I had played Umigari demo, and I liked the fishing and the usual Chilla’s Art special sauce that gave it some tangy flavor. I suppose it is the inherent problem in most fishing sims that fishing in video games often devolve into mini games. There are few games that escaped the usual fishing mini game…
Perhaps not so surprisingly, this will not be the end of Poppy Playtime the main franchise. As I understand it, the series was first planned with total of five chapters. Due to the nature of the episodic release, some parts of the review may contain spoilers. Please do check out previous posts on Chapter 1-3…
What better way to start a family holiday than an old school murder mystery set in London? It’s a psychic-filled murder mysteries set in London, solved by an American detective character, made by a Korean developer, with only Japanese dubs. I’m serious. This is quintessentially Castle in the Sky but with more emphasis on East…
Back when Hitman (2016) was released, I remember an old friend of mine telling me how the stealth formula in the popular franchise is simply getting too old. The AI of these NPCs never work together. And each iteration did try to amp up AI behavior, but it hasn’t changed so drastically. It did give…
I prefer not to talk about a game that is not fully released, let alone a demo, but Fear the Timeloop seemed to have positioned itself in a different spot. The reason behind avoiding making a comment on a game before the full release often comes from the common practice amongst the developers not to…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Of all things Valve is pushing, I find Early Access program to be easily abused because it demerits the narrative element of a game. Any games that are heavily based on its narrative or storytelling have limited shelf life; the moment it is released it will slowly sip through any and all social medias. But…
It is less likely scenario for macOS to be the host than the client for Steam Link, but it does indeed happen. I usually set my MacBook Air to be the host for Steam Link to play a stream the game session over to my phone, and no doubt there are other use cases where…
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…