Every Christmas since 2011, one of my favourite content creators The Yogscast have organised the “Jingle Jam”, a collection of streams with an associated bundle with TONS of great games to raise money for charity. This year, I’m trying to review all 80+ of them despite only playing 2-3 games all year before this! Here’s part 1, with the first 30 games.

Rating system

Before diving into the reviews, it’s worth clarifying what these ratings mean. They aren’t a typical game reviewer’s “how good is this game”, instead they are an entirely subjective “how much do I enjoy it”. With that in mind, here’s what the 5 ratings mean to me:

  • 5/5: I had to stop myself playing this game, this is a great game I’m very happy I’ve discovered.
  • 4/5: This was a good experience, but maybe a bit flawed. I’d still play this again, but maybe with not quite as much passion.
  • 3/5: The game was alright. Perhaps it had a few serious flaws, or had decisions made during development that make no sense. I probably wouldn’t play these again, but might look at new games from the developer.
  • 2/5: I didn’t enjoy the game. Maybe it has a few redeeming characteristics, but there’s pretty much a 0% chance I’ll ever pick this up again.
  • 1/5: The game experience was actively unpleasant. I had to force myself to play more than a few minutes of it, and was relieved when I finally closed the game.

I aimed to play most of the games for around an hour, but many were small and understood after 15-20 minutes. Information on peak player count are from SteamDB.info.

Finally, if you purchase the bundle you’ll be sent an email with a long list of game keys. These can be entered manually into Steam (what I did, takes a while!), or third party tools can be used to speed up the process.

5/5 Games

The Turing Test

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
84.92% - Store page £14.99 Puzzle August 2016 536 (May 2017)

The Turing Test is very, very comparable to Portal. However, unlike games like Q.U.B.E it does not feel like a rip-off, but like a developer has learnt Valve’s lessons around subtler storytelling and learning by doing.

New mechanics are slowly introduced every few levels, and instead of a wall of text the only way to learn is to do. Each puzzle is standalone, and the sense of accomplishment when the final piece of the puzzle comes together is amazing. Just as importantly, the solution to each puzzle doesn’t feel like a chore to actually implement, as the controls are slick. It also helps that the game is visually appealing, with non-puzzle rooms having lots of hidden extras, whilst puzzle rooms are clean and well laid out.

This game really surprised me, with the first 10-15 minutes playing like a mystery / survival game, before transitioning into the puzzle room solving formula. Throughout these rooms, a very well written two-layer story is told. Without any spoilers, if you don’t explore every corner whilst walking between levels, you’re going to get a much, much simpler story. Read notes!

I made it about halfway through the game before I made myself stop, I could easily have played it to completion all day!

On the ship Energy puzzles Bridge puzzles

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
91.46% - Store page £12.99 Pinball April 2021 341 (April 2021)

What an astonishing game. The main gameplay is essentially completing fetch quests by talking to everyone you meet, and a bit of combat. The quests are simple, the story is easily understandable, but what sets it apart is the writing.

When completing a quest you usually rip a document in half, starting with the tax bill, hence the game name. Later on this progresses to love letters, notices of military service, and countless random documents. Yes it’s a basic gimmick, but other character’s reactions to the senseless ripping is beautiful. Every character’s dialog is pretty entertaining, and it’s a great motivator for completing the next little quest.

The combat is relatively smooth, but nothing too new. Most of it is spent swapping between your melee weapon (used to inflict damage) and your watering can, used to grow helpful plants nearby. You’re unlikely to die very often, but the boss fights take a lot of attention and patience to get through safely.

Game map To do list Boss fight

4/5 Games

Sokpop: Flipper Volcano

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
67.20% - Store page £2.99 Pinball September 2020 10 (December 2022)

A short but sweet pinball game. The gameplay is smooth enough, you’ve just got to keep ascending a randomised volcano until you escape, whilst being chased by lava. There’s a small shop, where you can buy new pinballs. The pink one that goes through objects makes climbing the volcano much, much easier, and seems the best buy by far.

It’s a pretty short game, by looking at the achievements it’s clear there’s not more than a couple of hours of gameplay here. Still, my experience was satisfying enough that I’m intending to come back to this and complete it later!

Deep cave 3 Deep cave 4 Mud cave 1

Seals of the Bygone

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
79.37% - Store page £10.29 Platformer March 2020 18 (December 2022)

Seals of the Bygone is an excellent fast-paced 2D roguelike. You’re thrown into the first level with random skills, and have to form your combat style around them, even if they don’t work well together at all.

For me, I had one melee attack, one ranged attack, a bizarre “jump then fire barrage down” attack, and a dash. After a few minutes of trial and error, I eventually got pretty consistent with these moves and made my way through the first few bosses.

The upgrade / loot system is very simple (get coins, open chests), but frankly that’s all you’ll be able to handle since there’s always enemies coming at you. New waves of enemies are unlocked via a timer at the top. Whilst you can hide away and get a brief respite, the enemies will still be spawning and making their way to you. This encourages a frantic playstyle of never stopping, always killing enemies. The boss fights are challenging yet predictable, and encourage learning attack patterns.

Towards the end of my run I unlocked an active item, which I found too awkward (hold B, tap right) to actually use. Whilst these active items do increase the complexity, I’m not sure if they’re convenient enough to use. Looking through the compendium, there seems to be a decent variety of items to use, although most of their effects are fairly typical (+X% melee damage, chance to set enemy on fire, etc). I suspect the rarer ones might be a bit more interesting and unique.

Overall this is a solid early access game, and I’ll definitely be coming back to it for another few runs, although I might wait until the “Compendium update” is out.

Title screen Gameplay Compendium

Tanuki Sunset

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
87.14% - Store page £11.39 Racing December 2020 75 (December 2020)

I spent the first 3-4 minutes disliking this game. The speed didn’t make sense, the controls weren’t responsive, it was way too hard, and resets were way too punishing. Then… it clicked! Suddenly I was drifting around corners, going at maximum speed, and dodging cars easily.

Tanuki Sunset has a synthwave / beach vibe mashup, and once you work past adapting to the controls, it’s a solid skateboarding game. Each stage is a few minutes long, and a single failure (very easy to do!) will send you back to the start.

The complexity comes through a risk/reward mechanic, where you can push the analog stick to go faster, perform near misses on cars, and all kinds of other terrifying behaviour, in exchange for more points. These don’t seem too useful, whereas “bits” can be used on all kinds of cosmetics and accessories. It’s worth keeping in mind that all of the jumps / drifts etc are optional, and staying on the road is waaaay more important.

Gameplay Board flip stunt Shop

The Dungeon Beneath

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
80.18% - Store page £11.39 Roguelite October 2020 220 (January 2020)

The Dungeon Beneath is a relatively simple but solidly implemented roguelike dungeon crawler, one of my favourite genres. Your small team of yourself & 4 companions battle through a quite linear dungeon consisting of a series of battles with the occasional campfire or shop.

I only did a couple of runs, but found the strategy a little bit limited. With only 3 lanes consisting of 2 tiles each, positioning is limited. Additionally, mid-battle companions can only attack or move, making moving rarely the right choice. Instead you will usually set up your squad (melee at the front, range at the back, obviously), then repeatedly click “ATTACK” until you die or the enemy does.

Make sure you turn on “stats always visible” and “5x animation speed” to improve the game beyond the default settings. Whilst I was initially thrown by the game using the same icon pack as various mobile games (e.g. Orna RPG), it matches the setting well.

After most runs, a new companion option will be unlocked, giving this game quite a bit of replayability if you enjoy the core strategy. For me, the lack of in-battle strategy stopped this becoming a new favourite.

Shop room Boss battle Defeat

Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
88.35% - Store page £16.75 RPG September 2020 547 (September 2020)

I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would! Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff might have an awful name (SM&S?), but it’s a quite fleshed out casual RPG. The tutorial does a good job of teaching you the basics of combat, cooking, and similar skills, whilst not holding your hand too much.

The bow & arrow combat was pretty satisfying, especially when combined with the combat roll mechanic. I’m not fully convinced by the default controls (F to pick up, E to swap ammo), they stop being an issue after a while though.

I noticed a lot of focus on multiplayer features, which I’m pretty interested in looking into, since the singleplayer was very much a solo RPG. In terms of graphics it’s somewhat basic, but it makes the most of what it has available, with the voxel graphics suiting the gameplay style.

Town Map Combat

Zombie Rollerz: Pinball Heroes

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
82.67% - Store page £11.39 Adventure March 2022 126 (March 2022)

Zombie Rollerz was a pleasantly surprising pinball / RPG hybrid, with waaaay more depth than expected. Each level seems to be uniquely crafted, although of course the enemies and gameplay mechanics are shared.

Whilst I only completed the first 2 chapters, there is definitely a lot of “brain off” fun to be had here. The levels were very easy, mostly due to the overwhelming amount of stuff happening at any time. You have 4 “powerups” activated by the XYAB buttons, a ball action activated by LB, and various effects happening on the dynamic board. This causes every level I played to be beatable by just firing the ball randomly and spamming powerups when available.

However, there seems to be a pretty deep loadout system, with each ball powerup having multiple levels, and overworld with loot and puzzle levels, as well as enough variety to easily come back to the game over and over again.

Level Bonus level RPG elements

Wunderling DX

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
86.61% - Store page £11.39 Platformer March 2020 16 (March 2022)

How does this game not have more players!? Wunderling is an automoving puzzle platformer, with one button to jump, then sometimes additional buttons for level-specific actions. The movement is satisfying, the level design encourages risky behaviour (but are still completable), making it a tragedy this game has never had 20 players.

Each of the levels takes under a minute to complete, and whilst just completing it is very easy, the additional incentives (treasure chests with cosmetics) give excellent replayability. I only opened 3-4 chests, but was very tempted to go back and replay earlier levels to figure out how to get the cosmetics out of the missed chests. They often require looping back on yourself, which is easier said than done when you have no control over your movement besides jumping!

The main downside to the game would be the dialog and story. It’s aiming to be self-aware, but came across as a bit cringe-inducing, and I quickly started skipping all the cutscenes. Ultimately the story doesn’t matter whatsoever, your objectives per level always seem the same, at least at the start.

Game dialog World 1 level World 2 level

Sokpop: Sok-worlds

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
79.89% - Store page £2.99 Adventure March 2020 23 (November 2022)

What a surreal experience. Sok-worlds is essentially a sandbox tool for making, sharing, and playing levels that consist entirely of solid images or text. The storylines are baffling and mysterious if they exist, the images are cliché enough to be obviously intentional, and the platforming is as good as it needs to be.

As a creative tool, this game lives and dies on the content. Luckily, the few levels I played were all intriguing and truly unique 2-3 minute adventures. There won’t be any magnum opus here, but there’s absolutely the chance for niche creator subcommunities.

Cat world Frog world Desert world

3/5 Games

Pendragon

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
63.29% - Store page £13.49 Strategy September 2020 93 (September 2020)

Pendragon is hard. The enemy AI performs perfectly, you have very few options on movement, and the only way to win is to “cheat” via your special moves (abilities). I played 2 runs, and only made it through 3-4 stops each time. A single mistake generally results in permadeath, even on easiest difficulty!

Looking at other reviews, it unbelievably seems like I’ve actually seen most of the content! They mention a full playthrough is under an hour, so the initially interesting first impression is actually most of the game. This is a real shame, as the simple yet challenging core mechanics could easily make a far more expansive and replayable game.

World map Lancelot Snakes

Paradise Lost

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
64.86% - Store page £11.39 Walking March 2021 367 (March 2021)

Paradise Lost is a very, very pretty game. It’s atmospheric, the level design is excellent, the sound is engrossing. So why’s it only a 3/5?

Well, it’s slow. You will walk in a long, linear path, at a speed below usual walking pace. For the first few minutes it felt like a horror game, but opens up into an exploration / mystery game. This can be OK, but unfortunately the lack of any puzzles / challenge essentially makes this a “hold W and click occasionally” game, not quite enough for me.

I’m still very tempted to come back to this, but I found myself extremely bored during some of the (non-skippable) cutscenes. Staring at a blank screen listening to 2 characters have a fairly bland conversation becomes painful after the first few times.

As mentioned before, the environments are beautiful, and without their excellent design this game would be far, far worse. As it is the game is unfortunately a bit too simple for me, I would love some optional puzzles / collectibles, the ability to explore during cutscenes. Most importantly though? I want to MOVE FASTER. The first hour of the game had around 10-12 minutes of actual content, with the rest of the time left feeling like pointless padding as you slowly navigate down yet another corridor or wait for dialog to end.

Landscape Study Sewer

Paperball

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
86.65% - Store page £9.29 Arcade March 2020 30 (March 2020)

Heard of Super Monkey Ball? Then you’ll know what to expect!

This is a solid “roll the ball to the exit” game, very similar to earlier Super Monkey Ball games. The level variation is decent, and there’s a nice collection of game modes. You’ll want the “Arcade” one to start with, I made the mistake of trying to collect medals before realising Arcade is the main mode!

The “cat” aesthetic was a bit too… humanised for me, but the arcade-y design of the level themselves is hard to dislike. Some of the level packs seem a bit too luck based, but overall if this is a genre you enjoy, this is one of the best options out there. For me personally it’s not, hence the slightly low rating.

Level overview Gameplay Customisation

Sokpop: Pyramida

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
81.15% - Store page £2.99 Survival August 2020 96 (May 2022)

What a charming little survival game. It’s brutal, and unforgiving, but looks so cute whilst doing it that you don’t mind too much.

Your main resources are wheat, wood, and food. Wheat and wood are easy to obtain plenty of, and are core resources for expanding your settlement. Food however is… not plentiful, and you’ll spend a lot of time desperately hunting the hidden area to find some.

Whilst I did enjoy my few runs in Pyramida, the controls were slightly too awkward to make it a game I wanted to play to completion (likely 2-3 hours). It was tricky to see which of my settlers were doing what, how many food resources I need each day, and it took me far too long to understand I needed to right click to assign a worker!

I would have loved a “peaceful” gamemode where I could build up a settlement without risk of skeletons causing knocking out my settlers. As it is, the difficulty is just about OK for the first few runs. I get the feeling that after a successful run and awareness of how buildings perform, future runs would be easy to optimise.

First run Second run Night

Sokpop: Chatventures

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
84.66% - Store page £2.99 MMORPG April 2020 23 (December 2022)

What an interesting idea! It’s a simple text based RPG except… online. Everyone seemed similar levels of confused, so it was fun watching people blunder into areas and try to figure out the commands.

For fans of text based adventures this seems a pretty good one, and is quite forgiving with the syntax. The text highlighting was helpful, letting players learn from each other’s commands. Interestingly, you can loot any dead enemies you helped attack, with loot being duplicated for each player.

Unfortunately the story was tricky to progress, with most NPCs not being particularly helpful. As such, I didn’t make it very far at all, I’m sure there’s an efficient guide to completing it somewhere!

Fighting a slime Thicket Thicket 2

You Suck At Parking

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
79.09% - Store page £16.99 Racing September 2022 110 (September 2022)

Take your average indie game with a fun little premise, say… parking in parking spots with limited fuel. Now inject a heavy dose of aggressive monetisation: season passes, microtransactions, anything to make money. The result? You Suck At Parking.

The core campaign of this game is what I was mostly expecting the game to be, relatively simple puzzles about finding & parking in all parking spots before running out of time / fuel. The difficulty is a little bit all over the place, but the car control is satisfying and it feels very “fair”.

However there is also… an online mode. The premise isn’t explained, but you have limited time to find all the parking spots on 4 levels, one after another. However, other players will be driving around too, and they can interact with you (e.g., nudge you off the edge). There’s no quick chat / emotes, so the online feels a little lifeless. In fact, I could have been playing with bots my first few matches, although they seemed real.

Overall I can see how someone could get into this game. For me however, the ridiculous cosmetic prices and obvious attempts to extract as much money as possible make it unappealing. If the game was free, and on mobile, the strategy would make sense. Instead however, there’s a pretty expensive price tag only to be met with further requests for money once the game opens.

In-game Multiplayer results Microtransactions

WARSAW

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
69.97% - Store page £18.99 Strategy October 2019 351 (October 2019)

WARSAW felt like a game with a lot of potential, that could have been a cult classic if it had got luckier and made a few different decisions. The setting (Poland’s uprising at the end of WW2) is convincing, and the mood is as depressing and oppressive as you’d expect.

The map used to navigate a scenario is a little confusing. You have limited energy (used by movement) which discourages exploration, flanking, or strategic positioning, with the intended approach seemingly being to charge head-first into any enemies you see. Once you’re in combat, it seems pretty shallow, with the turn based combat (move OR shoot, then enemy does) leading to the best tactic just being taking it in turns to exchange fire until one team is all dead.

This simple combat system is slow, even on the 3x speed setting. Every battle will take quite a few turns, and it’s not particularly engaging when the only strategy I saw was to hide behind obstacles. Attacks have certain tiles they can target, which led to very silly scenarios where I was clicking through my 4 characters, trying to find any that could target a man standing right in front of us. Just shoot!

Overall this isn’t my sort of game, nor did I find the complexity of asset management vs simplicity of combat very engaging. If Darkest Dungeon didn’t exist, WARSAW might have been more appealing.

Map view During an encounter Combat

Sokpop: Pocket Watch

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
82.44% - Store page £2.99 Adventure January 2021 14 (January 2021)

Pocket Watch is a cute little time management game about living out a few days before the end of the world. I am of course incompetent, so spent most of my first run wandering around blindly!

The art style and sound design is very minimal yet works well. Sometimes the paths can be a bit tricky to distinguish, but after playing for a bit they are consistent enough to find fairly reliably.

I found the learning curve a little tricky, with escaping the first island feeling less like a puzzle than a blundering period of trial and error without a very satisfying payoff. I’ve played a few similar games in the past, and honestly they’re not my favourite. This is a decent game, just in a genre I don’t enjoy.

Boat fixing Terrace closing Failure

Sokpop: King Pins

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
77.40% - Store page £2.09 Strategy October 2020 13 (December 2022)

As with most Sokpop games, it’s a pretty basic take on a genre. This time, it’s a strategy game where resource gathering (food, wood, gold) must be balanced against expansion of your settlement. The usual choices are here, do you buy new workers or a soldier in case the enemy attacks?

The UI is a little bit awkward, but the short and sweet game is self-explanatory and worth the purchase. The story is light, but enough to make the battles make sense.

Level select During a level During a level 2

Vibrant Venture

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
90.93% - Store page £11.39 Puzzle July 2020 103 (February 2021)

This is a beautiful, complex game with a high skill ceiling. That skill ceiling is clearly much, much higher than my ability.

I’ve played a few similar games before, with the core concept of swapping between multiple characters each with unique abilities. Usually however, these characters just need to be swapped between to open a gate / pass an obstacle. In Vibrant Venture you need to swap mid-jump, to perform tricks like utilising one character’s vertical double jump immediately followed by another character’s horizontal dash.

I only played the first few levels, but every time I had to do this move my hands disobeyed me, and it took far too many attempts! The pixel art was absolutely lovely, and it’s a real shame this game wasn’t more of a hit. Maybe others are as incompetent as me!

Map view World 1 level World 2 level

2/5 Games

Tenderfoot Tactics

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
79.11% - Store page £19.49 Strategy October 2020 64 (October 2020)

It’s hard to review this game, since I never felt I really had a grasp of what was actually going on. I of course understood I was navigating around a map, and could enter battles, but the controls (at least on controller) seemed almost random. It was never clear which character was selected, why I was fighting enemies, or what the point of anything was.

There was a mysterious “flying” mode which showed the same area, just from a higher perspective. Whilst this might potentially be used for scouting, the bizarre objects popping in and out of view constantly made it useless. Finally, the game’s start was quite abrupt, with the start seemingly just being a collection of non-speaking characters (called goblins?) dumped in a field near some enemies (also goblins?).

A good strategy game might be hiding under here, but I didn’t see any hints of it in my short time playing.

Ground view Sky view Battle

Viscera Cleanup Detail (+DLCs)

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
91.01% - Store page £16.99 Cleaning October 2015 1.5k (March 2021)

Okay wait wait wait, I know this game is amazing! It’s just not for me. I’ve watched tens of hours of Viscera Cleanup Detail from people like Hatfilms, Sips & Lewis, and Jerma & Ster, and the multiplayer element feels essential. Without someone there to knock over your bucket full of blood, the game just feels like a chore simulator.

Whilst I know games like that can be popular, they’re not what I look for personally. I found the controls a little fiddly, navigating maps slow, and overall it mostly just reminded me of areas of my house I need to clean! That being said, the maps are fun to explore, and the boombox’s tracks are great.

Section 8 map Frostbite map Cryogenesis map

Warhammer 40k: Gladius - Relics of War

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
77.91% - Store page £30.99 Strategy July 2018 3.4k (July 2018)

I am not a good person to review this game. I’ve never had any interest in Warhammer 40k, nor 4X / strategy games besides a little bit of Civilization V in the past. By the very nature of these games, they require a time investment of tens if not hundreds of hours before a proper review can be given, and I just didn’t find it engaging enough to do that.

I played an hour or so of the tutorial, and the overall impression is that a lot of knowledge is assumed. For Warhammer 40k this is probably a safe assumption most of the time, but it meant I usually had no idea what units / tiles meant. Sometimes my unit would onto a building, sometimes it would attack it, and this unpredictably persisted throughout.

As Civilization 5 (and Settlers III) are the only vaguely similar games I’ve played, it’s hard not to compare this game unfavourably. Every action felt like a less intuitive version, with an excellent example being the monochrome icons used throughout the UI. After 10 hours the icons probably seem obvious, but at first glance they’re just mysterious shapes with no meaning or association.

Finally, the graphics felt pretty muddy. Zooming in should reward the player with a nicely modelled unit, perhaps with some easter egg idle animations and slight variation between individuals whilst still appearing cohesive. Instead, the units (at least the ones I saw) were very low quality, and quickly taught me that keeping the game as zoomed out as possible helped me pretend the game looked alright.

Zoomed in view Zoomed out view Info compendium

The Hex

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
90.02% - Store page £7.19 Adventure October 2018 118 (October 2021)

I didn’t enjoy The Hex’s multiple game styles (one per character) or overall UX much, which unfortunately outweighed the not-bad writing. Dialog took too long to get through, and self-awareness gimmick wore off a bit too closely when all the interactions felt clumsy and muddy.

I only played through the first character’s “flashback” and half the second character’s, before I’d had enough. Most other reviews praise the stories, so I suspect if I could have overlooked the actual gameplay it may have been a better experience. But, it’s a game, it needs solid gameplay!

Platformer stages Fight-em-up stages Options

Primal Light

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
80.10% - Store page £2.99 Platformer July 2020 21 (July 2020)

This game is too hard for me, I am bad. I played this on the casual difficulty, and very obviously hit my limit on the first boss!

If you’re a fan of very precise, very unforgiving 90’s era platformers then this is a great homage to them. Personally I prefer roguelikes, and constant progress, so whilst Primal Light seems like a solid game, it’s just not one for me.

As a side note, every single enemy is so, so, so infuriating! Floor worms that can only be attacked after jumping over them, on the same platform as timed fire-pillars. Vultures that dive in a confusing trajectory. I hate all of them.

Platforming Charms Boss

Space Crew: Legendary Edition

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
75.28% - Store page £19.99 Action October 2020 1.5k (October 2020)

A hard game to review. As with many other games, this is clearly extremely heavily FTL inspired. The 3D space view is frankly baffling, making it very hard to actually navigate to any quest objectives.

I suspect playing this game for a few more hours would make the overall controls a bit more understandable, but so far I’ve spent most of my time just blindly following a tutorial.

From reading other reviews on Steam, this looks like a watered down copy of the developer’s other game “Bomber Crew”, and that certainly seems accurate comparing screenshots. Whilst I appreciate FTL’s effect on the genre, I wish it was a bit less direct!

Ship view Space view Earth in background

1/5 Games

Sunlight

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
78.58% - Store page £3.49 Adventure January 2021 20 (January 2021)

This is a ~30m “game” with almost zero gameplay, even for a walking simulator. You walk painfully slowly in any direction (it doesn’t matter), and click flowers when the slow, meandering voiceover lets you. There is nothing else.

The voiceover should have been an audiobook, or ideally an article, not a game.

Title screen One flower Many flowers

Sokpop: Popo’s Tower

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
67.40% - Store page £2.99 Adventure June 2020 6 (December 2022)

I wanted to like Popo’s Tower, I really did. Unfortunately, every second playing it hurt my eyes, with what is easily the most obnoxious filter I’ve seen in a game.

The platforming was unpredictable, frustrating, and unnecessarily punishing. Jumps seem impossible, then turn out to be solvable if you jump directly into a wall then run diagonally upwards. Obviously. This is not helped by the blurriness of every surface. One positive aspect is the enemy design, the first one I met was genuinely a bit spooky when it lumbered towards me with arms outstretched. Of course, I then discovered how easily it could be run around, making it a little bit less scary.

Landing area Climbing Enemy

Uligo: A Slime’s Hike

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
74.19% - Store page £6.19 Platformer May 2022 5 (May 2022)

Honestly this wasn’t a very fun experience. It’s just a platformer with bad physics, rough UI, settings that don’t reliably work, and just an overall unhappy time. There might be some interesting gameplay mechanics later on, but there was certainly nothing new in the tutorial.

I guess Uligo isn’t technically bad, but it was a real effort to get through the 2 tutorial levels. Don’t play this.

Tutorial Hats Example dialog

The Galactic Junkers

Steam rating Price Genre Released Peak players
61.95% - Store page £12.99 Action June 2022 7 (December 2022)

If FTL didn’t exist, maybe this would have some interest. This is just FTL without the responsiveness, the cohesive storytelling, the tactics, or the love.

The space-level navigation is borderline impossible, moving within the ship is pretty tricky, and combat vs another ship is a ridiculous mess. Expect your crewmembers to get stuck in walls most of the time, and have zero survival instinct. Overall I really can’t recommend this game to anyone, I’ve absolutely no idea why the Steam page claims it is “comedic”.

Character customisation Ship view Space view