Little Kitty, Big City (Switch, Xbox One, X/S, PC)
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Posted on May 31st, 2024 by
In this unique game you play as a regular old house cat. You are lying on your favorite windowsill when you accidentally roll over and fall out. You land safely via a string of comical incidents, but now you must figure out how to get back up to your owner’s apartment. So you must explore the big city below, helping out other animals and causing cat-like mischief as well. This game reminds me of a mix of Untitled Goose Game, as well as a PS2 game I played a long time ago called A Dog’s Life, which was kind of the same premise except you were a dog doing dog things. The game also has a bit of a Katamari Damacy vibe with the simple graphics and the Japanese style city setting. Little Kitty, Big City is available on some current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.
Kudzu (Switch)
Posted on May 29th, 2024 by
Kudzu was originally a modern day homebrew monochrome Game Boy game. You could even buy a cartridge for it. And now you can play it on your Nintendo Switch. In the game, a mysterious asteroid falls on a mountain nearby a mansion and surrounding farmland, which causes the plants to become sentient. When the invasive plant species Kudzu was introduced, it takes over everything in a plan to rule the world. A team of botanists are dispatched to research this phenomenon. You play as the gardener Max, and it’s up to you to solve the mystery of the Kudzu and save the day. The game is an overhead action adventure that pays homage to classic titles like The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Unplugged: Around the World in 10-15 Minutes (Boardgame)
Posted on May 28th, 2024 by
The Roll and Write genre, where gamers roll dice and use the results to fill in a scorepad, continues to gain momentum. I suspect this is due in part to the low cost of entry. This is particularly true for print and play games. If standard dice are used, all that players need is a printed copy of the scorepad. Variations have appeared over the years, including using a deck of cards to make a Flip and Write game. Around the World in 10-15 Minutes eschews both dice and cards to allow the active player to choose the result for the turn, effectively creating a Choose and Write game. The game sheet consists of a map of the world connected by lines with two icons located on each continent and two on each city. The active player chooses whether everyone moves, marks off a continent icon, or marks off a city icon, with the active player gaining the selected benefit twice. All three choices lead to scoring opportunities and the game runs until one player has visited each continent and returned to their starting city. Points are added and a winner is determined. Since there are no dice or cards involved, the game only requires one maker and one scorecard per player – making it even more travel-friendly. Around the World in 10-15 Minutes is a print-and-play title currently up on Kickstarter until May 30th.
Unplugged: One Page Monster Hunt (Boardgame)
Posted on May 27th, 2024 by
Roll and write games continue to permeate the boardgame market. We’ve come a long way from the days of Yahtzee, where a player would make repeated die rolls and then mark up their scorepad. Current trends still have players marking up their private sheets, but now die rolls are shared by all players, keeping everyone involved in each roll. In a somewhat recent trend, designers have reasoned that if a single sheet of paper has now taken the place of a game board, can’t we also get rid of the game box? The result is a minor explosion of designers publishing their own games in a print and play format. I am happy to stand behind this trend as this style of game is almost always beginner-friendly and, better yet, the game doesn’t take up space on my gaming shelves! One of the recent projects I’ve stumbled across is One Page Monster Hunt, currently finishing up a Kickstarter run, ending May 27th. It has players filling up a dungeon using Tetris-like shapes while trying to manage the attacks of the dungeon’s villainous monster.
Timberdoku (Switch)
Posted on May 27th, 2024 by
Despite the title, Timberdoku doesn’t have much to do with Sudoku, other than the playing field being the same. I imagine the ‘timber’ part of the title refers to the wooden brown color scheme this game adopts. It really plays more like a cross between Tetris and those tanogram puzzles.
Rainbow Cotton (PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, X/S, PC)
Posted on May 24th, 2024 by
“Cotton” is a series of 2-D horizontally scrolling shooters that were very popular in the 90’s during the 16- and 32-bit eras. They star a candy-obsessed witch girl named Cotton who flies on her broom as she shoots down foes in spooky yet silly settings. It’s an example of the “Cute ‘Em Up” subgenre of shooters similar to titles like Twinbee, Parodius, Fantasy Zone, or Ordyne. In the past few years, many of these classic Cotton games have been re-released on newer platforms and I’ve been able to review them. But one game in the series hasn’t been released yet, until now. Rainbow Cotton was 3D on-rails shooter similar to Star Fox and it was on the Dreamcast. And now you can play it on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.
Bomb Cat (Switch)
Posted on May 22nd, 2024 by
Whenever a game gets popular, there are almost always imitators soon after. Such is the case with Suika Game. This was a fruit matching puzzle game that came out last year and gained a bit of notoriety on the Internet. Heck, even I reviewed it when it was free for a short while on the Nintendo Switch Online Service. And now here comes Bomb Cat, which is pretty much the exact same game on Switch, but with an explosive twist!
Ratyrinth (PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, X/S, PC)
Posted on May 20th, 2024 by
A couple of mice are separated by a big cat’s paw, and now it’s up to one to reach the other in this 2-D precision platformer. It features retro black and white graphics that remind me of the games I used to play on my old Apple ][+ computer when I was a kid. Ratyrinth is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.
Freedom Planet 2 (PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, X/S, PC)
Posted on May 17th, 2024 by
When I first started playing Freedom Planet 2 for this review, the first thing I thought of was how much things have changed since then, as it’s been nearly ten years since! Gaming-wise, I reviewed the first game on a totally different console generation. Also, Freedom Planet was meant to play like a classic 2-D Sonic style game, at a time when there wasn’t a whole lot of good 2-D Sonic titles around. But since then we’ve got Sonic Mania and Sonic Superstars, both of which are fairly decent (although I still like Freedom Planet 2 more). My life has also changed a lot since then, as I have a different job and live in a different place than I did back then. Even the world has changed, thanks to the COVID pandemic and whatnot. And now we finally have a sequel to Freedom Planet, and it’s vastly improved over the original game. Also I’d like to add that I’m so thankful for XSEED, the publishers of this game, as they’ve always been supportive of me and this site since they’ve been around. Anyway, Freedom Planet 2 is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.
Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher (Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, X/S, PC)
Posted on May 15th, 2024 by
Help a cat reach her scratching post in Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher. It’s a “Sokoban” style block pushing puzzle game with a few twists. Mimi’s scratching post is usually too high for her to reach, so you can push blocks and climb up them. You can even push two blocks together to make a higher block, but you can’t push it around then. Climbing on top of a box also lets you jump down over a gap. Finish a level by reaching the scratching post. The game is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.
