Developer: Goloso Games & Julia Minamata Publisher: Panic Year: 2025 Genre: Adventure
I’m attempting to get caught up with all the games coming out each week as a part of the Playdate Season 2 package and saw that Goloso Games and Julia Minamata, two folks I’m a fan of, made a new point-and-click adventure for the system. This season surprisingly has a lot of adventure games (and also a FMV game) and I’m not sure why. I’m definitely not upset about it but I suspect Panic just happens to be big adventure game fans since they’ve published a few of them outside of the Playdate too.
You play as the dog Chance as you are called to help out a criminal mastermind but are delayed by a flat tire. What starts off as a simple tire change puzzle leads to a series of events where you are bailed out by Chance’s extremely good luck.
I loved this one. It’s just a really nice adventure game that lasts about 30 minutes and occasionally uses the Playdate’s built-in features as puzzle solving gimmicks. There’s maybe one chapter where using the crank felt a little clunky but this only stood out because it works most of the time and the game moves at a really nice pace. The game is divided into six chapter and each one is about 5 minutes long. I felt very satisfied doing the puzzles but they weren’t too difficult either. For the most part, the use of the Playdate’s crank and microphone were fun ways to add some variety to the puzzles.
As expected, Julia Minamata’s art is fantastic. It manages to cram in a lot of nice little animations on such a small screen but everything is very readable. The game is very funny too. I really love absurdist humor and the situations in each chapter get more ridiculous as you move from one puzzle to the next.
I also loved the music! It has this nice jazzy soundtrack you would expect from old noir films and Philip Aldous does a great job with that. I’m always surprised at how good the games on the Playdate sound since it’s so tiny and I guess my expectations are low?
Anyway, great stuff. If folks like this one then they should check out other games by the developers. Julia worked on the free Playdate game Recommendation Dog and created the excellent mystery adventure game The Crimson Diamond. Goloso Games made Spike II: The Great Emu War (Itch.io/Playdate store) for the Playdate and Inspector Waffles (Steam/Itch.io).
If you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again. This one is short. Maybe I missed a ton of big announcements or people are just holding off from releasing games during a Steam, or both. That’s fine, there’s still quite a few games that came out this week.
Video Games
Don’t Eat the Cat (Itch.io) is a free Bitsy game where you make an Important Choice in a video game.
Dino Sort (Itch.io) is a cute and free puzzle game made in PICO-8 where you sort dinosaurs into groups.
Quantum Witch (Steam) is a 2D fantasy adventure game heavily built around making decisions and multiple playthroughs to see how the game’s story changes.
Project Silverfish (Steam) is an open-world immersive sim with horror elements that just entered Early Access and may or may not be furry adjacent (I don’t know! I don’t know shit about anything). It looks very neat and maybe I’ll play it when I can stop being a baby.
Ruffy and the Riverside (Steam) is a 3D platformer, maybe one of those that counts as a collect-a-thon. I just really like how the 2D character art looks in a 3D world.
Tabletop RPGs
Break the Law (pdf on developer’s site) is a short uhhhhh roleplaying game that the dev linked to on their site about ways to subvert the system.
cutestpatoot had a birthday and celebrated by releasing a new game. Mixed Feelings (Itch.io) is a tabletop rpg that you play by making mix cds and playlists.
I am a big fan of Cezar Capacle’s solo ttrpgs and there’s a new one! Mausworn (Itch.io) is a ttrpg that combines the solo ttrpg mechanics with the Redwall and Mouse Guard inspired game Mausritter.
First I’ll do some self-promo and mention that I’ve made a Steam curator page. I don’t know. It seemed like a fun thing to do. Still the same goofy website name I use here. I probably should have come up with a better site name years ago but then sometimes I think, no, websites should have goofy names like Happy Puppy. I also made a similar list of things I’ve reviewed on Itch.io except you can’t follow Itch lists! That should be something you can do IMO.
Ok, self promo over. Here’s some games. If I missed anything, feel free to mention it in the comments. Self promo is absolutely welcome too!
Video Games
Games To Get Excited About is a little festival organized by Alpha Beta Gamer on Steam. I discovered some neat stuff through there and maybe you will too!
Dreamsettler, the sequel to Hypnospace Outlaw, has been canceled and some of the developers will need work soon. You can read more about it in this post on BlueSky. Really sad to hear about this one and hoping things improve for everyone there soon.
There were a few games zines this week! ChoiceBeat (Itch.io) is a free zine about interactive fiction and visual novels while Adult Analysis Anthology (Itch.io) is a paid one about adult indie games.
Cell Sword (Steam/Itch.io) is a Descent-inspired by where you fly around inside a human body and blast away at anything threatening it. I enjoyed the demo for the game from a previous fest thing and I also strongly recommend the dev’s previous game Liberation (Steam/Itch.io) if you love open world sci-fi flight sims that have an approachable learning and also love classic British science fiction tv like Blake’s 7.
Tower Wizard (Steam/Itch.io release coming soon) is a short incremental game where you help a wizard construct a giant tower.
Korter 1996 (Steam) is a first-person point-and-click adventure where you explore apartments and solve mysteries. It’s described as an exploration of loneliness through adventure games. The Steam page has a demo too if you want to try it out.
Parallel Experiment (Steam) is a two player cooperative adventure game where each player is a detective that must communicate with the other player to solve puzzles.
Mushroom Musume has been on Itch.io for a while but it just got a Steam release! This is a game where you raise a mushroom spore into a woman and make import decisions that affect her. There’s a demo on the Steam and Itch.io pages.
10S Forever is another game that has been on Itch.io for a while but now has a Steam release. It’s an arcade game described as a Tennis Hell.
the Devil rais’d the storm is the third game this week that was on Itch.io but just got a release on Steam. It’s also ok to just buy games on Itch, where they get a bigger cut from sales. This one is a point-and-click adventure/visual novel where you are at an outpost on a remote planet.
Cast n Chill (Steam) is a cozy fishing game featuring beautiful pixel art where you just relax and fish. No secret horror elements or twists here. You just fish!
Bone Fire Effigy (Itch.io) is a short first-person horror game set in the woods with art inspired by the PS1 aesthetic.
Espirito Delusion (Steam) is a short rpg containing a dungeon full of puzzles and bosses and inspired by Brazilian culture. The Steam page has a demo.
Devil’s Liminal (Steam/Itch.io) is a visual novel in Early Access about a woman that is being hunted by a hungry ghost and two mysterious girls that have shown up claiming they can help her. As you would hope for a game like this, the price for the game is $6.66.
No Way Home (Steam) just looks like a very nice twin-stick shooter that just got a port from mobile platforms. It’s by the folks that made Moving Out 1 and 2.
The River (Steam) is a short point-and-click visual novel about the afterlife featuring some very nice black-and-white art. I discovered this one through a post on Buried Treasure.
Leaving Home (Steam/Itch.io) is a first-person point-and-click adventure where you navigate a series of rooms in an apartment and do puzzles. I recommend watching the trailer because I think it looks very nice in motion.
I would also like to thank Lucas for recommending the recently released games Squeakross: Home Squeak Home (A Picross-like with a mouse), The Explorator (first-person shooter with very nice 2D animated art), Bioysque (horror action rpg), and Autopeli (free driving arcade game in the browser). Always feel free to recommend games by others or your own in the comments!
TTRPGs
Today is Free RPG Day. Check out your local tabletop game store to see what deals and giveaways they’re doing. I also see a lot of folks on social media giving away their games. All of the ttrpgs on my Itch page should have free community copies anyone is welcome to take.
Break Time (Itch.io) is a solo ttrpg based on the show Severance.
The Invisible Labyrinth (Itch.io) is a game for 2-5 players about branching timelines, uncertain futures, and escaping what seems inevitable. It’s a hack of Microscope and I’m Sorry, Did You Say Street Magic. I’m a big fan of Morgan’s games and you should check the rest out on their Itch page like Memoirs of a Barbarian.
Crowdfunding
Take Us North (Kickstarter) is an adventure/survival game by Anima Interactive that follows the journeys of migrants and asylum seekers on their way to cross the US-Mexico border
Pilgrims is a short adventure game by Amanita Design, the folks who made Samorost and Machinarium. You play as a guy exploring a land so you can get the resources you need to get on a boat. The hook of the game is that each playthrough is very short and you come across a variety of puzzles that have multiple solutions, so the game requires multiple playthroughs to see it all. These playthroughs can also have different solutions based on the people that have joined your party. I’ve played through the game a few times and I was shocked by how different my playthroughs were. The game is only an hour long, which is great, and according to my Steam achievements, my playthrough was very different than the one I did three years ago.
The game uses a deck of cards to represent the inventory items and people in your party, and the deck grows and shrinks in size and you gain items and people, or use them and they leave your deck. I think the card inventory mechanic is great. It’s a very easy and quick way to see everything that is available to you without having to open a separate window. Switching between characters that drop in and out of the game through your playthrough is a fun mechanic too. I really enjoyed seeing how each character would react to puzzles and NPCs.
Since it’s a game by Amanita, it features the excellent artwork and sound design that you would expect from their games. I really appreciate how so many of their games have a different art style but also feel like something only they would make.
Anyway, if you like the studios other games, you’ll enjoy this one too. If you’ve never played a game by this developer, consider giving it a shot. It’s fairly inexpensive and goes on sale a lot, and it doesn’t take long to get through but you’ll probably want to play through it again one or two more times.
Pilgrims is available on computers, mobile platforms, and Nintendo Switch. All of these are linked to on the developer’s site.
Developer: Outsider Games Publisher: Outsider Games Year: 2022 Genre: Adventure
Since AdventureGamers has decided to become a gambling slop farm and is slowly deleting all their old content (and was apparently stealing content from other sites before that anyway), I have decided to repost the review I sent to them a few years ago here. The key for the game was directly sent to me so I don’t think the site really deserves any loyalty since they didn’t do anything to enable this opportunity. It’s a good time to repost it anyway since the game just got a release on the Nintendo Switch
Throughout their ups and downs, adventure games have had a devoted following for decades, partly because of their willingness to tell stories where the players can see themselves represented in ways they may not in other genres. Jennifer Wilde: Unlikely Revolutionaries by Outsider Games continues this tradition by exploring themes of queerness that I rarely get to see in other games. Despite occasionally frustrating issues with the controls, Jennifer Wilde is a well-crafted adventure game that features a unique story and beautiful black-and-white art.
Jennifer Wilde tells the story of a young French artist named Jennifer Chevalier living in Paris in 1921. Suspecting that the recent death of her father was not an accident, Jennifer investigates her father’s apartment. After finding a locket in his room, she attempts to use her childhood gift of talking to ghosts to summon his spirit. She accidentally summons Oscar Wilde’s ghost instead, with whom her father had an affair many years ago. The two team up and travel across Europe to find the murderer and uncover a massive conspiracy along the way.
The controls, as in your typical point-and-click adventure, feature clicking on parts of a room to walk around, interact with an object, or talk to someone. I thought the speech text moved too fast, and the dialog controls didn’t feel as responsive as they could have been when talking with people, but there were various options that allowed me to resolve both issues. I also appreciated that this game let me play with a controller and found it a very enjoyable way to play.
The primary mechanic for solving puzzles is a fun innovation. Throughout parts of the game, you will come across obstacles, like a police officer not letting you pass a crime scene while they are doing an investigation. To progress, you must gather clues by talking to people and interacting with objects relevant to the mystery. Each time you get a clue, it shows up in your inventory, resembling something that looks like a comic panel. Once you get three or four of these, you must organize them in a linear order that recreates the sequence of events of the mystery you’re trying to solve. I had some issues with this mechanic a couple of times because I wasn’t sure if I was missing a panel or just putting things in the wrong order, but overall I thought it was a commendable concept and would like to see something like it again in the future. I believe some feedback, such as Jennifer saying a line about how that doesn’t seem like the right solution, would have helped me learn the mechanic and know if I had the wrong answer or wasn’t following the procedure correctly.
At first, I thought the game was too easy and linear, but eventually it opens up a bit more and introduces more challenging puzzles. You can switch between Jennifer and Oscar to solve puzzles due to their different abilities, which adds complexity. This never feels too difficult though, and I didn’t get stuck on any puzzle for too long. The game has an objective tracker that helps manage everything you’re investigating, so the process never gets overwhelming once additional goals are added. There’s also some nice variety in the types of challenges later on that keeps the experience from ever feeling tedious.
Jennifer Wilde features incredibly detailed 2D black-and-white artwork that often evokes a comic book style. This is appropriate since it’s based on a comic mini-series released in the early 2010s. Characters have speech bubbles when speaking, and captions appear on the page when describing new locations. The game reminds me of a motion comic; characters generally only have animations when walking, and other actions have a slideshow effect. It all works very well in-game and suits the comic book style.
Aside from the catchy, period-appropriate music on the menu screen, there isn’t much music in the game, and most of what you’ll hear are ambient sound effects that fit the room you’re in.
I was initially skeptical about the inclusion of Oscar Wilde, but I felt it was a good fit with the story they were telling. There aren’t many commercial adventure games that explore queerness, so I thought it was nice to see. I appreciate that this shows a kinder and deeper portrayal of Oscar Wilde than we usually see in media. He often just seems to be portrayed as some guy with witty one-liners. He shows a lot of empathy towards others here, which is also a rarity in a video game. I thought Jennifer was a well-written character, and I liked her interactions with other characters and the arc she goes through. At a few points, you are allowed to make minor decisions that don’t affect the outcome but help make it seem a little more personalized, which was a nice touch.
The core mystery is fine, but it felt rushed towards the end. It took me about 3.5 hours to complete, which usually would be the perfect length since I generally prefer shorter games, but I think I would have preferred some more time in the end to allow the plot elements to unfold more slowly. Where the writing shines is in the character development and the interactions between Jennifer and Oscar, and that is where the majority of the focus remains. Aside from some quirks with the controls and feeling a little rushed toward the end, Jennifer Wilde is a good adventure that explores themes you don’t see too often in commercial games. I enjoyed playing it, and I hope we see these two engaging characters in a game again soon.
Developer: Soft Not Weak Publisher: Soft Not Weak Year: 2025 Genre: Puzzle
Recently I played through Spirit Swap, an incredibly polished match 3 that I got a few months ago from backing it on Kickstarter. I had backed the game because the artwork looked great and I wanted to support queer games, but I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting it is mechanically. The game has a story mode that breaks into a dating sim and there’s powers you can use during the puzzling parts. The powers add a nice twist to the gameplay. When you configure blocks into specific shapes, like a diamond, you can use one of your three powers and those will have effects on your board and your opponents. Each character has different powers and you can also specify what powers you want. It’s a nice way to add some variety to this style of game, which I think has existed for 30+ years.
I love that you “complete” the story mode very quickly and most of the game’s story mode takes place “post-ending” and it becomes a dating sim. If I did have any criticisms, I guess it would be that it throws so many characters at you in a short time span that it felt a little tough having much of an attachment to any of them by the first time the game ends. Some of this is on me since I have been and will always be terrible at remembering names, but that and the lack of any major conflicts and drama in the game means that some of it blends together. I really wish it introduced them more gradually or cut one or two characters from the game, which pains me to say since I like them, but I think it was too much.
It’s also just a great looking game. The effects for the blocks matching and disappearing look nice and the character design and animation while you play is very well done. Everyone in this game is beautiful and actually in a variety of body shapes! It’s great to play a game, or honestly experience any art, that doesn’t just see only skinny people as beautiful.
The soundtrack is fantastic and I recommend both of the soundtracks available on Bandcamp, here and here.
The only other real gripe I had with the game is that there were some typos in the dialogue that I wish got caught. There’s a lot of text so it’s easy to see how it slipped through but it stood out.
The game got some criticism for the “everybody is beautiful but no one is horny” trope but it doesn’t really bother me with this game. I guess maybe because I don’t know if it would have worked if the game was more adult and had characters fucking in it? I don’t know, maybe it would have, what do I know. Usually it’s something I wish for more of as well but I’m not bothered by it here. This isn’t the same thing as what we see in basically every Marvel film. I don’t even know if I completely agree with the criticism to be honest. It would also be great if some of the people throwing the criticism around were covering the queer adult games that do exist. There’s quite a few and they’re great.
I’m one of those annoying people that played Tetris Effect 30 years ago and still goes “hmm this is a good match 3 but it’s no Tetris Effect.” but I really enjoyed my time with this game and it’s nice to finally have a Match 3 that doesn’t require me bringing up SNES emulation if I want to recommend it. Nice work Soft Not Weak!
Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To is available on Steam, Itch.io, and Xbox
Hey it’s another one of these things that I do every week. This one is a bit shorter. I doubt that there were less games this week, I think I was just too busy to notice them all, but feel free to let me know if I missed something that you or a friend worked on so I can include it next week. Even with it being a little shorter, it’s still plenty to keep you busy for a while.
Fireside Feelings (Steam) is an online game where you sit around a fire with other people to tell stories and share your feelings. The idea reminds me a lot of Kind Words and it looks like they did some cross promotion with each other.
Robo Attack (iOS app store) is a top down shooter game for iPad, iPhone, and iWatch. I thought this one was interesting since it’s by the developer of classic computer games like Halloween Harry and Flight of the Amazon Queen.
Circlet (Itch.io) is a free arcade game where you have balls bouncing around and you try to avoid them with the line or circles you are controlling. It makes more sense in motion. Very fun little arcade game and the music kinda has a goth chiptune vibe to it.
A new Indiepocalypse is out, filled with experimental indie games.
I think it’s nice we still get games made with ZZT. BombPT (Itch.io) is a puzzle game made for a recent jam and is playable in the browser.
Seasonala Cemetery (Steam/Itch.io) is a free game where you explore a cemetery as it changes with the seasons.
Thank you to Josh for recommending Tametsi on Steam. It’s a Minesweeper game from 2017 that uses odd level shapes and is just $3. I love Minesweeper-likes so this was a nice one to hear about. Always feel free to recommend games to me, even if they aren’t brand new.
Poco is a short and free point-and-click adventure game released earlier this year where you are the world’s tiniest clown and have been kicked out of a floating circus, only to find yourself in the undergrowth below and must find a way back. From looking at the Kickstarter, it was a university thesis project that needed some additional funds to cover some costs and get it into festivals.
I was very pleasantly surprised by this one. I didn’t know of it at all until it came out and people started posting it in various Discords, but it’s a very solid point-and-click adventure. I love the music and art. The art sorta reminds me of late 90s games with pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D models, although these are illustrated backgrounds and look very nice. The movement feels great, which may seem like a weird thing to say about an adventure game but so many point-and-click games don’t get it quite right.
The game starts with you failing some clown activities through the form of mini games before getting kicked out of the circus, and more fair versions of these come into play later. I get the feeling they’re a little divisive but I think the mini games in this are actually good. The fishing one in particular was nice, short, and satisfying to play.
Overall the game is very silly and whimsical, but some of the background design is very dark. For example, there’s a series of “rooms” where you can see the skeleton of the dead clown and also need to enter its rib cage. Yet, I would still describe the game as “cute.”
The game consists of inventory puzzles that weren’t difficult and felt fair, with the exception of a minor amount of annoying pixel hunting. Some of the puzzles had nice rewards too like a musical sequence. It’s just a nice, little point-and-click adventure that should only take you 1.5-2 hours to play and I recommend it if you want an adventure game you can play in one sitting.
Billy Masters Was Right is a short adventure game inspired by 80s films like The ‘Burbs and has an aesthetic inspired by Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, but does not use the same verb system as those games. This one does the standard left/right mouse button system you see in most adventures these days, with the left mouse button for using/picking up objects and the right mouse button to look at things. I’ve always been a fan of the big head character design of those games and it always makes me happy to see people make them. I even made one myself. It’s the first game I’ve played by Postmodern Adventures, who has made a bunch of adventure games this point and has moved onto making commercial games for a while now. It’s good stuff! All the puzzles felt very fair and while I have 80’s pop culture exhaustion at this point, I enjoyed it here and it fit with the style of game. It’s certainly not used as a “remember how much better the 80’s were?” and even has a little dig at Reagan. There’s one or two plot threads that maybe felt a little out of place to me, but it’s a nice little adventure game that will take you about 30-60 minutes to play through and I can’t complain about the Pay-What-You-Want price tag. I’ll have to play more games by Postmodern Adventures in the future.
Billy Masters Was Right is available as Pay-What-You-Want on Itch.io
I Don’t Think I’ve Walked This Stretch of Road Before is a short narrative game, about 20 minutes long, where you walk down a road while ruminating on your thoughts. The gameplay is rather simple, you walk down a linear path, sometimes walking around objects or through buildings while looking at objects from your past and reading your thoughts, but I really appreciated what the game was saying about its subjects like mental health, trauma, and cycles that you can break when you have children. I think a much worse game would have gone in a darker and lazier direction with its focus and I appreciate the game because as careful as it was.
And on a more superficial note, I just think the graphics are neat. The game was built with Gamemaker: Studio, which is an engine that’s not really meant for 3D games, and the Itch page goes into the weirdness on doing something like that.
There’s not a whole lot to say about this one. Treating my blog as a journal of all the commercial (and sometimes freeware) games I’ve played means there’s sometimes really short entries like this. It’s just a nice short game and I would recommend it if you’re fine with paying $2 or more for a short walking sim (complimentary). I also recommend hexcavator’s other games. B-Sides is a nice point-and-click adventure and Stay Home Vol. 1 is a toy where you play around with objects in a room and I wish we got more of those.
I Don’t Think I’ve Walked This Stretch of Road Before is available on Itch.io
