Tyler DeWriter

Hello! It’s me, Tyler D. I’m not doing reviews right now… but I’ve been playing some games recently, and I’d like to talk about them. So let’s do that, without all the fancy formatting nonsense. Just you, me, and these 5 games.

Let’s start in alphabetical order, with Aviary Attorney. Basically, it’s a love letter to Ace Attorney, set around the 2nd French Revolution, dressed in the anthropomorphic art style of caricaturist J. J. Grandville. It’s not a very long game (You can easily get all 3 endings in less than 7 hours), but what it has is pretty good. Between the unique atmosphere and tight-knit witty dialogue, it’s clear that a lot of passion went into making this game. (10 out of 12)

Next, let’s talk about A Rose in the Twilight… wait a minute, this list isn’t in alphabetical order. I, uh… just as planned. Who’s the fool now? Me. I’m the fool. Get pranked. Tyler D? More like… more like Idiot D. (Got’em.) Where was I? Oh yeah, the game. It’s atmospheric, but in a dark and somber way. Very gray, with a splash of red once in a while. It’s a slow-moving puzzle platformer. I’m not very far into it, so I won’t rate it just yet, but it seems promising.

What next… well, there’s Holocure. I heard about the new update, and since it’s free, I wanted to see what all the hubbub was about… and boy, does it deliver. The gameplay is smooth, challenging enough to keep things interesting while also simple enough that anyone can pick up on it fairly quickly, and it has all sorts of neat little Hololive references. My favorite characters to play are the ones with mid-ranged sweeping attacks, like Mori, Sana (o7), and Fubuki. It may be a small package, but this fangame has huge replay potential, and I look forward to whatever comes next. (9 stars out of 10)

One thing about me: I have zero confidence when it comes to precision aiming. I can manage with lock-on and wide-range weapons, but I tend to avoid shooting games because I don’t like to worry about accuracy.

That leads me to the next game, a friend’s recommendation: Earth Defense Force 4.1 – The Shadow of New Despair. Setting aside my general distaste of the FPS/TPS genres, it’s not a bad game. Sure, the JP-to-EN translations aren’t great, but if you’re playing with a friend, it’s kinda fun. Also, the game’s Fencer class fits my preferred playstyle pretty well. I like having more weapons, and less speed for more health is a trade I’m happy to make. (3 guns out of 5)

To round things off: Frostpunk. Quick synopsis: The entire world freezes. There’s a few safe havens up north, built by Colonial Britain. Promotion: you’re the captain now. Congrats, try not to die. I’ve been playing it on and off for several months (click here for my Frostpunk review), but I’m running out of steam. There’s only so much you can do once you’ve beaten all the scenarios. I’ve gone through some of them again in Hard Mode (I even managed to refurbish the entire Dreadnought in Fall of Winterhome, at the literal last possible hour), but I’m not interesting in torturing myself with Extreme Mode, so I’ll probably end up uninstalling the game soon. It was fun… and now I wait, for Frostpunk 2. (5 cities saved out of 6)