I just wanted to remind everyone that the first episode of Path to the Peak is up on the official Pokémon YouTube channel. Path to the Peak is a short miniseries that follows a young girl, Ava, who discovers her love for the Pokémon TCG and her journey to be the best. The art style and tone are cute, and the animation is fantastic. It is too early to tell how good the story is, but I am enjoying it so far. It is a short episode, only 10 mins long, so you have nothing to lose.
I’ve been playing a lot of Pokemon TCG, and with Worlds happening right now and the Obsidian Flames release, I am a very happy boy. I might be a little biased, but I am excited to see where this series goes. What did you think of the first episode?
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If you haven’t watched Romantic Killer on Netflix, I strongly recommend you do so now. This series should at the very least be on your watch list, especially if you like anime. Romantic Killer is a cute anime with a lot of heart and exactly what you need if you are looking for comforting anime.
Anzu is a girl obsessed with video games with no intentions or time to find love. Unfortunately for her, a wizard appears and uses their powers to make her life into a dating sim. Anzu suddenly finds herself surrounded by hot guys and forced into situations that will decide her romantic future. Will this wizard succeed in their mission to help Anzu find love, or is she really as incapable of falling in love as she believes she is?
This series was originally intended as background noise as I built my gunpla kit. But my gunpla went unfinished as I quickly became absorbed into Romantic Killer’s silly and quirky plot. This series has a delightfully charming story with fun characters and a vibrant art style. I love how resistant Anzu is to the situation, but she is still willing to learn and grow from it. I love the awkward and hilarious situations the wizard puts her in. The only thing I don’t like about this series is that there isn’t an end yet, and I need to know what happens. I don’t want to get too detailed with this review because there is a bit of mystery to the plot that leads to its heartwarming resolution. The resolution and how all the pieces of the narrative connect is what makes this series special. I’ll admit that some of the plot points are a little forced, but it doesn’t matter when the result is this cute. I should go without saying that I love this anime.
Regardless of what you think of anime, you should watch Romantic Killer at least once. It is cute, dumb, and very entertaining. It can be slow, especially during setup, but it is worth the journey. If you have Netflix and need something fun and comforting to watch, this is your answer.
I couldn’t find the trailer in English, but there is English dubbing and it is solid.
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My first exposure to Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is the live-action movie on Netflix, and absolutely love it. I understand the stigma behind live-action adaptations, but if you ignore the source material, it works. Zom 100:Bucket List of the Dead is a quirky and cute road trip comedy about a zombie apocalypse that should at least be on your watch list.
Akira believes he’s gotten his dream job after graduation but discovers he works for an exploitative company that has no problem working him to the bone. Akira spends the next year of his life as a zombie for his company, working tirelessly at a job he hates. Luckily for Akira, there is a zombie outbreak to free him from his misery. For the first time since he started his job, he is free to do whatever he wants, and he plans not to waste this new freedom. Akira makes a bucket list of the 100 things he wants to do before he turns into a zombie and sets off to complete it.
I love the contrast between the corporate life Akira had and the one he has in the apocalypse. Akira will often remember how miserable he was before the zombie outbreak and use that as motivation to live his life to the fullest. It is a very unique take on the genre because the story isn’t about a group of people simply surviving, but rather a quirky road trip comedy of people learning how to live.
The live-action movie is incredibly over the top and cheesy, but it gives the movie its charm. The tone is silly, the action is over the top, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the story is cute. I love the references to Super Sentai and how exaggerated the action scenes are. The music they choose for the action scenes made this movie for me. If you want to watch a fun cheesy movie and enjoy some cool JPop, watch this movie.
I love this movie and have already watched it a few times. I recommend you check it out in the original Japanese, but the English dubbing is a solid option for enjoying this movie. If you a cheesy road trip comedy with a solid story, this is a cute one with a lot of charm. I don’t know how it compares to the source material, but intend to soon. You can stream Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead on Netflix.
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I picked up Revita for the Nintendo Switch because I was in the market for a casual game that didn’t require much commitment. The game features cute art, a fantastic soundtrack, and promised gameplay that seemed manageable with my current skill level. Revita delivered on most of my expectations. The game is a fun casual journey through a cute world that I will continue to pick up.
Revita is a unique twin-stick shooter roguelite with procedural dungeons. There is a story, but it serves more as flavor rather than creates the game’s identity.
The gameplay loop for Revita is simple. You start each run with a set amount of life and fight through the floors of enemies until you either clear the tower or die and start again. Each floor is randomly generated, making each attempt feel unique. The RNG isn’t always fair, but you can easily and quickly restart without losing your progress.
What makes this game unique is that it uses life as a currency. You can trade life for randomly generated upgrades at shrines or stores to give your character an edge against the monsters and bosses. There aren’t many chances to regenerate life. Life in Revita is a precious resource and the source of many difficult decisions. How much life will you be willing to sacrifice for power?
Revita is a game where you will die a lot by design. As you play the game and collect resources that you can use to buy permanent upgrades that make future runs easier. This game has a grind, but it doesn’t feel soul-crushing. The gameplay is a bit repetitive, but I found the repetition relaxing. That said, this isn’t a game I can main or no life because the loop gets stale after a while. This is a game you pick up in quick bouts when you don’t have enough time to game or are just looking for a quick and fun distraction.
I had a lot of fun with Revita. The art is great, the soundtrack is amazing, and the gameplay is solid. While I don’t necessarily regret my purchase, $17 is a bit too much for this game. Unless you know you are going to love this game and will be putting hundreds of hours into it, I would wait for it to go on sale. You can pick up Revita on Switch and Steam for $16.99. It is currently on sale on Steam for $11.04 until August 7th.
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I was sent The Wandering Village as a review code. While I am very grateful for the opportunity, I won’t let it sway my opinions. This will be my honest review.
The Wandering Village is a cute and casual village builder with beautiful art, interesting mechanics, and a solid soundtrack. This game easily became one of my favorites due to its casual atmosphere. This game is simple enough to pick up quickly but offers enough of a challenge without becoming overwhelming. This game is the perfect entry point to the genre and a fantastic addition to any library.
The world has become toxic and uninhabitable. The few remaining survivors have found refuge on the back of a giant wandering beast, the Onbu. Together you will wander the world as you attempt to rebuild a symbiotic civilization on the back of the Onbu.
The Wandering Village is a beautiful game with many moving parts. I recommend you play a few runs without looking up guides. I believe most of the fun is trying to figure out how to grow your village properly, failing, and doing it better the next time around. I am sure there is an optimal way of running through this game, but I had as much fun failing as when everything was running smoothly. This game is casual enough that guides aren’t necessary.
The Wandering Village is one of the more casual village builders I’ve played. Worker, resource, and resource management are challenging enough to keep the game engaging without becoming overwhelming. There are settings you can tweak that makes the management mechanics more difficult, but I never felt like it lost its casual vibe. What does create a challenge is adapting to the random encounters throughout the Onbu’s journey. The types of scouting missions that become available, the types of biomes it walks through, and the Onbu’s health all affect the growth of your village. Players will often have to readjust quickly to changes. I lost a few villages because I wasn’t planning properly. You will eventually be able to have more control of the Onbu, but I enjoyed the random nature of the journey. It makes every run unique, giving the game lots of replayability.
I had a lot of fun with The Wandering Village, and recommend it to anyone in the market for a new game. The art is beautiful, and the mechanics are fun and interesting. The game just got an update that added a new biome, buildings, and encounters. You can pick up The Wandering Village on Steam and Xbox for $24.99 or play it for free if you have Game Pass.
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Revita is an interesting-looking twin-shooter roguelike that I just came across. It has a cool art style, a fantastic soundtrack, and fun-looking gameplay. If you are looking for a game with a solid retro arcade feel, you might want to consider looking into Revita.
Play as a nameless child who has lost all their memories. Fight your way through procedurally generated floors and mobs of monsters to piece together the mystery of what has been lost. What secrets lie within the walls of this ominous tower? You will have to play to find out.
The art in this game looks so good. I love pixel art and adore this renaissance of pixel art games we are going through. I hope Revita can be included in that because it’s such a pretty game. The soundtrack is what mostly sells it for me because it is phenomenal. I am listening to it now, and I recommend you do the same so that you can also get hyped for this game. I am pretty sure the score alone has convinced me to pick this game up for myself.
Aesthetics aside, the game looks fun to play. It promises nearly unlimited builds, unique runs, and lots of customization so that you can play the game how you want. You will have access to settings that make the game as casual or hard-core as you want, such as adjustable aim assist, speed, and enemy visibility. The platforming is where I might have an issue with this game because I am not good at it, but it looks fun enough that I am willing to set prejudices aside. The combat looks easy enough to learn, but hard enough to keep the game engaging. It is hard to know how good the game will be from the trailer alone, but I will be picking it up for the Switch and getting that review out as soon as I can. Stay tuned for that.
You can pick up Revita now for the Switch, PlayStation, and PC for $16.99. Nintendo has it on sale for $13.59 until July 26. Pre-orders for the deluxe edition of the game are also available if you want the poster, an acrylic standee, and some extra swag for €34.99. The deluxe edition is expected to release later this year, but no date has been announced yet.
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I was sent Backpack Heroas a review code, and while I am grateful for the opportunity, I will not let it sway my opinions. This will be my honest review of the game.
Backpack Hero is a charming little inventory roguelike that deserves a lot more attention. It has a cute art style, a nice soundtrack, and fun gameplay. This game is a lot more fun than an early-access game has the right to be. If you are looking for a chill game that will challenge you, get Backpack Hero.
Dive through procedurally generated dungeons as you fight enemies, find treasure, and manage your inventory. Space in your bag is limited, so choose carefully. How will you brave the unknown? Will you use magic? Poison? Swords? Ninja stars? The choice is yours! (and RNGesus’)
Players start with limited inventory space and gain more as their character levels. Dungeons are full of monsters, treasure, and random events that award players loot to shuffle around. Weapons, items, armor, and potions have unique skills that can interact with each other based on their placement in the backpack. Inventory management is almost like a deck builder as you work towards specific builds by collecting certain items.
As deceptively simple as this game appears, I spent a lot of time theory crafting and optimizing my build only to have my run ended by an enemy or ability I didn’t plan for. Losing was never a frustrating experience in Backpack Hero. I understood my shortcomings and planned for a better run. There are special challenges you can run if the normal game because too easy, but I mostly played in normal because I enjoyed the chill yet challenging vibe that came with it.
What I liked most about this game is how different every run felt. I never had the same build, even when I started building toward a familiar one. There was always something dumb and alluring I wanted to try. It didn’t always work out, but I had a lot of fun exploring and testing my options. The combat is a little simple. It is turn-based, and what you can do is limited by action points. You spend your action points by casting spells, attacking with weapons, or blocking with shields. I never felt like combat got stale because my strategy was constantly changing. Some runs were more fun than others, but such is life with RNGesus.
Inventory management is the most important mechanic in Backpack Hero. If you’ve played any MMO or RPG, you’ve become too familiar with the concept. I used to joke that most of my playtime on Guild Wars 2 was spent in my inventory. In Backpack Hero, you will consistently make difficult choices as you arrange and rearrange your bag. What you choose to keep in your bag affects how you play each round, so make sure you choose carefully. There are vendors and special events that will give you access to random and sometimes cool items, a smith that will upgrade your gear, and cursed items that will mess up your whole strategy. I spent a lot of time theory-crafting the perfect build and had a blast doing it, even if I never got impressively far. There are probably guides out there for the most optimal run, but I recommend you fail a couple of times on your own first.
If you have been considering getting this game or looking for a new game to get into, Backpack Hero is worth every penny. It is a cute casual game with enough kick to it to keep you entertained for hours. You can buy Backpack Hero on Steam for $16.99. Now would be a great time to pick it up because it is 20% off ($13.59) until the 13th.
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I was sent Brotatoas a review code. While I am very grateful for the opportunity, I will keep my review honest.
Brotato is a top-down arena shooter available now on Steam. Play as a potato and survive endless hordes of aliens. This game has no story. You choose a potato and do your best to survive.
The mechanics are simple, move the potato around the arena, and your potato does the rest. You start each round by choosing a potato. Each potato has unique skills and traits that affect the gameplay. Usually, they’ll have a boost in a stat at the cost of another and some kind of gimmick. You unlock additional potatoes by playing the game and unlocking achievements.
As you kill aliens, you pick up XP to level up your character and currency to buy upgrades. At the end of each round, you chose an upgrade for every level you gain and buy items or weapons from a shop. The upgrades and items you choose from are random. While some of my runs were easier than others, I felt the RNG was fair.
The character auto-attacks, so you only have to worry about the movement. I preferred using a controller, but do whatever is comfortable. Where this game gets complicated is in the choices you make for upgrades. These choices affect how strong your potato gets, so choose wisely. Often, you will have to choose between picking up the resources you need to get stronger or simply surviving the round. As simple as this game looks, it can get pretty technical.
I loved Brotato! The art is cute, the music is great, and the gameplay is fun. It was hard to put this game down because the more I played, the more I obsessed with my strategy. This is a great casual game to pick up because it is engaging enough to keep your attention, and you can return to it without having to remember anything. Brotato is $4.99 on Steam, but it is on sale for $3.99 until June 30. Grab your copy today! The game has been announced to for the Switch, but no date has been set.
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I was sent Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine as a review code. I am very grateful for this opportunity, but won’t let it sway my opinions. This will be an honest review of the game.
I covered Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine in a previous post when I got to try the game early at GDC. While I didn’t get to finish the demo, I liked the game enough to want to play more of it. The game is cute, unique, and challenging. After spending more time with the game, my opinions remain mostly unchanged, but I’ve got a few addendums I’d like to make.
Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is a match-four game like you’ve never played before. Dr. Fetus has created a machine to clone his own Meat Boy. With your help, he will weed out the undesirable traits and build the perfect Meat Boy with what is left. To beat a level, you must match colors to fill the meter while avoiding hazards like saws or missiles. Levels start easy, but they quickly become impossible. Dr. Fetus slowly introduces new hazards that will make levels frustratingly bloodied. Do not be tricked by the false sense of security this game may give you. After completing a set number of levels, you can face off against a boss and move on to a new world. Bosses are hard and are sure to claim a few controllers.
I enjoyed this game a lot, but it isn’t something I can play to completion. While each level offers unique challenges and mechanics, the gameplay grows stale. As good of a match-four game, as this is, my attention span can only handle so much matching. This is going to be a game you come back to when you want something different, but still want a challenge. Unless you are someone that likes to collect achievements, or good at these kinds of games, I don’t see people finishing this game in one go.
The game’s difficulty is going to be the main barrier to entry. While I didn’t have an issue with the difficulty, I can see how the frustration it generates can kill its enjoyment. Some levels are annoying, and others feel slow because of their mechanics. As frustrated as I got with this game, I still found myself going back for more. The key to enjoying this game is taking breaks.
So is this game worth it? for $10 it is. The game is easy to get into, challenging enough to keep you invested, and the art is super cute. It is sad watching the clones die, but you quickly get desensitized. This is a great game to buy if you are in the market for a game that isn’t a huge investment. There isn’t a complicated story you need to remember or difficult mechanics to memorize. You can return to this game after long breaks and remember where you left off, and why you put it down in the first place. Dr. Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine is a frustrating simple game you will enjoy if you are the cool kind of masochist.
The last time I covered a Nintendo Direct, I listed every game presented. That was a bit overkill, so I have narrowed the list to the games I am most excited about. These are the games announced in the Nintendo Direct that I am considering getting for myself, and the list is in no particular order. Anything I leave out isn’t bad, it just isn’t my vibe.
STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R
I lied in my introduction and will lead with the game I am most excited about, STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R. I am always in the market for a solid RPG, and this one looks great. I love the art, the mechanics seem solid, and I’ve only heard good things about the story. This is a reboot of the original game with promises of a better player experience. There will be new art, mechanics, and quality-of-life changes that fans should be happy about. I love that Nintendo is digging into its classic library and brining back a lot of titles that I missed out on and bringing them into the modern era of gaming. I know I could play the original by other means, but I like the convenience of playing on my Switch. STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R releases on November 2, 2023. Preorders aren’t open yet, but you can wishlist it.
Persona 5 Tactica
I have an odd relationship with strategy games. Historically I have not been a fan, but I have been sent a few good ones that have changed my opinions of the genre. I am genuinely excited for Persona 5 Tacticabecause it looks like a lot of fun. The art style is cute, the gameplay looks manageable, and I always end up buying Persona games. Persona 5 Tactica is set to release on November 17, 2023. It isn’t open for pre-orders yet, but you can wishlist it. I would wait to see if they come out with a collectors edition because they always load those up with cute must-haves.
DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince
I know this one will be a bit controversial because it is a Pokemon clone, but it can’t be worse than Scarlet and Violet. I remember playing Monster Warrior Monsters back in the day and loving every minute of it, so I am getting this DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS for the taste of nostalgia. Dragon Quest games are generally a good time, so I feel like it is one of the safer games on my list. I love the art, the story seems interesting, and who doesn’t want another monster-catching game? DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince comes out on December 1, 2023. Pre-orders aren’t open yet, but you can wishlist it till then.
Silent Hope
As I’ve mentioned before, I am always in the market for RPGs, and Silent Hope is a cute one I can get behind. The story seems interesting, and the art and combat style remind me of Dragalia Lost. I loved Dragalia Lost, and I am still sad Nintendo shut it down. I am here for anything that can capture the spirit of that game. Silent Hope comes out on October 3, 2023. Don’t forget to Wishlist it!
Gloomhaven
Gloomhaven is getting ported to the Switch, and I couldn’t be more excited. Gloomhaven is one of the board games I would love to play if I had friends to play with. Until then, I will have to settle for the video game adaptation, which is a pretty solid experience. The mechanics are fun, and the art is great. I can’t wait to be able to sit back on the couch and play this game. Gloomhaven on September 18, 2023, and you can pre-order your copy today! The Mercinaries Edition is $39.99, and the Gold Edition is $49.99
This holiday season is going to be rough on my wallet. There is a lot more to see, so make sure check out the full announcement if you have time. If you’ve been enjoying my content, don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Make sure you share my posts with your friends. Until next time, thanks for reading!
