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If you think you know poker, Balatro puts a fun, rogue-like spin on the typical poker ruleset. I played plenty of poker with my father, though that was always against other people. In this game, you’ll battle against Blind amounts, boss Blinds, and the most intimidating opponent of all: luck itself.




While there’s no story to be had in Balatro, that’s certainly not a deal breaker. Read on to discover more of what this card game has to offer.


As a roguelike, Balatro runs are a little bit different each time. Of course, the core mechanics do stay the same.

Players are engaging in a game of spiced-up poker. There is a Blind with each round selected that can either be attempted, or passed. A Blind consists of a certain amount of points the player must acquire through their card plays and joker multipliers. If a Blind is skipped, the game will reward money and potentially further items.

Did I mention the jokers?

That's right, Balatro's entire game mechanic changes up the poker-style Blind play matching with jokers. There are a total of 150 in the game and each one augments plays a little bit differently. One of my first jokers added a x4 multiplier to my hands played, allowing me to get decently far on my first run. While you can only have 5 jokers at any given time, adding ones that synergize can allow you to combo plays to easily meet early-game and sometimes even late-game Blinds in only a few hands. For someone like me who loves watching numbers go big, this feature is incredible.

Additional helpful cards include planet cards, which level up the kinds of hands you play like pair, full house, and so on, and Tarot cards. The Tarot cards have different effects per major arcana, allowing you to change the suit of cards, add effects to them that give you extra chips, and more. These can be acquired by purchasing in the shop with funds you get after each Blind (or skipping a Blind), or by opening card packs. These add even further fun on top of the Jokers. I haven't had two games be the same yet!

The deck types also impact game play, allowing you more hand plays before you lose, more discards, more money, and so on. There are a total of 15 decks to choose from, unlocked in a variety of ways.

A total of two Blinds are met or skipped per ante before players reach the Boss Blind. Boss Blinds are purposefully tricky. The first I ran into was The Hook, which discards 2 random cards per hand played. There are, of course, varieties in the Boss Blinds as well. This makes it tricky to win even with some Joker benefits, and I've had plenty of runs end because of a bad, tough Boss Blind.


Many of the graphics in Balatro involve visuals of normal cards. However, there are augmentations that can be done to them that add seals, shine, glitz, glamour, mechanical value, and even foil. Aside from the deck cards, the jokers are all easy to tell apart. Their visuals lend themselves, for the most part, in the direction of the mechanical benefit they’ll provide to you. There are differences in each one, which is good since there are a total of 150 within the game.

The planet cards and Tarot cards are also easy to tell apart. If you know Tarot, small depictions of each character lay on each card, making them easy to differentiate. The planet icons look like the planets in our solar system, so if you can get to a point where you can memorize the card effects, you won’t even have to read.

While the background in most of the card levels doesn’t change much, that’s fine. It’s a formless sort of swirl of colour that doesn’t distract from the main feature: the cards themselves. Balatro developers are smart about their visuals, making everything easy to react to quickly.


If you don’t like card games, I’m not sure Balatro will change your mind; if you do like card games, pick this one up. While there’s no story to be had, the gameplay on its own carries it through hours of content, luck-based plays, and skill-based consideration. Filling out the collection and trying different decks is fun, and the joy of opening up card packs is one that’s almost as good as in real life.

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One of the first series that ever got me into gaming was Pokemon. I mention this here because Cassette Beasts is so inspired by the groundwork Pokemon set up in games that it’s impossible not to mention it at least once in this review. Cassette Beasts rings more similar to early game Pokemon than the recent fare. This is a positive, because newer generation Pokemon has proven disappointing in a number of ways to myself and other fans alike.

If you’re looking for a great monster-capturing game with a fantastical story, you’re in the right place.


If you’re familiar with the isekai genre, you’ve got a good place to start with the base story in Cassette Beasts. After you make a player character, the protagonist finds themselves within the world of New Wirral. Falling into an alternate universe is strange enough, but things get weirder. There are monsters in New Wirral, and the residents need to protect themselves. To fight back, they use cassette tapes to transfer into the same beasts after them, using various elemental attacks to force their foes to retreat.

That’s right, in Cassette Beasts you turn into the monsters.

The first companion you’ll meet, Kayleigh, is a bright face that acts as a guiding hand to the way things work. She helps lead the way to the main city, where multiple rumours and paths forward can be found. That’s right, despite all the side quests, main quests, and errands available in the game, your main goal is to get back to your own reality.

For the most part, the main story quests are split into three categories: companion quests, archangel quests, and captain quests. These can be tackled in basically any order that you want, though the game does make it decently clear what areas might be too difficult for your current level. Level scaling can also be adjusted in the game’s settings, making things harder or easier depending on what you’d like.

My favourite part of the game has to be the Archangels. These fights are great, the “dungeons” and puzzles to get to them are fun, and they act as boss fights within Cassette Beasts. Pursuing them is a requirement to “finish” the game, though there are hours and hours of game play to get there.

I’ll admit a close second are the companion quests. Felix and Kayleigh have the best companion quests of all time, and they both genuinely make me feel warm and fuzzy once I completed them. Don’t sleep on the companions either, you’ll find more throughout the world and by following rumours in Harbourtown. Each companion has their own personality, their own quests, their own Cassette Beast, and their own scenes to unlock by resting at the campfires or cafe. While I typically avoid spoilers in my reviews I’ll say this: you can benefit from keeping companions leveled up, even if they’ll train on their own some without you.

Catch as many beasts as you’d like, pursue friendships with all six companions, become a ranger, and enjoy potentially getting back to your own world.


Love pixel graphics? Me too. Cassette Beasts has a wealth of pixel sprites for each beast available, with each one varied and easy to tell apart. Even the remasters of certain beast lines change things up enough to be different while also being clearly related. What really astonishes with the graphics are the varying sprites for every single fusion in the game. Each one is a little bit different, and discovering what two beasts look like fused was sincerely part of the fun of gameplay for me.

Character sprites are colourful- except when they’re not supposed to be- and most of them are unique. Archangels are incredible to see, and seem to break all graphical rules within the confines of the game, appearing in true unpixelated 3D, 2D, static images, and more.

The world is also bright, three-dimensional, and loads of fun to explore. There are multiple regions to traverse, with plenty of unique obstacles and terrain.

Yes, you turn into a beast, but each Cassette Beast takes the main player's level and stats and combines it with the stats from each cassette. The cassettes don’t have their own level, every beast you equip will scale to the level that your player is. Stats can be adjusted once players pursue the captain/ranger quest further, allowing players to train at a gym to raise or lower particular stats for their player.

There are 14 types of beasts in the game, and every single Cassette Beast is a monotype until fusions get involved. Certain types impact other types differently, and there’s plenty of moves to also swap yours or an opponent's type in battle. For example: a plastic type beast will turn into a poison type temporarily when hit with a fire type move. The game is chock full of instances like this, which keep combat fun and reactive.

The game also hands players a number of ways to interact with the environment and get from place to place. First will be gliding, eventually you’ll be able to swim, and more. This also allows the ability to double-back and grab things missed at first, so you can really round stock up on items and stickers.

Moves in this game are dictated by stickers stuck to a beasts cassette, which can be swapped out and learned by compatible beasts. Each move can be used based on the amount of AP (action points) the player gets per turn, though more AP can be generated with certain stickers. AP also builds faster when players fuse with their partners, and this is also the only way to get dual type beasts that have access to both beasts moves. The fusion meter builds naturally in battle, though there are also items that can be used to fill the bar. Certain enemies can also fuse, and rogue fusions can be found throughout the world as well. These monsters are harder challenges to tackle, though there are potentially rarer stickers and even a higher chance for bootleg (or shiny) beasts to be found.

Did I mention there’s romance? That’s right, you can romance companions as well, if that’s the sort of thing you enjoy. They’re not exactly deep romances, of course, but they’re there!

There’s boundless amounts of passion present in the small team that created Cassette Beasts, and you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not checking it out if turn-based monster-collecting RPG’s are a genre you enjoy. I played this game for many hours back-to-back, and aside from a few issues that are beyond easy to overlook compared to some recent similar releases in the genre, I thoroughly enjoyed my time. This game is great, and one I’ll be recommending to most of my friends.

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Sequels to games don’t always hold up to the original. With coffee-based, visual novel games, sometimes the sequels don’t even come out at all. When Coffee Talk released its second episode, I was thrilled, as I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere and character stories in the first. I played it only shortly before starting this game- by like a day- which made the initial stories fresh in my memory.

This game re-captures the spirit of the first, despite taking place in 2023. The writing and characterization is consistent with what was written initially, and I found myself enjoying the new characters as quickly as I liked the first set. There’s a variety of new personalities to meet, as well as old characters you may be fond of from the first game who have had three years to grow, learn, and also struggle.



Let’s start here: You do not technically need to have played the first game to enjoy Coffee Talk Episode 2, but I would recommend it. The story has new characters present, but also has characters you meet and spend ample time with in the first game. It resumes about three years after the end of the first, but callbacks are made frequently, including drinks that may have been served during the first episode’s playthrough.

The protagonist is the same in the sequel, and is the owner of a cafe called Coffee Talk, which is only open in the evenings. All sorts of wayward wanderers find their way to the cafe, and it’s the barista’s job to listen to their stories, offer them items they may have forgotten or intend for other recipients, and to give them what they want- even if they don’t know what that is.

The patrons are people that either already care about each other, or are seeking some form of connection. Plenty of the characters in this game are in some sort of tailspin, and the cafe can become their home and place for guidance- or a place that they abandon in the event that you offend them enough with your mistakes and terrible memory. Themes in the game include loss, grieving, love, societal oppression, listlessness within a job, family ties, and more. While the writing can be a bit on the nose when it comes to issues echoing our real world, I don’t think it loses any heart in the narrative for it. A lot of this is real stuff that happens to real people, and sometimes only community can aid folks through some of these major problems. Community and family are things that get built up and emphasized in the game, and it warmed my heart to experience.

Yet again, the visuals are beautiful. Pixel sprites show different range of emotions for the characters that will visit. The background outside the coffee shop shifts, keeping things rhythmically moving while drinks are made. Ingredients are all easily differentiated to make drinks quickly, and the drink sprites are all different as well. The new drink ingredients make some of the most lovely beverages in the game, and discovering them and the new sprites was one of my favourite parts of my playthrough.

At its core, Coffee Talk is a visual novel. Main gameplay will always involve reading through dialogue and committing it to memory for each character, and then making them a drink. Sometimes, they tell you precisely what they want, sometimes they’re a bit vague, and other times they give little direction at all. There are multiple endings, and in order to get the best one, serving proper drinks to your patron is of the utmost importance. Drinks are made by combining three ingredients. It’s a simple process, and you’ve got the option to make latte art for latte drinks once the beverage is completed.

A gameplay mechanic unique to episode 2 of Coffee Talk involves item management. That’s not to say managing the ingredients for drinks- though that’s also important. Instead, NPC’s in the game will sometimes leave items at the cafe, or give you items to provide to someone else. It’s important once a drink is made to be sure to hand the item over before serving them, or you can lock yourself out of some endings/achievements. Though, sometimes forgetting is what you need to do for certain endings and achiements as well. It's as easy as clicking the item and dragging it to the tray to serve one your drink is finished, or holding the trigger of your controller and moving it manually and then confirming. Admittedly, I wish the item management was used even more often in episode 2 than it is, but it’s a nice addition so the gameplay offers more than just two new ingredients.

Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly is a faithful sequel that expands on the first game without losing the heart, love, and intimate moments that made the first game one to remember fondly. Only one new character grated on me even a small amount, and I found him to be likable by the end, he simply took more time to grow on me than the others. Characterization is done well over time, and there were multiple emotional moments present that made me want to tear up- especially one of the endings. No spoilers, but if you enjoyed the first game, you should definitely consider playing this one, as it’s a sequel that improves on the first game in every way.

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Our game begins in an alternate universe Seattle in the year 2020. There was a war between the races, though this seems to be a thing of the past according to initial exposition. The tone for the game is immediately set by speaking of a newfound freedom for citizens to dream- only to state that their dreams will be crushed before they can even be discussed. Still, there's hope. Anything can happen, right?
Elves have startups, Dwarves have automotive empires, Orcs use computers now, parents hate Succubi, Werewolves and Vampires have a peace treaty, and humans sure are humans. The stories of people in the city hold great importance, and we hear them as a barista at a coffee shop that only opens at night.

No one gets to hear people's life stories quite like service workers, and this entire game involves catering to your customers needs while also carrying their stories with you.

Table:





Day one opens, and our faceless protagonist stares down a pretty sizable issue with a familiar calm: the shop is short ingredients because of a missed delivery. Our first customer of the day is a regular, one asking for an espresso to combat her writer's block. She and the barista seem to know each other in that familiar way only repeat customers and servers can. What's interesting about this dynamic is that we get to learn as much about the customers- new or returning- as we do our protagonist. Apparently the barista main character is rich, or at least able to keep a coffee shop running that's only open at night. They also fist fight certain rowdy customers, and generally just live a very unique life that we learn about as the days progress.

One of the main characters to join the story is Freya, the green-haired writer on the game's main art splash, who decides to write about the coffee shop. Specially, she's taking inspiration from characters we'll meet as the story progresses, and writing about them in a world that only has humans. While they make jokes about that alternate reality being racist and how it couldn't possibly echo some of the trials and transgressions the supernatural folks are going through, she keeps at it, and we as an audience know better. Plenty of things in our world echo the issues of Coffee Talks world, which is why it's easy to assume her book may not be regarded too badly at all.

There are plenty of other characters- eleven total- that the barista meets and reunites with over the course of the game. Many have a shared story arc that can be resolved depending on whether or not you've served them the right drinks, something that can be tricky to keep track of. Still, the narratives evolve in a way that's sweet, often cathartic, and it does resolve itself provided you got the orders correct.

By the end of the game one of few loose ends that isn't tied up properly is the barista. The final day raises a few questions, and you get the option to replay certain days to scratch that curiosity itch. Provided you go back to experience the four days required, you even wind up having the main character's life explained a bit better, albeit more vaguely than the rest. Everything wraps up well, and by the time I was finished, I wished that there was more.


Truly this is one of the more charming parts of the game. Everyone has a unique pixel sprite, and is often identifiable by silhouette alone. The backgrounds often move and change as well, and the interior of the coffee shop is warm and cozy. This is good, since it's the spot you'll be looking at the most. All drinks distinguish themselves from each other, and the ingredients are also easy to tell apart and quickly flip through because of smart design choices.


The coffee brewing starts day one, and with a simple espresso. Our phone serves as a guide to help remind us of recipes and preparation instructions. Espresso- the first drink we make- requires coffee, coffee, and more coffee. It's a simple, effective beverage, and one you can just select the coffee grounds to add three times in succession.
Ingredients display themselves against the brick wall of the shop, and you can select them and click them or press the A/X button to add them. There are three ingredients total that can be added to any drink, allowing them to be customized but not too initially complicated. Pressing B clears ingredients as well, allowing you to start from scratch in case a mistake has been made.
Once the drink is brewed, you can choose to serve it or trash it, though you can only toss drinks 5 times a night.

There's the option to add latte art to certain drinks as well, though this is a bit more difficult to do. In theory, things shouldn't be so hard. Pour milk by selecting it and then pressing the button to add it, then etch your design, keeping in mind that you can rotate the cup, and then you can invert or reset as needed. I played this on the Steam Deck (which it runs beautifully on), and the up button on the D-pad selected the milk, the left button to etch the art, and the down button to invert. To perform any of the selected functions, pressing the right trigger was required, and then the cursor could be moved with the left stick to draw as needed, with LB and RB rotating the cup.

I've never worked a barista job before, but this is easily the hardest part of the game. Controlling the way things move took me time, and I don't think it was the controls fault so much as it was me struggling to get the milk to move the way I wanted to, with it stopping just short of what I wanted usually. Luckily, you aren't graded on latte art!

Once the main game is conquered, there's also an endless mode that can be selected on the main menu. This option offers free brew mode and challenge mode. The former allows you to brew any pesky, lingering drinks you didn't get to on your main play through, while the latter is trickier. Challenge mode sees customers lining up back to back to order drinks, and with a time limit. Their requests start off easy enough, telling you exactly what ingredients they're looking for, and then gradually getting harder. They'll ask for the direct names of the drinks, then the flavour profile that they want, and then multiple flavour profiles that they want. Each correct drink adds extra time to the clock, and you can keep playing as long as you have time. This mode offers a bit more play time if you want to experiment more with the games flavour system.

Keep in mind, above all else, Coffee Talk is a visual novel, with gameplay being secondary to story.


The creator of Coffee Talk, Mohammad Fahmi, passed away in 2022. I am glad that this game acts as a testament to his memory, as it is thoughtful, kind, and warm in all the right ways. This game treats every situation with empathy and understanding. It is melancholy, but it is also a celebration of life, friendships, and the connections that we make with others. It's lovely to share memories with each other, even over a simple cup of coffee, don't you think?

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I’ve never played Paper Mario, but I understand that it is also turn-based, and what seems to be heavy inspiration for The Outbound Ghost.

I’ll say if, hypothetically, The Outbound Ghost and Paper Mario were a 1:1, even as a new player, I wouldn’t want to check Paper Mario out. This game does just enough things either frustrating or short of the mark that I found my time wasn’t entirely well-spent, nor particularly memorable. I enjoyed the journey, unremarkable as it was, but that's all. One of these styles of games in my life is enough for me, and I suppose I spent that time with this one.


Despite the cute graphics and bright colour palette, the overall plot of The Outbound ghost is surprisingly dark. This contrast is part of what drew me in and kept me coming back, and the dissonance really does continue all the way through the game.

The story opens and says that a poisoned swamp killed people in Outbound, but that’s not entirely the truth. People in the town of Outbound were murdered, with the serial killer remaining a mystery to all. Rather than this being the end of the town’s story, some residents with burdens came back as ghosts, bound to the world until they resolve what’s keeping them tethered. This can be anything from a personal emotional block, to their relationship with another person, to other things.

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The player character has amnesia. Quickly, they’re introduced to figments, named for different emotions that they use to fight.
Michael and Mary are some of the first two major NPC's, and the former is immediately suspicious while the latter is kind and sweet. Michael thinks that the player character is the serial killer that murdered all of outbound, while Mary defends them since there’s no real proof. Instead, they opt to try to take the player character to talk with Adrian, another individual with amnesia. Their reasoning is that if both have amnesia, then clearly they must be connected in some way, or even part of each other’s burdens.This is somewhat thin reasoning, but then again, you don’t need a lot of reasoning to do something when you’re an amnesiac. Now, if the protagonist eventually recovers from their amnesia but the motivation doesn’t change, that’d be strange writing, wouldn’t it? Which is precisely what happens. This is frustrating, and the character of Adrian is the biggest shortcoming of all in terms of plot for me. He’s always running away at pivotal moments, and the plot leans far too heavily on his amnesia in the final chapter for me not to be frustrated with the constant memory-resets. It also tries to throw in actual plot in its twilight moments, like history with the world and figments itself, but there’s not enough time for it to fully develop by the time it attempts.

The Outbound Ghost’s plot starts out promising and even potentially emotionally fulfilling without sticking the landing. A little over halfway through, it seems to lose itself, and while some beats pay off alright in the first three chapters, there’s almost nothing of merit in the final chapter at all.


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The thumbnail on Steam has cute bubble text, bright against a dark background. When you launch the game, there’s a greyscale shot of a village, showing a well, houses, and other models in 3D. They flicker into colour like an old school movie, and then flit elsewhere in the town. We see a swamp and gravestones, but when the camera shifts naturally it sputters and glitches a bit before settling on our protagonist. This is an easy-to-overlook mistake, but frame stuttering was something I ran into a few times.

Environments are massive, though a fair critique is how empty they are. This became intermittently frustrating, and made the required backtracking take longer. There’s also a greyscale static effect that’s conjured when the player is about to fight a major boss, and I LOVED this, as it helps you know when to prepare.
Enemies and figments share the same models, because enemies ARE figments. Still, the designs are varied between each other, span multiple sets of colours, and are often pretty darn cute. Bosses tend to be bigger than regular models, helping you understand who the biggest threat is.


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This is a turn-based game, something I know can be an automatic turn off for some people. Combat is done by summoning figments, or tangible feelings. You can have up to four figments in a party, and most of the attacks and skills they can use require a quick-time style event in order to cast. When you select a skill like a basic attack, a horizontal bar appears. There are segments at the leftmost and rightmost end that are red, an orange segment inwards from there, and a smaller green bar at the center. You need to press the button to stop the lin in the green to get the most out of your attack.

Some figments are faster than others, some more defensible, and some do more damage. These figments can also be augmented by adding aspects, which give certain buffs, debuffs, and skills they might not have otherwise. Aspects are forged by finding crafting books throughout the game, which encourages at least a bit of exploration. Equipping the proper aspects and figments became pivotal in the endgame, and I had to redo a few fights because my figments weren’t properly equipped.

There are also world obstacles and ways to interact with areas occasionally. You get a chance to dig at sparkling dig spots, light or snuff out torches to do “puzzles” or unlock hidden areas, and also a shield to bash through rocks in your way. This can help it feel like backtracking is at least a little bit worth it, which is a boon since it’s required for you to do so to finish the game.

The Outbound Ghost is an okay game. It does some things well, it falls short of other things, and it’s a fairly short game without any real replay value, even if there is a post-game option to go around and fight bosses. This isn’t a game I’d recommend for story, it's biggest weak point. The visuals and gameplay made my time with it just a bit more enjoyable than it was difficult, edging my verdict out just barely in the positive. Grab this one on sale.

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While the Steam page for the game markets it (correctly) as a futuristic RPG with tabletop mechanics, I’d also like to preface that Citizen Sleeper is very much like a visual novel. If you don’t enjoy a lot of reading, then this game may not be for you. If, however, you enjoy rich narrative writing, worldbuilding, and pathos, thenyou'll certainly want to pick this one up.



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Citizen Sleeper is a game about connecting to other people. It’s a game about the degradation of your physical form, and the fight one takes to delay the inevitability of entropy and decay. This is also a game about capitalism, about who it hurts, and about how hard it is to escape when you find yourself at the bottom of the barrel.

The main character you’ll control in Citizen Sleeper is known as a sleeper. You're a fully-formed consciousness in an artificial body that can no longer properly sustain itself. The sad thing is, you're somewhat aware of that fact. Waking up in a shipping container, you know that you once possessed a different body you can no longer go back to, and also that you're on the brink of death.

The company known as Essen-Arp- the same the sleeper used to work for- ensures that all sleepers that escape them face consequences, long-lasting and often fatal. From the first time your sleeper opens their eyes, they are dying. Their organs are failing them, and without a proper stabilizer injection, they will die. Thus begins the daily grind. You need to work to make chits, or money, but working also takes energy and has the chance to hurt you, and every day you also need to eat. All of this totals up, and can be a struggle to manage- until you start reaching out to the other characters around you. Forming friendships and reaching out to NPC’s will grant you various items, and make day-to-day life easier. Citizen Sleeper is also about persistence, about community, and about all of the potential moral greys that come with a world that cannot exist in black and white.

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Everything’s gorgeous. The overworld map is a 3D landscape to explore, and each interactable spot gets its own icon to differentiate. It’s easy to tell things apart because of the dark symbols present, and when tracking quests a yellow symbol appears beside the spot you need to go to, which stands out against everything else. I’m terrible with maps, but Citizen Sleeper’s world was so easy to navigate, and I’m grateful for it.

The character art is gorgeous as well, and it’s hand drawn rather than being 3D rendered. Everyone has different gear, expressions, and body language in their visuals. Part of the fun of exploring the world is meeting the new characters and seeing their detailed art.


This game plays a lot like a visual novel, as I said before, but there are tabletop RPG elements that determine your progress. Each day, you’re given a certain number of dice to use towards different actions, and it’s random each day. To get more dice, you need to go to sleep, but luck determines what numbers you’ll be rolling with. Five dice is the cap you start with, but as your body degrades and your condition worsens, you’ll fall to only four dice, then three dice, and so on. In order to repair your body, you need to acquire stabilizer, which costs chits, and to get chits you need to work. Working will require dice, as will almost everything else in the game. For every die that you roll, you’ll also progress activity clocks for every area, with a different number of successes required to progress. For example, you may need to help someone with tearing a ship apart, which will require you to roll a certain number of successes, thus investing a certain number of dice, and the task will likely not be completed in one day. It’s worth noting as well that the dice do have consequences if you roll badly, and different tasks have different things you can lose, between energy, money, and even condition.

When booting up the game, you’ll get an option to pick from three different classes. Each one has a skill that they’re good at and one that they’re bad at, but the negative stat can easily be rounded out by leveling up that particular skill. You get points to increase your abilities by completing tasks, and can then use them to acquire new actions you can take to repair yourself, restore your energy, or even to increase the passive bonus you’ll get to dice rolls that work off of specific stats.

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I started off as an Operator, which means I was particularly proficient with interface tasks, scoring a +1 when I wanted to hack things or do anything involving data extraction around the map. This was beneficial, as you end up needing to do a TON of extracting during the course of the game, and I recommend it to people that may want a smoother beginning experience.

Your choices in this game matter, and there are multiple endings to choose from based on who you decide to spend your time with. It’s possible to do multiple endings in a single playthrough, though it greatly depends on who and what you decide to pursue. In my first run, I was able to achieve three separate endings - each with two options- by reloading the saves the game does automatically right before your decision is made. Each one has its own emotional catharsis attached to it, and is worth checking out.


This game is wonderful. For the narrative alone I’d recommend it, but the dice system and gameplay is also really interesting and fun to optimize. I wish things were harder from the mid to the end game, but I have few other complaints. The game hooked me after the initial tutorial section, and I played through almost the entire thing in a single sitting, eager to figure out the conclusion to the character’s stories. There’s a lot of emotion woven into each individual's arc and also your own sleeper’s journey, from discovering who they are, to finally realizing where they truly want to be.

Play this game.

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Indie rogue-lites are a common game genre, and I’ve kept my eye on promising looking ones intermittently for years now. This is why Astral Ascent caught my attention, along with its pixel graphics. With smooth gameplay and interesting (challenging) bosses, this game’s surely one you’ll want to check out if action roguelites are your cup of tea.




The initial heroine playable is named Ayla, and she awakens with some dialogue. Something has taken the characters in the hub area from their lives and put them in a prison, locked away forever. Ayla's not content to stay behind bars, but whoever locked the group away put security measures in place. The way out is filled with monsters and guarded by the zodiacs, twelve powerful warriors that act as roadblocks to Ayla's freedom.
As is the case with most protagonists, Ayla has a very vague recollection of anything that's ever happened to her. While her memories elude her, most of her fighting skills don't. She's tested by two wolf-like guardians who aid her in the basics of combat before she insists on trying for an escape from their confines.

Currently, it's not possible to fully beat the game. Once you get past the boss of the second area, you're killed immediately and sent back until more of the game is prepared. There are still plenty of memories to collect and skills to grab, of course, and most NPC's have fresh dialogue once you get back from dying in a run, regardless of what ended you. The memory collection acts to flesh characters and narrative out, and talking to them also often yields insight, something that helps both playable and non-playable characters dimensions.

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As soon as the update came that added readability mode, the graphics went from great to amazing. One of the only complaints I had about the visuals in the game, colourful and intricate as they were, was how difficult it could be to see some enemies against certain backgrounds. Now, with the dark pixel outline around characters you wanna smack, I'm able to see things much easier and get hit far less.
Besides this, the visuals are phenomenal. Graphics in the world are lively and bright, while designing most items and power-ups to be easily told apart at a glance. I recall two spell designs being similar enough that I had to read the differences between the two, but this becomes easier the more that you play. Enemy design is varied, and it's easier to tell the bigger threats because they're literally bigger- with the hardest enemies being the only humans.

Oh, yeah, and the talking head sprites that appear when interacting with NPC’s? They’re gorgeous. While the anthro-characters can take a bit of getting used to, the rest of the designs show some real artistic talent.



Like any rogue-lite, early runs of this game can be brutal. Getting to a boss room the first few times meant that I was going to die for certain, while I tried to bide time to learn moves and get better spells. Even with upgrades, some of these fights are tough, until you unlock enough to feel like most fights are a breeze.

Navigating the menus also proved difficult for me at times. In this game, you have a regular attack that you use to build mana, and then four spells that you can cycle through. These have various effects and do enhanced damage at the cost of that mana resource, but figuring out how to swap through things was tricky. I played the entire game on controller, and often times had to step away from new spells I wanted to pick up to scroll through to the spell I wanted to be rid of. It also took me a while to understand that I could page through my available spells using the left joystick to apply buffs, rather than cycling through each one individually. In the future, I hope this is explained a bit more clearly.

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As far as actual gameplay goes, the combat is great! Motions are quick and floaty if you opt to jump, since every hit gives you another jump. Skirmishes could turn into full on 'floor is lava' challenges if you want, and even if you don't, the game offers them to you later. Heavy damaging spells feel weighty and have their own animations, and each enemy you fight has their own attacks and patterns as well. This is easily the strongest part of the game, even if I found some bosses frustrating until I bettered myself, but I found that fit the narrative. A woman who cannot properly recall her memories is unlikely to encounter one of the big bosses imprisoning her and beat them first try. Instead, she'll need to hone her skills, kill plenty of enemies, and lose until she respawns back at the start only to try again.

To improve your character, you must purchase upgrades. There are some available during the run that can upgrade attack speed or health, but there are also permanent upgrades that are far more reliable, and must be purchased in your hub area. You get experience for each enemy you kill that accumulates at the end of a run. That resource is then used to unlock new spells, new auras, and new buffs for your player character. Auras are a passive thing that improve your character, and there are also skills that can be triggered to be discovered throughout the level, like a shield that can be activated to absorb damage. Ayla's health can also be upgraded, her mana can be upgraded, the amount of choices that you get per level- almost everything in the game can be upgraded with enough experience. There are also rewards for completing challenges, like killing a certain number of enemies or collecting memories randomly spawned through the levels. Each of these provides experience as well.

The game can also be played in co-op, though I played it solo. Player 2 can connect and play a more monk-style character instead of the rogue type that Ayla is, though I'm uncertain if this changes the difficulty of the runs.

There are plenty of other little things added to the game that breathe life into the world. NPC's can be talked to after almost ever run, memories add backstory to them, you can change the colour and appearance of every part of your character after finding tickets to purchase separate options, and once you beat the first zodiac boss of the two worlds available, then other zodiacs will appear to fight you.


Overall, there's plenty here to enjoy and unlock, even for an early access title. Personally, I look forward to further updates and the eventual release- I just wouldn’t pick it up for the story.

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During the intro, your heroes, Halea and Gwennel, have received a cryptic letter. They meet in the middle of a forest and sling questions and confused statements at each other. Halea appears to be a knight or a warrior of some sort, with axe and shield. Gwennel is most certainly an Elven ranger, clad in green and bow-decked (like being bedecked but with bow in hand). While our heroes are chatting, Goblin 37 approaches, stating that he also received a letter. Traditionally, Goblins are enemies in this world, and the characters are understandably confused. Things don’t exactly get clearer when a wizard named Elmar appears. He insists, quite enthusiastically, that the group kills the Goblin, and the tutorial begins.

Elmar quickly introduces himself as a bit of a dork, and tries to convince the heroes to join a guild of his. Despite initial agitation, he convinces the others to come to their organization, and we’re met with a character creation screen. You must create the guildmaster you will be playing throughout the game that guides the heroes you control during different guild missions. It’s the guildmaster’s responsibility to aid the heroes in their growth, and in assisting various individuals with tasks that get dropped at your feet as you progress through the game.

There is, technically, an overall “villain” to the story, but I would say that the plot isn’t necessarily one that enthralled me. The gameplay itself and the various jokes and general rapport the guildmaster has with their team was what kept me engaged. There are jokes a-plenty scattered throughout each and every dialogue option, keeping things light and entertaining along your journey.


Everything here is pixelated! If that’s a style you enjoy, you might like this. It’s simplistic for the most part, but things are colourful and engaging enough to look at. Character customization is present, as previously mentioned, though there’s not a ton of variety. Still, I love having the opportunity to be darker-skinned, and also female, and the sprites are pretty enough.

Every character has their own models and some animation flavours available. Armour won’t show on your character models, though new weapons and equipment will, and various spells have different animations associated with them. Most of the game takes place in forested areas, though there’s variety in the landscapes as well, from caves, to jails, to outposts. There are unique enemy models as well, and while I found some of the Goblins to be difficult at a glance at times to differentiate- since there only difference is often their equipment- the variety is usually easy to distinguish. You get the chance to choose your team before each quest- though some have only one required member-

Overall, the visuals really do a great job of harkening back to old-style tactical RPG graphics I might’ve enjoyed as a child, and I found it to be something charming that didn’t overstay its welcome for me, personally.


At its core, Guildmaster is a strategy RPG. Everything is turn-based, and your team will normally consist of a total of four players when you’re in missions. Players move along a grid, and even out of combat the guildmaster does the same. In your guild, you can equip your party, read up on lore at the library, and get general buffs to aid you at the enchanter. The guild is your hub, and you’ve got a steward who helps provide you quests named…Steward.

The game is point and click, and you’ve got a variety of skills your party is capable of, with passives particular to each character and skills determined by their equipment. Character archetypes include warriors, your mages, and your archers. There is an auto-equip button before missions to outfit your characters with the best gear you have for their class, and after buying new things, I found myself using it frequently. After each mission- which range from killing goblins to rescuing cans of beans to slaying slimes- your characters will level. You can allot three skill points to make them better at various skills, and then move on to the next quest on your list. After each mission, however, your prior active party has to rest. Difficulty in game isn’t too bad, though there were a few moments I came in with a team ill-fitted for their quest and had to reload a safe to switch out my party. Outside of that, if you play tactically, heal up and don’t rush your squishy characters into the fray, you shouldn’t have much issue.

While I typically do my best to not spoil anything in a game, I will offer a warning: I know it is easy in party games to pick favourites and only level them. I RECOMMEND AGAINST THIS STRONGLY. It might be a good idea to try to keep your party levels rounded out, for the most part, for no particular reason at all.


Guildmaster scratches a particular humorous itch in the turn-based tactical RPG genre for me. Multiple elements were entertaining enough that I wanted to keep playing, and see what would, eventually happen, and the way they would make things humorous enough to resolve the plot.

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Like most visual novels, RB: Axolotl is narrative-heavy. That being said, it's difficult to discuss the story without just spoiling things. I will preface with this: the game starts out at a bright, cheery tone that it does not keep up with. The characters are colourful, cute axolotl, and we spend our first few hours getting to know them differently coloured amphibians. Axy, Enc, Nio, Liam, and Lanna are all residents of the tank, and you quickly learn that things there are a tad bit strange. The axolotl doesn't need to eat and require very little sleep, for starters, and also don't seem to age.

There are even more oddities present that we learn quickly. There's a void in the center of the tank, a portal of sorts that apparently spits items out every day. Nio is the axolotl with the highest intelligence, and he believes there's a correlation between their very existence, the items he throws into the void, and the things that come out.

What I will say is that RB: Axolotl isn't necessarily for the lighthearted. Very early on things get dark, with graphic, vulgar dialogue. Things spiral from there, and if one were to label the visual novel as 'horror' I wouldn't disagree. There's a mystery in every part of this game, and it waits quite a while to begin to unravel all of its layers.

As a traditional-style point-and-click visual novel, the graphics in RB: Axolotl aren't necessarily the focus. Still, the backgrounds that are present are hand-painted, bright, and varied enough to be eye-catching. The character designs are adorable as well, and their expressions change based on what they're saying or emotions present in the scene.

Gameplay is relatively minor, and the most you usually do is click or press enter to advance text. There is a feature that requires you to press the 'S' key, and I'll say that it did put a smile on my face most time it popped up on the screen. There are also a few choices in the game that you are able to make later on, that may or may not effect story outcome (from what I can tell, the choices are mostly for fun).

I enjoyed the time that I had with RB: Axolotl. I truly enjoy games that set a narrative tone only to subvert it. Being lulled into a false sense of security and then watching the story spiral out once you think you know what's going on is always fun for me, and I eat up a good mystery. All things considered- even if the gameplay is typical of other visual novels- the story that RB: Axolotl tells is interesting enough to want to check out. It certainly did a few things I wasn't expecting, even if I did call a few other twists. When it comes to mysteries, a few shocks are always welcome.

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The main character, Maddy, is both a necromancer and barista. It's a strange combination, but apparently not as out-of-place as one might think. Her mentor, Chay, was very much the same before her, and despite being over 200 years old has stuck around long enough to pass his knowledge on to her. Many regulars know Maddy well, but the standout in the cast is Ashley, a little girl with a mechanical arm, and Ned, a strange rule-following-man with a metal hat.

Kishan is new to the rest of the cast, and we meet him very early when he wanders into the bar, freshly dead. He acts as a sort-of mouth piece for the audience, questioning many things in this strange pseudo-afterlife. Through him, we come to understand that the departed have twenty-four hours on this plane before you can move to the next, and staying for even a single minute longer incurs a penalty with The Council of Death. In fact, Ned himself works for the Council of Death, and Maddy very much hates him for it.

Things escalate from there. It's very clear that Maddy's methods of getting time for the Council of Death (not the Death Council, let's be clear) are less than ideal. Unearthing what's going on and taking our time with the characters is an important part of Necrobarista. When the plot finally comes to a close, it's a touch bittersweet, but only in the same way that saying goodbye always is.

The graphics and lighting engine in Necrobarista are beautiful. Text is hand-laid out to be as energetic as possible, sometimes angling with different camera shots or flying in from off of the screen. Each click lets you progress parts of the text, which means you can progress at your leisure and read at a pace that is most comfortable for you. The way the game experiments with lighting is beautiful, reminiscent of certain styles of comic art and even anime in the way it wraps around character model's faces.

More than once, the game will cut to a coloured background with only a few words on it, both for humourous effect and also for emphasis. I found this to be additionally engrossing, and something that, again, hearkens to a different form of media than gaming. To call the game dynamic seems almost too easy, but that's precisely what it is; the momentum is increased by the movement of text and the way it all frames each scene. As a visual novel of sorts, it's important that Necrobarista is enjoyable to look at, and the game proves all that and more.

The main interactive component in the game happens at the ends of chapters. There are two episodes and ten chapters total. After each one, you get a small little narrative from cute robots that Ashley built. They provide both commentary and recap, and afterwards you are met with a screen of multiple floating words. Each is one that was delivered during the chapter prior, and corresponds to a different subject like Maddy, Jay, Melbourne, food, or death itself. You get to choose seven total each chapter, and they allot you 'points' for each subject that the word relates to. Between chapters you get to walk around the Terminal and you can use these points to unlock different side stories. They allow you not only to learn more about the main cast, but also the world and how magic has effected things.

I can tell the contents of Necrobarista will stay with me. The narrative painted beautiful, well-thought-out-characters with punchy dialogue that often felt like a real conversation. The setting as well was intriguing, and I'm a sucker for modern magic mixes. Necrobarista is a series of stories that I tore through as quickly as I could, while still feeling sad that I would eventually come to the story's end. Of course, part of the lesson of the game is about finality. Endings are inevitable, but we keep our memories of everything that we have lost on our journey. I know my memories of Necrobarista will stay with me for a long time to come.

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