Category: Reviews

If you’d rather listen to this review than read it, check out this recent podcast episode.

We Forlorn Few is the debut game from Brisbane based company KnifeEdge Games. 3-5 players are pitted against each other in the role of brave pioneers, travelling west across an unforgiving frontier in hopes of a better life. You start on one end of a nine-tile wide board and the first person to reach the other side win! Easy right? Not exactly.  Between you and your destination is a harsh wilderness that will test you every step of the way. To make any progress you will need to pay an increasingly high mix of food, water, or wood.

Unfortunately, there’s not enough to go around – so you might need to “borrow” what you need from other players. Initiate a fight and if you win, you can take your pick of your friend’s belongings. You can grab a gun (or two) to raise you chances of winning, but its dice based so losing is always a possibility. Losing, even if you are the attacker, means your enemy gets to take your items. Fighting for resources means risking your own, and sometimes that’s a risk you can’t afford to take. That’s why, the more civilised players will sit down, chat, and trade resources so everyone gets what they need.

I really enjoy the theme of this game because it fits the mechanics really well. A world of unrelenting, unpredictable challenges where people turn on each other out of desperation? What’s a better fit than the pioneer trails?

And I appreciate that it forces players to fight each other. I find that for me, and a lot of my friends, we can talk a big game but are gun shy when we’re actually in game.  WFF happily gave us a nudge, by making a good portion of the event cards trigger combat between players. Since no one was choosing to start the fighting, it was easier to get started, and once it had people were more than happy to keep things going to get their vengeance.

But what’s the result of this pointless violence, can you die? Well sort of. Your health in this game is basically the thirst, hunger and wagon damage that I mentioned earlier. Strangely enough you don’t lose health from combat, just your stuff. If you take too much damage, you’ll lose one of your spare lives (or companions), and with each life lost your threshold shrinks. Lose them all and you’ll turn ravenous.

Ravenous players are no longer making their way to Newhaven, all that matters is satisfying their burning hunger.  Not only does this mean WFF avoids the awful “You’re dead now watch everyone else have fun” experience, but it also helps the game feel balanced. If you’re too brutal on your way ahead of the pack, you’ll make a lot of enemies who, once they turn ravenous, will have the power they need to get revenge. Or if you’ve had a bad run of luck and lost your chance to win early on, the game gives you a new win condition to pursue. Ravenous characters have their own drawbacks too though. They need to fight (and win) constantly, or they’ll quickly die. It’s a rule that keeps them aggressive, bold, and desperate: right at home on the frontier.

We Forlorn Few is a great looking game. It’s not intricate, polished, or vibrant like some board games but it would be weird if it was. All the art in this game perfectly matches the gritty high-stakes world it’s drawing from. The character art is high contrast with black shading and flat colours. The board tiles are brightly coloured and simple, which is great – you can see what’s happening in the game at a glance.

I will admit, I spent a while trying to find the best way to store the pieces in the box, and I wasn’t able to land on something I was satisfied with. Everything is put away slightly differently each time, but they did provide more than enough plastic bags to keep things secure so it’s a mild annoyance, not an actual issue.

The rule book is well laid out and everything is broken down into the separate steps of gameplay, along with a clear example of how it works. I also loved the centre spread which was a portrait gallery for all of the companions. It was a closer look than the small tokens and gave each companion a job. Not that those jobs made any mechanical difference but gave us something to consider when picking who we’d eat.

I will also give props to the games diverse cast of characters. There are five playable characters to choose from, and I was immediately struck that three of them are women. It’s not a huge deal, there’s only small mechanical differences between the characters, but it would have been very easy to have a majority or all of them be men. So yeah, lets get more women dying in the wilderness?!

I’ve played this game several times and it hasn’t become any less fun or engaging. Because of the randomized challenges, every time is different, so things don’t get boring after you figure out the strategies. I suspect We Forlorn Few’s theme and mechanics might scare off some newer board-game players, but it says suitable for players with all levels of experience,  and it means it. So grab your friends, load your wagon, and watch your back!

You can check out We Forlorn Few here: www.knifedgegames.com/

If you’d rather listen to this review than read it, check out this recent podcast episode.

I set out with the intention of limiting comparisons between Frostpunk 2 and the original, which is one of my favourite games. Because a game should be able to stand on its own after all. But that’s not going to happen because it turns out Frostpunk 2’s biggest issue is that it lives in the shadow of its predecessor.

The developers, 11-bit studios, were open from the start that they didn’t want to make a copy of the original, but instead a game that expands upon the world of Frostpunk in new and daring ways. What’s not to love about that?  Surely it’s can’t be that different anyway right? Well…

Frostpunk 2 takes place 30 years after the original and is bigger in almost every way. The resilient New London settlement has grown into a thriving metropolis and you, as the steward, are responsible for guiding its tens of thousands of citizens.

With so many people in one place, it’s unsurprising they’ve splintered into factions with different values and ideas about the city’s future. In the council hall, representatives of these factions vote on every law you want to enact in the city, and you need a majority to pass. You can win votes with promises and privileges, but the more you favour one faction, the more discontent grows within the others.

It might seem easier to cater to everyone and strive for balance, but you’ll end up with a stagnant city and no friends to rely on. Eventually you need to choose allies who can back you up when hard choices need to be made. Choose wisely.

This political management is the centerpiece of Frostpunk 2, and 11-bit studios pulled it of incredibly well.

But it’s not all political! What about the survival? What about the city building?!

Here’s where things get complicated for me. 11-bit studios put so much into this game that it can at points detract from the experience.

For example, you no longer worry about individual buildings and individual people, instead you’re building districts and managing entire workforces. This makes sense for a city that’s a lot older and bigger than the first game, but it removed the satisfying sensation of clicking things into place around your city ring. A more genuine issue was that the bigger population, and continuous population growth, made it harder to care about people.

In the first game every time someone got sick or died, there was a direct impact. In this game people got sick by the hundreds, and they were healed in the background while I was trying to de-tangle everything else in the game. And if they did end up dying? Oh well! We’ll recover within a few months. I understand why it’s done like this, and I don’t really know how it could be done differently with such a large scope, but it removed a huge part of the weight from the moral choices Frostpunk usually centres.

While the mechanics don’t quite deliver, Frostpunk 2 does do any amazing job at capturing and improving upon the vibes of the original game. New London is a beautiful looking city with multiple layers dug into the earth. I love the design of the buildings, they look futuristic in the Frostpunk setting, but also grimy and gritty from their decades of use. Also, the soundtrack, by Piotr Musiał, captures the tense, unforgiving, but sometimes hopeful world that New London rests in.

While there are some genuine flaws with this game, a lot of my issues came down to disappointment that it was different than the first. So strangely enough, I think people who haven’t played the first Frostpunk would enjoy this game more than people who have. But I played both and I enjoyed both and honestly I respect what 11-bit studios did. Would it have been easy to churn out a copy of the first game with some different scenarios and slightly tweaked graphics? Yeah. I probably would have bought it too.

But they made a game that feels unique, not just in comparison to its predecessor but to any other city-building games.

Developers; Progress Knight: ihtasham42, Progress Knight Quest: Symb1 & indomit
Publisher: Github.com
Platform: Browser Games
Created Dates; Progress Knight: 26/12/20, Progress Knight Quest: 11/11/22
Genre: Idle Game

This isn’t so much a review of Progress Knight from ihtashham42 and the evolution, Progress Knight Quest developed by Symb1 and modified by indomit, all of which are available to play on github, but rather a write up of my experience when a month ago I searched for something to afk play while editing podcasts and playing other games. I was looking for something to put in the background and play in the corner of my screen. And on screenrant.com I found it, lurking under the title “10 Best Idle Games On PC, Ranked”. It was everything I was looking for, simple visuals, nothing but text, moving bars, and buttons, nothing too flashy to take my attention from other things, no sound, no distraction, just simplicity… it was perfect. So, I google searched Progress Knight and found it in github. Not even a program. Just something running in a browser. I tucked it into the far left of my left monitor, out of my direct eyesight and started playing. The window taking up no more than an eighth of my side screen, and there it lurked waiting for my eye to catch it.

Progress Knight in its simplest form is an idle game with the hook that you’re living the life of a peasant and climbing the ranks of society. You start homeless, able to hire a book for 10 copper a day, or a tent for 15 all while you beg for change on a street corner earning only 10 copper a day. Each of these gain you bonuses to help you skill up in life, be it the concentration to learn skills faster, the strength to help increase certain jobs incomes, the ability to be more productive and gain job experience faster, or even the ability to meditate to increase your happiness and multiply your life experience bonuses. However, choose wisely as you can only do one thing at a time, and there’s only so many days in a year, and so many years in a life… So, as you gain more money, you can get a shack, small house, some dumbbells, even a personal squire and you balance all of these with your earnings.

As you age from youth (the game starts you at 14 years of age), to adulthood, you stumble upon an amulet on your 25^th birthday, the groundhog day token to the game’s loop. At 45 it shivers and changes gaining a symbol that is never described. And just before you rest your head on your deathbed at 70 a living eye emerges from the centre. Do you dare touch it? If you do each level you earned in skills and jobs gain you multipliers to aid in the speed of leveling of the same. And that’s kind of it, well, except for the change in form it gains again at 200 years, and again at a millennia.

And I blinked… Now the game took up half the screen on my second monitor.

Now I’m jumping between strength, battle tactics, and mana control, something you gain through excelling in mediation and concentration… It doesn’t seem to do anything yet but it hints of the possibility that maybe you could be the Merlin of this story.

And then I blinked again…

Weeks have passed and after finding the discord link in the settings, I went looking for spoilers as progress has slowed down. Not only have I realised that I’m starting to become the villain through my need to extend my life through magical means, but once I hit 200 years of age, I may have started to invest in Evil. Nothing like some Dark influence, Demon Training, and Blood meditation to sooth the desire for more flashing numbers and the slow accumulation of power, palaces, and a personal need for perfection… So, I went searching as I wanted to know if I was nearing the end of the game… But instead, I found the games most recent successor. Progress Knight Quest.

Suddenly instead of training one thing at a time, I train everything… So much progression so quickly, I outpace my previous evolution in mere hours. My mind sparkles as endorphins flood the synapses, family duty fades to mere nuisances, other games and responsibilities become the background tasks to watching the life of this unnamed character trapped in a time loop of progression.

The soul crushed from me, eyes dry and sore… I blinked again…

More weeks have passed, and the game dominates my second monitor. The computer left on overnight to grind the millennia of life needed to progress. But not before I lie exhausted in my chair, mind blank in the faint blue glow emanating from the flashing bars moving across my screen. The browser window the only open program on my desktop, house guests visit, family sick, yet still I am drawn to the screen and it’s pulsing, beating litany of indicator bars. I’m now a chronomancer before the age of 15, the evil now coursing through my veins, my research completely focused on the all seeing eye but yet something else drives me further. My reach for the void, it’s servitude and compounding evil gain driving my focus as the clock clicks forever closer to midnight. My eyes dry, my dry tongue desperately trying to convince the last remaining neurons in my brain that I need a drink, and the last feeble attempt of my consciousness frantically urging me to bed and the sleep I so desperately need. But my back curls and my head inches closer to the flashing lights, and maybe if I wait a little longer I’ll hit the millennium lived years marker and can one again reach into the void.

And you want to know the worst part? For the month that this has lived on my screen, and the 2 to 3 weeks of gameplay I’ve invested I haven’t even touched a thing called “essence” or something I’ve only seen in patch notes…Transcendence.

Progress Knight really is what an idle game would be if you removed the major distractions, boiled it down to just the basics and just focussed on a story hook. No visuals but the text, bars, and buttons feel totally adequate to convey what you want when you want it. The resetting, so far, never feels like you’ve taken two steps back for one step forward, something I’ve felt seems to be quite common in some other idle games where the sacrifice for progress loop can feel mediocre and disheartening. In Progress Knight the only time I’ve felt this is when I got my first point of evil. While it gave me a small modicum of compounded progression, it did not feel like enough to really strive for. Since then, every sacrifice has felt impactful and earned, so kudos to the developers. Mind you when I started to feel that the original game began to slow down (after reading more it was the end of the base game), I moved to Progress Knight Quest which is a hands-off mod of Progress Knight 2.0 and included more evolutions, buffs, and overall content. So if you found joy in Cookie Clicker or AdVenture Capitalist give Progress Knight Quest a shot. And if, like me, these kinds of games take over your life, make you avoid social event, eating, and job deadlines… maybe just load up Animal Crossing again, your villagers miss you.

Hmmm, maybe I should just play one more life, I’ll go to bed once I hit the next milestone…

Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Audio: Joshua Carro
Platforms: Playstation 4 & 5, Xbox One, Series S &X, Epic Store on PC.
Release Date: 25/3/22
Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG, FPS, Looter Shooter.

Before sitting down to write this review of Tiny Tina’s Wonderland I checked my playtime of this new instalment of the Borderlands Franchise. Nearly 80 hours, which beats most Borderlands games I’ve played in the past… So, what makes this game my pick as one of the best Borderlands games released?
The game, for those Borderlands aficionados, takes place between the last good game and the bad one you probably invested too many hours into, where Tiny Tina is still thirteen, your drinks are non-alcoholic, and the innuendo is masked.

So… umm… You play as the noobie, a creature of your own surmise (genderless options included – plus click that slider override button, you monster), in the tangled web of Tiny Tina’s Wonderland, and the world she has … created? Spoiler free review here, the dynamic between Tina and the Dragon Lord is… TASTY? And confusing. Halfway through my second playthrough with my cousin, he asked what the actual dynamic was, and all I could say was “yes” without spoiling anything.

And you are stuck playing the game because you’re trapped under a mountain with these people? So, 4^th wall breaks are in, and disbelief is suspended as you are lead through a story of Tina’s imaginings/traumas.
And I sure hope you’re ready, because it follows all the machinations of Dungeons and dragons and Tabletop enthusiasts out there, calling back to retcons, Fantasy reimagining, and a heap more…

But what exactly is the bunkers and badasses world in the imaginings of Tiny Tina’s Wonderland? At it’s core it’s just a reskin of borderlands 3. Same mechanics, renamed loot, grenades are now OP and reclassed as spells… but the core difference is the beautiful new settings, removal of cars and in its place a game board (much wow, many happy) and the new class mechanics. In Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands you get to choose between different classes that with an expanding list as the DLC’s are released, PLUS, new to the franchise, is the real RPG hard-line, BASE STATS. Wisdom, intelligence, strength, dexterity, constitution, and affinity? I guess because we all have excellent charisma… SEDUCE THE DRAWBRIDGE!

Later into the game classes can be miss matched aka multi-classed to create nearly anything that fits your play style. I tend toward face smashing and machine gunning badasses, or minion hoarding necro-druids… all of which tendencies I can indulge with relative ease in the base multiclassing Wonderlands affords me. And should you prefer to spell sling while invisible… you are covered as well…

Outside of that it’s a similar looter shooter you know borderlands to be, follow quest markers, listen to quest voice actors quip and joke, kill the big bad at the end and then get overwhelming numbers of stuff pop from their corpse in pretty lights only to be underwhelmed that none of it fits your playstyle… but fear not, when you roll that nat 20 you can go from offhandedly fish slapping to ultimate badassery… if you have any backpack space left to carry it…
So, max out those carrying slots because you’re gonna need them. Like most games in the borderlands series I do find I spend about 20% of my playtime fiddling with my inventory… those numbers can be damned confusing, especially with even more interactions now taking place with spells, companions, arrows and more taking even more slots in the lottery of stat boosts on weapon and armour. So take your time, shoot some targets out the back of Izzy’s Fizzies and figure out what you have… and play what feels good.

While the audio created by Joshua Carro is good, it can get either repetitive in the Overworld or can very much fade so far into the background it forgets to loop and you sit there in silence… well as much silence as you can be while voice actors repeat death lines ad- infinitum/ad nauseum over the top of the sound effects of your arsenal and spells assaulting not only the enemies but your ears. I only noticed the music when it was a feature of a quest, or I heard the same riff, repeatedly. Good or bad, your choice. However, the voice acting was superb with Andy Samberg and Wanda Sykes cast as your narrative friends, the big bad Dragon Lord by Will Arnett and then further layered with veteran voice actors quipping their way throughout the game.

This is a game with more than a healthy stuffing of tabletop humour with SNL skit comedy styling. Should that not be your cup’o’tea guvnar then you will nope out fairly quickly crying cringe to the winds of suffering and the goddess annoya. But should you chuckle, giggle and gaffaw in merry mirth, you will be blessed by the table top gods with tongue in cheek humour, references to the insanity of tabletop RPG DM madness, as well as the dreaded “popular culture” references as one must in this day and age.

There is an ugly to this tale, there are glitches where inventory sprites do not load, and journals of quests disappear, but none game breaking enough that won’t be fixed by a quick reload back to the main screen (load this on the SSD should you have one). And load up with friends, not online weirdos, or you may find your characters stats maxed out and all the joy of any challenge in this game gone.

So, after finishing the final quest in Tiny Tina’s Wonderland I am left grinding for better weapons in the end game rogue lite chaos chambers, researching current metas and builds all while trying desperately to find friends to replay the side quests and main story like some junky trying to get their next fix. Desperately I start to create characters, new looks, new weapons, synergies, only to drop them the next time I load up the game to try another… only to resolve to replay the game with harder mobs, same skillset, and a grinding meta mindset.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderland was developed by Gearbox, produced by 2K Games, and is currently available on Xbox, Playstation and through the Epic Store on Windows. I bought and played through Epic on PC.

Designer: Rob Heinsoo, & Cory Jones
Artist: Nick Edwards
Publisher: Cryptozoic Entertainment
Release Date: Feb 2012
Genre: Party Card Game

Are you sick of boring games involving strategy and money and stuff? Do you just want to mercilessly kill your friends over and over until you’ve asserted your dominance while cackling from your throne of broken promises? Then maybe… just maybe you’re hard enough to …

Welcome to … EPIC SPELL WARS OF THE BATTLE WIZARDS: DUAL AT MOUNT SKULLZFYRE!!! … Now where were we….

Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards is a series of games with an art style reminiscent of an evolution of Robert Crum’s work through the looking glass of Superjail and Adventure Time… think a 90s version of Adventure Time cross Mad magazine and you’re getting close. The artist is Nick Edwards and I thoroughly recommend looking him up for more of the strange. The edition we will be talking about today though is the first in the series and came out in February of 2012 … IT’S A DECADE OLD!? Yup and filled with humour suitable for all those fart gigglers out there.

Inside this hardcover box there is no board to speak of, rather a cardboard cut-out standee of Mt Skullzfyre to battle over, several last wizard standing tokens, because once you get a taste for the mighty magic duels you endure, you too will want to replay this with all the benefits that lie therein. Some skull tokens… and all the following;

• 8 EPIC wizard cards to choose your player from ranging from Pisster the Pissed Wizard, Krazztar the Blood’o’mancer to Princess Holiday and her FURICORN.
• 8 wild magic cards
• 25 dead wizard cards with 8 different effects of various rarities and benefits
• 5 different magic types
• And 25 totally different treasure cards… the ultimate powerhouse of buffs, charms, and sensual loot. And really the only strategic advantage you can get in game. So HOARD THEM LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT… because it surely does.
• And lastly the cards that you will use as components to cast your epic spells of destruction of which there are 20 each of delivery, source, and quality to choose from.

Now for the bit where I run through how to play.

Choose your wizard wisely and put your skull token on your life counter (20 to start with) and deal each player 8 spell cards. From those cards you create your spell… each spell contains UP TO 3 parts. A source, quality, and delivery. And on your delivery card you have your initiative. “But I don’t have one of those” you say in your whiny baby voice. Well play what you want, I’m not your dad. If you do play less cards you get to go first with the initiative of the delivery dictating again who goes first. And if you don’t have a delivery card? You fancy pants, go last!

Now it’s time to read out your spell and rain destruction on your foes. Each component of the spell has text describing what it does, which can range from returning precious life points to your board, gaining treasures, randomised effects, treachery, or just plain old hell fire damage. And who wouldn’t want to scream epic spells into the void such as Pam and Hecuba’s Ritualistic Nuke-u-lur Meltdown, or Ben Voodoo’s Wild Magic Bedazzlement… oh yeah, wild magic. Basically, you draw cards until you find one to replace it… RANDOMNESS MAGIC! Now should your spell not contain one of those qualities fear not, create your own words to describe it, you’re the wizard after all.

After draining your foes of their life points you, oh mighty evil one, receive a last wizard standing token while they, the losers that they are, receive a dead wizard card with the attached buffs to mitigate their weaknesses when facing you. Then, like your many skeletal minions, everyone rises from the dead and resets their health pool and the war begins afresh. And you continue this until you run out of energy to manically laugh at your foes as you grind them beneath your heel.

This is one of the few games I regularly get out at gatherings because there is little to no strategy to winning, and losing gets you buffs to balance and give you the win in the next round. So I would call this more of a social game and advise you to leave your ‘must win’ feelings in the strategy game box where it belongs. So just have some fun and to make it extra special, a personal favourite home rule of mine is to choose a role-playing voice and go hard for the whole game (thanks Wil Wheaton).

The crazy visuals, names and pure randomness make this very enjoyable and with other settings and new mechanics introduced in stand-alone expansions, Dual at Mt. Skullzfyre is a great place to start your journey with Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards.

Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Dual at Mt. Skullzfyre was created by Cory Jones, Designed by Rob Heinsoo and published by Cryptozoic Entertainment.

Developer: Laundry Bear Games
Publisher: Laundry Bear Games
Composer: Halina Heron
Platforms: PC, Mac via steam and itch.io, iOS
Release Date: For PC & Mac 18^th October 2017, iOS 22^nd November 2018
Genre: Story-Driven Management Sim.

A trigger warning for this review. I will be talking respectfully about the processes that take place within a funeral home from washing a body to the process of cremation. If these things may trigger you, please skip this review.

A Mortician’s Tale is a game that introduces you to the intimate and confronting world of what happens to your body after death. You play the black-haired, tattooed Charlie, the newest funeral director in the family-run “Rose and Daughters Funeral Home”. Charlie has managed to land on her feet with a boss who eases her into the swing of things, with her first job being a closed casket funeral. So, to show your respect you are asked to wash the body to prepare it for the funeral, and then attend the funeral. After changing into a “respectful” outfit, covering your tattoos, you reminisce with the attendees, listen to their qualms, and take a moment to stand by the coffin and process the death yourself.

The gameplay has a very simple loop. Go to your computer to check your emails where quite a lot of exposition lies. You will find your Monthly Newsletter with handy dandy tips and tricks, your job for the day, and correspondence from friends and co-workers. Then you will follow the routine of attending to the client’s requests in the preparation of the body and attending the funeral. This can range from open caskets to cremations with all the tools and steps you would normally take simplified for the gameplay. However, the real gem of this game is the story inbuilt under this.

Each loop takes place about a month or so after the last. By reading the emails you follow the ownership of family-run business doing the best it can for their clients where the head wants to retire and slowly move into the hands of a larger conglomerate. In this business the model is to push for sales and exploit the grief of families for higher profits and at the crux of this game, a few real issues. Do you respect the last wishes of a person, or go for that commission? Where do you stand when a family member wants something different to the person who once inhabited the body in front of you? Is processing this body worth the environmental impact? Is a funeral worth going into debt for?

The soothing, yet eerie background tracks composed by Halina Heron are a perfect accompaniment to the repetitive procedures, email reading, and funerals you attend. While the track’s loop isn’t very long, the tracks provide smooth loops and transitions between scenes. When it comes to sound effects, the ticking of the embalming fluid machine, the rumble of the cremation, and such can be quite confronting starting off, but quickly become routine. Other sounds are quite soft with the cremulator making a sandy hush that may be disconcerting for entirely different reasons.

A Mortician’s Tale is a simple story, in a simple point and click game, that hit quite close to home. I played this shortly after visiting a local mortician who had recently sent off a friend’s father and we sat and chatted for a few hours about many things, including the idea of being death-positive. I thought I knew the basics of what happens after someone dies and the processing of a body, but at the age of 38 this game taught me about new procedures, things that made me feel uncomfortable, and about not having a will which would leave it up to family or friends to deal with.

Overall, I recommend taking your time and playing A Mortician’s Tale. Not because it’s an amazing visual extravaganza, but if like me you haven’t thought too much about your post-mortem corpse disposal process, it will hopefully make you seriously reconsider the last impact you will leave on this earth. While also having few easter eggs to dig up for good measure.

A Mortician’s Tale was released in October of 2017 by Laundry Bear Games and is currently available for PC & Mac through Steam and Itch.io, and for mobile on iOS. I received my copy in a Humble Bundle.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the second instalment in the Miles Morales saga, Sony Pictures Animation’s adaptation of Marvel’s Spider-Verse series of comics. It has big shoes to fill following 2018’s beloved Into the Spider-Verse which introduced cinemagoers to a very different Spider-Man from the ones that have graced their screens in the past.

Miles Morales is an academically and artistically gifted but awkward and deeply conflicted 14-year-old from Brooklyn whose life is turned upside down when he gains the powers of Spider-Man. After witnessing the original Spider-Man die at the hands of Kingpin he is quickly forced to take up the mantle and save the multiverse with the help of a ragtag group of Spider-People from other dimensions.

Across the Spider-Verse picks up a year after the events of the original. Miles is growing up and learning to be Spider-Man all on his own since being separated from the Spider-friends he made last year, who he still feels are the only people who truly understand him. He continues to struggle with the pressure of balancing his self-expression, the responsibility of being Spider-Man, and his parents’ high expectations for his academic talents. A chance encounter with a superpowered criminal named The Spot pulls him back into the dimensional chaos of the Spider-Verse, he finally gets the chance to see his friends again and meets a whole lot of new ones along the way. The storytelling is just as gripping and emotional as the first film but offers us deeper insight into Miles’ personality and internal conflict as he grows up and grows into his role.

The only thing that detracted from my experience of Spider-Verse was that it felt like it ended during its second act with a cliffhanger and a teaser for the sequel, Beyond the Spider-Verse, which is slated for release in March 2024. The story suffers from being used as the setup for its own story and feels like it’s supposed to be viewed back-to-back with next year’s sequel.

Having said all of that, I still encourage you to go see this film on the biggest screen you can find and crank the volume for the absolutely bangin’ soundtrack composed by legendary hip hop producer Metro Boomin and featuring the voices of Future, Lil Uzi Vert, Nas, and many other hip hop greats. The music sets the stage and pace for jawdropping action scenes that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish and animation fans screaming “How did they do that?!” at the screen.

Across the Spider-Verse somehow manages to surpass the unbelievably high bar of animation finesse and creativity set by its predecessor with a playful use of the multiversal concept to introduce a blend of animation styles seamlessly integrated into the same scene. This is best exemplified by Hobie Brown AKA Spider-Punk, a character drawn in the style of a collaged together DIY punk zine with different parts of his outfit hand-drawn on different layers of paper that move independently. Spider-Punk’s DIY style is effortlessly blended into fluid animations that let him interact with the sets and characters of the movie’s incredibly slick primary art style influenced by Marvel Comics, as well as other extradimensional characters who are drawn just as distinctly as him. Even gadgets and powers originating from different dimensions are animated in their native art style while being wielded by characters like Miles and Gwen.

Overall, Across the Spider-Verse is a masterpiece of animated filmmaking that could go down as one of the greatest comic book adaptations of all time, but its fate lies in the balance of whether Sony can execute on their own setup in March’s sequel.

We saw the film at a preview screening at Event Cinemas Chermside with press tickets provided to 4ZZZ by Sony Pictures Releasing.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the latest addition to the ‘video game movies can be good’ evidence pile.

Produced by Chris Meledandri and Shigeru Miyamoto (basically Mario’s dad), and the awesome talents of Illumination, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has the bros themselves, Mario and Luigi, sucked into the magical world of warp pipes, mushroom people, and power-up blocks. Unfortunately, Bowser is set to destroy everything, find love, and reign supreme.

As we settled in the cinema surrounded by kids, big and small, we were immediately hit with a wave of nostalgia as the titular characters appeared on the big screen, looking much more appealing and familiar than their last foray onto the big screen. Animation-wise everything looked gorgeous, with the video game characters requiring only a few tweaks to maximise their characterisation and expressiveness. Coupled with Illumination’s team, the world of the Mushroom Kingdom took on a kind of beauty never really expressed in the games.

The musical score was an auditory delight, with familiar themes making an appearance constantly, as well as the additions of a few rock and love ballads. We were especially thrilled to hear the ‘DK Rap’ at the appropriate moment.

Turning game logic into movie logic is a challenging thing, and incorporating familiar mechanics into the movie world, and the powerups, was an experience all on its own. It was a lot of fun to see a powerup block, to see what the powerup was, and then to witness how that powerup would be used was hysterical. That wasn’t the only example of how the movie translated video game mechanics into the world, with my favourite mechanic being a Mario Kart mechanic, where you’re required to build your kart. The addition of this mechanic was clever and overall just a lot of fun, adding a lot of character to the setting, and being a familiar call-back.

And that was a common theme. As adults who grew up with these games, it was a joy to spot various references and additions, nudge each other, and meet each other’s grins as our inner child fed on the nostalgia. And for the kids who also grew up with these games, just perhaps with more pixels, it was a satisfying movie, with thoughtful nods and delights for them. Really, I don’t think anyone left the cinema without feeling a bit like a kid, in the best way possible.

I’m not sure if it’s a very rewatchable movie for the adults, but it was a lot of fun to watch through for the first time. For the kids, easily something I’d rewatch a couple of times. There were scenes that had me laughing, cheering for our heroes, appreciating the references, or even needing a tissue for (sue me, I’m a sap).

It’s a fun movie, a beautiful movie, and definitely a fantastic way to spend a couple of hours. Everyone’s performance was lovely, especially Bowser’s, the music was a treat, and we all left the cinema feeling that urge to boot up the Nintendo64, Switch, or NintendoDS and continue the nostalgia trip.

Zed Games were provided movie tickets.

Developer: Hanako Games, Ratalaika Games
Publisher: Hanako Games, Ratalaika Games
Platforms: PC (Windows, Mac, & Linux), Playstation 4, Playstation 5 Xbox One, Xbox Series, & Nintendo Switch
Released: 2nd June, 2012
Genre: Roleplaying Game, Political Simulation, Raising Sim, Strategy

The nation of Nova is a proud one, standing resilient for centuries under the rule of magic-wielding “Lumen” kings and queens. A recent tragedy, the loss of beloved queen Fidelia, has shaken Nova to its core and left the future uncertain. Now the people look towards young princess Elodie, not yet 15 years old, to navigate the country’s political chessboard and protect them from foreign threats.

The aim of Long Live the Queen is quite simple. Players take on the role of Princess Elodie, choose how she spends her weeks, and shape her into a strong leader before her coronation when she turns 15. Each week you’ll pick two classes for Elodie to attend (out of 42 options), decide how she spends her free time, and choose how she navigates interactions and events in the world. Your choices also affect Elodie’s mood. Your mood, in turn, affects Elodie’s studies – each mood giving bonuses and penalties to her progress in a handful of classes. With this premise, and the game’s sparkly pink aesthetic, you wouldn’t be blamed for expecting a cruisy ride. I thought the same thing, but then I died, and died, and died again. I was stabbed, poisoned, drowned, skewered, fried, drained, impaled, and many, many more…

The world of Long Live the Queen is both a labyrinth and a minefield, which you’ve been blindfolded and dropped inside.  At first it felt like the only way out was to brute force my way through the world, taking note of every failure so I could be prepared the next attempt. Thankfully, the more familiar I became with the world, the easier it was to predict the dangers on the horizon. I still died, a lot, but I was able to think several steps ahead and engage more deeply with the game.

If you want to fully uncover everything this game has to offer, you’ll need to play through multiple times. There are numerous paths to follow, secrets to uncover, relationships to build and epilogues to reach. Even when you make it to your coronation for the first time, you’ve likely just scratched the surface of the game’s rich world. Every character you meet has their own secrets and aspirations, tied to the game’s rich political landscape. Your father wants to guide you to become a strong leader and protect you from the dangers of Lumen magic but is bound by the same expectations of royalty that you are. Your mentor, the Duchess of Ursul, wants to lead you to your destiny as a powerful lumen despite the universal distrust she faces. Novan nobility all want something from you, money, titles, power, marriage. Worst of all foreign powers conspire from a distance with unknowable intentions.

It can be a little bit difficult to keep track of all this information. Unfortunately there’s no in-game log to check, which is probably my biggest problem with the game. I’ve heard some people kept their own log as they played through, but I was able to develop familiarity over my many attempts and accepted being occasionally frustrated. It does, at least, feature the option to skip dialogue you’ve already seen.

Developed by Hanako Games – Long Live the Queen Originally released on PC in 2013, and I played through it completely a few years ago but I was excited to pick it up again when it released to the Switch this July. I was worried it would be difficult to navigate the game’s detailed menus with Switch Controls, but I was delighted to find out it was equipped with touch screen controls. Disappointingly few games utilize this when ported to the switch – I hadn’t even considered it was a possibility! These controls are super helpful and make it easy to navigate Long Live the Queen’s complex menus.

There weren’t any significant factors that differentiated my experience playing on PC to playing on the switch. Except maybe that playing on the switch let me get extra cozy on the couch before experiencing another royal bloodbath. Long Live the Queen can also be picked up on Playstation4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox series X if you prefer one of those consoles.

Developer: Roost Games
Publisher: Freedom Games
Music: Sonya Vos
Platforms: Steam, Nintendo Switch
Released: 15 April 2022
Genre: Strategy, Simulation, Visual Novel

A ‘tail’ as old as time, your grandmother has left you her beloved cat cafe in the town of Caterwaul Way. In all her yarns, you’ve known about this sleepy little village, and the magic and joy it had given her. And ‘meow’ it’s your turn, you arrive at the address and find… an empty field and an old… pirate?

No, it’s just Bonner, a friendly fisherman who thought it would be best to inform you that unfortunately the beloved cat cafe has long since crumbled away. Just how long ago did your grandmother live here? But don’t get your hackles up, you have enough materials and resources to get a small little shack put together. Throw in a tiny little kitchen, and some… rough looking furniture and I guess you have a cat cafe! But you need cats.

Luckily some strays have turned up, and they’re super friendly. Add them to the mix and look at what they’ve dragged in. Customers! Granted, all you can serve is water but when you see their face light up as the cat you just found curls up in their lap, well.

I guess you can understand why your grandmother loved this so much.

Cat Cafe Manager is a 2D simulation managing game, in the most adorable, simple art style. You’ll be learning about what it takes to run and grow a cat cafe, eventually filled with a roster of staff and adorable little kitty cats. And you’ll also get to know more about Caterwaul Way, which is entirely populated by witches, fisherfolk, artists, vagabonds, punks, and cats of course! You’ll meet and bond with a cast of characters and learn about their relationships with each other, the village, and with the cafe. And you’ll learn about what’s going on in the woods.

Don’t worry about it. It’s not spooky.

Let me walk you through a day at the cafe.

Doors open, and customers arrive. They take a seat. Already we start to get feedback, with customers waving as they walk through the door, and a disappointed emote when they can’t find their favourite seat (or there isn’t enough of their preferred decor around).

You take their order, dash over to my little kitchen and put together their order. Some orders, like espressos and lattes, need a coffee machine. Others need a fridge and a chopping board, like sandwiches and salads. As you expand and grow your cafe, you’ll have to expand your menu too, which requires recipes, more ingredients, and specific equipment.

You bring them their order, they enjoy the order, and while they’re relaxing one of the cats hop onto their lap and curls up.

Some customers will have a favourite cat or two, but trust me, every cat is a winner.

Hopefully happy, the customer then heads on their merry way, leaving payment.

Now, the payment you receive depends on the customer. Vagabonds will pay with fabric, business guys pay with gold, punks pay with materials, fisherfolk pay with fish (obviously), witches pay with… nectar? And artists pay with gems (obviously).

You’ll need each form of currency in order to expand the cafe, buy decor and cat supplies, learn new recipes, buy new furniture. So if you have a specific goal in mind, you can adjust how you advertise to each type of customer in order to draw in specific currency. But there is one universal currency, and that is love.

After you meet a mysterious, ominous looking cat you’ll be shown the cat shrine, and you are urged to restore it. Why? You’ll find out in your own time, but the path to restoring the shrine is by love. Heart. Passion. You can select a project which will expand your cafe, unlock more furniture, allow you to house more cats, have more seats, and hire more staff. And with each project completed, the shrine starts to look just a little bit less wild.

Every customer has preferred themes, decor, food, drinks, and cats. Some cats will be naturally attuned to fisherfolk or witches. So to make everyone happy, you’ll have to keep growing. And it’s really satisfying watching that D rank at the end of the day gradually climb to a C, and then a B. I’m getting pretty close to an A rank myself.

It’s actually kinda a lot of work! So you need more staff.

You can go to the village noticeboard, where you can adopt out cats, or hire more staff. And as time goes on, you can train your staff, perfect for when you get hit with a rush of customers. They’ll get better and quicker at taking orders, small talk, making orders, cleaning up, and calming cats down. Just like a real cafe!

There were a few polish issues that were sometimes a little silly, like cats teleporting around the cafe, customers phasing through walls, just goofy little stuff that didn’t really detract from my overall experience. I did experience a couple of crashes, and occasionally there was some aspects of design that made it a bit frustrating (like my not realising that chairs needed to be set a certain way for them to work properly), but the team are really diligent, and would often fix these issues while I was asleep, and I could return to the game the next day with problems resolved. There are probably a couple of other little things that’ll pop up, but nothing ever really stopped me or made me want to stop playing.

Cat Cafe Manager has a lot of little details that I find really charming. The title screen is sweet and calm, sniffing out the village drama is a delight, and hearing the cats purr is so soothing. Hearing them yowl is less soothing, but the game delivers on those cafe noises. And spooky noises. And the little beeps and boops that bring life to a game. It’s understated, a bit relaxing, and if I wanted to play my lofi anime beats to run cat cafes I could.

There’s a few key things you should probably know about me. I love cats, I work in a cafe, I love cat cafes, and I really enjoy games where you build something and create resources to expand the thing you’re building. So when I heard about this game I grabbed at it with both of my… paws?

I’ll quit it with the puns. That was ‘A-PAW-LING’.

:D

Cat Cafe Manager is built up of so many things I love, so I was super excited to boot this game up and start my cat cafe adventure. Which is sounding like I’m building up to revealing I was severely disappointed, but I wasn’t. I liked Cat Cafe Manager! It was fun, I enjoyed the main cast revealing little parts about their lives to me, piecing together their upbringing, their problems and hopes and joys, and watching them grow and resolve things, with a little bit of input from their friendly neighbourhood barista.

It was nice to see the cat shrine grow and become restored, seeing more and more cats return. Bonding with the cats in my neighbourhood and cafe, watching them return and building trust with them. Watching the cats bond with my customers, and then getting the cats adopted to loving homes.

The game can be slow at times, really each day is about passing the time and calling your regulars over so you can talk to them. But there was a sense of pride with watching my cafe come together. Each day becomes another step towards expanding it, making it bigger and better, cultivating it to become a welcoming space to everyone who walks in.

Whether they’re a witch, punk, vagabond, fisherfolk, artist, or even a business guy. They’ve all got a place at my cafe.