In an era where puzzle platformers feel like a worn-out genre, and even games with clever seeming gimmicks feel hard to get invested in, Öoo stands out as something fresh and exciting. Elechead, the developer's previous game, was enjoyable but made me initially underestimate this as just another game like that. The mechanics here seem very simple at first, but they're used in far more clever ways than you'd expect. Öoo will constantly surprise you, test your understanding of that knowledge, and then move on. Everything is fast paced and about showing you as many neat ideas as possible, which I think makes for an excellent puzzle game. While not fully in the 'metroidbrainia' camp, this does have hints of that through knowledge-based progression you can use to backtrack and find secrets in previous areas. Presentation is very minimalist, with next to no words through the entire experience, and a simple but charming visual style and soundtrack. I had a great time with this, it doesn't overstay its welcome in any area and has some cool ideas that it feels like it explores to the fullest.

Fun little game that feels like a particularly polished flash game, or something out of UFO 50. The presentation in this is great, and the announcer is an especially nice touch. Can easily be finished in a single sitting for just one playthrough, but there's achievements and skins for replayability. Easily worth the low price and time commitment.

Hyperbeat is one of the most creative rhythm games I've played in years. Wholly original gameplay mechanics that test interesting combinations of skills taken in bits and pieces from a variety across the genre. These are used excellently too, each song feels like it has a unique identity in gameplay and does something a little differently with the core mechanics. The songs themselves are very enjoyable, and while the track list isn't huge it definitely feels like enough, a good variety, and I enjoyed the style of the music more than most rhythm games. The visual presentation is outstanding, not just in the general art style, but throughout the UI, cutscene presentation, how well it fits with the music, and all sorts of little touches. There's also a ton of character customization unlocks which fit well with this style and were fun to play around with. The story here is surprisingly not a tacked on thing but a core part of the experience, has interesting things to say, and does so briefly without getting too in the way of the rhythm gameplay. A lack of leaderboards is a notable omission, but there still feels like plenty of content here and I'd still like to do more on the higher difficulties and get the rest of the unlocks. Hyperbeat has such a strong creative vision to it and feels like it nails what it set out to do, definitely would recommend playing it.

It's rare that I get as engrossed with a story-driven game as much as I did with The Séance of Blake Manor. I played through it in only a couple days, and would have in less if I'd had the free time to. Blake Manor absolutely nails the feeling of the best detective novels and films and drops you right into the middle of one. The setting of 1800s Ireland is not just unique, but clearly made with love and attention to detail to that history, and the more specific setting of the manor is the perfect creepy location to sneak around in during your investigation.

The gameplay systems here are very ambitious in a way that does have some clear problems, but I can't deny that they mostly work from how much I enjoyed my time with the game. You're on a time limit to solve the mystery of a missing guest at the manor, as well as smaller mysteries that come up with each other guest, which is represented not in real time but in actions you take of talking to people or investigating items advancing the clock. This is largely done in 1 minute increments, with some occasional larger actions taking odd amounts up until around half an hour.

This time system does a couple important things, first and foremost enabling the dialogue system. You're given free reign to talk to anyone about nearly any topic, or any other person in the manor. This feels really natural and cool to interact with, and in many ways is much smarter than dialogue choices in most games, I was pleasantly surprised whenever I would bring up a topic that could be a touchy subject for a character or that the protagonist shouldn't know about and he brought it up in a clever and indirect way. The time system is important for this overwhelming amount of choice to prevent you from gaming the system and asking everyone you talk to about every single option, as well as making your investigations of the environment matter and not clicking on every meaningless item.

There's also a good deal of in-game help for keeping track of these complex systems. There are graphs connecting information for each mystery and character, categorized records of each bit of information you've received, a schedule for each character that fills in as you gain knowledge of their plans, a map with known character locations, and these all link to each other naturally. While I do enjoy a good notebook game, I think it could have easily become overwhelming here and I appreciate the game handling this for you. Each character moving about on their own schedules makes the game feel very alive, and adds tension when you're snooping around in places you shouldn't be. This got a tad frustrating towards the end as I was trying to wrap up character stories and someone I needed would be unavailable at that time, but I think it's worth it for the upsides.

There are a lot of small cracks like that in the systems, which were easy to ignore in the first half of the game, but those cracks widened as the game went on. Never enough to ruin my experience, but certainly notable. The amount of dialogue available is impressive, but it had issues like characters referring to something they already did (often in the same room right after they'd done it) in future tense, characters you'd made connections with not changing their initial standoffish attitude in their initial greeting when you open a conversation, and similarly characters you're on good terms with freaking out if you enter their room while they're inside and having no option to simply knock on the door and talk to them. This kind of immersion breaking isn't an uncommon problem for games, but feels disappointing here because of just how immersive the game is otherwise.

The voice acting is mostly great, and there's quite a bit of it even if it's not all of the dialogue, but there were points where the usage and quality was questionable. Some lines you could hear the actors moving away from the mic that really should've been rerecorded, and some conversations important to the story would weirdly only be half voice acted, the protagonist having missing lines that really felt like they should've been acted was the most notable, and he repeats a couple common voiced lines enough to feel repetitive and grating.

Some of the mysteries also feel a bit shoehorned in to this common system, where you collect information, form a hypothesis, and then "confront" the character about it. Some of these are really not things where it is a confrontation, and would have been more natural in a less aggressive form of conversation, and for nearly all of them it doesn't make sense that you're able to talk about it in crowded rooms, often around other people involved, but the game presents few opportunities otherwise.

There were also several instances of being locked out of progressing a character story or mystery and thought I needed to wait for it to come back up some other way, and it turned out I had simply missed something that even in hindsight seemed not obvious. For example, there's a detective vision that highlights interactable objects, which are nearly always obvious without it, but there was exactly one thing in the game that was practically invisible without scouring the area using that. I was still able to complete all of the characters' stories in the time limit, only looking up one or two small things near the end, but there were some puzzles that could've been done better.

The majority of the puzzles are quite simple, and this is really more an adventure game than a puzzle game, even though some of its most obvious comparisons are more puzzle-focused. They're enjoyable enough and there's enough variety so that most things that would get repetitive are a simple one-off. The main puzzles are solving the hypothesis for each mystery, which uses a fill in the blank system with keywords from information you've gathered. These probably could've been a bit harder, and the game only allowing (and prompting) you to solve them the moment you get enough information to makes it rather obvious.

The game also isn't without some technical issues, there are minor bugs here and there but most notably with the map, which sometimes doesn't show character locations that you should know from your schedule, even failing to jump to the location when you click the "link" from the schedule to the map, and sometimes showing your own position incorrectly on the map. The bigger issue is load times, normally not something I'd mention in a review but they're very annoying here and got moreso towards the end of the game. Individual load times aren't exceedingly long, only a couple seconds, but feels slightly more than they should be especially for small rooms. The big problem is that every single door is a load screen, and given the simple graphics and good performance of the game overall I'm sure many of these could've been combined into larger areas without issue. This makes walking across the manor, which you do a lot more later on as you're hunting down specific things or people, take more time in load screens than it does walking while you're in control.

All these complaints just describe how the game falls short of perfection, and the slight ways it doesn't live up to the ambitious premise from the start, but as I said at the start I had a fantastic time at Blake Manor. Getting to intimately know the quite large cast of characters seemed overwhelming at the start but I could tell you about any of their lives now. The main mystery unwinds in a satisfying way and I was pleasantly surprised by the twists at the end even with the amount of suspects I'd managed to eliminate. The supernatural elements are cool and at times were very effectively spooky, moreso than many games focused on horror. The gameplay systems even with their shortcomings are so unique and fun. If you enjoy mystery and detective stories, you owe it to yourself to play this, I could hardly put it down.

Only played a bit so far but definitely enjoying it enough to recommend, might write more and update this after finishing. I've followed Matthewmatosis on youtube for years (probably over a decade at this point), so anything he made would have gotten my interest, but this is definitely up my alley and something I would have been happy to come across regardless. It's an interesting twist on picross puzzles that scratches that same itch but actually plays out quite differently. Looking forward to playing more.

Jusant is a really enjoyable short experience. The game, both in gameplay and thematically, is centered around climbing a tower. You're following after people who used to live there and abandoned their homes, discovering what happened to them through notes left behind. The gameplay is pretty straightforward and easy, but still engaging enough to be enjoyable, I could see the lack of depth/challenging getting tedious if it was longer but it worked well here and introduced enough new mechanics throughout. Makes this feel like more than just a walking sim or something along those lines. The main draw for me is that this is just a gorgeous game. The art design is amazing and all of the areas manage to look unique and memorable, really fun to see as you play through. Sound design and music adds to this and are both very nice as well. The story feels like it built up an interesting world but didn't manage to make me care much about the characters, maybe it's just over a short runtime and just through notes it's hard to get an idea of everyone, or maybe it could have done more even within those constraints. I didn't find all of the notes and collectibles, but did get most, and feel like that was the main area that could have been better. Still had a really nice time with this, and for how little of a time investment it is the strengths are easily enough to recommend it.

Caravan SandWitch is a welcome addition to the recent trend of combat-free exploration-driven open world games, it reminds me a lot of Sable which caught my attention. Set around a small community in a post-apocalyptic desert, you drive around in a van to explore ruins left by the corporation that previously inhabited the planet. There's some basic platforming, and some very light puzzle solving, which mostly boils down to see an interactable object and use the appropriate tool on it. There's also collectible parts all over the place which you'll need to get to upgrade your equipment. The gameplay loop is simple, but I found it enjoyable at least for a relatively short runtime.

The biggest strength of the game is its presentation. The world here is interesting and the art direction makes it very nice to see as you explore. The soundtrack especially is a highlight, really loved it and will be listening to it outside of the game. The story is serviceable, I like the setting, premise, and some of the characters but feel like it could have been a bit more. I think the biggest thing I can point to there is that the dialogue often comes across a bit awkward, not sure if this is an issue of translation or just somewhat stiff writing but I'd guess the former.

Enjoyable experience and really quick and easy to play through, which I think is a positive here. Glad to see more games like this being made.

Mixed genre games tend to be something I don't go for too much. I usually prefer when a game is aware of its core gameplay strengths and focuses on refining that. Games that attempt to tackle multiple genres and tie together multiple gameplay loops often end up feeling underdeveloped. Luckily Dungeons of Hinterberg is one of the rare cases that does feel like more than the sum of its parts. It attempts a mix of action combat, puzzle solving, and a social sim, and I think does all of those pretty well.

The gameplay is split into different chunks by the time of day. In the morning you have main story conversations and select which of the four overworld areas you want to spend the afternoon in, during the afternoon you can explore that area and attempt a dungeon, and in the evening you're free to roam the city to shop for upgrades and select a character to spend time with.

The overworld and dungeon gameplay is a take on the Zelda formula, mixing action combat and light puzzle solving. Overworld exploration is a mix of combat encounters, collecting items for upgrading your equipment (a really satisfying effect where you vacuum in glowing items on the ground with a nice sound), and discovering the paths to dungeons. You also have an option to not do a dungeon for that day and use a rest area to relax and upgrade one of your stats. A minor complaint that feels best to mention here is that while the game controls well generally, there's no run button and every time you move you have to slowly get up to running speed, but the tiniest thing can reset that back to zero. Just an unnecessary annoyance, the game would've been fine if you were just at running speed all the time, the exploration suffers a bit because of this.

The combat portion is very serviceable, while it might not have as much depth as a game focused on this I still found it engaging enough throughout. There's a decent amount of enemy variety, you'll definitely see a lot of repeats but they do really stand out as distinct so the different enemy compositions for different encounters work out well. You'll also be using different builds in combat. While always centered around your basic sword moveset and dodge roll, you can have up to three Attack Conduits which are special attacks that recharge as you deal damage, and can also use your magical abilities in combat. There are also gear upgrades which mostly boils down to prioritizing physical or magical stats in both attack and defense, and a charm system which is mostly standard with a handful of unique effects but I liked that you can upgrade charms you like to take up less slots.

The magical abilities are the equivalent to items in a Zelda game, but rather than expanding your arsenal as you progress, you unlock two abilities at the start of each overworld area, and those are the only ones you'll have access to for that area and any dungeons in it. This limitation is an interesting choice, and I think mostly works out pretty well. Most of the abilities have a variety of uses which dungeons fully explore, there were one or two that felt sort of single-purpose but I liked them for the most part. Their uses in combat are a bit mixed, I found myself using them much more often in some areas than others, but at least I can say that it keeps the flow of combat smooth without feeling the need to constantly swap them out.

The dungeons themselves are the center of the game, and I think these are really solid. While they start out a bit on the easy side for my taste, they do increase in complexity as the game goes on, and both the quantity and variety here is really impressive. There are 25 dungeons and they pretty much all manage to stand out as memorable, while a couple do reuse visual styles they usually do something different enough with it to stand out, and I think the game could have easily gotten away with only one dungeon theme for each of the four main zones but I'm glad it didn't. The puzzle complexity isn't too high but does ramp up to be on the upper end of the Zelda series or slightly above, and while it doesn't quite go above and beyond that series like I would say some of its imitators have, there are quite a few dungeons here that I'd put equal to the best ones Zelda has to offer.