Roboquest
Hyperspecific Genre: Movement Focused Co-Op Bullet Hell FPS
The future sucks man, humans wander the wasteland while robots control what remains of the cities. That is until a plucky young girl boots up two BRObots to kick some robotic ass. You mission is to destroy bots, get ridiculous weapons (laser chainsaws, bouncing energy launchers, toys that shoot for you, just an absolute smorgasbord of fever dream weapons remixing Borderlands and Doom 2), and take the world back for your human homies. This is like the perfect game to play with a buddy: It has a high skill cap, short runs, a groove you can slip into, and the music slaps. The art style has this wonderful cell shaded look and the weapons all have comic book style visual sound effects (rat-tat-tat-tat style) and there are lots of cool secrets and unlocks to be found. And the movement is divine. Double jumps, crouch slides, head stomps, rails to grind on: Perfection.
Feb 24, 2024
Soko Loco Deluxe
Hyperspecific Genre: Twee Train Tycoon
I love logistics games, and city building games, and trains. But sometimes I just cannot handle OpenTTD's or Factorio's nonsense after working in the spreadsheet/SQL mines all day. Enter this adorable, tiny, train logistics game. Soko Loco is part of Sokpop's "Infinite Game Jam", a years long effort in which they released a game every 2 weeks for 3+ years before "slowing down" to 1 game a month. Their ideas aren't always fully baked but they're almost always interesting. Soko Loco is simple enough I don't have much to say about it but it's a satisfying pick up and deliver logistics puzzle that my burnt out from work brain can play for a bit and be satisified with. And it's cute as hell.
Jan 7, 2024
Furious Angels
Hyperspecific Genre: Score Attack Anxiety Test Twin Stick Shooter
Your mission: Survive as long as possible. How do you do that? Destroy the infinite hordes of enemy ships that are coming for you. Your tools? Upgrades based off of the amount of kills you're getting. Get shot down? If you managed to blow up enough enemies to turn into a flying tank (yeah, rule of cool is in effect here) you'll just pop out in your basic fighter jet form still ready to fight. You'll get a sweet damage boost to boot and you can repeat that 5 times. Fast paced, high skill ceiling and quick 5 - 10 minute runs make this an easy game to recommend if you need a daily score attack fix. Put on some heavy metal and blast away in a flow state.
Jan 7, 2024
Hyperspace Dogfights
Hyperspecific Genre: 360 Degree Inertial Shoot 'Em Up
This game is a lot like Luftrausers. If that doesn't mean anything to you consider this a recommendation for that game as well. You're a plane, or plane like object viewed side on and have control over your thrust and facing while gravity constantly drags you down. Effectively this means you're constantly fighting with the physics to get you where you need to be which is firing at ground units, avoiding other air units, and killing bosses. Super arcade-y, with a reasonably high skill ceiling and both have striking graphics. Pics for Luftrausers included as well. Hyperspace Dogfights is more roguelite with random upgrade choices, Luftrausers is a more considered apporach where you choose specific engines, weapons and bodies for your plane all with different effects. You WILL be cursing this game and muttering "just one more run...".
Dec 15, 2023
Teleglitch
Hyperspecific Genre: Quake meets Spelunky with a dash of Sadism
It's Quake 1. Just y'know add a surprisingly deep crafting system, roguelite permadeath, procedural level generation (and accompanying difficulty), and make the POV top down. Does that sound like a lot? Cool I'm not done yet. The levels are labyrinthine. Then the game is extremely punishing which will require you to hone your survival heuristics to a keen edge and you're gonna need to learn to think on the fly to deal with the unexpected. Sound fun? Oh yeah the sound of the game, it's loud, crunchy and disorienting. The guns sound like they're shredding themselves to pieces as you fire them. This game is an absolute blast and is one of my favorite "modern" roguelikes.
Dec 12, 2023
Transcendence
Hyperspecific Genre: Nethack... IN SPACE!!!
Nethack in space sounds awesome right? Really if we're being honest it's more like Star Control's Melee mode with a light ARPG (think Diablo) grafted on. You're compelled by a goddess that may or may not be real to make a pilgrimage to the galactic core which brings you into conflict with checks notes everyone. The game makes a pretty bold choice by keeping you stuck in your starting ship for the entire game and includes that sweet sweet permadeath. Moddable, free, and in development for years with paid for content packs to support continuing development this game packs a hell of a punch for the price. Highly recommended.
Dec 5, 2023
Eldritch
Hyperspecific Genre: Eldritch Stealth Speedrunning
Eldritch is a weird one. It looks a bit like a lovecraftian Minecraft, all blocky voxels and chunky textures. It plays like a dungeoncrawling immsersive sim being almost similar to Ultima Underworld at first but actually... its a speedrunner and I'll die on this hill. I don't really dig speedrunning games normally but moving fast ends up being super satisfying, and the mad dash scramble to go through levels as fast as possible feels so good. Runs are short at maybe 20 - 30 minutes per and the difficulty scale is good with lots of enemies to learn how best to deal with. Check it out!
Nov 30, 2023