Every once in a while a game comes along with a message that gut punches you. It reminds you that the world is a cruel place full of people just trying to navigate their lives in difficult situations. My Child Lebensborn is one of those games: it is not an escapist game by any means. Not that escapism is a bad thing – I think that there’s great value in not thinking about your problems for a little bit.
Revisit: Two Eyes
After playing some bad nonogram games, I made it my mission to find a good one. Thankfully, GAMEFOX’s Two Eyes is just what I was looking for.
Up Left Out is the latest tricky, minimal puzzler from Hook, Klocki dev and it’s quite good
When I want to play a puzzle game, I tend to go for games that are low pressure: no timer, no move counters, nothing like that. I like to take my time and feel like I can put a game down when it’s frustrating me. Up Left Out definitely delivers my ideal experience in a puzzle game.
Destination Review: Florence
Florence is, most of all, a story about finding your passion and happiness. Florence is the name of the main character–the events are from her point of view. According to an interview with the creator, she’s a 25-year-old Chinese-Australian girl working a desk job. She wakes up every morning, gets on the train, works her job, then comes home and watches TV. She has a very set routine, until she hears cello music coming from an Indian musician named Krish and becomes enamored of him.
Give the human race a hand (or claw) in Part Time UFO from HAL Laboratory
I’m still in the beginning parts of the game with not too much unlocked, but I’m really digging the style and feel of the game. For being their first foray into mobile gaming, I’d say HAL Laboratory has a good handle on making a cute and fun game to sink some time into.
Revisit: Desert Golfing
All I know is that it goes on … and on … and on. You’re golfing in a desert, a sparse desert with no scenery. Except once every couple hundred screens you might see a cloud in the sky or a cactus in the background. What made those appear? Did I do anything? Can I interact with it?
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath and Munch’s Odyssey are on sale for Android
Two games from the franchise, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath and Oddworld: Munch’s Odyssey, are currently on sale on Google Play. Both are down to $0.99 from $2.99, and both are worth the price of admission.
Revisit: The Firm
It’s an arcade-style twitch-based game where you, an imminently replaceable stock trader in a large firm, have to swipe left and right on various stocks with limited identifiable information at a rate that increases heavily over time.
Ron Gilbert’s Thimbleweed Park will arrive-a-reno ‘damn soon’ on Android-a-reno
For those unfamiliar with Thimbleweed Park, the excellent retro point ‘n click adventure game released on PC and consoles in early 2017, there’s a prominent character-a-reno who has a tendency-a-reno to add the phrase-a-reno “a-reno” at the end of various words-a-reno.
Warps is the newest iteration on the Flow formula
Flow is one of the classic mobile games of this generation, featuring hundreds of puzzles where the only object is to connect colors from point A to point B without intersecting. It’s simple, minimal and effective. Recently, the fourth game in the series, Flow: Warps, was released on Android. The aesthetic of Flow hasn’t changed since the original release years ago, and it doesn’t need to. Since the original Flow came out, Big Duck Games have put out several packs of levels — a game called Flow: Hexes and a game called Flow: Bridges. Each of the games are free to play, with additional packs and the ability to remove ads behind a small fee. Hexes changes the shape of the playing field and bridges creates one-way intersections for the lines. In Warps, you have to create flows using a number of warps, two or more depending on the difficulty,…