completing each location within a certain number of turns. Meaning the faster you defeat the enemies the more money you make. For new players this game is really difficult but as you earn more cards and money it becomes a bit easier in that regard. The difficulty quickly climbs to meet your improved skills though.

Controls are quit simple with just a simple click of the mouse or using Q and E to rotate your screen. Graphics are simple but crisp, allowing the combat to be fluid. Overall we found the game to be a solid worth the play. We’d even love to see it translated as it is into an actual tabletop game as well.

Geography of Robots and Raw Fury bring Norco- a narrative adventure game that is unlike any other modern game we’ve played.

Norco is my first experience with the Southern Gothic genre, at least where it was labeled as such. Where Gothic stories and games focus on suspense and the supernatural, Southern Gothic focuses more on the darker side of humor. It is meant to focus on exposing societal problems through the creation of complex characters. Isolation is a common theme in the genre and is a central theme to the game itself from Geography of Robots and Raw Fury.

The game centers around your brother Blake’s disappearance after the death of your mother. Teaming up with a fugitive security robot you follow the clues to find him. Along the way you learn more about your mother’s time leading up to her death. Near the very start of the game you have the opportunity to fight the former employee of the gas station- do it, seriously. I think the story would force it eventually but still do it. He’s a douche and deserves it, plus you earn an achievement for it. Who doesn’t like achievements? I know I do! The combat system is rather straight forward too.

The controls are simple, the entirety of the game is a point and click adventure where you need a cursor and a single button. Graphics aren’t the best but some of the scenes stand out as a fantastic use of the style they’ve chosen. The game’s slow pace was a bit distracting but the attention to detail in the story was much higher than I expected. Overall I would say the game is worth trying out at the very least if you can.

The Void threatens to devour the entirety of the known and unknown universes. In Togges it is up to you to save everything.

Thunderful Games brings a new 3d platformer that is family friendly and yet a real challenge with Togges. After completing the most basic of the tutorials you meat the King of the Togges. They are simple creatures made of yarn that love to be close to each other and be stacked. They also LOVE fruit. The first few areas you are tasked with collecting fruit to improve their strength.

Your end goal is to help the king take over the known universes. Sounds more like a villain but his goal is to do so to protect all life from the Void. Early on you don’t learn much about the threat itself other than the fact that it devours anything and everything in it’s path. Sounds like the Nothing from Never Ending Story. Along the way there are threats to these peaceful creatures but not really to the player. Falling to your death usually means the end of the character’s life but in this game it just places you back where you were before you fell. Spikes that will kill the creatures cause you no harm.

This is an adorable game you can let your kids play but I wouldn’t. As mentioned before there is a good deal of difficulty here but it’s not impossible. The complexity of some of the puzzles means I would only have older children play it to avoid their frustration and anger at them. Some of the puzzles simply require too much patience and critical thinking for younger children to complete easily. Overall I found the game to be challenging but adorable. Meaning you can play in front of the younger children but shouldn’t hand them the control.

If Sweeney Todd and Ghost Town Games worked together to make a new Overcooked game it would be Godlike Burger.

Have you ever been cooking all day and you get that one customer who just pisses you off? Have you ever wanted to show them how sharp your knife is? I can’t be the only one. With Godlike Burger you can live out those fantasies without the fear of incarceration. Of course if you kill enough customers the customers will catch on and try to kill you as well.

Visually the game has the same isometric view as Overcooked and from a control perspective has the same commands. For graphics though this game just doesn’t quite match that cutesy look and feel of Overcooked. It would be even more shocking if it did though. As you feed your customers you have limitations on your ingredients. Once you run out you will either need to purchase them or in the case of the meat you will need to kill someone and harvest them to feed to future customers. Overall the game is shockingly fun and worth the play if you like the Overcooked style of games.

Space Lizard Studio and Thunderful Games bring us Paper Cut Mansion- a horror game with Paper Mario graphics with a sinister twist.

Not many games give you the chance to expand on the story by getting yourself killed. Paper Cut Mansion does that and so much more. Sure each time you die you have to start the puzzles and the maps over but you get a slightly deeper look into the overall mystery when you do. The game features a paper/cardboard art style the is reminiscent of Paper Mario but with some cardboard thrown in. The music is subtle but when overlaid with the shadows that surround you there is an eerie sense of something dark around each corner.

Visually the game is truly captivating. The controls are quite simple to learn and only give you issues if you have a problem with a drifting controller like I do. Gameplay is full of tension and can be quite overwhelming at times but the mystery of the Mansion makes you want to continue deeper and further.

Beautiful Desolation is a game where some of the aliens are lies and the world has ended because of them. Are you up to the challenge?

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. Two brothers, one joins the military and has some issues adjusting to civilian life. The other brother has no patience for him. Aliens show up and essentially end the world. Beautiful Desolation markets itself as a Post-Apocalyptic adventure but if you look past the rendering and the aliens it really is a story about mending family relationships.

Controls though feel clunky when accessing the interface and doesn’t give much in ways of tutorial resulting in controls that simply don’t make any sense. The only exception is the A button performs as I would expect but the rest of your controls are simply not intuitive. The Brotherhood Games team has crafted a gorgeous world where not everything is as it seems. This game features some of the best graphics I’ve seen on the Switch to date, especially during the cinematics. Some of the alien aesthetic looks like it was taken from the Dead Space franchise and makes me want to dig in deeper to see if that is the only similarity or if there is more. Dead Space remains to be one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. If there are more similarities then this game will be worth digging into deeper.

Skirmish Mode Games brings the latest in console warfare with Warpips- a game where 8-bit and 3d rendering coexist.

Skirmish Mode Games brings the latest in console warfare with Warpips- a game where you must prioritize the financial cost of war against beating your enemy. The units you use to fight are rendered in chunky 8-bits where your base and some of the terrain have 3d rendering. It makes for an odd pairing that simply works with the game. Even the blood on the ground is rendered in a pixilated 8-bit style on the ground.

Players gradually earn money automatically which they then use to purchase troops. The troops follow some basic AI to always move forward and kill the targets they find. Some will even search for traps and remove them. Are you smart enough to survive the coming onslaught? I played the game campaign AND the additional Endless mode and must say I am terrible at this game. Of course I set the difficulty to the maximum but most games I start there. Seriously though, DO NOT start on the hardest difficulty for your first try. Try the easiest and build up from there, it will make a huge difference.

Graphically, as mentioned before, is an odd hybrid that works well for the game. There isn’t much of a story to speak of other than go and kill. Why are we killing each other? I don’t require much reason mind you but something is better than nothing. Even if it is just a single cutscene and then done. Of course I have not completed the campaign so it could be there and my bitching is for not. The game is unforgiving at almost all times and still a bit of fun.

Wayward Strand is a story that takes place on a hospital that is also an airship where you help your mother tend to patients.

In Wayward Strand, by Ghost Pattern, you play as Casey, a journalist who must help her mother tend to patients on a floating hospital. You are there to both write a story on the airshop and, as far as your mother is concerned, to help care for the patients. What this means for Casey is she is expected to interact with each of the patients and improve their demeanor in the process. To get every story told in the game will require multiple playthrough as some characters will overlap each other in availability. Eaves dropping on one conversation may catch the attention of one of the nurses since you aren’t talking to patients.

The game’s art looks and feels like a children’s storybook. Controls are very simple to learn and the overall story takes a while to get moving. If you are looking for a game with some depth to the story but not a fast pace then you will enjoy this game. However, if you are playing late at night or early morning you may just take that nap your body will be craving.