A Pit Stop for the Brain At 27, living with my parents definitely has its perks, but spending my entire Tuesday morning drafting up a formal $8,000 annual rental agreement to present to them has left my brain completely fried. When the logistics of adulting…

A Sinner’s Salvation The survival horror renaissance of the 2020s has largely been defined by massive, big-budget remakes. But what happens when an indie studio looks at the DNA of Resident Evil 4 and BioShock, drenches it in twisted Spanish folklore, and forces the player…

Dial-Up Dread There is a very specific, undeniable creepiness to outdated technology. Long before the internet was a sanitized, corporate mega-mall of social media feeds, it was a quiet, isolated frontier. Heaven Does Not Respond, the new analog horror title from indie developer Rise Studios,…

A Bloody Good Travel Companion Before I pack my bags for San Francisco later this week, I need to lock in a solid game for the flight. Between the long hours walking the floor at the Game Developers Conference and eventually winding down in my…

Escaping the Free-to-Play Grind in Aces of Thunder For over a decade, Gaijin Entertainment’s War Thunder has dominated the military vehicle combat market. It boasts an incredible physics engine and a massive roster of historical aircraft. However, it also famously features one of the most…

A Ninja’s Journey Begins in Voxel Form Every so often, an indie game slips onto the Steam storefront with little fanfare but an undeniable sense of charm. Katana Dragon: Chapter 1, developed by the Spanish indie studio Tsunoa Games, is exactly that kind of hidden…

Subway Surfers for Speed Demons There is a very specific, deeply irresponsible fantasy that every motorcycle rider (and many drivers) has had while sitting in gridlock traffic: What if I just pinned the throttle and split the gap? LANESPLIT, a new indie title developed and…

I Want to Believe For the past few years, the cooperative horror genre has been entirely dominated by the paranormal. We have hunted demons, identified poltergeists, and hid in closets from revenants. But what if the thing bumping in the night isn’t a restless spirit,…

All Aboard the Sequel Express When Monster Train 2 launched last year, it had massive shoes to fill. The original game was a watershed moment for the roguelike deckbuilder genre, offering a multi-floor, tower-defense twist on the formula popularized by Slay the Spire. Thankfully, the…

Welcome to the Colony… Wait, Wrong Game If you have been craving a Viking game that trades the mythological superpowers of God of War or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for mud, blood, and turn-based shield walls, NORSE: Oath of Blood might just be the raiding party…