indie

Wizard of Legend

2020-08-08

Wizard of Legend This was another rogue-like dungeon crawler that we found to be incredibly frustrating. Reviews praised this game in its single-player form, so perhaps there lies the difference, but we turned to Cheat Engine to extract some semblance of enjoyability after only the first boss. Note: we played on normal difficulty. At first, Wizard of Legend pulls you in with interesting graphics and powerful spells, lots of upgrades to collect, a bustling hub full of merchants, and the promise of challenging gameplay, but it goes downhill after the tutorial.…

Children of Morta

2020-08-08

Ho boy, it’s a good thing we don’t have a comment section (yet?) because this is going to be an unpopular opinion: this. game. was. crap. We wouldn’t know anything about how the action-RPG Children of Morta played in single-player-mode, and from other reviews it appears to be quite good, but from our experience, this was a game best described as grindy, grindy, grindy, with the wholesome, family-centred storyline serving to hold our attention just enough that we played it through with the help of Cheat Engine.…

Mortal Shell Demo

2020-08-06

You character is a nameless wanderer that has the ability to inhabit the bodies (shells) of fallen adventurers. This gives the player the opportunity to play various classes in a playthrough and switch between the classes as deemed necessary. The fighting mechanic is tight and rather souls like, but has enough new mechanics, such as how blocking is handled to make the fights progress in a different way. This makes the fights more than the standard: roll, dodge, hit and repeat.…

CupHead

2020-07-01

We tried Cuphead a couple of different times, and while we ultimately decided it wasn’t for us, there are many enjoyable elements to this 1930s-style bullet-hell adventure game. To be frank, it is extremely challenging, especially in two-player mode where the bosses have extra health. We found it to be frustrating because there’s no strategy to these fights—no deviation in the enemy’s attack from attempt to attempt, no items to pick up to modify gameplay, no ability to regain lost lives.…

Hue

2020-07-01

Hue is a single-player puzzle/platformer game, free on the Epic Games Store this weekend, where a child named Hue explores a colourless world in search of his mother, a scientist who researches colour. The main mechanic grants the player the ability to change the background colour of a level from grey to one of eight unlockable colours, allowing Hue to jump through and have other interactions with objects of the same or different colour (colourblind mode available, which we played with on, for the sake of clarity).…

OneShot

2020-06-21

Well wasn’t this little game a treat? We received OneShot by Future Cat as part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on itch.io, and though it is a single-player adventure puzzle game, we still had a blast solving it’s puzzles and figuring out its secrets together. You play by guiding a little cat-person named Niko through a solemn, atmospheric world in need of a new sun, and along the way, you learn about Niko, a mysterious entity who wants to hinder your progress, a mysterious entity who wants to help your progress, and a whole slew of characters trying to survive in a bleak world.…

Hollow Knight

2020-05-12

Hollow Knight is a Platformer about a fallen kingdom of bugs. It’s a platformer in nature, but has some strategic elements due to the fact that there’s emblems you can acquire that work like power-ups and they can be used in different combinations. The world has quite a bit of atmosphere and the music deepens this experience greatly. It’s not necessarily a dark game, but rather a little melancholy in parts.…

Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time

2020-05-12

This game is great fun as it provides an opportunity for cooperation as oppose to competition with it’s co-op modes. I’m basing it off of a 2 player playthrough, but it now supports up to 4 players. The overall premise of the game is to pilot a spaceship to save little trapped critters from mechanical monsters. Everything is whismical in nature and the game rewards helping others. There’s some level of strategy in having to man shields, guns and the motor of the ship with just two people.…

Binding of Isaac Rebirth with AntiBirth Mod

The Binding of Isaac is not recommended for kids even though it’s cartoony in nature. That being said it’s an interesting dark adventure in treasure hunting and slaying grotesque monsters. In it’s default form it’s not extremely fun as a co-op game. However, if you install the antibirth mod it becomes quite an awesome 2 player experience. I didn’t think it was going to be something that we would play co-op together, but the randomness of the power ups and the fact that it’s still rather cartoony in nature had us picking up the controller and doing runs even before we found the 2 player mod: http://www.…

Dead Cells

Dead Cells in a few words is the story of a headless prisoner trying to figure out why he still exists. It’s a fast paced game that has quite a bit of speed and the tight controls, a controller is definitely a must for full enjoyment. The game can be played through in about thirty or so minutes and that’s part of what makes it so awesome. Every playthrough is just a little bit different, from the weapons you get or the paths you decide to take.…