review

Glypha: Vintage

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Developer: John Calhoun
Publisher: Soft Dorothy Software
Year: 2023
Genre: Arcade

screenshot of two birds flying in a room with egyptian art

Glypha: Vintage is a remake of the 80’s Macintosh arcade game of the same name. It’s a variant of Joust, which happens to be my favorite arcade game, where you fly around on a giant bird and use your lance to destroy enemies by bumping into them while you are at a higher height than them. As far as Joust variants go, I think it’s one of the better ones, but to be fair there’s not really that many Joust clones I can think of. It’s mostly the same game, but with everything modified to have more of an Egyptian theme. The thing that stands out to me is how fast it moves compared to Joust. Everyone moves faster and less floatier, so you have to hit the flap button quite a bit more to stair in the air and enemies can turn around much faster. The egg items hatch a lot faster too. This all makes the game a lot more difficult than the original but to compensate, Glypha is much more generous with the extra lives you get from accumulating points. It took a few minutes to get used to but once I did, I thought it had felt very good.

The original Macintosh era was all a bit before my time. By the time I was in elementary school, our classrooms all had Macs that had color, so I don’t have any nostalgia for this era of computers. That doesn’t mean I don’t love the art in black and white Mac games though. It’s essentially the same art as the original Glypha game but obviously at a much higher resolution and a lot smoother. I’m guessing there’s some additional animations as well but I’m not familiar enough with the original game to know. I think it looks great.

I never played the earlier Glypha games but my understanding is that they eventually got color and probably other changes as well. I think they were all developed by John Calhoun, who is also know for his paper airplane arcade game Glider, also for the Macintosh. He eventually worked for Apple for a long time before retiring and I think this most recent version of Glypha was developed either right before retirement or right after. If you want to see what else he’s up to, I highly recommend adding his blog to your RSS feed reader.

Anyway, this is probably one of the best versions of Joust that you can actually buy for the PC. As far as I know, the original arcade version of Joust isn’t for sale anywhere and yes, obviously you can always just emulate the game, but it’s nice having this version as well with its ideas on how Joust should play and I’m not usually an achievements person but they’re fun in an arcade game like this.

Glypha: Vintage is available on Steam.

Devil’s Hideout

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Developer: Cosmic Void
Publisher: Cosmic Void
Year: 2024
Genre: Adventure

a man and a woman talking at night outside of a hospital and the man saying "this hospital is strangely silent for a medical facility"

Devil’s Hideout is a short horror point-and-click adventure by Cosmic Void about a woman searching for her missing sister, after discovering that cultists faked her death. While it’s in the horror genre, I feel like it’s going for more of a schlocky 80’s horror film that you would find on VHS at your local video store. That probably sounds like a criticism of the game but I absolutely loved that it had that feel. It never scared me but the vibes are very good and fun. I think the excellent pixel art and the colors used in the art help contribute to this mood and if you’ve played Cosmic Void’s games before, you won’t be surprised that the art in this is good.

If anything, I wish it had pulled away even more from trying to be scary. There’s a few points where it tries to do jump scares but these didn’t work for me and the atmosphere in the game was already very good.

The plot in this is pretty straightforward but I didn’t have an issue with that at all. I wouldn’t have minded if it was longer and had more time to develop characters, but it’s a smaller budget game and I was perfectly fine with the length, which took me about three hours to complete. It has multiple endings too, which I don’t know if I’ve seen in a Cosmic Void game before, so it took some time to go through both of those as well.

The gameplay is what you would expect from a first-person point-and-click adventure. You go from room to room, grabbing items and using them elsewhere, etc. There’s some pixel hunting that I found frustrating until I realized the game has a hotspot finder, which I always appreciate seeing in adventure games. I don’t think finding the right pixel to hunt is challenging in an interesting way at all and I’d rather not have to go through that. The mouse cursor will also change to a different color when there’s nothing else to say or do with an object is very nice and helps eliminate some of the busy work too. There’s some little mini games in here too like a Blackjack game and variation on the Lights Out puzzle game and while it can be a little silly that have that stuff pop up in an adventure game, they’re easy and add some variety too. I think they were fun.

If I did have any real criticisms of the game, it would be that there’s a few moments where the game is really fussy about how you must interact with things in a certain order before some objects will give you the info you need. Like looking at a painting before clicking on a tv to get essential information from a report. It’s not a puzzle or anything you would really know to do and the only way around it is to just click on everything repeatedly. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves in adventure games so it was a little frustrating to see here.

That gripe aside, I liked the game quite a bit and would recommend it if you’re looking for something with an 80s horror vibe. Cosmic Void’s games have always been very enjoyable to me and this one is no exception.

Devil’s Hideout is available on Itch.io and Steam.

Alone on a Journey thoughts

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cover of Alone on a Journey, showing windows to a city, a view of space, and a forest

Developer: Takuma Okada
Year: 2021
Genre: Solo TTRPG

Alone on a Journey is a collection of three solo tabletop rpgs with a focus on exploration. The collection is divided into three games. Alone Among the Stars is a solo game where you explore outer space and check out various planets. Alone in the Ancient City has you exploring the districts of an old city. Both of these were previously released games along with a new game, Alone Among the Shifting Trees, which has you exploring a mysterious forest and documenting the strange objects you find there. Each game is played with a journal, a standard deck of 52 cards, and a six-sided die. The three games have slight mechanical differences but the core part of each game is having you draw cards from the deck for prompts to describe the object you just found.

The collection also contains tips for making your own hack, or mod, of these games. The tabletop rpg community is very friendly towards people making their own versions of games and being allowed to distribute them, and the author of this game even put together a list on Itch of games based on Alone Among the Stars, featuring a couple of mine.

The book itself has a very clean and easily readable layout, with cute illustrations between each game to help provide some separation and know where they start and end.

I’m assuming that much better writing about the games exist elsewhere but I just played Along Among the Shifting Trees and wanted to use this post as an excuse to praise all three games. The three games are similar but even outside of the different themes I think there are enough differences mechanically to make it worth playing all three. They’re very relaxing games that I think are excellent examples of tabletop rpgs being more than just dungeon crawlers where you kill monsters, as well as examples of ttrpgs that aren’t using the traditional game master and 3-5 players structure.

Alone Among the Stars may also be one of the most important games I’ve ever played. While I had made games before playing it, it did lead me down the rabbit hole of making solo ttrpgs and then other games because making hacks of it is so approachable and encouraged. You can check out the released of Alone Among the Stars along with a 2-player version and Game Boy and Twine ports on Itch.io. I think all three games are lovely though and would encourage you to check them out if you want to have a relaxing experience creating your own worlds.

Alone on a Journey is available on Itch.io.

Neon Hearts City

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Developer: Cosmic Void
Publisher: Dionous Games
Year: 2025
Genre: Adventure

a guy sitting on a rooftop at night with buildings in the skyline all lit up

Neon Hearts City is a short point-and-click adventure game set in a cyberpunk future where you are a private investigator searching for a missing girl, and unfolds into a greater mystery involving androids. I’ve mentioned Cosmic Void’s games on this blog a few times before and how I’m a fan of their games, and I think this is another solid entry in their catalog. It’s just a solid and straightforward point-and-click adventure where you walk around different screens, pick up items, and use them elsewhere to make progress in your story. If you want another one of those in a cyberpunk setting, great, I think this is one worth checking out.

It has great art and music like I’ve come to expect from a Cosmic Void game. It’s what you would hope for in a cyberpunk game, with pixel art of a gritty city at night and the appropriate synth music to set the mood. The voice acting is very nice too and it was fun to see some names I recognize from other adventure games.

Without spoiling too much, I think the mystery itself was good too and even though it does unfold into something bigger, it’s still ultimately pretty low stakes and I always appreciate when games aren’t about you saving the world. The city is being watched by a fascist government that wipes the memories of people they deem criminals, sometimes picking off random people just to fill a quota. I think it’s good that it’s not really about overthrowing them and remains focused on people just trying to survive in that world, and the ending was very satisfying to me.

The game got some criticism in Steam reviews and elsewhere for being too short but I didn’t mind the length at all. It took me two hours to complete and I am perfectly fine with that. I will always support games being shorter if the developers think that is the appropriate length to tell their story. It would have been fun to see more of the world though, since I think the world building was the best part of the game, and maybe more interactivity with the world would have been nice so we could learn more about the setting as we click around and explore. It’s an interesting setting and I wanted to play around in the world a bit more, even if meant more interactions that don’t advance the plot. The game is at its best when it starts to engage more with the world and not just your standard adventure game puzzles. The world building starts to include some weirder stuff towards the end that you don’t see as often in cyberpunk stories, and I hope we’ll get more of this if there’s a sequel or another game set in this world.

If anything, if I did have any criticisms it would be about some of the puzzles. I think the inventory item focused puzzles were fine but you come across a couple riddles and other self contained puzzles that felt like they were there just for the sake of an adventure game needing more puzzles and didn’t really get excited about them.

That said, I enjoyed the game quite a bit and would recommend it to folks looking for a cyberpunk point-and-click adventure, especially if they want one on the shorter side. I don’t know if I need a direct sequel to this game but I’d love to see another game set in this world.

Neon Hearts City is available on Steam and Itch.io

Review: 3D Don’t Die Mr. Robot

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Developer: Infinite State Games
Publisher: Infinite State Games
Year: 2024
Genre: Arcade

a little purple guy on a board dodging rockets and lasers

3D Don’t Die Mr Robot is an arcade game where you avoid all the enemies flying through the level and pick up fruit to cause chains of explosions. The longer you play a round, the more enemies you’ll see popping into the screen. There’s some really interesting strategies you develop as you become more familiar with how the game and setting up combos works and I thought it was a unique mechanic for an arcade game. It’s a sequel to their game from 10 years ago, Don’t Die Mr. Robot, which seems to be essentially the same thing other than it’s 2D instead of 3D and they’ve iterated on the design. I never played that one and it’s not a requirement before playing this. There’s no Mr. Robot lore that comes up in the game as far as I know.

It reminds me a lot of 80s British arcade computer games. Maybe because I’ve played a lot of Llamasoft stuff and both developers have lots of nice, bright colors, explosions, and fun character designs. The soundtrack even has bits that remind me of that era. Which I suppose all makes sence because it turns out that the developer is British when I looked them up.

The gameplay modes in this game include your standard arcade mode, where you try to survive as long as possible and get the highest score you can. There’s a level based mode called Remix Mode where each level uses a different board for you to run around on and different gimmicks like giant enemies. The Lime Attack mode replaces everything with limes. Time attack mode has you trying to get as many points as you can within a specific time limit and you can respawn if you die. There’s also a relaxing mode where there are slowing moving enemies and you are running around on a grassy field instead. With the exception of the level based Remix Mode, all of them have online leaderboards too, which has been a lot of fun to play on as I competed with a friend on the leaderboard on the Arcade Mode.

It’s just a very polished arcade game that I got a lot out of from trying to get the highest score on the leaderboards and trying to get platinum trophies on each level of the Remix mode. I’d highly recommend checking it out if you’re looking for an arcade game. It was one of my favorites of last year and there’s a demo featuring the arcade mode if you want to give it a try.

3D Don’t Die Mr. Robot is available on Steam and a variety of other platforms listed on the publisher’s site.

Gubble thoughts (2020 Rerelease)

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Developer: Actual Entertainment
Publisher: Actual Entertainment
Year: 1997
Genre: Arcade

If you follow me on social media, you’ve probably seen me making plenty of goofy posts about the 1997[1] puzzle game Gubble. It would be easy to assume that someone posting about an obscure and goofy looking computer game character is making fun of the game and either never played it or didn’t enjoy it very much. Folks, I am here to tell you that Gubble is good.

a purple alien riding around on a screwdriver
Screenshot taken from Steam

In Gubble you play as Gubble D. Gleep, a purple alien who finds that space pirates have invaded your planet Rennigar, fastened zymbots (the game’s levels) to the planet’s surface, and now you must remove them. Each level has you running through a maze, removing all the screws put in the floor of the maze while avoiding the level’s enemies. The screws come in different shapes, requiring you to switch between the tools that have been placed in the level. This gives Gubble a puzzle game-like element and helps add variety to all the mazes you’ll be going through.

In the original Gubble, the only way to heal was to find a health powerup or to save, and saves were consumables. There were typically 3-4 located in a world and they would disappear after you saved. In the 2020 release on Steam they are no longer consumable and you can repeatedly use the save points anytime you want. In my opinion this is a drastic improvement over the original game. There’s an argument people have made in some Steam reviews that this makes the game too easy but give me a break. No one is forcing you to save. If you want to only save a few times in each area, knock yourself out. I think it’s great when a game allows you to save anytime you want and either save yourself the time from not having to play the same parts repeatedly, and just letting me leave a game anytime I want since I have three kids and sometimes have to drop everything to go do something. Gubble 2020 gets it.

Some levels also feature hidden mini levels in them too, where you run around on the board and try to grab as many objects as possible for points. I suppose this is maybe interesting if you’re trying to get the highest score possible but most people won’t care.

Gubble was designed by Franz Lanzinger, who is probably more famous for the 1983 arcade game Crystal Castles. Crystal Castles plays very similar to this and it’s interesting to me that he’s been iterating this design for decades though Crystal Castles and the Gubble franchise. Gubble must have done well because it was followed by a Gubble 2 (Wikipedia says 1998, MobyGames says 1999), where the new feature was that Gubble could walk. Gubble walking is an affront to God but I’ll save that for another post. But the world must have agreed because in 2000 we got Gubble Buggy Racer (MobyGames says 2001), a kart racing spinoff, which I guess is an interesting direction to take a puzzle game franchise. Gubble HD came out in 2007 on PC and later for iPad. This version is very similar to the one on Steam.

There were a few attempts to make new games in the franchise after this. In 2012 there was a Kickstarter to fund a Gubble 3D but this only hit $1,249 of the $80,000 goal. In 2014 there was an attempt to make an endless runner for Android and iOS called Gubble Vacation Rush. This one looks like it came very close to release, because you can pull up videos on YouTube of the game being played at conventions and the designer saying that it should come out in a few months, which never happened. In 2020 there was a remaster of Gubble 2 announced, but it presumably never happened because God does not want Gubble to walk and struck it down.

Overall Gubble is just a solid little arcade game. It’s kind of a meme game at this point because of the creature’s design and the Game Grumps folks angrily yelling “It’s fucking Gubble!” in one of their videos. Let me just say this, fuck Game Grumps. What, you’re going to listen to adult men who will forever be trapped acting like they’re teenagers, because that’s what their fan base expects? It’s fucking Gubble? Yeah, that’s what I yell with joy whenever I see this guy.

The rerelease of Gubble is available on Steam.

[1]: MobyGames and the Steam page of the rerelease lists the release as 1996 but Wikipedia points to this press release and I found this interview which points to 1997. Both happened close to release so I’m going with those. Gubble.com also states it is 1997. The Playstation 1 release seems to be 1998. As you noticed earlier in the post, MobyGames and Wikipedia also disagree on later entries in the series so I’m not sure what’s going on.

Void Breach

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Developer: Cosmic Void
Publisher: Cosmic Void
Year: 2020
Genre: Adventure

a man standing at a crossroads by trees and a pool of water.

Void Breach is a point-and-click adventure where you play as a scientist who must save his daughter after a science experiment goes wrong and sends her to another world. The game is strongly inspired by old Sierra adventure games. While it’s a point-and-click game and you can’t die, the game design and art style are based on those games. The game’s art is very similar to the style you would see in Sierra’s very early AGI games like King’s Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. For the most part it’s very good and nails the look, but unfortunately I’ve spent much more time than I’d like to admit looking at old games and there’s the odd bit here and there that looks off, like pixels being too small in some parts.

I think that the gameplay design and plot is very similar to those old games. Like I said before, you can’t die, but the basic structure where you are given a quest (rescue your daughter) and then are plopped into an open world where you walk around, seeing what other characters need, and grabbing items to help them out or overcome obstacles is very similar to the classic Sierra game structure. I realize it sounds like most adventure games do that, but to me it feels like a very Sierra thing to just plop you into a world and let you have at it. The writing is very similar to those early Sierra games too. The characters aren’t too developed, sometimes they’re just fantasy creatures like mermaids, and mostly exist to give you a quest. This sounds like a criticism but it’s not. It fits for the type of game that Void Breach is emulating and I think they do a good job of that.

Overall I think it’s a nice adventure game and would recommend it if you’re looking for something in this style and want something that you can play in two hours. It’s very affordable too. The game is only $2 and at the time of writing this review, it’s on sale for $0.50. My only real caveat is that while I like this game, Cosmic Void has made so many games and they keep getting better with each game so I guess if you’ve never played a Cosmic Void adventure game before then maybe consider checking out one of those on Itch.io or Steam. But it’s still good! What are you supposed to do when someone makes a lot of games you like? Tell people to play them all? Maybe.

Void Breach is available on Steam and Itch.io.

Hellkind thoughts

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Publisher: Motamot
Developer: Motamot
Year: 2025
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

top down view of a person in a prison cell with an open door

Hellkind is a free, short top-down horror game where you investigate a cult and ritual inside of a church. Apparently the game is inspired by Galician folklore, which I have no knowledge of but want to read more about after playing this game. I really enjoyed the grainy black and white aesthetic the game has. It’s not quite the 80s Macintosh look or what Return of the Obra Dinn did, but it feels similar. Usually I’m not a big horror person but I saw one or two reviews about how creepy the game was even though it doesn’t have any jump scares and I would say it succeeds on that front.

It’s definitely an adventure game. You aren’t being chased by any monsters or asked to fight anything. You are just slowly walking around this church trying to figure out what happened and picking up items to add to your inventory so you can use them elsewhere. The game only took me about 20 minutes to complete but there’s optional details you can discover if you want to investigate further and do the optional puzzles. I didn’t because I couldn’t really figure it out and was starting to get antsy about the player character’s slow walking speed (if I did have any gripes about the game, it’s this), but I think it’s fun that there’s optional stuff to pursue if you want. This is the first game by this “studio” (it’s one person that is very open about how they’re not solo because they buy assets) but I’m definitely interested in playing more games by them in the future. I recommend playing this game but think you should be aware that the game has flashing lights, the game warns you about this when you start it up.

Hellkind is available for free on Steam.

Atuel thoughts

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Developer: Matajuegos
Publisher: Matajuegos
Year: 2022
Genre: Adventure

a river at sunset with fish swimming in it

Atuel is a short and free documentary game about the Atuel River Valley in Argentina. The game uses surreal imagery and audio from interviews to explain how the changes people have made to the river, like building dams, impacted the river and everything living around it. The gameplay is a linear walking sim-like experience, which I do not mean in a derogatory way, and has you shapeshifting into different animals and elements, usually downstream, to see the impact of climate change. I was impressed by the variety of environments and art, which changes each time you shapeshift into something new, and how it uses these changes and narration to explain how rivers are like living beings. I thought this was a new game but I guess it actually came out a few years ago on Itch, it’s only just now that it has received a big update and a release on other platforms. I’d highly recommend checking it out. It’s free and only 30 minutes long.

Atuel is available for free on Itch.io, Steam, and Android.

Backwater Eulogy thoughts

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Developer: Wurm Fud
Publisher: Wurm Fud
Year: 2024
Genre: Visual Novel

a gif of deer in the woods looking around at night

Backwater Eulogy is a very short (10-15 minutes) visual novel and autobiographical exploration of loss and the experience of grieving someone you had a complicated relationship with. I think this type of VN is described as a Kinetic Novel, since it is linear and there are no choices, with the interactive elements just being the user clicking to transition from one page to the next. I don’t have a problem with that! A game can just be a very well written story featuring lots of great pixel art, which is what this is. The music is very minimalist and low key but works well for the story the game is telling and helped with the immersion.

It hit me really hard as someone who has experienced a sudden and very upsetting loss lately. I didn’t have a complicated relationship with my aunt but I still think about things I wish I could have done to change the outcome, even though there’s nothing I could have actually done. The story is also strongly influenced by the developer living in the midwestern US and that also resonated with me. Sorry about this one being such a bummer. Sometimes you play a short game about a depressing topic but it’s exactly what you needed to play at the moment.

Backwater Eulogy is available on Steam and Itch.io.