Author: Obsidian

Every now and then, an indie game quietly drops onto the Steam storefront that perfectly captures the magic of a bygone era. If you grew up spending your weekends cross-legged in front of a CRT television playing the Nintendo GameCube or PlayStation 2, developer Studio Pixanoh has cooked up exactly what you are looking for. Released last week, Town of Zoz is a colorful, cel-shaded action-adventure game that seamlessly blends top-down, Zelda-style combat with the cozy agricultural simulation of games like Story of Seasons (formerly Harvest Moon). It is a game overflowing with personality, gorgeous anime-inspired cutscenes, and a shockingly…

There is a very specific sub-genre of indie games that exists purely to generate chaotic, screaming fits of laughter between a group of friends over Discord. Games like Lethal Company, Phasmophobia, and Content Warning have all mastered the art of balancing genuine tension with absolute comedic absurdity. Now, developer FuzzyBot has entered the ring with We Gotta Go. Released just a few days ago by publisher Mad Mushroom, this online co-op game takes the haunted mansion survival formula and injects it with an unrelenting, deeply juvenile sense of bathroom humor. The premise is as simple as it is ridiculous: you…

A Reckless Crossing into Early Access The “Age of Piracy” is a setting that gaming seems to struggle with constantly. For every masterpiece like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, we get a half-baked, heavily monetized live-service disappointment. When indie developer Kraken Express announced Windrose—promising a massive, procedurally generated PvE survival game with deep base building and brutal naval combat—it almost sounded too good to be true. But having spent a ridiculous amount of time in the recent demo, and now diving headfirst into the Early Access launch that dropped earlier this week, I can confidently say the hype is real.…

The Roswell Legacy The horror genre has seen a massive resurgence in “analog” and “found footage” styles lately, but few titles have managed to ground their terror in something tangible. Many space-themed horror games rely on jump-scaring grey aliens or galactic gore, but Who Are You!?—the debut episodic project from Haunting Humans Studio—takes a much more cerebral approach. Released on March 27th, the game puts players in Ray Roswell’s shoes. Ray is a man haunted by the disappearance of his wife two decades ago. Now, in a cruel echo of the past, his daughter has gone missing under similarly mysterious…

For decades, the video game industry has conditioned us to play the hero. We are the ones kicking down the dungeon doors, dodging the spike pits, and slaying the terrible beasts lurking in the dark for a chest full of gold. But what if the beast was tired of being hunted? What if the monster decided to fight back with a little architectural ingenuity? Published by the always-eccentric Devolver Digital and developed by Artificer, MINOS flips the traditional fantasy script entirely on its horned head. Released last week, this genre-bending indie title casts you as the fabled Minotaur, tasked with…

Vae Victis! Woe to the Conquered! For over two decades, the Legacy of Kain franchise has languished in agonizing purgatory. Boasting arguably the greatest writing and voice acting in the history of the medium, the saga of the vampire lord Kain and his betrayed, wraith-like lieutenant Raziel ended on a massive cliffhanger in 2003’s Legacy of Kain: Defiance. However, actually going back to play the original Defiance on modern hardware was a nightmare. Between abysmal keyboard controls, zero native gamepad support, and a highly restrictive, cinematic fixed-camera system that made basic platforming an exercise in sheer frustration, the game was…