Rob MacIntosh

“Dirtbag Mahjong is a relatively casual little single-player Mahjong game with a fun little twist, starring an irreverent sitcom-esque basement full of largely sapphic/LGBTQ+ goofs. The story mode is hit and miss in its humor and gameplay, but I enjoyed enough of it for what it was. It’s a relatively casual little game best enjoyed at your own pace, where it can be decently fun.”

“Last Command is a master class in taking an idea to its creative limit. The game’s concept of “Snake meets bullet hell” is simple yet surprisingly novel, and it constantly demonstrates new ways to incorporate additional twists on its ideas. It has its share of limitations in narrative areas and an unfortunately weak translation, but it makes up for that with some brilliant, inventive combat and boss design, which is where you’ll be spending most of your playthrough. The game became one of my favorites of 2022 from the sheer number of times it managed to do something that impressed me and left me awestruck in spite of its seemingly humble exterior.”

“Purely off the charm of its setting, commitment to its motif, and a relatively fun combat system at its core, I can almost recommend Kingdoms of the Dump. Unfortunately, it just feels incredibly unpolished and undercooked. It’s littered (no pun intended) with incomplete sections, massive swaths of graphical issues, major design problems, and many bugs of the bad variety. The farther in I got, the less polished the game felt, such that by the final act I began to doubt if even the non-buggy parts were properly playtested. The story and characters also just don’t elevate the game past these issues. I had a share of fun despite navigating around these issues. There are plenty of cool ideas here. This game is an obvious love letter to the great JRPGs of old. Sadly, the handwriting of that love letter is very messy in a few too many places.”

“As a free to play game, Sonic Rumble is fine. It provides a Fall Guys-esque battle royale platforming experience with just enough Sonic flavor to distinguish itself adequately as its own thing, though not enough to quite capture the distilled essence of the blue blur. The developers have also been working on implementing new ideas and improving the experience, which is welcome for a live service game. Unfortunately, almost every positive with this game has some sort of caveat, which makes me question its long-term prospects. Ring Survival is a bit lacking in variety at present and doesn’t feel very winnable if you don’t place really well in its first stage. Its monetization can feel almost predatory especially with purchasable upgrades that provide tangible advantages in stages, and the restriction on game modes availability is disappointing. I don’t regret my time playing Sonic Rumble and had a share of fun, but I also don’t see myself coming back to this game years down the line. I don’t love drawing comparisons to competitors on the market, but it’s hard to find a reason to keep playing Sonic Rumble over its generally superior competition.”

“The biggest barrier to recommending Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga is not really a functional one. The game wasn’t made to be the most balanced experience and it has many of the issues that typically limit crossover titles in their ambition, but it’s still made with the goal of fun in mind, and it’s chock full of goodies. This is also far from a rush job of a port to modern systems, as refint/games did a lot to make the game play well and feel fitting among these franchises’ existing western releases, given the game featuring dual audio, maintaining a consistent English voice cast, and the work that went into its online features. Indeed, as someone who played the original PSP title many moons ago, this is more than I could have hoped for with a 2025 rerelease of this title. Some minor hiccups aside, it is a genuinely excellent remaster of a rather niche game. Rather, it’s the fact that this game conceptually feels made for a fairly small number of people. This one is for Falcom fans specifically, and there’s a lot of appeal to them here, even if it doesn’t break a ton of ground for either series. For anyone outside that space, it’s significantly harder to recommend this game. Which is a bit of a shame, because this game is genuinely quite fun for what it is. The implementation of 3D Ys mechanics into a fighting game works better than it perhaps should, given this is a company not known for making fighting games, and it has perhaps the best assembly of music of the company’s illustrious catalog. If you aren’t already a fan of Ys and Trails, this game can be a tougher sell, much as I recommend getting into those series already with all my heart. If you are a fan of Ys and Trails already, this is a worthy title to fit into your collection. It’s a neat little time capsule of Falcom’s history, and a fun experience on its own for what it is.”

“Waning Flowers of a World Eternal - The Rainbow Appears After Flowering Rain feels like it’s trying to say something, but often can’t really get the right words out. It sets up for plenty of drama, but a lot of it doesn’t land. It has a handful of salient and thought-provoking parts, and the brief bits of levity are actually pretty sweet, but they’re somewhat in the shadow of a rather repetitious story and often unremarkable cast of characters that don’t do enough to make it truly earn its emotional punches. Waning Flowers is an okay but rather flawed nakige that doesn’t really excel or stand out in any particular area.”

“For a pretty modest price point, Kanade is ultimately a sweet and short visual novel, and how much you enjoy it will depend on what you’re looking for and how you feel about the bubbly main character. It’s very cute, at times endearingly funny, and has just a pinch of sentimentality to spice things up. There’s not a lot of depth to its characters even with its small cast, and its attempts at theming feel like they only scratch the surface of what they maybe could have with an otherwise rather interesting concept for a setting, which left me a bit wanting for more of substance. Still, I enjoyed my few hours with Kanade for what they were.”

“It’s difficult for me to really pin down exactly how I feel about A Tithe In Blood on the whole. Its setup, its theming, and its presentation are all incredible, making for a memorable experience with reading the visual novel. As a story of the experience of grief and living through it, I connected with it quite a lot.  Once it gets to actually having to progress its narrative, however, things gradually get shakier and shakier in the way it pieces together its various sections, and it features an overall letdown of a conclusion. While in its set-up act, it’s one of the most emotionally resonant and striking parts of a visual novel I’ve read in some time. Unfortunately, by the time I was done, I spent more time dwelling on how I felt about the story rather than the impact it had on me, the sign of something with a share of missed potential with the direction it took. Still, there are compelling aspects to this story and a lot that I did really like about it. There is something genuine beneath it all, and I found I got more out of it than I do from a lot of attempts at this subject matter. It won’t work for everyone and the story that it tells is rough and uneven, but it manages to have the memorable good aspects to stand out just enough.”

“There’s a share of good and bad to Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim. It’s certainly one of the more unique horror experiences I’ve experienced, enough that the novelty alone makes it worth consideration even if you aren’t inclined towards the particular kink this game ostensibly is marketed towards. It left me with enough moments to kind of dwell on thinking about how I would respond to this situation. The fact that much of the cast really doesn’t come out at the end of this story looking like a good person might not be for everyone, but it gives it a fairly believable side. The first ending I got was unsettling in a way that was genuinely interesting, one which worked particularly well given what all you do in this game. At the same time, it can be a somewhat tedious experience to play given all the repetition. Though I wouldn’t call it quite an “ironic dating sim” despite it using the genre for means beyond conventional romance, the “dating sim” side of things can feel somewhat more burdensome rather than the neat little twist on the genre it perhaps could have made for. This game offers a memorable experience, though a noticeably flawed one in part due to the relatively small package this giantess dating sim comes in that keeps it from reaching its full potential.”

“I felt like Love, Elections, and Chocolate was overall better than the sum of its parts. It’s imperfect, but it has enough good moments and handles enough sections in interesting ways even in those imperfections. The phrase that kept coming to my mind throughout my time with this visual novel was “rough around the edges”. I could definitely feel that this was sprite’s debut into full fledged visual novels, as there are some aspects (pacing, handling conflict) that felt rough at times. Its heroines all have rough spots in their respective routes if not their personalities and character, and the melodrama can come off as overdone. Things don’t always happen the cleanest in this story, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. I can’t say I expect it to work for everyone, but there was enough here that worked for me. It’s not a story I expect fans of this genre to all agree on thanks to the rougher aspects of some of its characters, and there’s plenty which I felt could have been done better with its narrative and character dynamics. Even with its weaker aspects, however, I enjoyed my time with it enough to give it just enough of a thumbs up.”

“No Case Should Remain Unsolved makes for a nice game to scratch that mystery game itch that can be completed in a single afternoon, one that I felt was more than worth the $7 price of admission. While taking a rather minimalistic approach, it executes most everything it sets out to do within a reasonable scope. At the same time, it also feels surprisingly heartfelt and left me quite satisfied by the time the credits rolled.”

“Given how long the series has been going, I had higher hopes for SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky than I felt was able to deliver on for the series’s English-language debut. It hits a few of the right notes but doesn’t quite put them together enough to truly strike a chord. It’s well-presented, but presentation alone doesn’t carry it, and the script errors don’t do it any favors either. The cast of characters have their moments, but they’re scattered between lengthy sections of ultimately both predictable and often forgettable story routes that at times feel like inorganic drama was put in for the sake of it. The end result is a fairly cookie-cutter and by-the-books romance visual novel that doesn’t truly shine in any particular area.”

“NanoApostle is the epitome of a “pretty good” game. Combat is fun, presentation is well handled, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. This is one of those games where it does almost everything it sets out to do well but doesn’t quite reach particularly highs at any point either. It sticks to doing what works but rarely gets aggressive with its ambition or does something to truly go off the rails, falling into few pitfalls but also not being as creative as I would hope for a boss rush game. Nonetheless, I had a fun time playing it from start to finish and can definitely give it a recommendation for people interested in a short but relatively dense little action game.”

“Everlasting Flowers - Where there is a will, there is a way is a tepid story with high-quality presentation. It has its moments here and there of solid storytelling and some relatable character moments, but there’s not much to take away from it either. The visual novel medium is one of the more stagnant in the greater landscape of gaming and I appreciate Sprite’s attempts to make a shorter and more cinematic story that breaks somewhat from the typical mold of presentation but it ultimately doesn’t quite have the substance to match its style.”

“Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch wasn’t entirely what I expected going into it, but I came away satisfied. While it takes a while to hit its stride and has some odd parts here and there that don’t always click, I think it does a good job of handling several of its core themes and delivering emotional payoff. What matters most to me in a story is if there is something that I was able to get attached to and resonate with, and I absolutely found that here. The story is largely well-paced with a cast of characters I grew to care about, and it features several scenes I found to be surprisingly emotionally gripping. It might not be the most original story, but what it lacks in novelty, it largely makes up for how well-executed much of it is once the ball gets rolling. If a small-town story with personal struggle and bits of magic, fantasy, folklore, romance, growing up, and occasional silliness sounds like something you might even at all enjoy, I can definitely recommend this tale.”

“Hana's Campus Life feels like a visual novel that wants to reach the highs of some of the medium’s greats but doesn’t really have the space to do so. It’s far too short to do everything it wants to, leading to a story that is dense with events but lacking in emotionally resonant scenes or characters to earn any satisfaction from reading it. While it doesn’t have extremely low lows, there’s a lack of striking moments, and even some of the parts I did like have an asterisk attached. The experience of trying to get all the endings was bogged down by some programming issues and requiring certain choices that sometimes didn’t make all that much sense.”

“Aoi Tori tries to do a lot, but it doesn’t do much particularly well. Plot elements clash and leave the story feeling disjointed. Two of the four routes are just not good overall, and even the two better ones have significant pitfalls. It has a small cast of characters it focuses on, but outside of Mary I seldom found myself actually caring for or about most of them.”

“Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya is a rather low-maintenance game, yet surprisingly addicting at times. A strong presentation, lighthearted tone, and relaxing gameplay loop made it an enjoyable experience. It does drag just a bit in places, and I think Dichroic Purpilion could have implemented a few more tricky mechanics to deal with in order to spice things up, but I think what we ended up with was still solidly fun. What keeps Mystia’s Izakaya from reaching even higher heights isn’t so much in its mistakes, but rather that it doesn’t do a lot that truly goes above and beyond. I still liked a lot of what I ended up playing plenty though! This Nintendo Switch version of the game comes with all six packs of DLC, resulting in a large cast and a lot of additional content that is pretty seamlessly integrated into the game, giving you plenty of options during and after your main playthrough. While the game’s systems are limited in overall scope, there’s no shortage of things to do. It might not be to everyone’s tastes, but there’s still plenty of enjoyment to be had.”

“Tevi’s greatest strength is in how much fun the game is to play with its actual mechanics. At its best, it’s an absolute masterclass in 2D action game design. Combat and movement flow together seamlessly to produce a fun and acrobatic gameplay experience that stands with the best of ‘em, regardless of whether we’re talking 2D or 3D, indie or AAA. The developers and publisher poured a lot of love and care into Tevi’s design and production. Unfortunately, it’s bogged down by a weak narrative that felt like more was put into its style than making something of genuine substance, resulting in some jagged and stunted edges. The incompleteness of its latter half led me to feel at least a touch of regret over what could have been. Still, the areas in which Tevi makes good on its potential are more than worth your playtime if you’re looking for enjoyable action-heavy 2D games, Metroidvanias, or even bullet hells.”