Recent reviews by manchego obfuscator

As a streamlined open-world game with an emphasis on light puzzle-solving and platforming as well as traversal, Giant Squid’s second game is significantly more ambitious, and significantly more of an actual game, than its debut title, the very linear and gameplay-light underwater swimming sim Abzu. While the exploration, atmosphere, and puzzles are all fairly engaging for most of its running time, The Pathless ultimately doesn’t feel as tightly designed or polished as its predecessor: all the puzzles are designed around a small handful of gameplay elements that start to wear thin by the end; the story would have worked better with abstract text-free storytelling a la Journey or Abzu; and the boss battles that end each region start as welcome changes of pace from the exploration, but end up as overly drawn-out affairs with frustrating difficulty spikes (you can’t actually die, but taking too many hits will kick you out of the arena and force you to restart the current phase of the boss). And while a traditional map or quest markers obviously wouldn’t have fit the deliberately streamlined approach to open-world design, I do wish there had been a feature like the one in Sable, which allowed you to set waypoints anywhere you could see from a suitably high vantage point; as is, I spent too much of the time using the Spirit Mask, which highlights key landmarks, but also desaturates the visuals and slows you down. It’s still generally fun to explore and solve puzzles, and I enjoyed most of my time with it, but it’s more flawed than I had hoped.

Going by the reviews here, a lot of people clearly found the central gameplay loop of Loddlenaut to be highly addictive… but while I can certainly see what it’s going for, it just didn’t click for me after an hour or so, with its cleaning mechanics not feeling particularly satisfying, and the process of gathering the necessary materials to craft an upgrade feeling overly slow and grindy. Maybe it’s better balanced once you get the first few upgrades out of the way, but I’m not sure I’ll come back to find out.

A short, relatively polished, and enjoyable 2D action-adventure platformer (very much linear and not a Metroidvania, but it’s neither divided into thematically discrete stages, nor is it a cinematic platformer), with its central platforming and puzzle mechanics revolving around a magic sword that allows you to wield fire to your advantage. Admittedly, it ultimately feels like a proof of concept for a more ambitious sequel - outside of the fun but fairly simple combat, you don’t end up using your fire powers to do much more than light torches that act as switches or burn away obstacles, the story is underdeveloped, and there isn’t a lot of visual variety - but still worth your time given its brevity and that the fire abilities are visually and mechanically satisfying to use, and hopefully Nocturnal II delivers on more of the potential here.

A generally lovely and affecting short visual novel from the perspective of a trans woman in 1993 Ireland, with an eraser-themed UI mechanic thematically tied into the narrative and various animated flourishes that thankfully distinguish its presentation from more conventional entries in the genre. The ending did feel a little pat, but maybe that’s just me; regardless, the personal nature of the story, and the specificity of its setting, come through and make this well worth a play for anyone interested in queer narrative games, trans or otherwise.

If you can't already tell from the premise (you play as a nun who hears the voice of the devil in her head), Indika is very much an art-house style of narrative game, with a story that ambitiously tackles weighty themes of Catholicism, free will, and morality, and an XP/skill tree system which involves deliberately incongruous UI elements and sound effects and has literally no impact on the gameplay, but does end up playing into the narrative in a meaningful way. I don't think it entirely coheres for me - a few of the puzzles are clunky, the ending feels anticlimactic, and the general surrealism of the world isn't quite justified by where the story ends up going - but it's hard to find too much fault with a game with this level of narrative ambition, and a story and voice acting that were strong enough to keep me playing despite some general jank. May play through it again down the road and see if the story holds up better now that I have a better sense of what it's going for.

An open-world indie platformer with a grapple mechanic sounds like a good time, but an hour or two in, the grapple just feels janky and unsatisfying to use (as does basic movement, to a lesser degree), and the open-world elements suffer from a lack of any objective marker or onscreen map. Sludge Life may not have had a grapple mechanic, but it did this sort of quirky low-fi indie first-person open-world platformer much better.

A very short (under an hour), experimental narrative game with only one limited gameplay mechanic (archery), and script that uses its conceit (you have one chance to light a flame that will determine whether or not people will get their wishes granted) to tell a story about moral choices and the weight of expectations. I'm not entirely satisfied with either of the two endings, which feel anticlimactic (especially the "bad" ending I got) even if I can see what the developers were going for, but it's an interesting experiment nonetheless, and definitely worth the $3 it'll cost you on Steam.

A generally charming and fun linear story-driven platformer, though its title character talks far too much and level design could have been a bit tighter, with some periodically unclear objectives and a particularly dodgy late-game stealth sequence.

I've never played League of Legends and likely never will, but all the LoL lore that's actually relevant to this game's plot is explained reasonably well here.

Swashbuckling 3D action game set in a cartoonishly heightened version of 18th (I think?)-century Spain, in which you play as a lesbian swordswoman who dispatches enemies with a vaguely Arkham-esque parry/counter system and fun physics-based environmental interactions. Suffers from the limitations of its indie budget: it's a fairly short game that nonetheless runs a tad too long given the limited mechanical and environmental variety; there's some questionable checkpointing; and some of the battles and enemy types limit the ways you can use the environment to your advantage, neutering the game's strongest feature. But when its mechanics come together, like when you parry an attack and are then able to kick an enemy into a weapons rack, or drop a chandelier on a group of enemies, it's a lot of fun.

Qualified recommendation. Replayed this before I belatedly get around to its sequel. Production values and Juergens’ performance are still outstanding in 2025, but the combat gets awfully repetitive and overly drawn out, and I found myself wishing for more than one puzzle mechanic; I’ve heard that the sequel is even more of a walking simulator, and maybe that was the right move.

Also, even on an RTX 4070 with DLSS enabled, the high RT setting completely tanks performance in certain areas, particularly the final fight.