Recent reviews by Bob Pullen

Excellent and immaculately designed puzzler. Main story is short, but is a blast (pun intended) from start to finish! That said, there's a good number of post game challenges that will keep you occupied if you haven't had your fill. None of the achievements are gated behind the more difficult puzzles which will no doubt satisfy the completionists too. Fully recommend!

The metaphor and nuance of this game are completely lost on me 🤷

I'm guessing this is what warrants the praise - because without it - all I'm seeing is a v.short, narrative-led adventure, with uninspiring gameplay, zero challenge, tonnes of jank, confusing/abrupt scene transitions, and a whole bunch of head scratching!

Beautiful pixel art, excellent voice acting, endearing characters, moody soundtrack, really nice controller support, fun set pieces/puzzle design, and an engaging storyline that doesn’t let up. It’s brilliant! 👏

Bit conflicted with this one. I'm a sucker for the pixel art and the controls are fluid/responsive, but it doesn't quite come together as a package. The difficulty progression is a bit all over the place, some of the puzzle arrangements feel forced/janky, and I wasn't particularly enamoured by the story/world building either (something I thought I was going to love!)

It's not 'bad' and there are definitely moments that shine, just not enough to make it worth the price of admission. If you're stuck for something to while an afternoon away - and it's on sale - then maybe give it a shot.

Nice dose of nostalgia that remains faithful to the 8/16-bit classics however, the story is incohesive nonsense. Arcade mode re-runs and exploring the perks/options are where it comes into its own. There's a bunch of Challenges to complete in addition to the main campaign but it's not enough to justify the price tag so grab it on sale if you're interested. Runs very well on Steam Deck.

Nice, short point and click with commendable voice acting and decent presentation/mechanics. If you're the type with a soft spot for Monkey Island etc. then you can't go too wrong.

Solid metroidvania, surprisingly lengthy and with plenty of optional content for the sadists. Looks pretty and plays superbly on the Steam Deck.

This game is almost entirely walking/narrative based, so how much you enjoy it is going to depend on your appreciation of the aesthetics, dialogue and storyline.

It's definitely a looker, and the setting is more than reminiscent of Bladerunner, so if that's your bag then you'll not have too much to grumble about.

The storyline is OK. I like the ichorite concept, and the detective tools are satisfying enough once you get to grips with them, but there's a lot of reliance on understanding the relationship between the characters you're reading about. I found this hard to follow at times and sometimes felt that I was failing to come to the conclusions that the game was expecting of me. This made some of the story path decisions fall a bit flat too, as I didn't always understand the relevance/consequence of choosing one option over another so some of the decisions I made lacked any emotional investment.

The voice acting is decent but the dialogue/narrative can be a bit grating/unnatural at times and there's a lot of noir cliché.

Grab it on sale if you’re interested as it's fairly short at ~6 hours and not without its flaws.

Pretty, mechanically fluid and beautifully presented. Nothing ground-breaking though, and it's a short experience, so recommend picking up on sale when you fancy something relaxing/pretty to occupy you for a few hours.

Great game, with a novel (although somewhat under-capitalised) 'game within a game' premise.

You'll spend most of your time within a very primitive Atari-esque pixel environment so if that's not your bag then stay away. If it's something you appreciate/are nostalgic for though, then the atmosphere the devs have managed to create with what surmounts to a bunch of 8-bit monochrome squares and rotoscope cut scenes is commendable. If you're familiar with/have played 'FAITH: The Unholy Trinity', then you'll like this.

It's definitely not for everyone and it took a fair bit of perseverence at the start for me to understand some of the game mechanics; I can see this lack of direction/intruction being too much of a hurdle for some.

The puzzles are largely well-thought out however, there was more than one occasion when it felt I was brute-forcing/breaking something, even though I was doing what was expected of me. This was particulalry true for puzzles involving some of the items found in the Forest area of the game.

Minor quibbles aside though, this is a gem of a game that's well worth the price of admision if you're willing to put the effort in.