A game with jaw-dropping pixel art and a truly intriguing narrative, offered completely free of charge. After a quick double take to make sure it really was free, I prompted to download it and played through the whole thing in a little over an hour, and now I’m here to tell you why you should do the same.

Bright Memory is a name that may ring a few bells in your mind – you might’ve even played it. But then how come it’s only just now coming out? ? Well, allow me to untangle the mystery real quick: you see, there was Bright Memory, a fast-paced and graphically impressive FPS developed by a single person. It released a couple of years back, and is now back with a bigger, better, and longer version.

For those who grew up with games like Desperados or the Commandos franchise, War Mongrels requires no introduction. At its core, it’s essentially a stealth game with splashes of action here and there; you control a small team of freedom fighters from a top-down perspective, and use their unique abilities to strike back against the Nazi regime.

I’m of the belief that a strong beginning is not necessarily a sure-fire recipe for success, and an idea that sounds great on paper doesn’t always translate into a fantastic interactive experience. I say this primarily because I’m here today to talk about a game called Industria...

Appearances can be deceiving, and I believe we have all been in a situation where a game looked amazing on screenshots and even the trailer seemed convincing enough… and then we actually played the thing. That’s when the mask falls off.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and games that evoke the spirit of much-revered classics are often met with unfettered optimism – and so it happened that I took one quick look at Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness, a game heavily inspired by CRPG darling (and personal favorite) Baldur’s Gate, and decided I would have to try it.

I think it’s safe to say that even the best video games have things people don’t like about them. Dreamscaper is no exception: tackling the concept of (literally) fighting your inner demons, the game presents this wholly interesting setup in the framework of the classic roguelike dungeon crawler, which, I feel, ends up becoming more of a yoke than anything.

From time to time, I run into a game that makes me question if I’m getting too old for this. Have I become out of touch? Am I missing something crucial that others can most definitely see? Can I no longer appreciate the honest efforts of game developers? And so on – you get the idea...

“Soulslike” and “Metroidvania” are probably among some of the most commonly used terms in the game industry these days, and that’s no coincidence, as both the Dark Souls and Castlevania/Metroid franchises have established templates and patterns that numerous other titles have come to incorporate into their DNAs with varying levels of success.

The Hand of Merlin’s narrative takes place in medieval times, in the corrupted lands of Albion, and your mission is to guide a party of three adventurers all the way to Jerusalem in order to prevent the coming apocalypse. Alas, I stubbornly insisted on sticking to the rather challenging Normal difficulty mode, which resulted in more deaths and failures than I care to admit.