#indiereviews

An alt pop and alt hip hop single that examines pressure, paranoia, and self myth-making through sharp writing and sharp-edged production.

Elle Madison steps forward with “Knightmares,” a single that pulls from alt pop, underground New York hip hop, and the darker corners of contemporary rap. The track presents a character caught between confidence and threat, using a mix of storytelling and internal monologue to map out rising tensions. Madison blends rap cadences with melodic phrasing, creating a contrast that mirrors the song’s central theme: the pull between power and vulnerability.

The narrative follows a cycle of pursuit, defiance, and self reckoning. The opening sections frame the song inside a world shaped by intimidation and obsession. Rather than quoting the lyrics directly, it is clear that the track explores a hostile encounter that lingers in the mind long after the moment passes. As the verses unfold, Madison positions her character as someone aware of personal flaws, yet unwilling to back down. This balance gives the song a sense of pressure rather than heroism. It focuses on how fear and bravado can overlap in unpredictable ways.

The production enhances this tension. The mix is tight and deliberate, with a low end that stays controlled while giving weight to the rhythm. Subtle details fill the midrange, adding small shifts that make the track feel alive without overwhelming the vocal performance. The top end is smooth, keeping clarity intact even during the busiest passages. It reflects a modern approach shaped by influences like Bones, Nelly Furtado, and underground New York rap, though the final result avoids imitation.

Madison’s performance leans into contrast. She switches between sharp, clipped delivery and more open melodic lines. This blend keeps the pacing fluid and gives the track enough variation to sustain its intensity from start to finish. The song also examines power dynamics through moments of confession and aggression. It hints at unhealthy attachments, spiraling thoughts, and the kind of internal battles that continue after the conflict seems settled.

“Knightmares” positions Elle Madison as an artist working toward a style shaped by personal history and a wide range of influences. It is a focused and distinctive step forward for a solo artist developing a strong identity in alt pop and alt hip hop.

Aborigenus is an adventure platformer with light RPG elements developed by Flying Islands Team. In Aborigenus, invaders have enslaved your clan and you are the last hope to save your tribesmen. Truthfully, there is not much more to say about this game as it feels more like a demo than a completed game. Your adventure as the hero of this story is told through simple text screens and the occasional bubble chat to clue you in on what is going on in the world. Story goes as follows: clan is enslaved, hero gets new powers from a shaman, hero fights single boss battle and saves his clan. This all occurs in the span of an hour or less of game play time.

Game play in Aborigenus consists of simple platforming that requires no skill or precision and is just meant to move you from enemy to enemy. In many cases, slightly alternate platforms can be taken to avoid enemies, but there is no reason to do this as there is no challenge to the enemies and no hidden collectibles to find. The light RPG elements could add value to this title if it had more substance. You acquire the ability to use three different spells past the halfway point of the game, which are completely unnecessary to use except for in one instance to proceed in the game. I would much prefer the RPG elements to be removed from the game if it allows for a longer experience and focus on the stealth mechanic that can be used to score critical hits on enemies.

Goblin Sword

Goblin Sword is a retro-inspired 16-bit action platformer with a simple two button scheme. After an evil wizard invades your hometown with monsters, you head out to slay them all while collecting loot in the process. Goblin Sword is worth the price of entry with plenty of content for completionists despite being repetitive and overall easy.

I had a fun time with Goblin Sword, but about halfway through the 80+ levels I began to feel that the levels were just a grind to get to the much more fun boss battles. Each level is quite easy to speed run through, but you won’t want to as there are two chest and three gems to collect in each level which can grant more heart pieces, income, relics, and souvenirs. In-game currency can then be used to buy swords with different stats and special attacks, armor that is purely cosmetic, and relics that grant stat boosts or abilities. Although I understand the purpose of adding these light RPG mechanics to add life to the game, I found them to detract from the fun as the levels were all quite easy without the added buffs. The platforming in this game is also quite light with challenges only coming into play for those actively searching for every collectible. Combat is old-school with any time you get hit or simply touch an enemy causing the loss of a heart point. During the regular levels there can be some difficulty in later stages where the screen begins to get flooded with multiple monsters, but since most of them die from a single hit it never becomes unmanageable. There is also an energy mechanic that allows you to release a special attack unique to each sword type which is completely overpowered. I found that most levels I would have my energy meter constantly refilled allowing me to wipe multiple monsters at the same time with a single attack. With the mostly easy combat in the regular levels I began to only care about getting through them as quickly as possible to get to the more challenging and varied boss battles. Each boss has a unique design and unique attack patterns that made it fun to figure out how to beat them. Maybe because I never spent the time searching out heart pieces and went through all of Goblin Sword with the beginning three heart points; I found some of the boss battles to be really challenging raising my satisfaction when I would finally beat them after multiple attempts.

Audio and visuals in Goblin Sword also face the same issue as the gameplay, repetition. There is only one background song per world that contains 15+ stages which only helps to further the view that the levels are a grind. Visually there is good variety of enemies in the levels, but as I progressed further, I realized most were just reskins of monsters in prior worlds to fit their current world. I can understand a low budget title like this one needing to use the same sprites, but I would have preferred fewer levels with more variety in audio, and visual design with much more challenging combat.

Goblin Sword retails for $5, but I was able to get it on sale for $3. Despite what seems to be a negative review, I think this title is worth the price at full retail or sale. For lovers of retro games and this genre, Goblin Sword has a lot to offer in content and the boss battles alone make it worthwhile for me.

Bury Me, My Love is a text-based game about the journey of a Syrian refugee into Europe. Nour attempts to immigrate to France with guidance from her husband Majd to escape the tragedies of the Syrian civil war. This isn’t a single tale though as many paths can be taken leading to 27 different endings depending on how you choose to advise Nour as Majd. The game is played through a simple text messaging interface where you respond to Nour’s progress to France via limited emoji and text options. Gameplay-wise this title does not have much going for it with limited choices and many of the paths converging into the same story beats, but the emotional impact of Nour’s story makes this an easy recommendation. 

When Bury Me, My Love went on sale for $1 the premise quickly interested me as I am first-generation born in the United States. Although I don’t know the full story, I do know that my mother had a tough journey from Colombia to the United States where multiple things could have gone wrong, potentially fatally. As my mother had to immigrate alone, so does Nour in the story of Bury Me, My Love. Majd postpones leaving Syria to care for his parents that would not be able to make the trip leaving Nour to do it alone. This single decision, made before the start of the game, foreshadows many of the difficult decisions that are made by refugees attempting to leave a war-ridden country. Within the first couple of minutes issues begin to arise where you, as Majd, advise Nour to pay more than the agreed price to a shady taxi driver, or change plans completely with her going to a different city. My brain instantly began to think of everything that could go wrong with both options. If Nour spends this much more now will she run out of money before making it to France? Will going to this other city delay her even longer from leaving the region, or put her in a more dangerous place? Reluctantly, I chose to have Nour pay the cab driver more and stick with the plan. Anxiously, I would help Nour make many more decisions as she would not always listen to my advice leading to a horrible first ending. Despite not getting a good ending on my first playthrough, the ending of each run is the true gem of this game. Each ending has a unique audio clip from Nour that is spectacularly voice acted and really punches you with the emotional weight of the anxiety, fear, joy, and second-guessing that occurs throughout that specific journey. I’ll likely never see Nour again. My father may have never seen my mother again. 

I can highly recommend Bury Me, My Love, just not on the Nintendo Switch. Throughout my two playthroughs I kept thinking to myself that it would be so much more impactful if I could have a delay in text responses from Nour to further build the anxiety that would be felt while waiting for her to reply. In many cases an issue would arise and within 30 seconds we were talking about a different topic as the conversation moved along so fast on the Switch.  After looking into this game some more I came to find out that the mobile version of this title provides just this with text messages coming in in real time. Can you imagine having a loved one message you right before she is going to cross a border and then radio silence for three days? I never want to experience this in real life, I do with this game. For me, there were also many performance issues with multiple crashes at the start of the story during both playthroughs. With the text messages coming in so fast, I would receive one towards the end of that day and it would instantly jump to the next day before I could read the message. Yes, you can go back and read the prior messages, but I also had difficulty opening the prior tabs at times. My biggest complaint though about Bury Me, My Love is how little dialogue choices you have. About 70% of the texts you will send Nour are a choice of three emojis. I am sure that my choice of emoji affected the outcome of Nour’s journey, but I have no way of knowing in what way. It seems extremely lazy on the writer’s part and is the equivalent of that friend that responds “K” to everything. If there are to be any future installments I would like there to be more dialogue choices with only the occasional emojis, and I would hope for more audio clips throughout the story, not just the end. 

Balthazar’s Dream

My experience with Balthazar’s Dream has been a nightmare. What seemed to be a cute action platformer about a dog rescuing his best friend quickly became a flea infestation of bad controls, mechanics, and level design.

Individual scores below are based off a top score of 20 for each category.

Gameplay (8) – Balthazar’s Dream claims to be a challenging puzzle platformer. The game is difficult for sure, but not because of difficult puzzles or tough platforming. This title relies heavily on its fear mechanic where if Balthazar is close to an enemy for too long, directional controls will be reversed and at peak fear any jump action is amplified to get across large gaps. I like the idea of this mechanic, but it was poorly implemented as you can’t control when a super jump becomes available with fear buildup being inconsistent. This led to the platforming being challenging only because there is no way to get good timing for jumps, and Balthazar would repeatedly swan dive off ledges. In many cases, I ended up using poor level design where I jumped on walls or other objects in the level as platforms that clearly were not designed to be such. Gameplay was also made more challenging by a plethora of bugs like getting one hit killed by a single flea when it takes three of them at once to kill Balthazar. The most disappointing thing is that this game provides great variety in enemies to avoid and environmental hazards, but almost all of these had at least one bug associated with it. The puzzles are also more of a game of chance as seen in the first level having to score a basket with Balthazar launching a ball at random and hoping it bounces just right to land in the basket. A quick search on twitter shows that this part of the first level is where many give up on the game.

Audio (12) – Outside of some issues with audio clipping caused by the fear mechanic, the soundtrack is the best aspect of Balthazar’s Dream. Each chapter has a different track that suits the levels well. My favorite is in Chapter 6 where a heart-pounding rhythm plays as you race against a descending ceiling. Unfortunately, I will never find out if the final levels get even better musically. There is no voice over in this title with the story being told through balloon chat and animal sounds.

Performance (5) – This game could have easily been called Murphy’s Law as everything that could go wrong in my playthrough did. During my two hours of gameplay I had multiple crashes, framerate drops, audio clipping, and eventually a game-breaking bug. Even after resetting the game multiple times I am stuck in an eternal loop of spawning and dying right away so I will never get past level six. I also recommend never pausing the game. If you need to take a break just put the screen to sleep. For me, pausing would lead to a reset of the game as I could not get out of the pause screen.

Visual (11) – The trailer for Balthazar’s Dream is what first got me excited for this title outside of the sale price point with cutesy pixel graphics. The visual design begins quite poorly in the first level but gets better as the game progresses into deeper and darker dreams. Balthazar’s dreams are nicely varied seeing him go from a home, to a forest, and even into outer space. Enemy and environmental hazard designs are also quite appropriate for what a dog would fear like cats and vacuums.

Budget (6) – Balthazar’s Dream retails for $8, but I was able to get it on a big sale for only $0.80. At full price I can not recommend this game to anyone based off the short run time and high chance of not being able to complete the game anyway. There is no replay value in this game unless if you want to run it through with all the five choosable dogs as there are no secrets or collectibles. Even on sale, I have a hard time recommending this title unless you enjoy the challenge of completing a poorly designed game.

I really wanted to enjoy and be able to recommend Balthazar’s Dream. I gave up on it three times and would return to it the next day because I feel there is something special that can be had here. The game has good bones, but needs a major overhaul patch for bugs and to polish core mechanics before I give it a second chance.

I have absolutely no interest in skateboarding, hell I can’t even balance properly on a bicycle. I could only finger skate with those little finger boards. For many years, we have been given skateboarding games like Skate or Die and the critically acclaimed Tony Hawks series. Tony Hawks was widely accessible and got more people into skateboarding. The last skateboarding game I played was Tony Hawks 2 on the original PlayStation as an early teenager. This review will be covering the PS4 version of OlliOllli. Let’s skate!

The first thing you will notice is how colourful and vivid OlliOlli looks in comparison to the more serious skateboarding games on the market. The art style, coupled with a wide selection of crazy skateboarding tricks makes this game a pleasure to look at.

The game controls are simple for anyone to grasp. Hold the analog stick up, right, down or left and release to pull off a fancy skateboarding trick. Whilst you are in the air, you will need to press the X button the second you land on the ground or a rail. If you miss, you either fall off your skateboard or stumble (which breaks your combo streak)

OlliOlli is also an incredibly accessible game to pick up and play. The aim of the game is to jump, flip and grind from the far left of the stage to the far right where you will be welcomed by a crowd of devoted fans cheering you on.  But make no mistake, this game is brutal. Each level will present you with 5 challenges. These challenges range from getting a certain score to collecting an x amount of a certain item in one run. Once all challenges have been completed for one level, you will unlock a “pro” version of that level. These Pro levels are 100x harder and they will make you smash your controller against the wall.

To the dedicated OlliOlli players, if you manage to beat every stage and challenge, you will unlock the fiendishly difficult RAD mode, a mode that will make your palms sweat and your blood boil. RAD mode is ironically pretty UNRAD for the average gamer who loves to rage-quit. Every jump, landing,  grind and trick you pull off must be perfect rank. One slip-up and you will end up back at the beginning, no second chances. Memorisation of every grind, ramp and obstacle is absolute key here.

OlliOlli also has a ranking system that displays a list of all the OlliOlli players who took part in earning a high score for that particular level. There is also a “Daily Grind” event that occurs every 24 hours. You have only once chance to rack up a high score on a randomly generated stage. These two modes will keep the score-centric gamers happy.

Overall, despite my lack of interest in skateboarding in general, OlliOlli is a game that everyone should try. OlliOlli may be incredibly frustrating but you will be rewarding for your patience and determination with the sounds of people cheering upon your arrival and an overwhelming sense of relief. OlliOlli is also a really fun game that has kept me engaged from the moment I took off on my skateboard to the final landing. A must play for everyone.