Souls Like Strings

A whimsical fantasy metroidvania with Sanabi's gameplay but pacifist

Why

• Deeply weird in all the best ways
• Atmosphere really sells you being in a fairy tale
• Movement is much easier than it looks
• Boss 'fights' are fantastic, visually and mechanically
• Great use of achievements to signpost/hint at weird side content

Why Not

• You only care about the length of a game, not its quality

Impressions

Key Fairy is a surreal, unique experience which feels like a fairy tale come to life. Rather than fighting 'enemies' you liberate them from corruption by zooming...

Hyper-chaotic 1000xResist vibes with Persona's flair

Why

• Will definitely surprise you
• Also very good at the things you'd expect
• So much love & care was clearly put into it
• Banging soundtrack and visuals
• A multitude of cool little details

Why Not

• You're a cop

Impressions

I came into Unbeatable expecting a solid rhythm game with a unique style but ended up on a non-stop chaotic journey of emotion and philosophy. From Beat waking up in a meadow to escaping from police helicopters on a scooter and well beyond, I found it nearly impossible to...

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine.

Surely there are better ways to communicate than nausea-inducing singing

The follow up to A Memory Called Empire doesn't land quite as well with me due to its wider scope, but is still a worthy successor.

The aliens clearly set up as antagonists in the first book are back, and they brought so, so many new characters along for the ride. Many of them POV characters too, I don't remember there being anywhere near this many POV shifts (if any?) in the first book. Off the top of my...

Nothing Mid Beyond this Point

Why

• Genuinely unique approach to a metroidvania
• Basic but very evocative art style
• Combat system is a cool concept well executed
• Story is suprisingly interesting
• It just has the juice, couldn't put it down despite a frustrating start

Why Not

• Exploration can be painful until you get certain abilities
• Giving the second boss anti heal was certainly a choice

Impressions

This is not what I expected at all from a 580yen Metroidvania which looks like they didn't bother hiring a background artist. Nothing Beyond this Point is a great...

• You cannot convert a Webpack project to Vite in ~2 hours by making a plan with Copilot and letting it rip
  • Tomorrow we'll see if it made any meaningful progress and I just need to clean up, or it was a complete waste of time
  • Next day managed to clean up some errors in an hour, now stuck on not copying the dict files for kuromoji
• Don't always take requirements from a single engineer on a team at face value
  • Or you'll end up with two major refactors of what should have been a simple...