Swap Sword is a little puzzle game where you swap tiles to create lines and clear them. Depending on the cleared tile, you either get some mana, hearts, keys to open doors to the next level, or money. You can also clear enemies that way, although a difference in this game is that while you can only swap identical tiles, you can move your character around in order to defeat enemies and collect gold. Once the ending door is opened, you have a set number of turns to leave before death arrives. New mechanics are slowly introduced and you get upgrades between each level. I probably could end my review here because that's all there is to Swap Sword, and that's why I was kinda bummed by it.
Blueprint Tychoon is a simulation game, a bit of a factory management mixed with light sim city touches that focuses on you constructing buildings in order to produce resources, move them around, build things with them, sell these things and/or build more complex things while managing the needs of your worker, pollution and supply routes. I enjoyed it quite a bit, although even after hours of play, some core concepts were still opaque to me and I never got into the eponymous "Blueprint" part of the title.
Realm Grinder is an incredible little idle game that has only a few flaws and works really well to engage the player into playing more in order to unlock new mechanics and systems. Instead of just making numbers grow higher, this game throws together plenty of interesting ways for you to interact with it and have different 'runs' most of the time. I'm still playing it after more than three weeks, and I plan on playing it until I grow bored, if that ever happens. If my iOS reviews seem to lag behind in the future, you know what game to blame!
There is an interesting nugget of an idea at the core of Puzzle Box, a game where you place colors on a grid to complete pixel-art like pictures, then complete platforming and other puzzle-like challenges on them to get coins and progress to more levels. All of its game modes could've been tweaked to make them more fun and new mechanics should've been added to make the game not feel stale. As-is, it's not a really good game, I was intrigued by its core concepts, but quickly lost interest.
Starward Rogue is a bullet hell action RPG roguelike where you move in procedurally generated levels, fighting enemies, gathering keys, power-ups, money and items all in service of getting to the final boss, defeating complex foes with hellish projectile patterns, and get stronger in the process. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I feel like the roguelike elements have been wasted for a game that feels completed when you finish it for the first time.
Asymmetric is a neat idea executed in a frustrating fashion. At its core, it's a simple puzzle game where you move two characters on separate fields. When you move one, the other does the opposite. This create puzzles that should be interesting in theory, but I've found it very frustrating in practice. You can fail non-stop and it can become irritating to plan ahead for each levels. Furthermore, the game even gives you the complete solution if you get too stuck, which I have used too many times. You can almost do it on every level. I didn't have a great time with Asymmetric.
The Silver Case is one of Suda51's old games - a visual novel - that was remastered and brought back on Steam this year. Being a big Suda fan, I decided to check it out. The end result is a bit too weird for me - probably due to its ancient roots in the PS1 era - and I really couldn't get into it. Is The Silver Case interesting? Sure! It's also pretty stylish and you can see blobs of 'typical' Suda51 themes and touches here and there, but at the same time, I found it very confusing, both in the story and gameplay sense and ultimately it felt more like a chore than a fun game to spend time playing.
Make More! is an idle game where you manage five factories where a grid of 3x3 workers make items for you to sell. You use that money, alongside a premium currency, to improve your factories and your workers in various ways. After maxing all of your factories and leveling them to the maximum, you restart the cycle anew from scratch, with a few bonuses - daily cash and boosts for the characters you have already acquired in a previous run. It's a neat little idle game and it does the thing I kinda like with free-to-play games; Letting the player watch ads instead of paying for some 'premium' boosts.
I know it's a bit weird to review a game that's over fifteen years old, but I never had the chance to try and sink my teeth properly into FFX-2 and this steam re-release gave me ample time and opportunity. I think that it's a nice entry in the Final Fantasy series - although I had problems with its seemingly wildly varying difficulty spikes - and that the remaster features they added are nice inclusions, if you're into making games easier after the fact in order to see the story and content.
Fire Emblem Heroes is the second foray from Nintendo into the mobile game space, and while a free-to-play product usually interests me less than paid endeavors I had to give it a try being a big Fire Emblem fan. The end product is an interesting game that doesn't abuse its premium currency while being a fun light version of the original thing. I think that you still need a certain mindset before diving in - particularly because of the randomness of unit 'pulls' but it's still a neat strategy game.
Dex is a cyberpunk RPG adventure game with platforming elements that tries to combine lots of cool things but fails at integrating everything into a compelling package. Shoddy combat, frustrating hacking minigame that comprise a big chunk of this universe, weird storytelling set in an unpleasant setting didn't help me get into it enough to keep pushing past everything that frustrated me, so I gave up quite quickly.
Solitarica is a Solitaire-based RPG with some roguelike mechanics where you fight enemies by playing solitaire, casting spells, using equipment and defending yourself against their attacks in order to reach the end of a 'run', after which you get some currency you can use to unlock permanent upgrades for various decks, all with their small quirks. I tried it because it got raving praise by some people I follow and there are also no in-app purchases. It should've been a really cool game, but alas, a few design issues combined with the age - now more and more showing - of the equipment I use to game made the whole thing a frustrating slog.
HPAWS is a really interesting little shop simulation game where you run a weapon shop, working with various smiths in order to research, build and sell the best weapons available and progress through a bunch of little quests in order to get fame, money and give experience to the buyers of your gear. I really enjoyed it and I wish I had more time to play it because the fun of discovering new recipes and upgrading your shop really hooked me. On the down side, there are a few options that this game really could've used to make the experience truly perfect.
Hocus is a very simple puzzle game in nature where you swipe around to move a cube on a bizzare shape, usually involving many layers of optical illusions. That's the only mechanic of the game and it's used pretty well. Moving your cube around, you get on other sides of the shape in a way that sometimes feels a bit difficult to predict and therefore can also get a bit frustrating. I didn't completely finish the game, but that's because the later levels are user-submitted, and I thought I had quite enough of it yet.
Super Mario Run isn't a great game and it doesn't have enough content to offer, what it has is that Nintendo polish and a few good ideas that should've been exploited more and in a different package. SMR is a platformer where mario always runs and when you tap, he jumps, if you hold your tap for longer, the jump is higher. You can also tap to make him flip in the air and keep altitude and tap when hitting walls to wallkick. That's pretty much everything in terms of controls. It's possible to make a good mario game out of this idea, but what they did wasn't enough.
TESO:TU is a poor MMORPG experience, while it could've worked as a single-player Elder Scrolls product, the attempt to make it catch on the MMO craze brought a bag of problems with it and its also the reason why I've played it for the strict minimum I could and probably won't play it ever again. Its core systems are confusing and poorly implemented, the game's balance is terrible and there is tedium every step of the way, while interesting stories are told in what seems like an afterthought, especially for a product in the specific genre of grinding, looting monsters and participating in multiplayer adventures.
Nonstop Knight is a great idle experience. With graphics that reminds someone of an action RPG and with a few gameplay systems to engage the player, I was completely hooked and played it for much more than I usually play these games. In a sea of idle games, I would totally recommend Nonstop Knight for many reasons including the progression, level of customization and potential for unlocking new stuff that are all so important in a game like that.
DOOM is a really interesting game, a product of a gone area brought back into this century with a flurry of new mechanics, systems and updates over the original arena-based single player first person shooters. I was looking forward to playing it and while I'm not the biggest FPS fan in the world, it didn't disappoint me. I'm really happy that DOOM exists and it does exactly what some other games - Serious Sam, Bulletstorm - have tried to do in recent years, but better. I feel that this game is going to be on everyone's mind for a good while.
Slash Mobs is a perfectly competent - although I've had pretty bad performance issues on my iPad which prevented me from enjoying the game - idle stage-based monster killing game very similar to Clicker Heroes and other idlers of that style. It adds a few mechanics like player equipment and skill trees to differentiate itself from its various competitors, without much success.
2016 wasn't that great, but there were a bunch of real cool videogames that came out this year and this is my column where I write about my top ten in a few lines and try to convey what I enjoyed about them and why I think they're important games. I'm lucky enough to be able to play almost anything that I want - bar buyer's remorse preventing me from getting too many games at once - but you'll notice a small 3DS skew on this list. Man did the 3DS have a good run...