Noole

Not the train management game you might expect it to be. Train management is pretty much reduced to a mini-game here, you'll spend most of the game exploring and talking to NPCs, fighting zombies and collecting stuff. Sounds pretty basic, but there's a cool twist on pretty much everything here. First of all, the story is great. There's a lot of depth to this world and it feels more like end of evangelion than a zombie apocalypse. The story is simple enough for everyone to get an emotional kick out of it, but you have to really look for clues in the environments if you want to piece the entire narrative together, it always feels like there's more to this world than the game is showing you. Beyond that, the art direction is amazing and all the environments look really cool and gameplay has some pretty neat tweaks to the basic Deadlight formula. You'll have to conserve ammo and use melee and you'll have to think a bit when you face groups of different enemies. The downside is it's pretty short and doesn't offer a lot of replayability unless you're really into the story. Oh and you can't jump.

I wish developers would stop making programming a game mechanic. If I liked programming enough to spend my free time doing it, I would be a programmer wouldn't I.

The core game mechanic is amazing, but it ships with a pretentious unskippable story that's barely related to the core gameplay. And it's super short. Such a shame, should've been a GOTY contender.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Incredibly simple gameplay and visuals, it's something you'd expect from a browser game from 00's. The high scores it's getting is because it's "breaking the 4th wall". Thing is, you need to establish the 4th wall before breaking it, and Pony Island breaks it withing 5 minutes and then keeps repeating the same tricks until the end. Gets really boring and predictable very fast. Nothing smart about shouting "Look at me, I'm a game and I'm aware of it". Comparing it to Undertale and The Stanley Parable is a joke, those games are in a different league.