Every Christmas since 2011, one of my favourite content creators The Yogscast have organised the “Jingle Jam” charity games bundle, which finished a week or so ago. Here’s the final part to complete the trilogy, with games 61-83.

This final batch had a LOT of okayish games, but much fewer games I truly disliked. Overall it was amazing collection, easily worth the price, and even a picky gamer like myself has still found plenty of new games I’m into!

5/5 Games

Dude, Stop

Okay, yes, this is a pretty simple game that I perhaps only enjoy because of its similarity to old meta Kongregate / Newgrounds games.

Dude, Stop is a collection of puzzles organised into packs, with “cups” unlocked for certain behaviours (e.g., failing all tasks). It’s extremely self-aware, in a similar vein to The Stanley Parable, and there’s absolutely tons of content for every minute you’ll be playing the game.

I suspect it isn’t a super long game you can spend tens of hours with, but I’m still very eager to come back to this and complete it, and probably get 100% achievements.

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
81.71% - Store page £11.99 Puzzle June 2018 158 (June 2018)
Pack Picker Puzzle Results Puzzle

Here Comes Niko

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
86.35% - Store page £19.49 Adventure August 2021 415 (August 2021)

Very cute, very comfy, very chill!

Here Comes Niko is pretty much solving mini puzzles and exploring various islands, with your main objectives being to help others and make new friends. Whilst this game isn’t challenging or competitive, it is a nice way to spend a few hours. The writing / light storytelling is addictive, with little bits of humour here and there providing motivation to talk to new characters.

I played through the first couple of islands, I’m interested to see how much more content there is, and whether it can be 100%’d. The only downside is the controller buttons are a bit odd, with “B” acting as “A” and “Start” acting as “Back”. Still, this only applies to the menu, within the game itself it’s all very intuitive.

Snail Pet Island Tasks Earning a coin

Discolored

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
76.11% - Store page £5.49 Puzzle November 2019 34 (December 2022)

Whilst Discolored is technically a point and click game, it’s done in such an intuitive and mysterious way that I deeply enjoyed it.

It was a relatively short experience (1-2 hours depending on puzzle solving), but at no point did I feel completely lost. Instead, I could solve each stage logically after a few minutes of considering the unknown objects / areas I hadn’t found a use for yet. There’s also a pretty helpful “hint” feature that I used a couple of times, that gives enough of a clue to avoid feeling completely lost, but doesn’t just solve a puzzle for you.

This is an excellent example of the kind of point and click game I like, where each step feels logically solvable without random clicking, and every item has a specific purpose. The sequel comes out next year, I can’t wait!

Bedroom Basement Attic

4/5 Games

Fury Unleashed

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
85.68% - Store page £17.99 Platformer May 2020 521 (July 2021)

Fury Unleashed is a roguelite platformer shooter, with a meta story backing it up.

The movement and gameplay is solid, and reminds me a lot of the frantic yet precise feel to games like Spelunky. I only played through the first 2 chapters (twice, it is a roguelite after all!) and the story had some intriguing meta elements to it, with a comic book style without. This manifests itself in “ink” as currency, the occasional “sketched” levels, and a narrator describing each chapter.

The levels can get a bit bullet-hell at times, with enemy movement and various projectiles all over the place. Because of this, I found it tricky to get through a level perfectly, something that is usually possible in games like Spelunky. Due to this, there’s more of a reliance on accepting damage, but then healing from it moving forward.

Definitely looking forward to a few more runs through this!

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Meta

Gene Shift Auto

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
78.25% - Store page £12.79 (base game free) Action May 2017 214k (December 2018)

I’ll admit, I judged this game by its title, and was expecting a cheap GTA rip-off. Luckily I was very wrong!

This is a battle royale style interpretation of classic GTA titles. It’s a chaotic mess of bullets, explosions, and NPCs, and very, very fun. The game itself is actually free (which explains why it once had 214k(!) players), but the premium upgrade was included in the Jingle Jam pack. As far as I can tell this doesn’t give many benefits besides extra coins / XP drops, used to unlock new skills.

The skills are nice and silly, with things like increased bullet speed, vampirism, spawning homing rockets etc. All of these help make every fight unpredictable, whether it’s against police or other players.

I won my first game, but given the skill level of some players I strongly suspect it was a “new players only” matchmaking game! Whilst Gene Shift Auto maybe isn’t for me, it’s a very good free game for someone seeking an old GTA-style online experience.

Combat Unlockable skills Victory

Sokpop: Hellblusser

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
81.04% - Store page £4.99 RPG August 2021 16 (August 2021)

This is a bare bones but interesting RPG, with the typical Sokpop-style distortion of the camera.

As with many RPGs, you’re mostly wandering through corridors killing everything with your sword or magic, then upgrading equipment / perks when possible. The unique gimmick is the ability to “absorb” fire from ambient sources and use it as a fireball, leading to desperate environment hunting when a melee-immune enemy is chasing you!

I found the boss at the end of the sewer levels a bit too challenging, as I couldn’t figure out a way to inflict a single point of damage on it. Considering this is after 7-8 levels of combat, and death means starting from the beginning, it’s quite a punishing learning curve.

Overall this is worth a few runthroughs, although the levels can be a bit repetitive. Looking at the Steam page, these levels are procedurally generated, with 3 “areas” (themes) to beat.

Sewer Shop Combat

Kaiju Wars

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
79.90% - Store page £15.49 Strategy April 2022 91 (May 2022)

This is another game that I watched on Twitch during the Jingle Jam by Lewis & Ben. The aesthetic appealed, and who doesn’t like giant kaijus?

The strategy (at least in the first few levels) was pretty simple, mostly around pumping out units to try and slow the kaiju down whilst also saving up for new bases and other larger investments. There’s lots of acted cutscenes and backstory that adds some atmosphere to the combat, with custom missions and power-ups to add some complexity.

I liked the semi-nihilistic tone of the game, with each battle obviously just being trying to survive for a bit longer, not actually wiping out any opponents permanently. The overall style reminded me a lot of older XCOM games, with a bit of the “rock paper scissors” style combat of Advance Wars. Definitely an easy game to spend a few hours in if the aesthetic appeals.

Map Dialog Close-up

Killrun

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
64.21% - Store page £3.99 FPS August 2022 88 (August 2022)

Take CounterStrike, merge it with Superhot (minus the time manipulation elements), and you’d end up with Killrun!

Each short level is a combination puzzle / test of FPS ability, with the entire goal being getting the quickest checkpoint touching & enemy killing completion possible. These enemies don’t shoot back, so they’re essentially 3D target practice. A good run feels absolutely amazing, and looks like an edited highlights reel from a montage. With crouching, powerups, quickscoping, and all the FPS staples, it definitely felt a lot like I was playing a serious shooter. Spoiling that illusion (for the better!) are various powerups that give temporary abilities like dashing forward and enemy highlighting (looks just like Superhot!).

It’s very hard to represent this game in still images, since it’s all about the speed of the run, and how each kill flows into the next. The trailer does a much better job than words and images ever could. There are 60 levels currently available, with more packs on the way.

Finally, there’s also “mods” for your weapons, which are just cosmetic skins. Whilst looking at this, I discovered the developer is the same one behind The Turing Test, also in this bundle, which I rated 5/5!

Combat Movement map Level select

Imagine Earth

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
76.81% - Store page £11.49 Strategy May 2021 327 (May 2021)

Imagine Earth is a strategy game, but with a focus on balancing the needs and wants of your city, not on fighting other civilisations. This means choices have to be made about how to exploit resources and what to prioritise.

I only played through the tutorial, but I really liked the fairly laid back gameplay style, and I could easily see myself getting sucked into building civilisations. It helps that the graphics are decent, and that it uses a triangular grid instead of the typical hexagonal.

One complaint would be that it’s quite hard to distinguish the different buildings, at least when first starting. I had to keep mousing over buildings to remember what they were, and some natural resources looked quite similar to mining buildings.

Zoomed out Zoomed in Research

3/5 Games

House

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
91.98% - Store page £7.19 Puzzle October 2020 202 (July 2021)

Full confession, I saw half a playthrough of this game on a Yogscast Jingle Jam stream with Sips & Lydia, so already had a few preconceptions going in.

House is essentially a puzzle game where you have a limited period of time to find various endings to the story. This can be done by finding objects, using them on the environment, interacting with characters, etc. My first playthrough I impressively walked into my own beartrap, which was such a lame ending it didn’t even unlock an achievement!

This is undoubtedly a very creative game, and I can see how hunting all of the unique endings could be addictive. It’s not really for me, but the gory mystery solving may be for you.

Kitchen Cat Piano

Demolish & Build 2018

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
73.71% - Store page £0.71 Simulation March 2018 462 (March 2018)

Simulation games have a lot in common. Repetitive gameplay, simple tasks, and a weirdly dead and sterile world. D&B 2018 is no exception, and whilst the writing was kinda engaging, the actual gameplay was too mindless for me. I tried injecting some excitement by driving head-on into other cars / buildings and nothing much happened.

The overall goal is to do tasks, upgrade your business, buy some vehicles, etc etc etc. If you’re into house flipper and want explicit instructions at every step, this might be for you. Otherwise, maybe not.

All that being said, this is currently on sale for under £1 / $1, hard to complain too much at that price point!

Inside Bulldozer Sun..?

JARS

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
73.36% - Store page £9.99 Puzzle October 2021 18 (December 2022)

JARS claims to be a strategy / tower defense game, but there’s really not enough time per level to call it that. Instead, each level is a few seconds of frantic clicking / hotkeying to open jars and handle their contents, then it’s over either positively or negatively!

Whilst there are some elements of puzzle solving, this is more a challenge of prioritisation, not any actual challenging aspect. As such, winning a level doesn’t feel too rewarding. However, there does seem to be quite a lot of content. From minions to enemies to comic books and cutscenes, new significant content is unlocked every level or two. If you’re into the gameplay style, there’s plenty here to play with!

Level select Level Perks

Factory Town

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
87.78% - Store page £15.49 Simulation November 2021 2.6k (March 2021)

Similar to quite a few other games on this list, this seems like an alright game, but it’s not my genre at all.

Factory Town is a very detailed resource management system, with each resource needing gathering, processing, and selling. Personally I found every stage a bit too fiddly, and I never had much understanding of what my settlement was actually up to. Every interface was a little bit too clunky, every action took a few too many clicks.

I can absolutely see how someone could get into this, and spend tens of hours building up their civilisation. For me, it just wasn’t rewarding enough to continue much past the tutorial.

Landscape Town Build menu

Deponia

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
85.55% - Store page £6.99 Point & Click August 2012 1.2k (December 2013)

Deponia is one of those games where the quality is obviously extremely high, and I can see how someone could fall in love with it but… I don’t like point and click games.

I honestly didn’t get very far at all, as I find the genre’s gameplay style too frustrating and trial and error based. Based on other reviews, Deponia is apparently a good example of the genre, albeit a little frustrating at times. I can only vouch for the 2nd half of that description!

Intro cutscene Upstairs Downstairs

Final Vendetta

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
76.16% - Store page £22.49 Fighting June 2022 23 (June 2022)

Final Vendetta is a tricky game to judge, since it’s obviously very intentionally emulating retro beat ‘em ups (even down to a CRT filter), but doesn’t innovate on this format. As such, it’s hard to know why someone would choose this game over the many similar ones released in the last few decades.

Combat felt a little unfair, with quite simple controls / moves and some enemies having unblockable attacks. The gameplay isn’t bad, it’s just nothing new. That being said, the pixel art is pretty attractive!

Cutscenes Streets Underground

Eternal Hope

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
81.26% - Store page £9.29 Puzzle August 2020 24 (August 2020)

Ever played Limbo? Alright, if you have then you already understand most of this game.

Eternal Hope has all the same physics based puzzles from Limbo, plus an additional mechanic letting you “change dimensions”. In practice this usually does nothing, but at specific places reveals a helping hand or enemy.

Overall this isn’t a bad game at all, it’s just hard to appreciate it when it wears its inspiration so clearly.

Story telling Normal mode Shadow mode

Fit For a King

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
82.68% - Store page £3.14 RPG September 2019 12 (September 2019)

Unlike many other 3/5 games, Fit For a King isn’t just average throughout. Instead, it has some great bits (the interactions, the writing), and some bits I can’t stand (the size of text, the interface). On a larger monitor, the text is almost unreadably big, yet also constantly scrolling off-screen!

The list of commands is impressively detailed, and I liked the freedom of being able to get absolutely wasted on my wine reserves, go out into the town and execute all the villagers, then get killed by a bear. A perfect day out.

I’m sure this game has WAY more depth than my initial look around, and if the visual style isn’t too off-putting you’ll probably have a great time!

Commands Drinking wine Killed by a bear

Epic Battle Fantasy 5

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
94.92% - Store page £8.99 RPG November 2018 2.4k (December 2018)

Coming in at the 5th game series is always going to be a tricky sell, and this one totally missed the mark for me unfortunately. The description proudly boasts of “video game references, juvenile dialogue, and anime fanservice”, none of which I’m particularly keen on.

The combat itself was fairly standard Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat, with all the status effects and attacks you’d expect. There’s also overworld puzzles, and pretty good animation on each attack. Unfortunately these weren’t enough to outweigh the overall mood of the game for me.

Looking at other reviews it’s an extremely popular game, so I assume this aesthetic and writing style appeals to a lot of people, just not people like me!

Story World Combat

Driftland: The Magic Revival

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
71.45% - Store page £1.59 Strategy April 2019 456 (December 2020)

I liked the twist to this low level empire management game. The world is a collection of floating islands, and you can move them or create bridges / portals to gain access. Alongside this, there’s all the usual resource management (wood, stone, soldiers) that you’d expect. It actually reminded me quite a bit of the Settlers series (specifically 3, my beloved).

I didn’t get too far into Driftland, but found it quite tricky to keep track of my soldiers and civilians. Soldiers are based in camps, but even then I was unsure how many of them there were, what they were doing, how they were handling combat, etc. Same story with civilians, each building manually needed civilians assigned to it, even if you had 20 wandering around doing nothing already.

I really liked the mixture of traditional medieval content (mining, knights) mixed with a bit of magic (spying on areas of the map, moving entire islands, teleporting portals) and dragons etc. The game definitely gets a lot more complex later on, although the number of buildings seemed relatively limited from what I could see. All in all, worth a look if you want a break from the more grid-based strategy games.

Map Combat Perks

ΔV: Rings of Saturn

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
89.95% - Store page £3.59 Action August 2019 360 (November 2022)

This is a good game! I am just an idiot who could not get my head around the controls. I finished the tutorial, but still felt like I was just bumbling around and only occasionally even going in the right direction. This is entirely my problem, and the game tried to help by offering multiple buttons for actions.

I didn’t get far enough into the game to properly appreciate its depth, so it’s not especially fair to rate this. I’m very aware this is some people’s favourite, and I watched Lewis & Barry play it for a bit and was glad to see they had the same control issues I did!

If you’d like to play a Asteroids-y mining sim and can handle complicated controls, give it a go!

Flying Controls Repairs

2/5

Kitaria Fables

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
74.28% - Store page £16.99 RPG September 2021 1.0k (September 2021)

Kitaria Fables was a very slow experience. VERY dialog heavy, VERY fetch quest heavy, and I quickly found myself just mashing the A button to try and get through the endless dialog ASAP. This meant I accidentally selected a few dialog options, but it was worth it to avoid the boredom!

The combat itself is actually pretty fun, with a simple attack (or use skills) and dodge system. Unfortunately, the story was too over the top and needlessly wordy to make it worth the effort. As an example, the very start of the game is walking between 3 locations multiple times just to talk to the same NPCs. All immediately after a length cutscene, a ridiculously lengthy initial 4-way conversation.

Looking at other reviews, they all mention that the game gets even more grindy later on, so one to avoid as far as I can tell. On the plus side, my cat liked the repetitive nature of the movement during combat / walking!

Town Dialog Dungeon

Desolate

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
66.44% - Store page £19.99 Puzzle January 2019 1.8k (February 2018)

This is perhaps one of those games that is better with friends. By myself, it was just a janky experience wandering around a wilderness, where everything I meet kills me pretty quickly. Fun. The late game might be fun, but the beginning is just an unpleasant experience, doing pointless tasks just for a generic mob to kill you.

Archives Combat Outside

1/5

First Class Trouble

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
76.53% - Store page £10.99 Multiplayer November 2021 1.2k (April 2021)

Here’s the story of me trying to play this:

  1. I open the game, and immediately have to scroll to the bottom of & approve three different agreements.
  2. I go to play the tutorial, it’s just a few pages of text.
  3. I click play, get put into a lobby as the traitor / humanoid, experience horrific frame rate drops.
  4. 2 players walk up to me, grab me & strangle me. I die.
  5. I mess around as a flying hoover for 10 minutes.

At no point was there any fun. Perhaps this is a good game if you have friends to play in a lobby, but online matchmaking doesn’t seem great. I know The Yogscast used to play it, and personally I skipped the videos as it just felt like GMod TTT but not as good.

Tutorial Murdered Vruumba