Cozy Grove [Spry Fox]
(Nindie Choice!) - While bludgeoning or blowing away bad guys can always be good fun, everyone
should have some time in their lives to slow things down. With a laid back
tone, cute and friendly characters, and a small variety of activities to
complete Cozy Grove seems great for settling in with on a daily basis to help
bring the positive feels. While not as full-featured as Nintendo’s own Animal
Crossing the price tag here is also far more budget-friendly and the
characters you’ll meet and stories they’ll share are also much more fulfilling
for the most part. If you’ve been looking for an experience that will help
wash your cares away as you tend to the needs of some souls in need of help,
and who will be grateful for it, Cozy Grove is a warm fuzzy of an experience
that will gladly help you in that goal.
Stick Fight: The Game [LandFall]
(Nindie Choice!) - Oh how perilous the eShop is in the budget category, filled with games that
look like they could be promising but with many letting you down. On the
flipside of that you have Stick Fight, a title that’s very unassuming in
its appearance but that uses that formula to heavily under-promise and
over-deliver on the experience. There’s not much to know about playing this
multiplayer brawler (which works wonderfully locally but also online… we’ll
see how long it can last though, as is always the issue with small games with
online play), you’re able to jump and attack and that’s really all you
generally need. Sure, you can grab a variety of weapons to then do some
serious damage with (careful, some of them can be lethal to you as well), but
if you’re quick and determined some flailing and luck can be a highly
effective strategy no matter what weapon your opponents may have. Where the
game gets to the next level though is really with its loads of arenas and
settings that really change things up. In some cases the environment itself is
outright lethal and simple survival will be necessary, in others the best
strategy may be to destroy the environment and hope you can leave yourself
somewhere to land. Heck, there are also times simply standing still and
letting your opponents get themselves killed is a legit strategy. Considering
the budget price this title carries it absolutely delivers a superb
multiplayer experience that’ll have you and some friends fighting to wear the
crown. If only it would do some stat collection to see a breakdown of who won,
by how much, and a bunch of fun additional facts about the chaos!
Lost Words: Beyond the Page [Sketchbook Games]
(Nindie Choice!) - I’ll admit that this is a title that got off to a bit of a rocky start for
me, with me essentially wondering what to do at first. The distraction of the
pointer that you do end up using for some tasks kept me from realizing I was
also sometimes supposed to move my character independently as well. Once that
was understood though what followed was unique and extremely worthwhile. Not
quite a game in any normal sense, Lost Words is more of a creative interactive
bit of storytelling with plenty of varied and beautiful forms. From page to
page what you’ll need to do may vary, sometimes consisting of some simple
platforming and other times feeling like a bit of a mild puzzle. The
attraction though is a heartfelt and sometimes sad story that really manages
to grab you, a bit moreso as you’re heavily involved in helping it unfold
visually. It won’t be for anyone looking for a challenge or even puzzle fans,
this is really for people looking for something unique and beautiful to touch
their hearts, and the level of quality with which it is executed I can get
behind.
Sturmfront: The Mutant War [Andrade Games] - There’s nothing wrong with
an old-school shooter, where your goal is simple to run, gun, and make a
bloody mess out of your enemies along the way. Sturmfront absolutely captures
some of that classic arcade vibe with plenty to grab and blow up, and it even
offers a fair challenge to boot. If you were looking for a game that takes the
classic ball and runs with it though you may not be as enthused since overall
I’d say classics from those older days still have an edge on the overall
experience here. Sturmfront has a good look, and apes almost all of the old
motions quite well, so there’s some satisfaction there, it just hits a wall at
trying to do it better, or perhaps even quite as good, so it’s a mixed bag as
an overall experience.
Press “A” to Party [BoomBit Games] - Multiplayer games looking to pull
in gamers of all ages and skill levels have a tough challenge. How to create
gameplay that is quick and relatively easy to pick up, but then somehow offers
enough cooperative or competitive oomph to give the experience some staying
power. There’s no doubt that Press shoots to hit the target with the overall
simplicity, adopting a one-button play mechanic across its 6 mini games, but
there’s a bit of an unusual learning curve in the case of some of them since
there’s really no conceptual explanation, you’re just thrown in to figure it
out. This makes early matches a bit of a fustercluck as people struggle to
tackle the nuance of holding down the button in some cases and carefully
pressing in others. The thing is, once everyone is on the same page, the
lifespan of interest seems to likely be limited just because aside from
unlocking new avatars and going for bragging rights there’s just not much to
explore and simple games don’t necessarily make for satisfying ones.
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