Shiftyvee

This is going to be a short post but I wanted to make it separate from the mini-review batches, simply because I'm happy to have played another short horror game I can confidently recommend. Cobb is a very satisfying and clean feeling game to play. You run around a little dungeon juggling items that either light your way, cause distractions, sustain yourself or progress the objective. Your obstacle is an evolving monster that can only wonder aimlessly at first, but will slowly be able to stack up new abilities that allow it to see you in the light, hear you run, sense your presence, etc. The rules of the monster having some randomisation for each attempt, as well as the maps being procedurally generated, constantly keeps you on your toes as you adapt to the circumstances. While it's simple and the counterplay to some rules are more intuitive than others, I enjoyed my time with this and would happily pay for a full game if one were ever made.

How Fish Is Made (2022) 6/10

It feels like it was made as an art piece to be analysed (and likely exposed to people via video essay), because there are definitely some interesting ideas that feel sufficiently explored/explorable for its short length, but then it just kinda tells you what the game was about at the end so I'm a bit confused as to how they wanted people to digest this. I enjoyed my time with it I suppose, definitely preferred it as a surreal experience to Arctic Eggs with how trippy and uncomfortable it could be, but I can't say that it left the greatest impression or that the DLC made to advertise another game was very spectacular either.

Super Mario Bros. (1985) 4/10

I'm really sad that I didn't like this. I figured that such an iconic game would be a great entry point to the NES Mini I bought, but it just left me quite unenthused regarding the rest of the system. Between the slipperiness of the movement and the ever-changing responsiveness of the controls, it ended up being surprisingly difficult and aggravating for what I'd assumed was just a cosy platformer and I never got far. While I did initially want to see it through anyway, the lack of save states ultimately shut that idea down. I guess you could say I had a skill issue with Mario but it just did not feel good to play. I don't really dislike it though, it's pretty hard to hate something this important to gaming history. The music was nice too.

Take Care Of The Cat (2026) 4/10

I do like the visual style this game went for, with flat sprites for characters, and I think that the goal of trying to keep your cat friend safe while it gets ready to deliver babies is very sweet. The issue is just that it feels like it needed a lot of work, because as a full experience it was underwhelming. The gameplay is very simple and gives you nothing to be interested by. The wolf in sheep's clothing is a nice enemy design, but it's only there briefly and is in contrast to a dumb looking ARG monster that felt unnecessary. This game just struggled with actually playing into how creepy it could be.

Spoilers!!!

Was nobody planning to tell me that the puzzle genre is gas? I pushed away the idea of playing many puzzle games over the years because I doubted that they would be very entertaining, almost all of my experience going back to older mobile apps and browser games like 'Fireboy and Watergirl', but so far both of the puzzle-focussed titles I've logged have been great.

I played this during a bit of a "fun game drought", where my rotation isn't bad but I'm rarely ever excited to boot them up and play them. It is a bit of a shame then that Portal's brilliant campaign didn't even last me that one evening, coming in at not much over 2 hours when I had assumed it'd be roughly double that, but it's very hard to be disappointed with the length of something that I enjoyed almost every minute of.

I can rather confidently say that the puzzles of Portal are by far the best designed in any game that I've played, whether it be my limited experience with the puzzle focussed titles I've touched or one that simply includes them. It strikes an extremely satisfying balance between being challenging and manageable, where despite taking some time to solve certain puzzles I never felt frustrated or even lost, in fact I was actively enjoying and invested in merely thinking about the solution.

I could mention a few other things I liked about the puzzle design, like the very smooth and digestible way that the game is taught to you or the amount of milage that it seems to get out of its often simple mechanics, but the one that stuck out the most was how lenient it felt for a puzzle game while playing the campaign. The larger array of possibilities present with the portal gun and general physics engine provides a degree of freedom, meaning that there isn't always 1 set answer to the task at hand, which feels so much nicer than playing a game thats much more linear and restrictive, even if that isn't inherently bad design.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like you always have a handful of options available, but when you come up with a chopped solution to the problem and it still works it feels incredible. The example I remember the most was when my brain turned off and I forgot that I can just redirect some bouncing energy balls, so I used portals to fall past them instead. Was it classy or easy to pull off? No. Did I die a bunch while trying to get the positioning and timing right? Yes, but in the end when I got past that hurdle and realised how it was meant to go, I could only appreciate that the game seemed to have no interest in punishing me for doing it the "wrong way".

I praised Half-Life for its aesthetic, and while Portal didn't quite hit the same I still highly appreciate some of its visual qualities. Most of the Aperture Science lab is minimalistic in its detail and colour, likely intended to look sleek and tidy if it weren't for the walls being dirtied up, and even rooms that are flooded with disgusting waste. This provides a pretty cool contrast for whenever you find a hidden room or break off into the larger facility where everything is messier and rustier, and you can hear the hums, thumps and hisses of the machinery littering the building, while still feeling natural considering all the hints beforehand that this place isn't as glamorously futuristic as you might initially guess.

The maps of Portal also make it quite clear that the place is abandoned, at least when it comes to people, leaving you with just 1 constant presence in GLaDOS who is quickly becoming one of my favourite characters from a videogame. Without her, the game would still be good but it definitely wouldn't have the same impact. She's incredibly charming and entertaining, combining a robotic lifelessness with a surprising degree of emotion and personality to create a very memorable vocal performance. It's always fun to catch her out on her lies.

When it finally becomes obvious that she means to kill you, she'll flip back and forth between pretending that you're friends or that she means well in some way and then outright threatening and insulting you with full honesty. She's hilarious about it too, and honestly this applies to most of her dialogue, not just the insults. Lines such as "Do you think I'm trying to trick you with reverse psychology? I mean... seriously now..." and "Here i'll put you on, 'hellooooo', that's you! that's how dumb you sound!" are just great. If there's one thing I'm most excited for in Portal 2 it's to see more of GLaDOS.

The charm doesn't stop with her though, because she's not the only entity in the game. Some of the levels feature the inclusion of sentry turrets which come with some of the cutest dialogue I have ever heard, genuinely making me feel bad for knocking them over. The Companion Cube is also a pretty fun addition, and I like how GLaDOS' sick insistence on burning it ends up being a tutorial for the exact mechanic you'll use to take her down at the end. The radio music bangs too.

Overall I'd say that Portal's story mode is flawless, or at least close to it, but you might have noticed that I have clarified that I'm specifically referring to the campaign at certain points throughout this review. Portal does have bonus content, and I have played and completed all of the advanced chambers, but I would not extend much of my love for this game to these extra levels and I'd say that they left Portal on a bit more of a sour note. The fact that GLaDOS is missing is obviously notable, but I just didn't find them nearly as enjoyable to play through.

It's not that they're bad necessarily, they're meant to provide an optional challenge and do succeed at that, but the issue I had is that advanced chambers often feel less like the difficulty is coming from figuring out a solution and more from trying to execute it, which leads to some tedious and unfun moments. I would've much preferred if these were their own original creations with the same love and care from the campaign put into them, as I have a feeling that it was an unfortunate symptom of trying to alter and add to puzzles that were very tightly designed. Still satisfying to complete more often than not, and I'm not going to let it drag the score down, but it's definitely something that I think could have been done better.

I decided to replay this after I saw a major update being advertised on twitter, because I figured that 3 years should've provided this team with enough experience and hindsight to make a more competent version of Banban 1. This is not what I got. The core game is still terrible, as all that they seem to have improved is the optimisation. The drone was made faster but it was not made any better to use, still having an awkwardness with angles and notable delays between actions. I also figured out that Opila bird can kill you while riding the chair if you stand too close to the edge, especially if you're in the middle of reading the note.

I'd be a bit more charitable with this update if the secret content was largely how the game itself played out. While it definitely wasn't any good, with some laughable scares and still having to wrestle with the drone, the new character and some small improvements to the ambience are still better than nothing. While this still isn't nearly enough, it's a bit of proof that maybe they could've made something passable if they really tried. It's hard to be remotely impressed by these improvements though when the only thing worth playing the update for requires you going around collecting a bunch of items (which didn't even work for me so I had to see it through a youtube video).

I did almost consider upping my rating slightly, but this is way too little too late. In fact, the lack of a considerable upgrade actually makes me a little more mad at this game than before.

If you're looking at just the presentation of this game, then it's not too bad. There's some charm present in the cheesy recreation of older youtube videos and some really nice artwork for some of the animals and characters. The menu is fairly cool and I like the nod to the recreation of prehistoric cats hunting humans when you die. The game's visual style is also more interesting than the usual mascot horror games that I see, fully leaning into being cartoonish with its models. Whether or not it always executes this well is a different thing entirely, because some of the characters do look overly silly or just a bit ugly to me.

Regardless, looking at this free "pilot" from the perspective of aesthetics, I can understand why this might interest some people enough to want more of it. Judging it as a game however, well quite frankly I had more fun reading history facts than actually playing it. Annoyingly though, I wasn't even allowed to do that in peace due to the non-insignificant amount of interruptions present in some areas. One requires you to do a whole enemy stealth sequence first if you want to read them safely and the other involved the ugly bat consistently repeating voice lines in my ear while I tried to read. I'm sure that at least the latter could've been avoided.

The two tasks that you're given in this game are pressure puzzles and the stealth segments I just mentioned. Stealth isn't very interesting or well made due to a lack of things to actually hide behind in some spots, leading to you fairly consistently trigger the object-permanence-lacking AI to chase you and then just waiting for its funky pathing to lead it far enough so that you can edge through the room again. The actual chase sequence near the end is also just a bit dull, there's nothing interesting environmentally and you're just holding shift to the end of a room. The nightguard at the start can also just be ran past and basically ignored entirely.

Pressure "puzzles" are just you picking up an item and putting it on a glowing square and then it opens the door, which is hardly riveting. It's the only type of interactivity in the whole game, and it doesn't seem like they made any attempt to add any gimmicks that help their game stand out from the rest. A lot of mascot horror titles that I've seen, including some of the bad ones, still tried to spice things up a bit mechanically in one way or another. Poppy Playtime has the multi-tool hands which make for some pretty unique feeling puzzles, the upcoming Terrible Lizards is centring its gameplay around parkour, and even Garten of Banban introduced the drone which might have sucked to use but it was still a better attempt than nothing.

Finally, and I know that I keep saying this in reviews but it keeps being an issue, this game is simply too short and rushes to both its scares and conclusion too quickly because of that. The only thing that's keeping you from first seeing the active threat a mere 3-4 minutes in is willingly spending your time reading the exhibits. A complete lack of any considerable build-up for the horror or time to sit with the setting and characters of the game not only doesn't make for a very satisfying experience, but also feels like the exact opposite of what you'd want from a mascot horror pilot, that being that it slowly eases you into what the rest of the game might be like and still acts as a good enough starting point while also leaving you with a core hook. This game's concept is owed upwards of an hour to get started, not a sloppily made 20-30 minutes.

This is my first anomaly horror game, and I generally love the way it was done here. It's a sufficiently unnerving game that is completely devoid of standard jumpscares, getting you to fear anything that isn't perfect and sometimes overanalyse the surroundings due to that worry of making a mistake or not getting out while you still can. A few of them really got me, most recent to this post being the one where the lady in the painting is missing. There's a good amount of variety present in the hauntings, with one of my favourites being the figure table that tracks a ghosts movement, and there seems to be some simple but potentially interesting lore for anyone that cares enough about that.

It's fairly good but not great, as I did have a couple of gripes. Some of the clues require a much closer look than what most of the hauntings would lead you to expect, and they just went unnoticed in the midst of the chaos of fairly often being bombarded by oddities, resetting my run. You can also get attacked in this game, and one of those events in particular wasn't very intuitive to figure out, again resetting my run multiple times. These threats often don't even contribute to the minimal story aspects like you might expect them to, so they just kind of get in the way. Overall some pretty minor-moderate issues in the grand scheme of things, since neither of these are all too common, but when the entire game is built around this one system, any seemingly unfair interruptions still bog down the experience.

Fallout 1 is a masterclass. If an ally happens to miss its target and accidentally shoot you instead, they will now be aggressive towards you and want you dead as well. The developers didn't know it yet, but this level of coding genius would lay the foundations that would eventually lead to the Omniraptor's pounce ability in The Isle (2015).

The introductory cutscene to the world of Fallout is just brilliant, certainly one of the best I've ever seen, setting a strong tone with its showcases of tyrannical rule, blatant nostalgia baiting and capitalist marketing geared entirely towards the rich and lazy. It's all shown through the screen of an old-school CRT with chill 40's music that would otherwise be comforting, if not for the news giving it a more sinister taste, that then comes full circle as you pan out to the devastation caused by the world that the television was showing you.

I instantly expected something that I'd love, and I rode this high for a large portion of the game. I rode it through the growing pains I had, including the incredibly overwhelming character creation, the whiplash of 90s RTS combat, the utter confusion from the lack of considerable guidance I'm used to. I didn't even know that I had skill points that I could use to turn my absolute stormtrooper of a character into a firefight demon until I was hours in.

Soon enough, I learnt. I didn't look up a thing, I just kept going until I tried enough options or until a mechanic clicked for me, and I started to enjoy myself, even finding a bit of charm in these previously rough aspects that likely would've stopped me from pushing on if not for that intro. Of course the atmosphere was great, they actually sprinkled in some good comedy that didn't take away from the tone, and I found interest in helping others and learning their stories, but getting over the game's hurdles was largely what made playing Fallout feel fulfilling even if it wasn't anything spectacular.

But then it slowly began to shift back as I went along, and the honeymoon period was wearing off. I'd start to make more and more save states because I didn't know how to tackle something or if I'd be happy with the result. I'd finally get myself a weapon upgrade but actually I can't use it because I set my strength 1 point too low 20 hours ago, on a build that was otherwise perfectly made to handle it. I had to look up how to fix that, as I did with many more things down the line. I'd convinced myself for ages that I needed something else to enter the Glow and then finally bit the bullet on googling it, only to find out that the rope worked just fine, I just needed to put it on a specific spot. I'd upgrade my armour and move on to stronger enemies but oops, sometimes attacks just go through even the strongest armour and you die so you better have saved before any notable encounter! Get lost. Google. Save. Reset. Get lost. Google. Save. Reset.

If the game had ended maybe a handful of sessions in, I could easily see it getting as high as an 8 from me. If it had ended even just some number of hours prior to the end, it could have been viewed more favourably. Sadly, with the time I spent running around like a headless chicken after daring to take a couple breaks from the game and the information it provides, and also just the general length of the experience when accounting for side content, it was really dragging on for me. Those closing hours as I wrapped up the game hurt, with so many of the smaller issues, like missing a bunch of 95% shots in quick succession, feeling they're actively trying to stop me from seeing it through. You aren't even safe from being frustrated when trying to select the amount of money to trade, you have to manually click all 566 times.

Even the story of the game, which had previously been one of its best aspects, disappointed me in the end. While I did like the summary of how the wastelands evolved due to your presence, the final confrontation completely took me out of the immersion. My character wasn't an angel, often solving problems with violence, but she almost always did the right thing and those that she killed were very often corrupt or aggressive. Fallout seemed to have a very different idea of the character I'd built to me, and forced my hand completely into a conclusion I wasn't satisfied with. These last sessions weren't bad enough for me to think the game as a whole is bad, but it definitely soured my final thoughts on a game I otherwise felt positively about, and now have a painfully neutral stance that meets in the middle between admiration and rage.

I'm definitely going to have to approach the next game in this series in a completely different way, because this just did not work out.

Major Spoilers

I wanted to play at least one gay game for pride month, and while I did hop on Dead By Daylight a handful of times, I've sadly already reviewed that one.

Alter Ego explores manipulation and domestic abuse through the lens of a victim feeling guilt over standing up for herself. The stressful act of self-defence manifests as a murder mystery for her to investigate. It's a novel idea that created an experience that I appreciated, and I quite liked some of the concepts it managed to get across with its short runtime, like seeing how the girlfriend quite literally paints herself as a saviour and uses that as an abusive tactic. There's also some great visuals, with the game's art heavily benefitting at times from a willingness to go off-model or switch up the style to create some unique and striking imagery.

Unfortunately, even though I find quality in multiple elements of this title, I can't outright call it good with the 2 issues I had with it. The less impactful one, while still bothersome, were the game's looping scenes. I understand that they probably wanted to make it flow better than if it freeze-framed, but the lack of clarity regarding when a scene is finished caused me to both occasionally skip over dialogue with the feeling that it was ready to move on, and at other points slow the pace of progression down a bit too much just to make sure I won't miss anything.

The biggest issue with this game is the runtime. At about 20 minutes max, Alter ego severely limits the room it has to dive into the complex and heavy themes it lays out. As stated before there were times where some subtlety and intrigue peak through, but a lot of it was also presented without much grace, leading to a sizable dose of expository dialogue that probably comes off as a bit more cheesy than it'd like to be at times due to its blatant simplicity. Not only does it take away from the detective mystery vibe it seemed to tease to you at first by often being so quick to feed you information, but there simply is not enough time to get invested in this narrative that accounts for pretty much the entire experience. I'd give it a recommendation, but not a very enthusiastic one.

I figured it'd be reasonable to start making bundled review posts for when there's a few titles that I've played but haven't felt very compelled to write about. I'd like to include mostly everything I play on this blog but don't always have thoughts that I feel are worthy of an individual post, you know?

Water Womb World (2020) 6.5/10

A cool religious horror game set in the depths of the ocean. Fairly unsettling with some strong visuals and an interesting little world/story. It does run into issues with its length though, as it felt like it was owed up to 2x its very short playtime to leave a lasting impression. Also had some issues with awkward feeling mechanics and hard to read dialogue.

Control, I'm Not Coming Back (2026) 7/10

A short and sweet hopecore game with a lot of nice things to say. It can look pretty stunning and comes with some rather pleasant tunes. I didn't expect a game to make me feel both bad and hyped for a space probe, but that's what this managed to achieve. It definitely wasn't quite what I expected though, and I think it misses out on being a truly great experience by focussing all of its energy on inspirational quotes, at the cost of not giving you more to get attached to and more time to stew on what's being said. I do like this title and highly respect how it might affect or inspire some people, it can just start to feel a bit repetitive is all.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997, Gameboy) 0/10

I'd actually recommend playing this yourself before reading on if it interests you, as it's very hard to talk about without spoiling what made it work for me.

Anyway I gave this one a try in honour of the success of a movie that I haven't even seen, but most likely will after getting acquainted with what a serious Backrooms experience can feel like, not having been all too familiar with this creepypasta outside of all of the discussion surrounding its fanbase.

The Complex is an entirely atmosphere-driven walking sim in quite possibly the most literal sense. The entire game can be completed by only ever holding W or Shift+W and occasionally pressing control to crouch under something. Your only other mechanical option is to zoom in with your camera, really only there as a possible aid to your horror experience depending on the situation.

If this game doesn't manage to scare you, you probably won't like it, but I'm happy to report that it had me more fearful and tensed up than most horror games that I remember. Due to the well-known and often-criticised state of modern Backrooms content, packed full of entities and such, I fully expected a monster to pop out within 5 minutes of playing this mediocrely-rated title (on Backloggd). Combine that expectation with some of the wonderfully unsettling and peculiar vibes of its often cramped environments, not to mention some pretty tight sound design with dragged footsteps and noisy water always giving you a brief feeling of being followed, and here I am shivering in my chair when nothing has happened.

But that's where this game really got me, because there's definitely more than nothing in the Backrooms with you. Just as I started to get comfortable with the idea that this game was creature-free, I saw a tall, dark mass peering at me from down the hall. It wasn't a misleading object like the well-placed statue from earlier, this time it moves. I promptly went back to the elevator and paused the game for at least half an hour while I went to do something else, and it's likely that the only thing that brought me to return to it so quickly was the lack of save points. After this level I wouldn't see the entity again, only sense its presence through new tricks and an overall vastly stronger concern of not being alone.

Where feelings on this game start to get complicated is with the fact that there is no big reveal. On the one hand, I like that I was able to sit with the uncertainty of how safe I was, never potentially ruined by a big, loud jumpscare. Just knowing that I could have run into something, but otherwise got a mostly pure tour of the Backrooms kinda felt satisfactory enough. I even liked the way that the camera is the only thing to make it back into the real world. This makes it feel plausible that anything could've happened to our character while still keeping true to the found footage name.

On the other hand, the way it ended was just sort of anti-climactic. The monster is very clearly stalking you to a degree, even going out of its way to mess with you. While the elevator crash might have been its fault, there was too little seen from it to easily make that connection, and so my initial feelings for how this very intense experience ended are a bit of an in-between of apathy and disappointment. I don't think that it's necessarily a bad way to finish, you can of course draw conclusions that make it work out for you, and I don't think I have a confident answer as to how they could've better tackled this.

What I can say however, is that they could've tackled their monster appearances better overall. There are a few over the course of the game, the others being a bit too in-your-face or even goofy feeling to have worked quite as effectively as my single encounter, and I lucked out by only ever finding or noticing the best one. Even then, my hallway spook could have been improved through the lack of a scary noise accompanying it. Blurring the immediate identification of a monster, as well as leaving these moments to be entirely up to the player to notice, would've hit so much harder regarding the uncertainty of your loneliness.

I also felt that while they had a solid grasp on how to create some nerve-racking moments, they also missed some good opportunities regarding the atmosphere and entity. For example, the street with the red lighting could've been a lot creepier had the light switched on and off like a breaker. Even with nothing present this would be a little startling, but the entity appearing subtly in the forest or windows between flashes could've gone pretty hard if spotted. I'm not asking for overexposure, just more than what I got.

A 7-year-old shows up at the local anti-corporate protest. Understandably, the other people there are curious and ask them why they wanted to come, to which the child responds "Pikuniku taught me the way, down with Mr. Sunshine!" Thank you Pikuniku.

Just a short one today, but this is a fine little experience. It's a simple walking simulator where you navigate some caves in search of missing people, with the environment itself slowly growing and shifting around you until it resembles more of an organism than a cave. That's quite the neat idea, making the setting of the game interesting and a little fun to explore while simultaneously adding to the feeling of nervousness. Additionally, some of the ambient noises are effectively creepy and will have you checking your back at first due to being played out of view. It seems to have taken inspiration from the classic Minecraft cave sounds that notoriously scared its players, they felt pretty familiar to me anyway as a certified victim.

While hardly special, I think Cave Crawler did enough right to have warranted a positive score if not for a couple of issues. Firstly, the camera controls are just too slow and the actual movement is a bit too restrictive. It doesn't always get in the way much, I wouldn't think kindly of this game if it did, but you will feel it and it can be especially intrusive when having to do any backtracking for something that you missed. The other issue is a bit more inconsequential but I wasn't a fan of the occasional shadowy figure jumpscares that this game has, they feel out of place and a little cheap, like they're there for a youtuber to react to. Kind of weird how that continues to be a problem I bring up in these posts isn't it?

Major Spoilers

For a game that is very clearly inspired by Iron Lung and trying to recreate that kind of experience, hell maybe even due to that fact and the higher expectations I had for it, I found myself super underwhelmed by this one. It doesn't show much understanding of what made Szymanski's game work and so while it might have some nice elements, it's an ultimately disappointing and tedious experience.

As an example, the main flaw of this game is its ship mechanics. All of your functions run on a separate power system that you need to manually toggle on and off, depending on how much power is available. This is relatively fine while you can have almost if not everything active at once, but the increased menu scrolling and finicking as you go along is a very annoying way of "increasing difficulty". I suppose they had no choice considering they made navigation itself manual, which is a shame because controlling the ship could've been an actually decent mechanical aspect.

Your objective is to photograph and record audio for planets and then send your work in, which is quickly turned into a bothersome process as you're forced to repeat the task many times over with lower power. The horror aspects, being any unnatural audio and visuals you capture, take a bit too long to get started and spread themselves way too thin over the course of the game. As a result of everything, it ended up feeling way longer than it actually was. It didn't take me long to stop feeling unnerved and start feeling bored.

Your ship interior is also completely useless. You're allowed to look around and it is kind of cool looking, but being able to view your ship doesn't provide anything of use because nothing happens to it. I needed a lot more to be immersed in this experience and make up for the lack of visual information, and they did not help me feel confident in the quiet vacuum of space working for this gameplay style.

It's not completely devoid of good things. I did like how the predator disguised itself as a safe planet and do prefer the concept of being pulled in like that while being functionally restricted to the camera to Iron Lung's fish jumpscare, even if the journey to get there was so much worse. The lore and files are fine, there's some nice foreshadowing. I also appreciated how the monitor degrades due to radiation, though it also made files inconvenient to read so yeah. Maybe my final score is a little harsh but this was just a really disappointing game that I only liked less and less as I wrote this.

My space-obsessed friend watched me play, and was able to catch when the radio wasn't authentic, so maybe he and other nerds had/would've had a better time with this than I did. However he also got bothered by the inaccuracies present in the game, as well as the missed potential of not using red dwarf systems for atmosphere, so it's a bit of a double-edged sword.

This was such a pleasant way to kick off my 2026 backlog. It's not uncommon to find horror games that masquerade as cute or harmless at first, I've played a few myself, but a cute game that "pretends to be scary" is a much rarer experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. There's never any danger, not much that could even be classed as a jumpscare, and yet there are just enough little tricks being played or things you're yet to understand to unsettle you at first. Silly player, there's nothing evil in the never-ending dark pantry with constant disturbances, that's just Goober and he likes to make a mess.

I adore the aesthetic of Creature Kitchen, combining a fairly ordinary setting on a spooky night with a lot of magical fantasy elements that create a really cool map. There are many fun surprises, whether it be a creature or a location. You'll be in the middle of making food for simple dogs and raccoons when a little armless ghost knocks on the door. You'll finally get the key to a shed that was completely ordinary when you first got here, only to find it to be impossibly large inside like the Tardis, stars looming over you.

The critters that you interact with are also very fun. Most have their own gameplay quirk or some other attribute to make them memorable, like the Mice that scrounge up anything that you drop or the Moth that speaks to you and thanks you for your services. The cute designs and extra bits of personality give you a bit of an attachment to these little guys, taking more pictures than the game needs you to for the sake of fun or intrigue.

Narrative elements are pretty simple and scattered but also rather heart-warming. You're in charge of feeding all the animals that were previously taken care of by the house owner who had documented preferred tastes and behaviours. There used to be a bit of a community in the woods here, and making every little fellow happy will allow you to be accepted into this odd family that was brought together by the previous owner. Pants is one of the best examples of this feeling of belonging, as you cater to it as one might cater to a child. The somewhat bittersweet ending you get for all your efforts is the cherry on top.

The gameplay is fine, but this will be where I start my criticisms of it just not being detailed or expanded enough. I did enjoy many of the puzzles, especially the clock one despite it being a little awkward to interact with, but it is weird that it almost feels like the puzzle elements take up more of the game's focus than the cooking you expect from it. Using your kitchen often requires little input or room for error, and I just wish that it felt like I was more involved in making the meals for the animals that I care about.

Similarly, I would have loved for there to have been additional interactions and incentives present to have you spend more time with critters post-feeding. If this was the case, the already sweet story about bringing the family together would've been so much more satisfying. This game was definitely going for very easy and approachable mechanics, and there's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, I can't call it peak while it felt like it was missing something to up the quality and really tie the experience together, especially when it feels like more gameplay depth was easily possible without sacrificing accessibility.

8.5/10