Claire Obscura: Expedition 33

Claire Obscura: Expedition 33

Buy and play this game. End of review.

Partially a joke but really not. This is one of the best games I have ever played. To write a review of this is almost impossible. After I completed it, I looked through multiple reviews in the press and on YouTube and still look today, and none do the game justice.

The main reason is because the game cannot be explained without ruining it. It is like giving the ending away to Bioshock or discussing Neir Automata and the relevant plot points that slowly become clearer the more you play the game or revealing the secret to a movie like Fight Club or Seven (not the Sixth Sence because, let’s be honest, that was bleeding obvious). This is not just secrets but the way the game peels back story layers and show hints and indications of what is true and then whiplashes you to different truths.

This game is not just beautifully dark, sad, haunting, joyful and full of moments that make you think or just shock you, it is also full of believable characters that are so well written and are so deep and layered that you very quickly connect with them and start to care deeply for them. It is so easy to feel their emotions and sense their drive and personal pain and joy, a feat many media struggles to convey.

I imagine by now many know the basic plot, but if you don’t here is a basic rundown. You meet Gustav and Maelle as they are heading down to the docks to experience the Gommage (derived from a French word meaning ‘to rub out’ one of many painting references in the game), a yearly event where the looming mystical figure of the Paintress, who sits by a huge monolith, stands up and reduces the number on said monolith by one and any of the inhabitants of the city of Lumiere who are that age or older dissipate in a swirl of dust and flowers. They disappear and this leaves many of their loved ones behind. The citizens see this as a joyful event touched by sadness. They show a level of respect for the people who are going to Gommage and they offer them flowers in red and white as a sign of affection and love. They try to make the most of the devastating event by turning it into a celebration similar to the Day of the Dead.

As you move through the city you speak to people and start to understand that there is a swathe of feelings about the Gommage, the Paintress and the Expeditions. Again, here is where the writing shines as even characters you meet in passing have depth to them and you can feel their history within the city and connections to the player characters and the city feels like it is full of genuine people with genuine views and feelings.

You meet Sophie who you soon discover is strongly connected to Gustov and Maelle and who, sadly, is celebrating her Gommage. You never feel like there is sadness there but rather a reminiscing of history and memories between the characters. There isn’t even sadness just comfortable companionship. The story proceeds through to its inevitable climax in a scene that I have seen repeatedly make everyone tear up and use the phrase ‘I am not crying, you are crying’. If there is any doubt in your mind and if for some obscure reason you have not played this game and you need any inspiration to drive you to play this game, just watch the first 1hr of this game and it will hook you.

During this time, you find out that both Gustov and Maelle are both part of Expedition 33, the number of which is tied to the number the Paintress painted on the monolith. Sophie was 33 and Gustov is 32. You find out Maelle is much younger than them both but has inexplicably volunteered to join the expedition. The Expedition is a group of people who leave Lumiere in order to find a way to the Paintress and discover a way to stop her yearly number reduction and thus the Gommage. That is enough of an introductory explanation as it gets to a point where it is best experienced firsthand.

The game features tight, often very difficult, combat with each playable character having unique combat systems that are simple to use but difficult to master. These once again are really better experienced through the game as it does a really good job explaining the individual systems and many are quite complex to describe without the ability to show don’t tell.

Another standout in a sea of truly amazing qualities, is the music. It has been reported everywhere that the composer was a first-time composer for games. He was found by the game devs (a team of 2-3 at the time I believe) on Soundcloud having posted on there for the first time that very day. The music is 8hrs of truly moving music of varying styles.

I played this game day one. I had it on my Wishlist on Steam from the day I first saw it on the Xbox showcase in June 2024. As soon as I saw this game I knew this would be something special for me personally. I didn’t think it would blow up like it did with people singing it’s praises from every rooftop. It tipped over to the point where journalists, YouTubers and media commentators who would normally not make content about games like this jumped on the bandwagon. I feel this is a sign that you have made it as a development team. I saw video after video with headlines like ‘Is this game that good?’, or ‘I tried Expedition 33 and man was I surprise’ and so on. Months later content is still being made of people listening to the music or starting the game for the first time and it absolutely amazes me and I hope that this means it will be remembered at the game Awards but I suspect that it will lose out to Kojima and Death Stranding 2, even though this is deserving of the award as it a game that is universally loved. I don’t think I have heard a bad word spoken about this game other than difficulty, which I can partially agree with but doesn’t distract from the game.

Like I said at the start, play this game.

BallXPit

I was pleasantly surprised by this game. I had played games that are similar but not quite the same. The game that to me is the most akin to this is Loop Hero. It has characters, upgrades, resource gathering as well as roguelike mechanics. You have a home base that upgrades and requires runs to progress. There are similarities to Vampire Survivors and Balatro but I feel those are quite generic roguelike mechanics and systems.

The story is that there was city called Ballbylon and it was destroyed by a giant ball from space leaving a giant pit in its place. You are what is left of the city, and you need to move down the pit in order to fix what has been broken in New Ballbylon. You have a lift that takes you down the depths of the pit and you need to make your way down, destroy the bosses along the way, collect resources and characters, collect gears to fix the lift and so on.

The basic outline of the game is quite simple and yet complex. You have 2 distinct portions of the game. You have your home base where you build and upgrade buildings that increase your character’s stats and give you general upgrades for each run and the roguelike arena where you complete your runs.

At the base you have a starting area that is initially small but can be expanded with gold as you go along. In the open area you build buildings that give bonuses and unlocked new characters as well as resource collection sites that include farms, forests and rock piles. These are where you collect the resources you will need for upgrades. These resources are gold, wheat, wood and stone. An interesting mechanic is the resource collection from these sites you have built. There is a hidden timer that counts down and once it is done you can use your characters to bounce around and collect these resources. This generally last as long as a run so the resource harvest is ready when you finish a run. Each of the buildings and resource sites need the characters to connect with them in order to collect the resource and some cause the character to ‘bounce’ off when they collect the resource in a pinball machine kind of way. In order to build the different buildings and houses needed to increase stats, add bonuses and open up new characters, your current unlocked characters need to bounce off them directly a set number of times. I have played a fair amount and have opened up 6 characters (it was a fairly quick process) and having these 6 characters pinballing around the base at harvest time makes a significant difference to the amount of resources harvested in one harvest period and the speed at which buildings are built or upgraded.

All the characters have 6 attributes, these are Endurance, Strength, Leadership, Speed, Dexterity, Intelligence and these vary with each hero. Each of these effect various character stats like Damage, HP, various ball attributes (more on that later) and Crit and AOE chance as well as damage bonuses. There are 16 characters at the moment, and you unlock characters as you play runs during which you receive blueprints for their individual houses which you then need to build back at your homebase to unlock said character. Each character plays quite differently from each other. Other than the usual stat and attribute difference, each character also has unique mechanics and base ball. Currently I have the starting character The Warrior as well has 5 others that I have unlocked. These characters also permanently level up as you progress through runs. They receive XP for each run based on how far you get through the run and as they level up, they increase their attributes.

The second part of the game is the roguelike run through the different levels. Each level is made up of a selection base enemies, 2 mini bosses and the final boss of the level. The level is in a vertical corridor with your character at the bottom of the screen and enemies moving vertically down towards your character. Each level is thematic with the first level being themed around the Bone Yard (written The BoneXYard) and the second level being ice themed (The SnowyXShores) and so on. Each time you complete a level by beating the final boss you receive a gear. You need to complete the first level with 2 characters at least to receive 2 gears which allows you to go down to the second level and so on. There are benefits and bonuses to completing each level with every character and there is also a distinction made based on how long it takes to complete the level. I have not personally managed to complete a level fast, so I am not sure what, if any, benefit there is to that. But I imagine as you level up your characters this will be easier to do.

The basics of a run is each character has a specialist ball they start with, and this ball has a characteristic such as ice, fire, vampiric and so on. They also have a number of ‘baby balls’ that are being fired constantly and cause basic damage. As your character progresses up the vertical corridor the enemy units move down towards them. You can freely move your character around the arena. You only have one copy of your specialist ball, and you shoot it in the direction you are aiming and cannot shoot it again until it returns to you. You also shoot baby balls at regular intervals. Each character has unique systems, so for instance the Cohabitants are a duo that fires a double stream of balls in diametrically opposite directions but the balls do half damage, while The Itchy Finger shoots twice as fast and can move at full speed while shooting but his aim is scattered and therefore doesn’t fire directly where you are aiming. These make for interesting strategies when using different characters. The system, for me, is reminiscent of a mixture of Tetris, space invaders and a twin stick shooter. The enemies come down, similar to space invaders, in procedurally generated Tetris like rows, your character moves and shoots like a character in a twin stick shooter and as they die the enemies leave behind a selection of goodies for you to collect. These include gold, resources, upgrades and, in Vampire Survivor fashion, experience spheres to upgrade your character for this run. When you level up you have to select between either a new specialist ball to add your arsenal or upgrading one of your current specialist balls or select an item that adds a benefit to your character. As you move through you can have infinite items to add various bonuses to your character, but you can only have 4 specialist balls at any one time. When you have 2 specialist balls that are level 4 you can fuse them into a new ball that mixes the properties for both balls. You can also receive a drop that looks like a rainbow ring that randomly upgrades 1-5 of your items and is what you need to fuse the specialist balls. There is a large selection of specialist balls available as well as several fusions and when you discover a fusion, it is remembered for next time. As you can often select between a couple of specialist balls it is possible to have synergies between your specialist balls, and they can create an incredible amount of damage and domino effects. There are balls that are vampiric and steal health, others that add fire or ice damage and can either set enemies on fire or freeze them, other poison enemies or the starting Warrior character’s specialist ball causes bleed.

The enemies are varied and interesting as well. Again, this is simple yet complicated as the different enemies do different things. Some are melee and attack you if you get too close, while others are ranged and fire projectiles that slowly move towards you and are easy to dodge but can become more difficult when there are many enemies on the screen. When the enemy reaches the bottom row, they fly across the screen and melee attack you. Some have armour and can only be damaged from a specific direction. They come down in random rows with gaps in between them. If you fire your balls through these gaps and they get behind the enemies, the balls bounce off the walls and back of the corridor and do damage to the enemies from all sides until it bounces through a gap to return to you similar to brick breaker games. This can be a significant way to destroy many enemies.

On the right side of the corridor is an indicator showing your progress through the level including the points of the 2 mini bosses as well as the final boss at the top. On the left side is your health represented as a health ball similar to Diablo, as well as your progress towards your equipment progression that increases as you pick up experience.

I doubt I will complete this game as I imagine, for me, it will become quite repetitive, a trait I find common to roguelike\roguelites. But I really think for games of this type this has held my attention for longer than normal which is a huge compliment to this game. I imagine this might be one of those games that doesn’t leave my PC. It is less than 600MB and it is easy to pick up and just do a couple of runs. There are intricate systems but realistically they are not overly complex but rather it is a case of easy to learn but difficult to master. I would strongly suggest this game to anyone who enjoys cleaver systems and complex and deep synergies with roguelike mechanics. I feel I grew quite strong quite quicky, but I only have 6 of the 16 characters and have only unlocked 2 levels. I have completed the first level with all 6 characters but none of them completed the level fast (within 12minutes). There is enough there for achievement hunters to keep them busy, but I feel that most people will get something out of this game.

Steam Nextfest October 2025

A new Steam Nextfest is on us and as per usual there is a landslide of games available. I feel landslide is an apt description of trolling through the demos. As per usual there is difficulty finding games even though they have added a whole selection of filters. You will have a spate of good games, maybe 3-6 games, then 30-40 either rubbish or games that we have seen before with a new skin. I will say compared to previous Nextfests there are actually a lot of very good looking games but I feel they are still hidden under a slew of AI slop, rehashed or reskinned games or just games that are not very good. I applaud people who create a game and more so to have the courage to put said game out there, but realistically having said that not all games are good unfortunately.

I do feel Steam has done something on the back end to make the games that are shown more curated, but there is still a lot of games on there that are just not good. This isn’t just rehashed AI slop but just games that are, as I said, just not very good. I am, I admit, quite a snob when it comes to graphics. I don’t mean that it has to be photorealistic or absolutely beautiful, but there is a standard I expect to be a minimum. I realise this is not a thing some people worry about, but pixel art graphics that look too outdated I cannot deal with for instance. Again, this is a personal choice. I love pixel art games (Stardew Valley, Core Keeper, Dave the Diver) but for some reason I cannot play pixel art games that are not in more of a modern style and resolution.

Another thing I feel the developers who put demos up would benefit from (or more specifically I would benefit from it), is gameplay immediately in the trailer so you can see what the gameplay is and therefore decide if it is a game for you or not. Or just gameplay in general, the number of games that have no gameplay astounds me. The gameplay should catch your eye and then more info can follow in the trailer. I found the games that caught my eye had gameplay first then more about the game including story trailers and a more in-depth details about the mechanics.

As a sidenote, anywhere I mentioned a game I put its title in bold so you can easily see the games name in case you are interested and wanted to look it up.

Looking through the games in the rolling banner, the For You section of the demo storefront and in the charts, I noticed a few things about the games they highlighted. There were many repeats of either classic games or recent games often reskinned or altered in some way. I know this seems obvious but there were quite a lot. I will say that many of these were the usual quick cash grab (ones based on Peak, Vampire Survivors and\or card\dice games) but there were actually a lot that seemed to move the genre or game design forward in interesting ways. There were also many shop simulators including a pet store and train sim one as well as a Bike repair one and a Parking Garage Simulator. These were all in the style of the original shop sim games with varying amounts of differences. As with the last few years there have been many vampire survivor likes. Many in 2.5D basically the same as Vampire Survivors but reskinned while other seemed to go the route of Megabonk and make it 3D often with really nice cartoony graphics. There also was a few more comedy style ones where there was a story behind the game, such as the one where you play a drunk con man who has pretended to be a wizard and must protect a village from hoards but you have no spells, so you throw rocks instead.

There were quite a few based on classic games from the 70s and 80s such as Asteroids in the form of games like Leaks in Space. In fact there were just a lot of space games in general from shooter, sides scrollers and first-person horror games. There were a lot of horror games but it is October after all. There were also a lot of card games similar to Balatro and dice games.

A lot of AI games, some of it slop but a few just to have art and voice acting. These ranged from a quick cash grab to someone who has an idea for a game that seemed interesting but has no art or voice acting skills so needs to have a helping hand to create the game. I think there is a conversation to be had here, and I am not sure how I feel about it if I am honest. Without the AI the game would not be made but it is AI so where the line in the sand for that is I think will be up to each person individually. If publishers were more likely to greenlight games like this with smaller budgets and smaller profit expectations, then AI would be a great placeholder as a proof of concept, but publishers are just not taking chances on games like these that really won’t need many sales to create a profit but at the same time will not generate the level of profit many publishers expect.

On a side note, I will mention one publisher I have had a lot of time for. Hooded Horse seem to be a publisher that publishes many of these smaller, well curated games that other publishers would not touch. They have a selection of published games that have exceptional reviews (Shadow Gambit, Son’s of Valhalla and Old World) they also have a few great games in early access (Manor Lords, Endless Ledgend 2 and 9Kings) as well as some very interesting upcoming games (Whiskerwood, Drill Keeper and a prequal to a classic game Might and Magic Olden Era). In fact, all throughout my time looking at the games on the Nextfest demo list their name kept coming up.

Another striking thing is how many of the demos are games that are being self-published. I was left wondering if this is a sign of things to come or just purely a sign that publishers are not willing to take risks? If publishers are not willing to publish games and more established studios see that they are able to self-publish with a little more effort and therefore have no publisher to split profits with then might they follow suit and publish their games themselves?

I also saw many hidden object games where you have to search for hidden cats or dragons and so on but in more in the style of a colouring in sheet where you need to colour in the hidden object. There were a lot of cat games I found in general. Surprisingly there were quite a few football manager style games including games where you actively play the games as well or football games like Rocket League or Rematch.

There were some papers please style games such as a game called 1998 The Toll keepers Story and one that has been around a bit in the news Quarantine Zone. A surprise was the amount of army strategy games including Strategod from MicroProse. I didn’t know they existed anymore and ended up down a rabbit hole on who started the company, who bought the company through to who owns it today. The more you know.

There were also the obligatory selections of Boomer shooters including Boomer Grandma which looked like more fun that those games have been for me personally.  Unsurprisingly there were lots of Chinese games and they too fall into the category of all the other games with much slop but some stand out games as well. We are still being inundated by idlers like banana a notable one I saw was TBH Task Bar Hero that looked like it would be fun if you are into that sort of game.

There was a swathe of games that were a sequel to another game that I really didn’t think would have enough sales to have a sequel. I am surprised by Cocnut Simulator 2 for example. I didn’t know the original Coconut Simulator existed and wouldn’t have thought that it required a second crack at the whip. Also being horror month, I saw a lot of Anomaly games with strangeness as their tagline.

Below is a list of games I saw with a cursory scan that looked interesting ang caught my eye while going through the carousel:

Click to Civ – This seemed an interesting casual clicker game that might be fun for a few hours depending on how much they add to it and the eventual depth of the systems.

Raidbound – a rogue like autobattler with gear progression. Again might be fun for a few hours but if they add a lot of customisation options or some RPG style mechanics it might hold for a bit longer. The graphics and feel is a bit like Battle Brothers.

Word cross – PVP crossword game. Looks interesting if you are into crosswords and PVP

Lilith’s Game – Asymetrical chess where it looks like you play chess against Lilith and the chess pieces are different or the board is set up in such a way that she has the advantage. It looks like she can have multiples of chess pieces. It is a game where the board is set up and to win the game you need to work yourself out of the situation you find yourself in similar to the Dulingo chess my son does.

Dogpile – a Tetris style game where you drop different dogs on top of each other and when the same type of dog hit each other they grow in size. I assume the idea is similar to Tetris in you try to keep the play area clear of dogs. There is a cat version as well with Cat Merge

Out of Shape - Multiplayer coop Hole in the Wall game. Quite simple but many of these simple to play hard to master co-op games become popular due to the lowish skill ceiling and random fun that is created.

Hacked the Streamer - FMV detective game where a streamer gets hacked and you as the streamer need to figure out who the hacker is. If you like detective games and FMV this seems a well-made well-acted FMV game.

Hide Zone - PVP hunter game in the vein of Dead by Daylight where the victims turn into Props

This Aint Even Poker Ya Joker! – Another Balator like idle clicker. Not sure how it works but looks interesting

Simon the Sorcerer Origins – return of the point and click game but a prequal to all the games. It is Simon the Sorcerer point and click. More of the same.

SpongeBob Titans of the Tide – a SpongeBob game including the one and only The Hoff. It’s another SpongeBob game so I think you know what to expect.

Balance Plane – a game where you use your plane to courier items around with a sort of Tetris style packing system, increase your plane size incrementally, try to smuggle things in, pick your piolets and so on.

Bubsy 4D – I was never into Busby but there is a new one that looks like a 3D platformer

Servant of the Lake – This is A Rusty Lake game. If you enjoy their games, I imagine you will enjoy this.

Restless Lands – 2D side scroller that looks quite tight. The graphics are the type of pixel graphics that I just cannot play (a bit like Regions of Ruin or Kingdom New Lands)

Bandit - 2D side scrolling shooter that reminds me of the type of game you would have got in an arcade machine in the 80s and 90s.

Nook Fall West Town – interesting looking narrative adventure that has a style of its own.

The Oversight Bureau – interesting voice driven narrative adventure where you are trapped in a detention centre that corrects your social thought to make them more inline with the social norms and you need to escape.

Jackal – A Hotline Miami style game that is very visceral

Revelation of Decay – Top-down zombie survival similar to Core Keeper or Crahlands

Forestrike – martial arts roguelike that has a mechanic similar to Sifu I guess where you go back in time and learn from your mistakes.

Mystic – a bit rough aound the edges of a survival game based on Eastern fantasies similar to Outworld and a Kenshi mix

江山北望 – There is no English translation for the title. This is a Chinese FMV game which has English subtitles. Any of these I have seen before have been well made and really good. This looks well-acted and they tend to have multiple endings and story divergences. I believe these games often go along with a TV series in China, so they benefit from the bigger budgets of said TV series.

Roadside Research – This is kind of a shop simulator game with the same style of gameplay but in it you play co-op as aliens where you are researching humans for invasion and you try not to get caught. I thought it was interesting in its differences.

Escape from Ever After – Paper Mario like game where you need to escape from Forever After Inc. The game looks very well made and very pretty

Dusk Punk – a Citizen Sleeper style dice game with a narrative story

Angst – Don’t Starve survival game mixed with the Long Dark aesthetics.

Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era – a Heroes of Might and Magic Prequal by Unfrozen and Ubisoft and published by Hooded Horse. It looks old but new at the same time. I think this will be a definite for Heroes of Might and Magic fans and has a very high production value.

Marvel Comic Invasion – Streets of Rage, Battle Toads or Double Dragon style game with Marvel characters

Whiskerwood – another Hooded Horse game in the vein of Timberborn with anthropomorphic Mice building towns. Very intricate with large production chains like Timberborn.

Demos I tried:

A Planet of Mine – This really is a great little game. You can already see the bare bones of something that will become a nice little cozy game. There is still much that is greyed out in the menus like all the different animals and planet types. I imagine it will be a game that is simple to play but difficult to master.

Statecraft – a game similar to Suzerin or King of the Castle where you are given a choice that has positive or negative effects on your country’s resources cush as military, economy or infamy. The other parties (run by AI in this game) vote as well and the highest voted options wins. You have options available t o you to swing that vote in your favour using money, energy and popularity. It is a simple game with choices that seemed overwhelmingly negative. In the game I played of the 20 od so choices I had only one had a slightly positive spin to it. There is also an election every 8 turns but I was unsure if I played the same party all the way through or if I played the ruling party.

Tavern Keeper – This is a very good tavern builder in the style of the old Theme Hospital or Theme Park games. This includes the humour and oddball characters. This is a no brainer for people who like those Theme style games.

Astrobotanica – It is a basic survival exploration game. There are puzzles which are the main point of the game that I could see. You are working with CO2 instead of Oxygen and a Stamina gauge. The game I think will be interesting to explore the areas and speaking to the prehistoric people. The lack of inventory id a real pain. I find this more than other survival games. It wouldn’t be such an issue if there weren’t that many things to pick up. You start with 5 slots only although your tools do not take up space in your inventory neither do quest items which is good. I explored most of the map and couldn’t find the quest item I needed.

Coaster crash course – a physics-based game where you build roller coasters on different maps. It was fun for a bit, and I can appreciate the idea but for me it wore thin quickly as I wasn’t really that bothered to clear the map or to go on and get a better grade.

Quill>Pistol – Never got on with this one. The instructions were a little too obscure and although the tutorial opponent was rubbish you still had to wait until they had their turn and that made learning a little slow. It told you what you needed to do but didn’t tell you how. The mechanics around the actual shot are all to increase the accuracy of the shot and increase your potential to do damage. For instance, it explained you needed to reload the pistol. This makes perfect sense. It said you need to load the gunpowder, then the wad then the pellet, then the rod and then the primer. So, I placed the items on the pistol and then there was nowhere I could see that actually set the reload into motion. It didn’t explain you didn’t need to just close the book. Another system is where you have to triangulate the persons height and distance from you to increase accuracy another good system, I think. So, you have to move your left and right hands (one in a c shape and the other with its thumb up), swopping between them as they move around randomly and I once again couldn’t figure out how to set it in motion to add this to my accuracy rating for the shot. It was filled with fun looking systems, but they need to be made clearer.

Cataria – isometric cartoony Rimworld. You have settlers and different things to build. I would say it needs work. There are some basic quality of life systems that these days are just expected. You have to constantly and actively tell all the settlers what to do. Most games like this you have a jobs list and can assign particular villagers to particular jobs. Now this is, as with many of these demos, still early in production and there does seem to be quite a few rough edges to the game so I imagine they will add many things especially if they continue to take on board what anyone who plays the game says.

Norse Oath of Blood – This looks like it could be quite interesting. There is village building, missions, turn based combat with individual character progression with some RPG elements. The graphics are really good as it is an UE game. I imagine there will be a lot of things to this game when it releases in full.

Tears of Metal – This will be a really good rogue like game with many upgrades and weapons and charms and so on. I think this will rival the Hades games for some people as it is very visceral and the attacks are heavy and chunky. I feel this is one to watch.

The Last Caretaker – This is exactly what I thought it was going to be. The game is all about a robot on a station trying to get everything to work again. There are crafting items and cables that need linking and tools and everything you would expect from a game like this. It will be a game I will wait to play at full release rather than play a lot of the demo as I know I will enjoy it. It surprised me as I though it was set in space or somewhere else but instead you appear to be in the sea and on a boat or station of some kind. Like I said I will be playing this at launch so I didn’t want to be too spoiled.

14: Overmind – This is basically Breathage or Subnautica in space. It is very interesting, and I think once you learn the mechanics and how the systems work it will be a good game. For a work in progress it is very good. How much longevity there is depends on how many new systems, mechanics and interesting vehicles and so on they add.

Pokitaire – Poker solitaire hybrid in the style of Balatro. You clear the solitaire game by playing poker hands. Seems more interesting and different than the other versions of Balatro-likes that I saw. It has interesting combos and new poker hands to find and learn. The decks are not always your standard 52 card deck of cards. Stackflow was another game like Balatro but with Tetris instead of poker or card games.

Below is a list of games that were already on my Wishlist that I hadn’t mentioned before:

Tides of Tomorrow – I tried this demo a while ago. Looks interesting with a good story with narrative arcs but seemed a little rough.

Anno Pax Romana - Again I tried this demo a while ago and seems like more Anno but they have made a multitude of changes to quality of life additions even from Anno 1800. The game looks really pretty as well. There will be a semblance of a story to drive you along, but I will wait to see if Ubisoft does and Ubisoft and tries to monetise the hell out of the game. I wont be holding my breath though.

V Rising

I have recently been revisiting V Rising. I had played 60 odd hours of this game before but had the itch to return to it. This is a fantastic game. It is a great mix of top-down Diablo style ARPG with specials and attacks that are dependant of progression of spells and your weapons. It has a selection of weapons that can fit different playstyles each with their own move sets, my favourite is the spear which has a quick multiple hit repeat attack that can hit many enemies in a cone in front of you. This is mixed in with a group of increasingly more difficult boss enemies that each provide you with new craftable items, castle upgrades and new crafting machines and tables. This is all wrapped up in a survival game veneer. The game is single player, PVP, PVE, you can join public servers for both PVP and PVE games and you can host your own server for friends as well. There are also numerous options to customise the server for the game you would like to play.  

This game is made by Stunlock Studios, a Swedish game company, whose previous titles include Battlerite and Bloodline Champions. All three games are very positive on Steam. I would like to note that the game has DLC, but all story and game content is free. The DLC is all cosmetics and designed to be an added income for the developer. They did a crossover with Castlevania for instance that is £16.75 but contains a huge amount of cosmetics from new hairstyles to statues and other decorations, to variations to your shapeshifting forms, to a mount, stairs, paintings and so on. As an indication the DLC also has a very positive reviews on Steam. I think they just let their very talented artists free to go wild with aesthetic ambiance and they delivered. I have not bought any of the DLC cosmetics but looking at them (and the fact that the game itself is only £30 and I have seen it as low as £7.50 on sale) I would be seriously considering it even though I don’t buy cosmetic DLC. The game came out in May 2024 and they have actively been updating and balancing the game since then.

Also I played on keyboard and mouse, but controllers are 100% supported. I tried it and it worked fine, but I preferred to use my keyboard and mouse as I had learned the controls. It is also Steam Deck verified.

The basic story is vampires ruled the world until man destroyed them and forced them into a hibernation state. You are one of these vampires and you have awakened many years later and not only are you hungry, but you want revenge. You start in a crypt, and your first task is to extract yourself from your tomb. The game gently leads you through its mechanics and progression by setting you tasks that once completed net you a reward of new craftables. It doesn’t always explicitly tell you want to do (go here, do this, kill this boss and so on) but rather it suggests things that need to be done in order for you to get that next tier of reward (new flooring for your castle or crafting recipe and so on). The progression is steady but not too fast and there is often plenty to do along the way and you can often get lost in doing simple tasks like cutting down trees or collecting stone or any number of typical crafting game mechanics. This is similar to Valheim in that manner as I often found myself spending hours chopping trees or smacking rocks or cooper veins.

You start off basic with a wooden palisade and some simple crafting items but rapidly you are able to build your first Castle Heart and then some floors and then walls and thus you have a functional castle with walls and a roof over your head. With this the basics are out of the way, and you can start to spend time moving around the map, collecting the multitude of crafting items, killing humans and animals, taking on bosses and collecting new recipes and other items as well as slowly building up your vampire as you go.

Your vampire has many customisation options, from a pretty vampire that would be at home in Twilight, to one that will put the fear of the nightwalkers into their enemies, a sort of Malkavian vampire from Vampire the Masquerade. This includes many options for faces, hair, body, beards, skin colour and so on. Much of this doesn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things as mostly your vampire is seen from the top in an isometric view from quite high up, but we all like to customise our character even if we never see them. You can zoom in but there isn’t really any need to and being able to see further is really of more use than seeing how pretty your vampire looks in their new armour. I did figure out that you can change the colour of your armour to stand out somewhat if you want to so there is that.

The survival mechanics are baked into this game at its core, and everything revolves around them. The game is a survival game first and the crafting and progression are required for making headway. There are specific vampire survival systems that I feel set the game apart from other similar games.

As a vampire, the day night cycle is important to you as the sun, unsurprisingly, damages you. You can venture out in the daylight but if you are caught in direct sunlight, you will take significant damage. There is plenty of shade to move between in most areas but there are significant spaces that are more sun-drenched. Walking around in the daylight is generally fine and if you come across small groups of enemies this tends not to be a problem, but if you come across a large group of enemies or one of the roving bosses this can become more of a problem. There is no reason to hide away during the day, and the day night cycle is relatively quick, sometimes too quick if I am honest, especially if you are having to repeat a boss. Beating the bosses during the day is more than doable but the sun adds an extra thing to be thinking about and some of the bosses require you to pay close attention and use all your tools sparingly and timely, so the added stumbling block of the sun just adds another dimension.

As any great vampire, you also need blood in order to survive and here in lies one of the great mechanics of the game. Each human, animal or creature has different blood types. These types of blood (creature, warrior, rogue and so on) have different benefits when you fill up on them. Each blood has different levels as well so the higher the level of the blood (which is depicted as a percentage above the creature\person) the bigger the benefits. They split the bonuses up into 5 levels. For instance, the worker blood gives you an increase in resource yield at the first level and an increase in damage to resource objects at the second and so on therefore 2 levels of worker blood increases both the yield and speed of collection. The brute blood gives you a small increase to your primary attack at level one and a small amount of life leech at second level. These stack as the level of blood increases but as soon as you feed on a different enemy you lose your current blood, as well as its bonuses, and replace it with the new enemy’s blood along with its bonuses. This can often be useful dependant on what you are looking to do or your playstyle. You use a lot of magic, a decrease in cooldowns might be handy. Or maybe you are going to spend your time resource gathering, well a high-level worker blood is your drink of choice. There are later mechanics that make this swopping of blood easier as looking for high level blood enemies, especially ones that are specific to what you are currently looking for, can be quite difficult. Finding particular types of enemies is not difficult as they tend to be at selected areas on the map (rogues and warriors in bandit camps, scholars in the monasteries and workers in the mines and so on) but finding that one with a particularly high blood level that gives the top bonuses is a little more difficult as it appears to be random.

The blood is also used for a few vampire skills such as healing. This drains the blood from you in order to use it. The blood drains slowly over time anyway and this is increased when you are passively healing. Eventually you reach zero blood and unless you find a new blood source you will slowly die. There is plenty of warning about this and your blood level is prominently displayed in a Diablo style blood ball in the UI including the blood type and percentage.

Dying is not a great loss in V Rising, you can just revive at a teleporter or directly in your coffin which you build at your base and your dropped items (excluding your armour and weapons which you keep on you) will be nice and tidily bagged up waiting for you in a drawstring bag where you died but any boss will be full health again. A nice touch though, for me anyway, is that if you killed the boss and then died (to ads or other enemies) and you hadn’t had a chance to drain them of their blood (more on this later) they will be downed and waiting for you when you return to them. This happened more often than I would like to admit to myself or anyone else.

Your level is set by gear. It is based on your armour (chest, legs, boots, gloves, helmet, cape and ring) and weapon level. These are crafted at various points along the way and can be researched (using scrolls and books at a research table) in order to get different armours, some with set bonuses. This is another way you can further customise how your vampire plays. The benefit to this is if you are up against a boss and your current weapon, armour, spells or set bonus isn’t working it is nothing to swop out to a different set, weapon and spells in order to better defeat the boss. This has no drawback as the gear levels for the different weapons and armour are the same, but they just have different attributes. You are not locked into a class or weapon\armour set as the game is classless.

There is a ‘family tree’ of bosses, called V Bloods, that get progressively higher level and more difficult as you move up it. Each boss has an area they hang around or are they patrol in the case of the roving bosses. Each boss has details of things to craft or new production machines or work benches which are required for you to progress which you receive once you defeat them and feed on them. For instance, the first boss is an Alpha Wolf that allows you to change into a large wolf that moves around a lot quicker than you do. As a side note this is a bugbear of mine how slow your vampire is. They seem to saunter around the map and there is no sprint\run button. The wolf moves faster but it is still a little slower than I would like personally. The second tier of boss has 3 enemies of the same gear level and for instance on the second tier is Keely the Frost Archer and defeating and feeding on her gives you blueprints for the Tannery (to turn pelts into leather) as well as the recipe for leather, the Travelers wrap coat and a waterskin used for potions. You also receive a Tier 1 spell point for one of the spell schools specifically Frost spells from her.

There is a helpful V Blood boss tracking system in the game where if you highlight a V Blood you wish to track in the V Blood menu you get a periodic blood line that comes from the direction of the boss. It also shows information on the boss and a vague distance to the boss (imminent, far Very far to the west and so forth) in the top lefthand corner of the screen. If you are close enough in level to the boss it will also show you what you will receive for defeating the boss.

There are 6 Spell schools: Blood, Frost, Chaos, Unholy, Illusion and Storm. Each has 9 spells some of which are similar in use (AOE or throwable type spell as an example) with others being unique to that spell school (such as summoning spells). The spells work similar to Diablos spells and special moves, so they are not unique in that regard. There is the usual breakdown of summon spells and spells that add damage over time and others that apply a debuff or status effect. Although these are still interesting this, I feel, is the least unique portion of the game.

I feel the developers got the difficulty spike just right. You very quickly start feeling like a badass and that you can take on anyone and then get owned by a roaming boss a few levels above you. I never felt like the higher-level enemies are impossible as I felt they were in Assassin’s Creed where if the enemy you are fighting is a few levels higher than you, you just cannot seem to do damage to them but then when you equal their level all of a sudden you destroy them. You can defeat any of the bosses with skill (something I sometimes felt I lacked with a few of the bosses) but it is certainly more challenging.

On the subject of difficulty there are 3 starting levels to choose from; Relaxed, Normal and Brutal. These are distinctly different and the contrast between Normal and Brutal is quite stark. The enemies on Normal are definitely doable and even the bosses are easy enough. But the difficulty on Brutal ramps up quite drastically. If you enjoy a difficult game, then this will test you. I believe you are handed all the tools to enable you to complete all the tasks and defeat the bosses, but it will require skill. I am sticking to Normal on this playthrough as I am just having fun.

I think the game is beautiful. The graphics are clean and sharp, and all the UI elements have all the information you need. There is some similarity to games like Diablo with the UI such as the blood ball telling you how much blood you have left (unlike in Diablo or POE where it indicates your health) with your health as a bar above the ball with a numerical indication as well as the bar. To the right of the blood ball is your basic attack, special weapon attack, your 2 spells and a third specialist spell that opens up later all of which shows the cooldown left once you use them. This also comes up on the screen above your character if you try to use it before it is ready, so you know how much time is left until you can use it again. You have a dodge as well on space. To the left of the blood ball are slots 1-8 for your weapons and items (like a fishing rod). There is a list of objectives and the current boss you are tracking in the top left of the screen and in the top right is a mini map and the current time of day broke into day and night. I find it all very unobtrusive but easy to read if you need the information.

Building in the game is simple but very effective. It uses a click and place system that works extremely well. Although you won’t be able to build Valheim style buildings where you place every single block, there is a certain amount of freedom to build using the Lego style system where you place different types of floors, walls, windows, and so on. They have added many quality-of-life things like a treasure room where you store all your items in chests (which you can label) and any room that is touching the treasure room you can use items directly from those chests. There is also a great system where each crafting machine gets bonuses to speed and cost of production as long as certain criteria is met. These are: is the machine indoors and does it have the relevant flooring. For instance the sawmill and crusher need to be indoors and on a workshop floor in order for them to receive a 25% increase in speed of production and a 25% decrease to materials used respectively. This make a huge difference in the long run and getting this set up early is just a no brainer and beneficial.

On the subject of production this is where I feel the game lets itself down a little and can, in time, feel grindy. It is a bit like an GOTCHA or game like Warframe where gaining resources, the amount of resources and the time it takes to process those resources is just too much and too long making it feel really grindy. For instance it takes 12 Stone to make 1 Stone Brick and 1 Stone Dust. This changes to 9 Stone with the correct flooring. To build one floor tile you need either 2 or 4 Stone Bricks. So to build a 3X3 room you need 18-36 Stone Bricks (that’s 432 Stone or 324 Stone if you use the right tiles in the room ). A wall is 9-10 Stone Bricks so for the same room you will need 12 walls so that is 120 Stone Bricks (made from either 1440 or 1080 Stone). So to build a 3X£ room with 12 walls around it (the castle entrance or doorway is the same as a wall) you will need upwards of 1872 Stone. Now each Stone outcrop gives you a 100-150 Stone yield and this take maybe 30s to destroy. That’s 5-6mins of resource gathering just for a basic 3X3 room. Then the grinding of the Stone to Stone Bricks takes 20s (16s if you have the correct flooring) so to make 156 Stone Bricks it will take 52mins (20s X 156 Stone Bricks divided by 60). This is very much an early game issue as once you have built a castle and floors and so on you don’t need nearly as many bricks and as long as you continue to keep the grinders going when you can, you should continue to have bricks when you need them. But this is just one of multiple craftable items (there is Planks from Wood, Whetstones, Copper and Iron Ingots, Sulphur and so on) so the time sink can very quickly add up. That is why getting the correct floor tiles can make such a difference. Just by getting the machine indoors and using the correct tile you can change the above example from 52 minutes to 41minutes, the 25% decrease in time is significant.

Another thing to note about building is you can build up. You can have 3 floors (up to 6 by changing the server settings). This does open up many options for creative building, but obviously you will need more of those pesky Bricks and Planks.

There is so much to speak about in this game. There are so many small nuances that the game gets right. The grind can be a drag at times while waiting for stuff to process but I find in general there is always something to do (usually resource gathering). I do wish the blood you feed off of lasted a little longer and that those higher-level blood enemies were more common or at least you managed to get what you need faster to make that be less of a drag on your time. You can get times where you just feel you are waiting constantly for the game to get stuff done so you can progress but there is a lot that is interesting in this world that I feel you can get lost in it quite easily. The V Blood enemies are interesting and although I have never actually completed the game I cannot really comment on the last few bosses as I still had at least 20 V Bloods to go. You can fly through quicker if you follow guides and don’t faff around as much as I do or spend hours building a castle. The world has many unique areas and enemies and although the materials and crafting can be slow it is interesting, has unique ideas and all the resources feel needed and thoughtful rather than a waste of time with slightly different variants of the same thing. I know this will be a game I will play again and again (although I feel I will play for 10-15hrs then get my fill) and I will be interested as to what Stunlock Studios do next.

Hollow Knight and Silksong

I played Hollow Knight in 2017. Not at launch but a bit after. I went in expecting not to like it that much, but it was an inexpensive game, and I thought I would give it the old college try as they say. It came as a surprise to me that I really liked it. I am really not very good at metriodvanias at all. I don’t have the reflexes and my hand-eye coordination is just not up to par with what you need but I did well enough to embarrass myself only a little. I was also at the time predominantly keyboard and mouse so I was pretty rubbish on controller which doesn’t help.

There are many things about this game that people find fantastic and I feel it richly deserves the praise it gets. The art style and stylistic direction are amazing, from the world to the characters, to the subtle story telling through a mix of visual cues and cryptic conversations right down to the world language they created that draws you in. The way it leads you through the game, gently tugging you in the right direction when you need it and seem to have lost your way, is masterful. I struggle with many of these types of games and often feel I am aimlessly wondering through the world but in this game, I felt that whenever I was flailing a little and losing my way there was a developer performing a little head nod in the direction I need to go with subtle clues or glaring empty areas in my map. In most metroidvanias I just get frustrated. The backtracking, even through really beautiful environments, frustrates me and games such as Ori made this easier with fast travel that alleviated this a little. I often suffer through the controls and just don’t have the dexterity I need to perform as well as I would like to. The issue is I always I lose interest in the end. This happened in Hollow Knight as well but I feel that when it happened I was more disappointed in myself that I drifted away from it and it is a bugbear of mine that after almost 30hrs of the game, I never finished it.

When I saw Silksong was in development I was really happy for the developers. They had made an incredible game and deserved to be able to continue making games. This was the type of stories we all love in gaming, a developer that made the game they wanted to, smashed it out of the park and because of their hard work and creative vison, they created a situation where they were able to make another game. Everyone was rooting for them and in no time at all the snowball began to roll downhill and before we knew it Silksong was the most wishlisted game on Steam. On top of that people were willing to give them time to make the game right and as the developers wanted it to be. People didn’t rant and rave on about where the game was, there was only a woeful, quiet constant question of where the game was every time there was a games showcase of any kind.

After multiple proof of live showings, a date was eventually announced and the world lost it. The game sold like mad even though it was on Game Pass. The consensus overall was it was an amazing game in a year of amazing games. It is ‘very positive’ on Steam with a review number of 83 000. The major gripe seems to be difficulty.

I thought this might be the opportunity to redeem myself (in my own eyes at any rate) so I downloaded it on Game Pass (although it is only around £17 or $20). The game is great but now I am 8yrs older than I was when I played Hollow Knight and to no one’s great surprise my dexterity and reflexes have sadly not got any better. My personal issues with the original game remain.

My overall feeling before and after playing Silksong was it is more Hollow Knight, and this is definitely not a bad thing at all. It has all the comparable art style and characters that fill the world. Although there are differences in the movement and combat mechanics there are similar enough for someone coming from Hollow Knight to be comfortable in saying this is familiar to them. The dialog is alike in how the characters interact with the main character in both games and the characters individual personalities are similar as well. The map and metroidvania mechanics are the same and so on and so on.

I think the main issue I had with both games was with the control mechanics. I actually like the combat and acquisition of different skills, charms and the upgrade system. The issue I had with both games is I felt that the game never did what I wanted it to. The jump has a system where the longer you push the button the higher or further you jump. Although I liked this, I often felt that the difference between jumping too high\long compared to too short\low respectively was too tight. Again, I need to stress that this is a me issue. I couldn’t quite get the timing right and often jumped too high into spikes or not long enough to jump over an enemy. Specifically, the bounce on something (like an enemy or the red metal flowers in Silksong) was erratic in when it worked. I would push down and attack on the controller to do a downward attack in order to bounc on the thing I needed to and then do it again in order to bounce off another item to get higher and instead of doing a downward attack I would just whiff an attack in the mid-air. I did see other people struggling with this exact problem and many people said the solution was to use the D-pad as they had had better success with it. I am too well trained now after many years of using the analogue sticks to do this. I also never really liked the D-pad as I always felt it was too imprecise.

As to the difficulty that others complained about, I didn’t get far enough into Silksong to comment on this, but I can see that my personal difficulty would be fighting the controls and my lack of dexterity and timing. This is how boss fights and even basic enemy fights were in Hollow Knight. I would often end up hitting enemies and taking damage on touch from the enemies, because of these issues I have with the controls and be left feeling like I couldn’t get the game to do what I wanted it to do, and I was fighting the controls rather than enemies. To make it worse, I would from time to time know what it felt like to do it correctly because I would every now and then get the controls to do what I wanted them to do.

One of my biggest bugbears, not specific to this game by any measure, is the damage on touch. This has been an annoyance of mine from the first time I saw it. It makes no sense at all. If the enemy took damage as you do, maybe this would make more sense. I get why this is a thing, but I cannot get behind it as games that do not do this do not suffer from any side effects but only benefits. They could make your player character or the enemy move or dodge each other with a sweet ballet move or ninja sidestep. I know damage on touch can add another level of difficulty and encourages accuracy in your movements, but I cannot get onboard with this.

I doubt I will go back to Silksong not because it is a bad game, as I think for may people this is game of the year material, and to be fair I can see why. I believe quite strongly that Team Cherry did exactly what they needed to do in order to make this game successful. It is more Hollow Knight with mechanics that are different and yet similar enough to please old fans and elaborated enough on the game to keep both the old fans and any new fans happy at the same time. I think we have seen enough sequels that have not done this successfully to know this is no small feat. I hope Team Cherry go on to make a new game in this world. I am not sure but I will assume they will continue to make metroidvanias, but I would love to see what it would look like if they were to bring their world, attention to detail and storytelling to another genre. I think about Moon Studios move from metroidvanis to soulslike ARPG when moving from Ori to their new game No Rest for the Wicked (which I actually really like). This game has a tug to it though and when I think about it I want to play it, but I know if I were to return to it I would remember why I sucked at it and the frustration would just set back in and I would quit.