This game was never really popular and it was made by Zen Studios which is known mainly for making pinball games. I bought it because I liked its circus theming and due to its turn-based gameplay, I knew I wouldn’t have a problem finishing it. The steampunk circus theme is every bit as fun as I’d have hoped and the art and animations are great too. Unfortunately the story is an unappealing family drama and while the game mechanics are solid, they’re not interesting enough to hold up through so many battles that are more or less identical. It’s an okay game but should really be shorter than it is.

I’m playing this partly because I got it for free and partly to give my old joystick, a cheap Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, a workout. It’s been ages since I last pulled it out of storage and I wasn’t sure if it still worked. Plus it’s always fun to relive old memories of playing X-Wing and I was one of the unfortunates who never got around to playing TIE Fighter. Back then I didn’t own a joystick either so being able to fly a Star Wars starfighter with one sounds like fun! This is also really a multiplayer focused game but as usual I will only play the single-player story mode and in any case, I don’t think the multiplayer scene for this title ever really took off.

I loved Slay the Spire, so it was only a matter of time before I got around to playing this deckbuilder game that was clearly inspired by it. It flips the theme around so you’re playing as the forces of hell fighting against good but the story hardly matters in a game like this. It modifies the formula so that you’re deploying monsters to defend a number of distinct battlefields for example. On the whole, it’s very similar however so those who loved Slay the Spire should love this as well. I’d say that the design here isn’t quite as elegant as its inspiration and it’s also a more forgiving game. Yet combined with its better production values, I found myself playing this a lot more than I’d expected.

Genshin Impact has been out for a few years now and though I have little interest in it, its cultural influence has been undeniable. It’s crazy how the AI chat sites are full of characters made by kids from this game. It’s also fascinating that this a China made game but seems to be trying very hard to come across as Japanese instead. They’ve calibrated its appeal very precisely to sell it to the worldwide market. Since it’s famously free to play, I thought I’d at least try it out briefly just in order to be able to understand what it’s all about.

I first tried King of Dragon Pass ages ago but only finished it when A Sharp got around to releasing a modernized, downloadable version. I even wrote a game diary of the experience 10 years ago! Apparently the new version did so well, they decided to make more of them! As with the original game, this is set in Chaosium’s Glorantha fantasy setting but the story here takes place before the events shown in King of Dragon Pass, so it’s really a prequel. Mechanically this works almost exactly the same, with expanded options for battles and of course as it still uses hand-drawn art, it even looks similar. Unfortunately I’ve found that I still remember my playthrough of the first game enough that more of the same wasn’t very satisfying to me and the same approach just isn’t novel enough now to hold my interest.

Obviously the RPG to play right is Baldur’s Gate 3 but I’m holding off on that until I get a better PC. In the meantime, there’s this little gem made by a virtually unknown company that uses the same 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons ruleset under the Open Game License. This means it uses the rules, with some modifications to adapt it for a video game, but must set it within its own original fantasy world. As a game made on a limited budget, it lacks polish and is somewhat short. Yet as many others have pointed out, its tactical depth and faithful implementation of the ruleset make it a better RPG experience than you’d expect.

As I’ve mentioned before, I simply adore the text-based storytelling games by Inkle and so just had to get this one. Unfortunately, while Heaven’s Vault had the problem of being too long and too ambitious, this one has the opposite problem of being far too short and too simple. You can be done with pretty much all the content in a couple of hours and even a simple first win will take no more than an hour. I do like the premise but there’s just too little content and the production values are somewhat lackluster as well.