Recent reviews by Laco

A skill-based physics game with elements of OlliOlli and Bennett Foddy's classic Pole Riders. Super high skill ceiling - I don't know if I'll ever get close to beating all 70 levels - but I don't mind because the basic act of pogoing is so enjoyable. Nothing feels better than pulling off a casual flip into a railslide just for the fun of it!

This is an impressively deep and masterfully tuned game from what I believe is a solo indie dev. Play it!

Teardown is absolutely amazing. After decades now of games offering destructible physics, here's one that finally lives up to all the potential that entails - and it's from a tiny team! This has fully granular destruction and is happy to let you experiment however you like, but the core mission design actually provides a reason to carefully consider what you destroy and when.

I tend to play this game with my mouth half-open, shocked that things I try "just work". The fire propagation system, a small part of the game, is the most impressive I've ever seen and joyously chaotic. Knocking down huge structures, with explosives or just by driving vehicles through them, never gets old. There are so many loving touches in the visuals, sound, and level design; even the volumetric fire extinguisher smoke, again a tiny component, is by far the best smoke effect I've seen in a game.

The game is already engrossing even with just a small handful of base levels reused in clever ways. I hope the developers continue to expand on the levels and missions, and regardless I'll be enjoying this for a long time to come.

This is 100% my jam. It takes what I loved and spent hundreds of hours on in Magic Duels, Slay the Spire, and Dicey Dungeons, trims away much of the busywork, and isn't afraid to let you come up with near-broken combos. In fact, it expects it.

The almost tower-defence aspect of the three level train is clever for opening up varying strategies at different meta-layers (per turn, per battle, per run). The compressed boss rush at the end of each battle is genius at limiting their length and preventing the kinds of degenerate strategies that in other games let you laboriously eke out a win but take dozens of turns. Here, if you want to win you need to set up your engine (in the form of units) quick smart.

Monster Train is as close to a pure "series of interesting decisions" game as I think I've ever played. It's great.

Endlessly inventive rulesets. Legitimately funny writing. Each run is a challenge but never drags on. I could probably play this forever.

Simply one of the most beautiful and engaging toys I've ever played with. The music really makes this work.

A great Zachtronics-style game. If you've enjoyed any of those, particularly Shenzhen I/O, you'll almost certainly get something out of this. Many of the puzzles have quite tricky restrictions - how *do* you build a multiplier without using subtract? - and finding a solution that meets the ideal (or better!) is always a fun challenge.

The harder puzzles get really hard, but there's plenty to do even if like me you're not at that level. The dev has been active in fixing bugs and adding or tweaking puzzles to make the game more intuitive.

+1 would research linear recurrence relations to solve a puzzle again.

Like all the best puzzle games, Kami forces your brain into a new mode of thinking, one that it stays in for a while after going back to real life. I just went through this thought process while hanging out laundry: "If I touch that sock first, it'll merge with those t-shirts so I only have to hang up one thing... hang on a minute."

It's also really beautiful, really simple, and really cheap. Highly recommended.

Teleglitch is incredible. I can't do it justice in a short description, just like the static screenshots don't do justice to how perfectly the chunky pixel style works in motion. It's dirt cheap, just play it. Hell, if anyone is remotely interested and wants a copy I'll buy it for you.

Effortlessly charming, weird, and imaginative, but as tightly designed as old 8 bit platformers. I basically play this with a permanent huge grin on my face. Everyone, play this!

Avalanche sure know how to make explosions enormously satisfying.