Siliconera

At launch, HoloVillage: Our Cozy Days is too broken and limited to recommend to folks looking for a Hololive Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley sort of experience. There’s too little interaction with Vtubers. The grind is real. The game might just freeze or break on you. For a game that should be packed with personality, thanks to all the performers represented in it, it’s instead incredibly bland. Maybe in a few months, patches could improve some of the issues and you might be able to play without fear of being frozen in place. But it is not at that point right now.

Whereas Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley felt like you got to experience a new story in Moomin lore, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth is closer to an interactive storybook game. It puts its own spin on a beloved story while maintaining the original spirit of Tove Jansson’s work, making it a delight for fans regardless of familiarity. I’m not sure if Hyper Games will continue the series, but I would be interested to see what it comes up with next.

If missions felt more exciting and the character designs, enemies, and environments looked as good in Kingdom’s Return” Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster as other Inti Creates titles, I’d be more forgiving when it comes to the tedium. Sadly, they’re not. Compared to the company’s other games, it’s disappointing in many ways. On the plus side, the Switch and PC demo is a very good indicator of what to expect, so you could at least try that and know right away if you’re willing to overlook its shortcomings and give it a try. Still, Kingdom’s Return: Time-Eating Fruit and the Ancient Monster is one of the most bland and tedious Inti Creates games, and that’s a shame.

Magical Princess is an admirable daughter-raising and stat management game, and it feels like Neotro and Magi learned from the example Princess Maker set. It’s more streamlined when it comes to presenting information. The Skill and EX Skill system also can make it less daunting and easier to succeed when pursuing certain goals. Most importantly, I really appreciated how important bonds seemed to be here. It really establishes the character Alice as someone with a family and friends who care about her.

The thing is, I can think of ways Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy could be fixed. Give everyone immediate access to all characters, and make the Character Tickets unlock the additional costumes. Fine, have the Abilities on the gacha banner, but perhaps offer an option to outright buy the four unique skills for each character in the shop. Instead of making the story feel so reliant on going through multiplayer battles, instead tie them to the Challenge mode so we don’t need to wait around for a full party or invest in a competitive mode we might not enjoy. Focus on making it enjoyable and not so reliant on other people and RNG to succeed. Of course, the amount of retooling means we’ll probably see the title fail, rather than get adjusted and relaunched as something that feels far less greedy. But hey, at least we got some great music and fantastic character designs!

Essentially when you experience Opus: Prism Peak, you need to pay attention and play with a purpose. Imagine yourself as Eugene. Think about his mindset and life. Think about your own struggles and past. Do you choose optimism or pessimism? Do you attempt to connect? Do you reject? This is a game where the more you put into it, the more you get in return.

Find Your Words is a charming game that gets you thinking about communicating, with conversations sometimes feeling like puzzles. At the same time, it might offer a window into a different kind of life. This title could get you thinking about accessibility and how easy to might be to reach out to others and how easily it could be to connect to other beyond the more typical methods of communication.

Vampire Crawlers offers Wizardry-like dungeon-crawling and roguelike deckbuilding without abandoning the Vampire Survivor roots.

Darwin’s Paradox can be a lot of fun, but how much you enjoy it depends on how much you enjoy stealth games where dangerous enemies chase you. It’s short and sweet, saying all it needs to in its brief runtime. It can be exceptionally clever, especially in its first half. However, after the halfway point there are some absolutely obnoxious sequences with some real baddies chasing Darwin and a few particularly annoying stealth segments in certain chapters.

The idea behind Dosa Divas is sound and I like Amani and Samara as individuals, but the overall experience is so uneven. The narrative structure feels off, with poor pacing and an odd way of trying to tell the story and foster connections. The QTEs for combat and cooking can get demanding in some situations, though in others they sort of exist and always feel the same. By the end of it, I found myself wondering if maybe it would have all worked better as a graphic novel that could have better told the tale instead.