Roll for initiative… wher’ver you be doin’ that sort’er thing.
Peglin is a great game where you complete levels by dropping a ball into a destructible pattern of mechanic activating orbs. You can activate critical strike boosts, or replenish the board. And, before I gloss over too quickly, the purpose of this strategy is to rack up points which can then be used to attack mob health points, in effect winning the level and moving on. I was lucky enough to find the demo on Steam, although the main game has been covered elsewhere. Anyway, I'll give you a brief rundown of Peglin.
The game Moonlighter is a combination rogue-lite dungeon-crawler mixed with trade simulation and story-rich RPG elements. This timeless, beautifully rendered pixel top-down was released by Digital Sun in 2018, and is available on most platforms.
Today's game, Loading Story, listed as developed by "potatodog" on Steam is a tad quirky but genuinely satisfying. It's a very short game about a character troubleshooting a game loading error in an imaginary video game town, where the loading…
Update: Alchemic Cutie is, once again, a game running across my desk, slated for Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5 for June 2023. I really have no particular context for describing it after so long, but when I tested it on…
Arietta, a young lady camping at grandma's cabin along with Arietta's mom and dad. Arietta meets a spirit named Arco during their first night. After Arietta's departed grandmother greets her on the cabin pier and sends her on a quest to retrieve a silver ring, things take a major turn. With some authentic metaphysical storytelling involving realms, ghosts, and spirits, the integrity of the spiritual aspect of this game is solid. In reward, it creates a game with a story with countless possibilities and storytelling. Let's take a look.
Dark Dragonkin is an indie dev project from Twintertainment that is a top-down pixelized fantasy RPG/dungeon-crawler. Players control multiple characters in a group to make them work together to defeat enemies and advance the story. This game is still deep in the dev process with a potential audience of RPG fans and general indie gamers. It feels very attended to as a solo dev project though, and the potential to scale abilities and environments into a fully fleshed world is entirely real. So, I sat down with Dark Dragonkin and played through the first level. I recommend if you test the demo for this you realize how far the developers have come in working on basic mechanics and themes. I thought it was pretty cool, so let's talk about it.
Go Heroes is a coming soon, turn-based RPG based on the stories of Greek Mythology. Each level is filled with puzzles that not only advance your progress in the game but progress the story. It is not quite isometric but rather described as four-directional--it is sort of like using a board game with camera controls. You play as Prometheus, the Greek titan, who dared give the gift of fire to mankind. I am fortunate enough to have a very early press copy of this game in collaboration with Indie Game Collective and Happyland Games. So, let's take a look.
Phoenotopia is more than a cozy pixel-art game about a hero with pink hair. There are some pretty deep theme but also pleasant gameplay. For a sample, a group in Phoenotopia known as the last councils decide the fate of…
