This game has sunk its cute little cat teeth into the majority of my household. We can't stop playing. There are so many possible combinations of all the abilities and there is simply *so much* to discover. The music is catchy and the visuals have that classic Newgrounds/2000s Flash game charm. Also, despite the flat battlefields, there's enough complexity here to scratch my SRPG itch too. It's no Fire Emblem or FFT, but it's not supposed to be.

Edit to add: The rougelike elements sell me on the crapsack world the cats (and your character) live in. You're foraging for food and survival tools, and those don't come easy. As per the name, "eugenics" strategies are all but required to build up your teams so that they can survive longer, more difficult expeditions, enabling you to build up resources, improve your living conditions, and progress the story. You'll have to leave at least some of your morals at the door to survive, but the game isn't asking you to do this blindly. Part of the humor comes from poking fun at, or making commentary on, just how screwed up all of it is.

Indeed, the game's sense of humor and the harsh nature of the whole scenario might be hit-or-miss for some folks. For example, there's an early boss that is emotionally difficult for me to get through; while on the gameplay side, she's only a mild challenge. There's tons of grossout humor, too. Yet I find it all to be endearing in its own way, and it adds to (or at least, doesn't detract from) the gameplay, which by itself feels strong enough to carry the game even if you find these elements offputting. Your Mileage May Vary, of course.

Lastly, to touch on the music: so far, it's all catchy. The grossout humor extends to the lyrics in many of the songs, but they'll probably hook you regardless if you like the genre (I'll be honest: I can't stop humming/singing Flush, and I ended up buying the soundtrack on Bandcamp). The songs that don't have grossout lyrics, among what I've heard so far, are either unsettling in some way or underscore the harsh, unforgiving environment the characters live in. That said, I feel that having the lyrics only play during the boss battles is effective at heightening the tension or the awesome factor (depending on how your team is doing).

In all, I can strongly recommend this game to anyone with even a passing interest in it, even at full price ($30 at review time).

I’ve had several false starts over the years, but I finally gave this game a proper chance and stuck with it past the first two hours. And it really does live up to the reputation, in my opinion. The art is gorgeous and the challenging boss fights don’t feel unfair, and the sense of discovery and exploration hits good.

I can’t form a full opinion yet since I haven’t finished the game as of this writing, but I do confident that I’ll stick with it and want more. Money’s tight but I want to buy Silksong eventually, no question.

Quintessential for 2D platforming fans. What else can I say that hasn't been said before? (Trans rights, by the way!)

For all of this series’ flaws, there are reasons besides nostalgia that it’s so enduring. KH2 in particular is an absolute joy to play after you get through the prologue, while KH1 has the most coherent story since it feels self-contained and doesn’t seem to be written with sequels really in mind. (I also appreciate the gameplay and the story of Birth By Sleep, and I really wish Days had gotten a proper port because the story doesn’t work when it’s just a 3-hour movie. coded and Chain of Memories are also better in their original versions, in my opinion.)

The original characters (and most of the Disney and Final Fantasy ones) are charming, the art style works great, the music is consistently top notch, and the gameplay overall manages to remain approachable while offering a high skill ceiling if you want to challenge yourself at the highest difficulties (where the game mechanics really come into their own, because trying to button mash through every fight will get you killed constantly).

And yes, there’s a huge nostalgia factor - not just for the games themselves, but also for all of the Disney characters and worlds. The novelty does eventually wear off, however, and there are many times where the plot in those worlds is just an abridged retelling of the source movie without any meaningful integration of Sora and co. or the overarching plot (or, worse, they outright undermine the movie’s original lesson) - but the times where they *don’t* do that are quite engaging.

From the technical side, this collection runs great on my Steam Deck, and it managed to run well enough on my old desktop with an ancient, 2nd-gen Core i3 and a 760 (I used Linux Mint on it before I decommissioned it), so odds are pretty good that if you have a PC made after 2015 and your drivers are up to date, it stands a chance of running the games acceptably well. I strongly recommend a controller; I used an Xbox Series gamepad.

Kingdom Hearts is easily one of the strangest popular franchises to come out of the 2000s, and I’m glad to see it endure over 20 years later. It’s like nothing before it, and likely, unlike anything that will be made after it.

A light, you might say, in the darkness.

(The tl;dr: Good enough to recommend, but not as charming as other VNs in this genre.)

It’s hard for me to pin down how I feel about this game. The writing feels more down-to-earth than Ace Attorney overall, but the characters feel inconsistent sometimes, with the occasional bit of fun character design or exaggerated reaction not meshing well with the overall tone. They lack the same level of memorable charm that most AA characters have. The story also tries, with earnest, to tackle current-day topics, but I feel like it’s misguided in some places, even if its heart is in the right place.

The mysteries don’t always feel well-constructed, either, certainly not with the level of focus Ace Attorney pulls off. I can forgive this because of the small size of the development team, but I also feel that the story is just too ambitious for a first game, and it stumbles in places where I think a lot could have been handled better. With that said, I do like the interconnected feeling of all five cases, working together to form a cohesive whole, and that does help strengthen the story for me.

Overall, for anyone who likes a good visual novel or detective mystery-drama, Paper Perjury is still worth your time. I just think there’s a lot of room for improvement, and that players coming from Ace Attorney in particular might find that it kind of scratches the itch but doesn’t quite get there.

I’ll admit that I struggled with the gameplay at times; I got stuck a few times during interrogations and had to check a guide. But my biggest struggles were during investigations; a notable departure from AA is that you take statements from multiple people, and then you have to compare those statements to each other (and new evidence) to find flaws, *then* go “cross examine” the person who made the flawed statement. And updates to statements may expose flaws in someone else’s. It can be challenging keeping track of the details, and sometimes the way forward requires you to be nitpicky. It’s hard to say if I just suck at this or if it’s legitimately too difficult.

I still look forward to more adventures with Justina and company! Chapter 6 is still in development at the time of writing, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the development team comes up with!

The most adorable (and polished) nonogram game on Steam, at least that I've played so far! With over 600 puzzles to solve, this game also has a wealth of content for the price.

Seriously, it's so cozy, and it feels effortless to control, which is a major point of friction in less-polished nonogram games. There's a free demo, and a solid tutorial, so be sure to check that out if you're on the fence about these types of puzzles!