Short Story Scribbles

Developer and Publisher: Wadjet Eye Games Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive Release date: April 24 2014 [After many years and many trials, here we are, folks: the end of an era. Or, rather, the end of a singular story that, while abandoning its own threads, ended up woven into other (as yet unreviewed) tales of the strange and exciting. Come along with me as I gripe about one of the best…

Developer and Publisher: Travel-Friendly Cake Genres: Visual Novel, Point & Click, Logic Puzzle Serving as a quick glimpse at Travel-Friendly Cake’s upcoming logic puzzler, Puzzle Spy International (Demo and Prelude version) is easy to blow through having only 2 puzzles to complete and some quick dialogue to click through (it might take you all of 30 minutes if you’re also taking pictures and…

Developed and published by Kickstart Now Platform: Steam Genres: 2D, Idle, Management, Desktop buddy Often, when you hear the phrase “simulator” in relation to bottom-of-the-screen buddies, you’re really talking about an idler that isn’t so much a simulator as it is a digital pet: a limited, fantastical point-and-click pet that isn’t really grounded in reality, so it doesn’t really teach you…

Well, it’s that time of the year again, kids: time to reflect on the past 365 days and make half-hearted promises about the coming 365 more. There’s a bit to go through, but hey: content is content! The year just flew by, huh? I managed to put out a few articles and reviews, but not as many of them were for full games as I would’ve liked. It’s difficult writing out full reviews when the urge to…

Developer: Tlon Industries Publisher: V Publishing Platform: Steam Genres: Metroidvania, crafting, survival, sci-fi, base-building, farming Some people just don’t know when they have it good until it all goes to hell in a handbasket; the same can be said of Kent, the average joe-turned-clone hero of this quirky, yet seamless genre-mixing game about a man displaced by time tasked with doing…

Hi, everyone! It’s time for the quarterly update (I know I never mentioned it before, but I’m going to go ahead and slip into it as if I did). Every three months or so, I’ll give you a quick run-through of what’s going on, any concerns I may have about how the blog’s doing, and any future plans. First off, I’ve been slowly chipping away at the longest written project I’ve ever done for this…

Developer: Poti Poti Studio Publisher: Wholesome Games Presents Tags: puzzle, cute, relaxing, casual Developed by Poti Poti Studio and taking place in a wide world of sepia, comic book dotting, and flat color tones, Is This Seat Taken? is a logic puzzle centered around accommodating the various seating (and standing) requests of a city full of sentient geometric shapes. When not listening in…

Developer: CaveLiquid Publisher: CaveLiquid Release date: Feb. 2025 Desk buddies aren’t really a new thing. As far as I can remember, BonziBUDDY and its multitudes of spiritual descendants have been gracing the desktops of PC users the world over for decades, thrilling us with their wide range of functions, charming characters, and the deep-down, lingering fear that we’ve opened ourselves up…

Developer: norrimo Publisher: norrimo Release date: Oct. 2024 Steam reviews: Very positive Logic puzzles really do come in all shapes and forms, huh? Now picture this: you have the odd but fascinating job of creating photos based on the memories of other people. You listen to their brief but sometimes meandering descriptions of their childhoods and recreate the landscape using different…

If owning a book store was a dream of yours, you should probably skip over this snooze-fest.

Developer: Bit66 Publisher: Bit66 Tags: Cozy, Shop Keeper, Cute, Sim What do you get when you combine assets seemingly ripped from an early DS-era Pokémon game (sans pocket monsters) with the incredibly niche genre of book store owner sim? Why, you get the lovingly cozy but extremely limited in scope Book Bound. While I understand that as a demo, this is just a quick glimpse into a larger,…

Developer: Sokpop Collective Publisher: Sokpop Collective Steam reviews: Very positive Release date: Jan 2022 Tags: sim, tower defense, strategy, city builder, dice, resource management Have you ever looked at a game and thought, “There’s so little going on here; it can’t be that difficult”? That’s essentially every Sokpop game ever released, and Luckitown is no exception to this casual…

Developer: Pathea Games Publisher: Pathea Games, Focus Entertainment Steam reviews: Very Positive Release date: Nov 2023 [I’m going to assume you either played My Time at Portia, or you took the time to either check out TV Tropes or read my review, so if you were looking for a full Portia recap, sorry-dorry, it’s not here! Also, this review is for the single player version, as I haven’t had…

[Note from the author: Okay, so, when I was writing this up, it occurred to me that I’d put myself into a pretty bad position by putting off reviewing this game by 7 years. For those of you keeping up, I wrote the accompanying walkthrough for The Blackwell Deception some 7 odd years ago, when the freshness and newness of the game was in my mind. I’d had limited experience with the point-and-click…

Developer: Cat Society Publisher: Spiral Up Games Steam reviews: Very Positive Release date: Oct. 2024 Tags: Time management, turn-based, sim What do you do when the petty squabbles of two rival guilds are interfering with your ability to make an honest coin? The safest answer would be to pick a guild to work with, but why pick sides when you can hustle them both? Dungeon Inn Prologue: The…

A bright and cheery post-apocalyptic game.

Developer: Pathea Games Publisher: Focus Entertainment Release Date: January 2019 Steam review: Very Positive Technically one of the most positive post-apocalyptic games you’ll ever play, My Time at Portia is set centuries into a future on an Earth that has survived not only the end of times, but a centuries long literal dark age where nuclear war has created dust clouds that block out the…

Saving the world one card at a time.