alex's word hole

It does you good to have a few guaranteed bangers on the to-play list. Moon has sat on mine with patient promise ever since the English translation came in 2019, over twenty years after the original Japanese release. But you do gotta play 'em eventually.

A few meta-layers peel back to reveal what is essentially a sidequests game - helping townsfolk and resurrecting animals in the wake of a JRPG hero's blundering, destructive quest. The multimedia melange of sprites, CG, and claymation creatures twists together with characters' mundane routines and absurd, often obtuse, problems to create an incredibly charming, hand-crafted, and specific video game.

A time and stamina system is really the only point of friction and restriction, though swifty (too swiftly I think) overcome as you complete quests and can stay out later in the day before collapsing. A trip which takes several in-game days of travel is a particular highlight, forcing you sit calmly in the passing hours, the sun rising and setting, stars and storms sliding on by.

The soundtrack is easily the game's biggest triumph. In content, certainly - a great, diverse selection from pop songs and traditional prayer chants to trance, trip hop, funk. But also in context - most tracks are purchased out of crates in a transitionary corridor and you have to create your own playlists to accompany the long walks and tedious waiting around you will inevitably need to face. Each record comes with its own cover art and a little review from the snobby, insecure rocker running the shop. This is the video game - filled with completely unnecessary but completely delightful details that make you fall in love.

Immortal biker-warrior dog sets out across the wasteland on a bloody revenge quest against the militaristic birds. A Trials game with guns, or a castle game on a bike, an interesting combination however you want to explain it. Aim with the right stick and control your bike with the left - backflip to reload, front flip to recharge a bullet-reflecting parry. In theory you are gunning it over hills, popping heads off unsuspecting crows, blocking retaliatory fire with perfectly rotated chassis acrobatics and racing off through the dust without a care.

In practice... well, we should have a chat about your temperament first, because this is also one of the most frustrating games I have ever played in my life. If you have a low tolerance for getting pissed the fuck off, that's okay little baby, just walk away. Did you learn how to walk yet?

You will accidentally spin backwards off a tiny pebble, hit your head and die. You will catch a random bullet in the shoulder from off-screen after killing half an army and die. You will simply fail to wheelie along a rope as required many, many times and fall into the sea and die. And then you will jump back to a totemic shrine with all the enemies respawned, and have repeat fiddly bullshit you literally just managed to get past ten seconds ago.

The game reaches its nadir amongst some boring fetch quests, a stodgy middle, largely disappointing new weapons, and a grappling hook which has zero interesting applications. Even a peaceful, accepting, emotionally regulated person such as myself could began to struggle. But it's rather pretty, the music is incredible, and often enough you do pull off some beautiful balletic bike brutality to make everything okay.

Then, late - far, far too late - you get this boost dash ability which is so good I wanted to scream. I could have been doing this, the whole time? Instead of suffering?? You can use it in the air, at any angle you like, zipping suddenly back on yourself, past enemies or into gaps. It's a playful, freeing pulse, a safety net and escape button. My every complaint about the game instantly evaporated, leaving behind a small but bitter residue. Deep breaths.

I really need to pay more attention to why games float up into my peripheral attention, as sometimes it's because the streamers are playing them. Our tastes diverge quite swiftly beyond an aesthetic appreciation, though I certainly rate Horsey Game higher than the previous time I was tricked with Nubby's Number Factory.

Anyway, after a little gambling this game quickly reveals the expanse of its quivering musculature as you begin the husbandry of your own racing stock. A horse can be whatever you want it to be, and frequently whatever you don't want it to be too. Horses are horses, yes, but so are dogs and rabbits, deer and giraffe - though such easily-recognised morphologies will swifty disappear in a torrent of intermingling DNA. After saving up for car - which I assumed would simply allow me to drive around the map more quickly - I was delighted to discover that cars are actually horses as well. Now all my horses have windows.

It's all very silly but constantly surprising with its depth - there are sidequests, sideshows, secrets and systems all over, including a fully-featured genetic engineering lab. You will ultimately have to set your own goals and find your own fun though, perhaps if you had an audience that would help. I was entertained enough just poking around the world and breeding up some delightful freaks who might occasionally manage run in a straight line.

I forget if we settled on a name for Vampire Survivors progeny yet. Hopefully not bullet heaven, that was a bad option. Vamp-likes, survivors games, single stick looters, horde management, survival dodger, framerate stress tests, vamp-likes (bisexual), avoid/amass, walking (in central London) simulators.

Anyway, this is a 3D one. The actual basic combat and build-development is not especially exciting nor - the greater sin - particularly differentiated from run to run. But everything else is good. There is a fun, super-powered boost or jump that can serve as a panic button or just help you navigate the extensive number of levels. Those levels are the main draw really, grimy memory amalgamations - abstract landscapes, scrapheaps, exploded toy boxes, brutalist sculptures. Frantically running around a weird zone for ten minutes is an experience it's difficult to find any fault with. Add a little scrap of story after each run and tie everything together with a dirty old computer aesthetic, you've got a pretty good video game.

I found myself charmed and then completely hooked by this bright action-adventure inspired by Zelda (Wind Waker's island-strewn sea) and Zelda (Breath of the Wild's free climbing) and Zelda (general, dungeons and bombs and stuff.) Developed by one person over 12 years, it retains that delightful amateur wobbliness that would be carelessly squared away in the name of polish or balance under different circumstances. So, for example, it's often not entirely clear what to do or where to go - but that means you have to actually think about it, or else just explore and see what happens. And the combat is incredibly simple against equally simple enemies - but this encourages a fast, cheeky approach to fights where you bounce between blind spots to chain stealth takedowns, or snipe an entire island out from the dock, or just bash everyone into the water as they run at you one by one. And so on.

Then you get the grappling hook and it's genuinely wonderful in a way that makes you despair that BotW/TotK didn't have the hookshot in. Zipping around like an absolute fool. You can even zip past/into enemies and knock them out which will instantly become the only way you want to fight anyone. And THEN during the final boss fight the grappling range gets permanently boosted by an absurd amount which completely snaps the game in half. A fun and freeing parting gift that supposedly better games would never let you keep.

Reveal-centric storytelling stretches to breaking point during this fourty-hour main quest in which about three things actually happen. There is a huge amount of set-up and lore instead - largely, it seems, so that characters can wonder if a certain thing really exists and then find out ten minutes later that it does. What should have been a Greek myth-style journey feels more like stalling in the shadow of many interminable, vague cutscenes where figures stand around going 'you know what will happen, if you do this...' - 'it's worth it, after all this time. For Her' - 'I cannot allow it' at each other until the game decides to tell you what they're talking about. I only wish it was worth waiting for. The game pre-revelation becomes diminished into near irrelevance and half the party, already disappointingly thin and backgrounded, fail to muster any particular opinion about world- and self-shattering truths beyond a trudging, supportive ennui which may be very French but is also very irritating. A void of reaction that neither characters nor their creators appear to have any interest in exploring.

In combat, many fun systems and ability interactions struggle to surface beneath a much larger and much less interesting focus on parry timing. It does feel wonderful to bat away attacks, gathering buffs and action points in the process, and the action shines in regular play where you can gradually learn enemy patterns until you become untouchable. However, difficulty is mainly raised by giving bosses longer and longer combo strings for you to nullify entirely or perish to, asking much more of my patience and attention than I was willing to answer in the game's extensive optional final-act stuffing. I would simply love to deal with incoming damage normally, mitigate and recover, buff and counter, the dance of our ancestors.

A game I could happily complain about for hours. Nonetheless, a pretty good one.

An apartment block provides the excellent framework for this horror RPG in which an unimaginable cosmic entity passes by the earth, transforming anyone who gazes upon it. And so each home becomes becomes a twisted, self-contained nightmare of its own. There's the taxidermy apartment, teeth apartment, underwater apartment, paint apartment, war PTSD apartment, rat flat. Anything you fancy.

The experience is strongest early on when you're as uncertain of the mechanical bounds of the game as you are the possibilities of its fiction - a genuine unease when you step out of your apartment to scavenge and explore and find that something has Changed in the halls, and genuine relief when you return. But while the tension may ease with familiarity, the imagination on show continues to impress - a vast array of detailed and disturbing pixel-art monsters loom towards you during the workmanlike turned-based combat.

Unfortunately, as I only found out quite late into the game, most of the available party members join after knocking on your door as a random event while you're spending time at home, which I wasn't doing very much. Even if they might be less developed than the characters you meet out in the building, it was still a shame to miss out - the residents and how they are coping with everything changing around them (and inside of them) are consistent highlights in the game.

This is also a game with a fandom and lore and constant updates adding new stuff which you could probably argue adds an illusive sense of fuzzy-edged possibility and threat but I choose to find slightly annoying instead. I just want to play the game once and finish the game.

A comedy FPS that's neither particularly funny nor a good shooter, but still a pretty great video game. This is entirety down to Bubby Darkstar's incredible art - bright, energetic, stupid, gross - and great characterisation of the cast.

You play as Shooty who is basically this guy:

Fighting this robot invasion you may have heard of, while her useless idiot squadmates do not help at all and then claim all the credit in the background.

The first level is a neat little open city zone which strikes a perfect balance between action and conversation, exploring and doing sidequests for weirdos on rooftops. Crashing a boardwalk party and crushing a trickster robot with a big hammer after discovering he rigged the carnival games, giving his corpse to the birthday girl and uploading his consciousness into your own tech to serve as an antagonistically ally for the rest of the game.

Unfortunately, while the game escalates in scope and absurdity from there, it collapses structurally - linear levels and incredibly long sections of just talking to people without shooting any of them. It can get rather tedious, but again I find the art so overwhelmingly endearing it's impossible to be too mad. I just enjoy seeing everyone's ridiculous expressions, emotions and reactions from moment to moment - and all the outfit changes. A bunch of awful dorks, I love them.

A creepy cavalcade of monochrome creatures hanging in a video game instead of a gallery. The Tribulation Entanglement is like getting a nudge from a guy you've never spoken to before during a lecture in college and he half-turns his notebook towards you, showing a detailed sketch of a monster in the corner of the page biting a man's head off and you just gotta nod and whisper 'hell yeah, sick'.

The game itself is a fairly basic 2D platformer, feeling nice enough to run around in to keep you going and with some fun bosses for flavour. I was a little worried about the difficulty at first as it took me half a dozen attempts to make it from the very beginning to the first checkpoint, but I never had much trouble after that.

A short and snappy fantasy story told in the form of a character-hopping 2D platformer. If the first switch-out doesn't put a grin on your face then hope may be fading for your salvation in this life and the next. It's very rare also that I wish for a little more game to play, but some of the playstyles here are so enjoyable I wanted to keep going with them, including the Warrior's own sword-that's-so-big-it-throws-you-around-when-you-swing-it. But then the pacing wouldn't be so good. I truly am impossible to please.

Million Depth hits the same unfortunate snag as many other run-based games - too stingy with the cool stuff. By the time you have a fun build going you've beaten the boss and it's back to square one. It's a shame as the action in this game is pretty interesting - you create your own weapons by sticking blocks together, certain configurations of which will transform into special pieces like blades, guns and shields with boosted stats and capabilities. You do then just kinda drag them around bumping into things during combat, but also have to move your character independently to avoid enemy attacks. It's neat.

The Million Depth in question is the underground ruins of human civilization, bored into the earth as the surface died. You drop down from a lonely satellite in search of a friend and find your usual random events, shops, upgrades, and recovery spots along the way. Many narrative nodes too, helpfully mapped out on timelines you can eventually manipulate to prioritise your descent towards unseen events. Yes it's a timeline game, and so a time travel and time loops game. And yes it's a sci-fi post-apocalypse game, and so a sad robots and ancient AIs and existential questioning game. Far from unique, but the imagination in both its narrative frame and action core make a lot of fun.

Now we're talking. The 1997 Playstation version of this JRPG got a fan translation in 2024. Here is a good interview with those responsible. If you have any interest in weird old shit you gotta play this one. And here, watch the intro of the game as well.

Yes, the planet will be destroyed in a few years, and while the population is evacuated the two young pilots Ken and Linda must gather pairs of God's freaky creatures for a space ark. Cramming animals into their storage pods is perhaps the most humane things to do with them in this world. There are no veils drawn across the extensive use of meat and gristle - a slaughterhouse, a wall of cages in every town. You can sell animals as they are or process them into food or equipment, tame them for combat, or bring them to your local 'ripper' to see what treasures may be found amongst their guts. The only thing that isn't rewarded is wasteful brutality - doing too much damage results in the animal being obliterated rather than captured, providing one of the few points of combat strategy in the late game as you try to mitigate your levelled strength to take your prey alive.

This spiky backbone provides the societal structure, supporting two delicious flanks of narrative meat. Scenarios A and B are separate selections from the main menu, with entirely different but equally exciting stories. The game has an admirable refusal to lapse into predictability - so much that the opening section (Ken waking late in his mother's house and being rushed out to volunteer for the pilot position) is a little joke on standard set-ups we can share. By the time a creepy masked Santa delivers a cryptic message and your commander leaves a panicked voicemail about everyone in Linda's home town disappearing overnight, you understand this will not be a rote adventure. Every phonecall portends some sudden swerve - kidnaps, assassinations, conspiracy, clones, mutants, the evil girlboss plans of the CEO of perpetual Christmas town. Below it all, the mysteries of the planet itself - and above it all, of course, love.

Then there's scenario C, in which you have to gather 100 different species for the ark - a significant increase on prior requirements. This gives an initial thrill as you lock in to a speedrunner routing mindset, planning efficiently to collect animals on your way to open a chest you remember, drop some eggs off to incubate, see if you're strong enough to tame a wolf companion yet. It's a pleasant rhythm, and forces you to engage with the more obtuse ways of making certain animals appear whether by season or circumstance.

Unfortunately there's no central plot in scenario C - instead you get a series of small, timed side-quests for minor characters. It's certainly nice to get to know everyone better, and learn details that only drifted lightly in the background during the previous scenarios. But the big story moments are sorely missed - and their accompanying anime cutscenes even moreso. The overall experience of the game ends on this low-key, slightly underwhelming note - if an effectively sombre one. As the years pass and you toil in your duties, the citizens really do evacuate the planet in drips and drabs, leaving homes and towns abandoned, shops and services simply unavailable. A ghost world, waiting to die.

I do believe if all three scenarios were somehow rolled into one singular experience the game would be much stronger for it. And while I'm complaining - it's rather plain to look at outside of the animal designs and animated scenes. And it sure would be nice if Linda was actually in the game more as well.

But - as it is, merely an incredibly incredibly good video game that I will recommend to everyone at every opportunity and be really annoying about. We love those.

I also highly advise keeping this extensive play-through bookmarked, not only for hints you will almost definitely need but the fantastic art from the game guide and artbook which wrap up each section.

It's a difficult gothic horror melee action game with parrying and bosses and everyone's gone mad because of cosmic nonsense and everyone else speaks very cryptically and you have to run back to your body after you die and okay okay it's Bloodborne, it's 2D Bloodborne.

It's not very good but I wouldn't hold that against it. Short, too, but we love that. Still, the spooky mansion and its grounds manage to be perplexing to explore in a not-on-purpose way, unless perhaps the evil mist has got to me. The atmosphere is alright and the scraps of a story were intriguing and dreadful enough to drag me through to the end.

The fighting was a bit of a slog to begin with but the parry-riposte is extremely generous, spammable, and damaging which eased things along nicely once I realised I could actually use it. Always good to switch from running around out of reach and risking occasional swipes to just standing there swatting attacks away like flies. It's bullying, it's fun to bully a boss, it's allowed - encouraged in fact.

A short and not especially good narrative game very much in the vein of a Telltale's Walking Dead. Instead of zombies we've got freaky monsters and instead of a recent collapse this post-apocalypse seems to have been dragging along for quite some time.

Teenage scavenger Ted stumbles into trouble and faces some scrappy quick-fire, big outcome, they-will-remember-this decisions against some other people, eventually stumbling into the path of Diego. Their relationship is the whole point of the game and it's nicely developed enough, though as often awkward (positive, nice writing) as awkward (negative, poorly timed and delivered in execution)

Unfortunately you can't skip through anything so I couldn't be bothered to replay and see the effects of different choices at the critical moments of conflict. The boys are gay though so all is forgiven.

At one point I was aware of this game as one of the last things released on the 3DS eshop, as a point of trivia slash marketing. Then I forgot all about that, though a vague sense of familiarity persued me while I was playing until I remembered. Which was fun.

It's a fairly barebones 3D platforming/exploring game with a little shooting. The best bit involves neither of those - flying around between levels in a little rocket ship, one of life's great pleasures. But the levels are good, intriguing and rather desolate spaces ranging from the mundane to the abstract, twisty little mazes and broad empty plains. You can sense the designer's process and imagination in that variety, simply exploring as you do the kind of places that can also be a video game, the kind of secrets that can also be a surprise.

It's really annoying when your main complaint about something is a really boring one so let's just get it out the way - the game is too long. Each chapter makes its point, and usually does so exceptionally well, before grinding on until its sharpness starts to dull. Some ruthless editing and jump cuts would have done wonders.

The first chapter is a very strong opening as you (a clone from the clone girl mall-bunker society elevated to designated role 'Watcher') explore the pre- and post Inciting Incident versions of your progenitor's school, uncovering artifacts and speaking with students. School dance, image-marring spite, a spreading disease, an alien invasion, the end of the world, a plan for survival. The myth of your ALLMOTHER, the reality of her past, and your character's position in the world she left behind, all nicely jarring against each other from the start.

It's a dense and spiky scene, with a mechanical playfulness which sadly fails to return in later chapters. Much of the work from then on is about explaining or exploring those tangled threads one at a time, in often unnecessary detail. I am a sucker for stories about cycles though, so a thorough laying of groundwork definitely pays off as the game moves forward and the insular little clone society breaks and reforms, always echoing. Love to Healer obviously, the worst and the best. Jiaos forever.

The Ö is you, the o is a bomb, and the second o is also a bomb. Absolutely sublime puzzle-platforming design here, no gimmicks just teaching your idiot brain things you never thought of with regards to blowing yourself up and stacking bombs on your head. Each little run of puzzles finishes with a drop into a room with no exits and the first time you go 'oh, a dead end :(' before realising you've just learnt how to get past an obstruction you assumed was inpassable five minutes ago. I believe you could just go straight to the end if you were smart enough from the beginning, which is probably the number one best thing for a puzzle game to do.