amphibious_ReViews

I don't think I've ever been so blind-sided by a game announcement in my life. I've been surprised by the short time between Xenoblade releases on Switch; I've been hyped for Ace Attorney games finally getting an English localization; this, however, is the first time a formative game from my childhood got a surprise sequel nearly 16 years after the fact. Before I bought it two or three more times on other platforms, the original World of Goo  was gifted to me by my aunt via a CD-RW she put together herself. I was a bit too young and inexperienced to recognize the dubious origin of that Sharpie-labeled disc at the time, but I wasn't too young to pop it in our family PC and stack some goo. Thus, my lifelong appreciation of tiny sentient goo balls began, and I'm thrilled that I was finally able to bear witness to their triumphant return! World of Goo 2 was immediately familiar and nostalgic. From the 2D Boy splash screen to the goo world itself being used as a menu...

Since its release, Monument Valley intrigued me. The gorgeous minimalist aesthetic combined with the fascinating Escher-inspired puzzles sat in my periphery for years. However, I guess I was never interested enough to drop any coin on it. I only ended up playing it more than 10 years after its initial release because it was included with my Netflix subscription. While I didn't like it enough to feel compelled to buy it outright now that I let my Netflix subscription lapse, I still had a genuinely good time playing it.   Monument Valley has you directing Princess Ida across little puzzle boxes of physical and gravitational impossibilities to return strange artifacts to their pedestals. You'll be responsible for choosing where Ida should go, as well as manipulating the terrain to discover and create new pathways for her. While most of the puzzles take no more than a few minutes, they frequently introduce new features and obstacles, so they remain engaging.   The eerie impossibil...

I first played Pokémon Trozei on a friend's DS while at a sleepover while I was still in elementary school. I didn't have much time with it, but I loved Pokémon and I was into puzzles, so I just couldn't get this game out of my mind. The 3DS received a digital-only sequel that I bought pretty early on, but it never hit quite the same. Now, closing in on two decades later, I finally buckled down and played the whole campaign. I think my conclusion is that I moderately enjoyed Pokémon Trozei. It has a lot going for it, but it definitely wasn't the juggernaut my nine-year-old brain made it out to be. As a puzzle game, Pokémon Trozei had the opportunity to be mind-numbingly basic and it still would have sold on the Pokémon name alone. Instead, Genius Sonority developed a unique take on the falling-block genre that cleverly took advantage of the still-new Nintendo DS hardware. Using the touch screen, you'll be sliding Pokémon in the bottom five rows as you try to make ma...

I can't remember anymore if this was my first Picross game, but it absolutely played a huge role in my love for the series. While the free-to-start model has some obvious drawbacks, it's likely the only reason I was willing to pick Pokémon Picross up in the first place, so it paid off. If you max out on purchasable picrites, the otherwise drip-fed premium currency, then most of the free-to-start influences are nullified, significantly improving the experience. That's how I played this time around, and I think it became my favorite entry in the entire Picross franchise. Around a decade and a half after the announcement and subsequent cancellation of Pokémon Picross for the Game Boy Color, Jupiter Corporation was given a chance to redeem their lost game with a successor on the 3DS. While its price-point and its Pokémon branding surely garnered it plenty of extra attention, Pokémon Picross for the 3DS also had a distinct gameplay advantage compared to it's 20+ predecessor...

Outer Wilds was a game that I built a lot of expectations around. Over the past year or so, I've been upping my consumption of content from the indie game YouTube scene. It didn't matter which creator I was watching, though. One game kept coming up. Often described as a "Metroidbrainia" or a "knowledge-based game," Outer Wilds seemed right up my alley. I didn't want any spoilers, so I always skipped past anything but the most surface-level discussions, yet I was so convinced I would enjoy it that I pre-ordered a physical copy for Nintendo Switch at my local GameStop. While I could have saved money and started playing sooner by buying it digitally during one of the frequent eShop sales, I knew that this was a game I would want to be able to display on my shelf and share with friends. Now that I have finally beaten it, I'm happy to report that Outer Wilds: Archaeologist Edition is one of the most incredible games I have ever played. Boiled down to its ...

All of the pre-installed games on the 3DS were incredible to me as a kid. They may have just been glorified tech demos, but the fun of experiencing such novel technology cannot be overstated. I spent a lot of time playing Face Raiders and the AR Card games, but Puzzle Swap, a demonstration of collaborative gameplay via StreetPass, was easily my favorite. Originally one of just two games in the StreetPass Mii Plaza, Puzzle Swap has now been joined by a large variety of StreetPass-based games, yet it remains one of my favorites. The simple yet rewarding act of trading puzzle pieces and unlocking 3d dioramas had me hooked from the start. While it was a ton of fun finishing up my remaining puzzles all these years later, the prime Puzzle Swap experience was back when new puzzles were still being released. With every update, you'd get a piece of one of the new puzzles as a starting gift, making it your duty to disseminate your share while you try to collect the rest for yourself. Th...

Circa 2012, I had purchased every Angry Birds game to date. I loved the series, and only really fell off after Angry Birds Star Wars II. Since then, every single mainline game I loved so much has been delisted, but only after being stuffed with ads and micro-transactions. I, like many other classic Angry Birds fans, longed for a return to form, and Rovio finally obliged in 2022 with a full remake of the original game as it was in 2012, before any of the money-hungry updates. It turns out that those updates happened for a reason, as Rovio Classics: Angry Birds was delisted from the Play Store less than a year after its release with Rovio citing a major loss of revenue in all of its other Angry Birds titles due to the remake's popularity. Thankfully, like half of the original games, I bought this one on release day, so I still have access to it. For someone as familiar with the modern mobile gaming landscape as I am, a return to classic Angry Birds was a breath of fresh air. Off the ...

Sometimes I'll jump on to bandwagon games, like Fortnite or Among Us , just to see what the fuss is all about, but even at just $2.99, I wasn't fully convinced to bite the bullet on Suika Game. When it arrived as a free trial on the Nintendo Switch Online service, I finally gave it a shot, and my first thought went to how much my wife would enjoy it! She has been thoroughly addicted to both Tetris and 2048 in the past, and Suika Game feels like a blend of the two with added physics. I actually ended up really having fun with it, but my wife liked it even more; so much so that we ended up buying it for her Switch after the trial ended. It may be iterative, but this is one of the freshest-feeling arcade puzzlers that I've played in a long time. Suika Game challenges you to earn a high score by dropping as much fruit as you can into a clear container before it overflows. The trick is that when two fruits of the same variety touch, they fuse into one larger fruit and earn you...

I started playing Microsoft Jewel 2 through the Xbox app because it earned me Microsoft rewards points that I could use to buy Xbox games. At first, I avoided playing it because I knew I'd have to write a review, but I obviously caved. The Microsoft Rewards program has since been seriously nerfed, so I stopped participating and no longer have much of an incentive to play this generic, yet enjoyable, puzzle game. Thus, I am now facing the consequences. I'm not actually disappointed to be writing a review, I just wish it were about something with a little more spirit. Microsoft Jewel 2 does everything it needs to in order to be a passable match-3 puzzle game, but not much more. The game starts you with a screen full of colorful jewels, a level progress bar, and a set of three challenges. Jewels can swap places with any of their adjacent, non-diagonal neighbors, as long as at least one of the jewels being swapped creates a line of three or more like-colored jewels. That line is th...

When I first learned about this "game" in a Nintendo Indie World presentation, I was immediately intrigued. I downloaded the original game-jam version to my phone soon after, then proceeded to never play it. When I learned that the full game was available on Google Play Pass, I downloaded that too, and this time I was actually committed. Despite the title, there actually is a game, and it's surprisingly cute! There Is No Game is a tongue-in-cheek point-and-click puzzler with a touch of tragic romance tying it all together, but it takes a second to discern all of those pieces on a first playthrough. From as early as the title screen, the game is trying to stop you from playing. If you manage to make it past that point, you'll be greeted by a somewhat hostile AI who does his very best to keep you from finding any game-related experience within his software. With a little bit of creative puzzle-solving and a lot of determination, you can find ways past his defenses to re...

I feel like Samorost 2 flew right by me. I got a free trial for Google Play Pass (like Xbox Game Pass for Android apps) and most of Amanita Designs' games are available on it, so I thought I should probably try the sequel to Samorost 1 while I had the chance. Just like with the first game, the visuals were the star of the show. Unfortunately, they ended up being the only real draw for me this time. I liked the game well enough, but I feel like it could have been more than it was. Samorost 2 follows the familiar little gnome on his journey to save his dog that got kidnapped by a group of aliens. You'll have to solve puzzles and interact with a surprising variety of characters to help him rescue his dog and get home safely. Some of those puzzles are neat, and there were a few that made me feel pretty smart for figuring them out, but there were plenty of others that didn't quite land for me. They didn't sour the experience though, as the good puzzles and bad puzzles alike...

Capping off Professor Layton's original trilogy, I went into Unwound Future with expectations set higher than I ever had for the previous two entries. I anticipated there would be improvements to the puzzles and UI similar to the way Diabolical Box improved upon Curious Village , but I was more excited about the story. I had heard that this was a game that could really tug at your heartstrings, and I love it when media makes me feel, so I was more than ready. However, I was surprised when Unwound Future ended up delivering stronger-than-anticipated puzzles, but a cheesier-than-expected narrative. The result was still excellent, and it was definitely my favorite Layton game that I've played so far, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be. First off, Unwound Future easily had the best puzzle variety of the whole original trilogy. I think I could count on one hand how many times I noticed a puzzle repeat concepts within both Unwound Future itself and the series as a...

Pushmo was always on my radar as an interesting Eshop title, but I ultimately ended up getting both of its 3DS sequels and never actually Pushmo itself. The closure of the Eshop pushed me to finally play it, and like its successors, it's a great mix of puzzles and platforming. I like to think that Pushmo is someone's answer to the question of what would happen if a simple puzzle was made to be the size of a house? Instead of solving these brainteasers with a pencil or a stylus, our protagonist Mallo must push, pull, and climb blocks using his own raw strength. What results is a cute puzzle game that stands out in a genre mostly known for purely logical, flat experiences. Pushmo tells you right away that it isn't going to be like those other guys. Instead of a simple tutorial,  it treats players to a little story that establishes the importance of Mallo solving every puzzle. The puzzles in question are explained to be a type of theme park attraction that little children enjo...

I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started playing Katamari Damacy, but I was wrong. Before I booted it up, I had the idea that this was going to be like one of those games where you eat everything smaller than yourself in order to grow and eventually be big enough that you can consume absolutely everything (which was pretty much right). I also expected that to be the game's focal point (which I'd now argue is pretty much wrong). It was once I heard the first "NAAA NA-NA-NA-NA-NA NA-NAA" of Katamari on the Rocks (the game's opening theme) that things started to shift in my brain. Now, while Katamari Damacy's gameplay is unique and quite excellent, it's clear to me that everything else, the art style, the music, and the story, is what actually makes this game as exceptional as it is. Katamari Damacy sees you taking control of the young Prince of All Cosmos as he rolls up objects around Earth into big balls using magical devices known as katamar...

I wouldn't necessarily consider myself an expert on video game history, but before Shovel Knight made indies mainstream, I credit games like Limbo for putting them on the radar in the first place. In an industry increasingly dominated by big-studio, big-budget, big-name titles, it was notable for a game like this to break out from the noise and find widespread acclaim. I didn't end up playing more than the first few chapters when I originally bought it on PC, but I've never had enough time to dedicate to PC gaming in the first place. Once I bought the game on my phone though, that was a different story. Thanks to the portability and generous checkpoints, I could pick up and play for minutes at a time, slowly working my way through Playdead's dark world. Limbo is a game about a boy trying to find his sister. The plot leaves a lot of room for interpretation beyond that, but to avoid giving anything else away, I'll just say that I was surprised, then confused, and fina...

Brought to us by the talent behind World of Goo , Little Inferno manages to capture the same demented, yet emotionally complex, style of entertainment again. I'll be honest, it was because of that pedigree that I first bought the game for my iPod Touch , and despite going into it blind, I had a great time from start to finish! Fast forward nearly a decade and I'm starting to crave the games of my childhood again, with Little Inferno at the forefront of that nostalgia. While I could say it was to be as true to my original experience as possible, I actually whipped out an old iPhone 4S to play this because I was too cheap to buy the game again. I'll need to repurchase it eventually so I can play that awesome new Christmas DLC, but the iPhone was good enough for now. Little Inferno is a game about burning your stuff, buying new stuff, and burning that too. In an effort to throw a rug over the constantly worsening climate crisis right outside your door, you receive a Little...

What do you do when one of your favorite mobile game developers releases a unique demo for their upcoming co-op-only game? You charge up one of your old phones and double-fist that sucker, obviously. At least, that's what I did. I love the Rusty Lak e series and the world it's slowly crafting l, but finding another person to play with (without committing to some stranger on Discord ) is a pretty big hurdle at this point in my life, so it was just easier for me to play both of the game roles on my own. Honestly, I might even recommend that for other introverts or lonely folks, since it makes The Past Within Lite feel just like the previous Cube Escape games, just with two screens. Keeping in line with the series motif that "the past is never dead, It's not even past," The Past Within Lite has players begin by choosing whether they will play in the past or the future. Players in a cooperating pair must choose a different time from one another, as puzzles in one t...

I remember my mind being blown when Pokémon Shuffle was announced. It didn't look like anything super special, especially since I already owned Battle Trozei , which seemed very similar. However, this was the first major free title that I had heard of from the franchise, and getting a Pokémon game for free was more than enough to get me hyped. Upon release, I played the 3DS version of Shuffle until I was sick of it. I had a lot of fun at first, but it eventually got to the point that it seemed nearly impossible to progress without caving to the microtransactions, so I moved on. Now, over half a decade later, I was ready to play it again, but I took advantage of the convenience of the mobile phone version this time. Pokémon Shuffle is a pretty vanilla match-3 puzzle game. There are Pokémon elements implemented that tie it especially well to the sixth-generation games, but nothing that particularly makes it stand out. The general structure of the game is built around defeating ...