My selection box isn’t really a selection box.
If I am false in this assessment, may Horace the Endless Bear bite my head off for my impudence.
If I’m wrong, may Horace the Endless Bear savage my supplies of toilet paper.
If I’m wrong, may Horace the Endless Bear mercilessly despoil my kitchenware.
If I’m wrong, may Horace the Endless Bear make a tasty spaghetti lunch out of my entrails.
My box of choices isn’t actually a box of choices. This tray of hardly-used leftovers was quickly taken out of my Steam backlog. As you can see, one of the drawbacks of being a news editor is that I have a goldfish-like attention span. Like a pickpocket speedrunning the Harvey Nichols checkout line, I snatch and discard game demos in my mad rush to find the next scoop or the next Elden Ring update changelog. Some of these cast-aside games are really good, and I am vaguely aware of this. Some may even be worthy of being played for more than half an hour. I don’t feel good about that at all. Maybe not much. also existential. My life is measured in tutorial levels.
So instead of pulling out three games that I have actually finished this year, like Death of a Wish, Mask Quest, and The Crush House, I’m going to take a chance and suggest a couple that I haven’t even touched but that feel great and have received glowing reviews from critics. If my assessment is incorrect, may Horace the Endless Bear snarl at me for my foolishness. Now let’s get started.
rooms that are withering.
Get this if you like the horror subgenre of Small Spooky Girl In Big Spooky House and/or have good memories of American McGee’s Alice. Set in a procedurally generated Victorian mansion, this 2.5D corridor crawler alternates between dreams every night, wiping out your inventory as it goes. I enjoy the dollhouse’s moody presentation as well as the creative enemies and occult combat design, which make up for some janky handling. Ghosts that can only be seen in mirrors exist. You can play-act as a zombie to trick a ghoul, and there’s a potion that makes you super-size. Armor can be enchanted to become rideable minions, and doors can be hex-shaped to prevent monsters from entering.
I’m strongly reminded of the heyday of survival horror games like Clocktower, Fatal Frame, and Rule of Rose by the writing, atmosphere, and supporting fiction. You should play this, then let me know if it’s as good as I just described it. If not, may Horace the Endless Bear devour my toilet paper supplies.
To the heavens.
Because it’s a quickfire strategy game that can be played in 15-minute bursts, I feel more comfortable recommending it. It’s a great diversion during coffee breaks, supplying you with plenty of gurning, monstrous planets. Draw starlanes between those planets so that their fleets can attack one another. The catch is that each planet uses its own numerical mass to finance the war effort, and when its resources run out, it will blow up. In addition, there are a number of unique map-wide abilities on cooldown to tip the scales, as well as space monuments that grant victory when you claim them all but lack ship-building capabilities.
To the Stars, according to some wise old members of the Rock Paper Shotgun commentary, is Galcon with a distorted, upscale Hanna Barbera aesthetic. The presentation is definitely unique because the planets are constantly looking at you and one another, scowling, smirking, or provocatively waggling their tongues. In contrast, the music is the type that makes your heart race with pleasure. I think this will work well as a handheld game, even though it hasn’t been confirmed for Steam Deck. I hope Horace the Endless Bear ruthlessly destroys my kitchenware if I’m mistaken.
Isles of Sky and Sea.
Before I happened upon the demo for this beautiful, calming, SNESational puzzler, I didn’t really enjoy block-pushing puzzles. You play as a hairy castaway exploring an open world archipelago full of single-screen puzzles with a lot of block and key puzzles. There seems to be a story to discover, but it pales in comparison to the warm tropical glow of the pixelart graphics and the easy complexity of the puzzles, which you can solve in any order. Sprawling teleporters, volatile blocks that count down to an explosion, slippery ice patches, tiles that become impassable once you walk over them, and propelling water jets are some of the props.
It’s a typical sokoban celebration. There are absolutely no ways that this could not have been named the Bestest Best. In the event that I’m mistaken, may Horace the Endless Bear use my intestines to make a delicious spaghetti lunch.
