From Review

Return of Obra Dinn Spiel

The legendary developer of Papers, Please returned with another retro style game, or had returned in 2018. Yes, I am writing for a game 6 years too late, despite it not getting a major update since. For 6 years the game is left with what I would call a breathing room for improvement, while having…

Logitech MX Master 4 Spiel

Would you believe it, if I had said I was in the process of writing a review for MX Master 4 only to find out on the day of publishing Logi Options+ stopped working. I had to scrap most of what I had written to reflect on where Logitech is going with this blunder, and…

The King is Watching Spiel

I have lost much hope for RTS genre. I am growing too old for it. Starcraft II was one of the recent real-time strategy I enjoyed, but that game came out in 2010. I recall the game and the genre in general progressively becoming more physically demanding to add more contents, until we saw Overlord…

Shinkansen 0 Spiel

I am always bit confused about Chilla’s Art games. The developer has published many retro styled Japanese horrors, and as far as I could gather, games are never set post 2010s, the age of smartphones. There is always a digital camera, a flashlight, or a camcorder. The supernatural horror as we know it, or at…

Faceminer Spiel

AI was the talk of the town during Christmas dinner, so I thought to give Faceminer a chance. Even before AI was such a hit, we — everyone who has seen the crypto ads on social media — have seen the whole mining rig as a business opportunity to ‘work from home’. It has been…

The Operator Spiel

As a fan of Orwell series, a similar game released in 2016, The Operator immediately had my fullest attention with its retro take on agent-handler system. The retro futurism from the 90s was wild, and the game does not shy away from it. The media thought ancient computer systems hooked up to a CRT monitor…

Anker MagGo Power Bank (10K, Slim) Spiel

It is quite unusual for a manufacturer to include readable description such as (10k, Slim) in its product name, but part of me thinks it is at least comprehensible than some random numbers we see on some generic electronics. For clarification purposes, I would like to add the one I’m discussing in this post is…

Routine Spiel

Routine is, or was, a game in development hell for 13 years. Announced in 2012 with the release window set in 2013, it is no wonder the talks I could find on the game are largely the pure surprise on the mere fact it had not been fully abandoned. No doubt with 13 years of…

Pools Spiel

There is a new subgenre of horror which most horror lovers would have already seen one way or the other — liminal horror. Some of the liminal spaces went viral online, such as the Backrooms, for invoking sense of eeriness or uncanniness to the space itself. It is an acquired taste, even in the world…

Philips Hue Light Bar Spiel

Philips had multiple IoT lighting products, including generic desk lamps, floor stands, and light bulbs. I wanted to focus specifically on, perhaps not their latest, but quite frankly, the most versatile product I’ve seen yet from Philips Hue. It can stand up right; it can stand sideways; it can be attached to a surface with…

Silent Hill f Spiel

Silent Hill franchise finally has a new installment in the franchise, and it’s called Silent Hill f and it’s set in 1960s, Japan. I know there were quite the concerns about the status of the IP under Konami and the future outlook of it; I believe The Short Message and Silent Hill 2 (2024) have…

AirPods Pro 3 Spiel

I’ve tried AirPods, AirPods Max, and AirPods Pro. Of them three, AirPods Pro grew on me recently as I began to use my prescription glasses more often — headphones, no matter how comfortable it sits around the head, still has some force on the legs of the glasses. Since the release of AirPods Pro 2…

Cronos: The New Dawn Spiel

I started playing Cronos: The New Dawn well aware of the fact that it was from Bloober Team and that it is sitting between AAA and AA, due to its budgets and pricing. What I didn’t learn, and the writers of those reviews and articles have rightfully reserved those details, were the nature of the…

Parasocial Spiel

I was waiting for Chilla’s Art to make landing on non-PC platforms for a while; any other successful horror indies have ported their games over with or without the help of porting studios. That hasn’t happened as of yet. Regardless, Chilla’s Art titles have special place in the indie horror scenes of serving realistic modern…

Dwarf II Spiel: Astrophotography on Smartphones

I believe Dwarf II crowdfunding started back in 2021. I barely knew about the first Dwarf device, so when I heard the rumors of the new “smart” telescopes, I kinda wished I hadn’t invested so much on short tube telescopes already. There is something fundamentally beautiful, different even, being able to see through what the…