BugOnDesk

Simulacra 2 is as good as the previous game in the series. Continued with high-quality narrative design, this time we have much more fun in gameplay thanks to the new video clips and the improvements on the graphic design.

Until today, the time travel mechanic of The Silent Age is still a mind-blowing method of storytelling in puzzle game design. The developer had good control of the difficulties throughout the entire gameplay. This is a game for everyone.

Another cool phone simulator game. If you like stories that talk about politics and revolutions, Replica won't disappoint you.

This game gave me a lot of inspiration both on storytelling and simulator design. The story is mind-blowing and I enjoyed how it unfolds dramatically throw the video clips searching process.

The phone UI and the photos had a consistent art style, which helps the players to feel immersive. The puzzles are logical and stay in a comfortable level of difficulty.

The detective stories were well-written and very logical. As a player, I felt involved with the ongoing situations and my moods changed along with them. I played the game a few rounds to make 100% achievements but I didn't feel boring to try different options.

Overland is a creative turn-based survival game that helps new players on board. The first chapter provides a slope that teaches each part of the surviving system step by step; the colorful low-poly art style and little amount of storytelling reduce the fear towards the death threads from monsters and crucial environment; the gas system is a great tool to balance the decision making, and saving more teammates could build a chain of passing items from the further corners.

I noticed Night in the Woods because of the knife fight mini-game, and the cute fair-tale-book style made me think this is a warm lovely story. The overall playthrough was so smooth that I didn't even feel much like playing a puzzle game. Rather than saying I was surprised by the dramatic turn in the story, I was shocked by how much fear this game can give me even if everything was drawn as simple colorful 2D shapes. I would definitely recommend everyone who is interested in good narrative design to play this game at least once.

Incredibly hard, incredibly well-designed, incredible. If you are a game designer and want to learn how to improve the "teaching" design in your game, try Celeste.

If you want to have a short break from combat, racing, surviving crises, play A Short Hike!

This is not only a game but also a gamified virtual programming learning tool.

So weird, so cool. It is fun to find a way to trick our assignment AI. The colors are a little bit too bright to look at for a long time.

Nice virtual experience based on the famous Walden book. It would be better if we can travel faster in the later part of the game, and maybe make the interactable items more obvious.

A Mortician's Tale gives us a different angle of everyone's ending and the people who give their efforts at corners that almost nobody ever looks at. The only disadvantage here is the game is too short.

The bgm and sfx are very chilling, making you feel like building a happy dreamland with your mini people. The pixel text is clear enough to read and the comprehensive systems are not too hard to understand. But the pixel icons could be bigger to be found and to represent the meaning, and the tutorial would be more helpful if showing how to build the first couple of things step by step.

NIGHT OF THE CONSUMERS has an interesting concept and we all should say thank you to all the retail staff during the pandemic. Unfortunately, there was a bug of not being able to put things on the shelf, which blocked the entire gameplay. It would be very helpful if there are more hints on the control.

A very creative treasure hunting game with a cute simple UI and high dynamic geography map. You don't need any relative knowledge to start this game, the well-designed interface and instinctive visual feedback did a great job of teaching players.

Airships Conquer the Skies did a great job on making its tutorials by covering all the necessary details and explaining the complex systems clearly step by step. The pixel battle ships have extreme high quality that even can see the structures and animation with very small size.

Cool 2.5D roguelike game with funny narrative and very flexible customization of game mode. The vfx and sfx feedback are decent. However, all the characters only have idle animation, no moving and attacking version.

You can tell the developers knew what they were doing from the very beginning of the gameplay. Well-designed UI, full-emotion VO, player character customization, funny storytelling and dialogs, highly detailed backgrounds, and pretty character animation bring us a high-quality visual novel experience. The attribute system combines the options that are distinguished enough, which makes the players believe they can build their own story path or personality. It would be better if all the NPC dialogs can have VO.

The 60s timer brings the players unique fast pace gameplay. It combines the item collection system and the home unlocking system to provide a well-balanced reward loop. Mint makes its players feel proud of themselves when they figure out a puzzle even after many times of death and expect the next exploration.

I love the humor of all the dialogs under the Talk option, and I can relate to the daily social topics this game talked about. The old-school pixel art has a comfortable color pattern, and the background story setting is easy to be accepted by the player.

I played this game three times in a row and was really impressed by the high-quality animation, localization, and story writing. It's hard to believe the designer put so many turning points in such a short game.

Another great example of how platformer/puzzle games introduce new mechanics to the players. Switching to control the cubes is such a cool idea.

Don't even think about catching up on the thoughts of the designers, or wonder how crazy the puzzles can be with such simple color patterns and low-poly models. This game is art.

Thanks for making such a cute simulation game that introduce us to the unique journal of transgender and fandom. You can tell how much effort the developer put into the design of a complete simulated 90s-style computer operating system. The response speed of NPCs sometimes is a little bit too slow.

Although the online feature is no longer available, Loot Rascals is still a great 2.5D space roguelike game that is worth a shot. The loot-HUD system brings the players flexible ability customization, and the animation feels so smooth and looks so pretty.

If I can only bring one visual novel to a no-man island for two months, Changeling will be my choice. This full-length modern supernatural story has more than 40 endings with 6 love interests. Instead of just name tags above the dialog box, I think it could be better if the speaker's character drawing can have a highlight.

The designer blew our mind by showing what their mind looks like. Rather than a video game, Fugue in Void is more like an interactable art gallery. I would suggest making the pauses(black screens) shorter or giving more visual feedback when the players are doing the right thing, there were some times I couldn't tell if I encountered a progress-blocking bug or was not doing what I suppose to do.

A cute little roguelike game with very stylish glitch pixel art and interface. You can always find something new in Haque every time you are looking for it. By "new", I don't mean just in this game, but all the games in similar genres.

Who doesn't want to fight cute little monsters with a broom and meet other adventurers who ride motorbikes in dungeons? Try out this Zelda-like pixel art game and enjoy the solid quality of gameplay and childing vibe.