Indie

Half a dozen dice, cat statues, and a handful of lucky charms give the Balatro-like Cats & Dice an undeniable charm.

If you’re aware of Balatro, which has arguably been one of the biggest leftfield successes of the last year, then you probably don’t need much of an introduction to the core concept at play in Cats & Dice. For those that haven’t, you have to hit score targets of increasing goals through playing rounds of dice to create poker-style combos. Three of a kind will give you a nice boost, but not as much as four or five, for instance.

The real twist comes in that you can buy in a cat statue which has modifiers for each of the six slots that you can submit dice to. These cats might create a multiplier bonus for each other instance of dice face that is banked, or might give you bonus score if it’s your last Play in the round or you have no Rerolls left.

Critically though, each cat changes the dice that is rolled for that slot at the start of each play. A few rounds in (and a..

Shutterbug alters and resizes your browser window so that you can take some great pictures of charming little bugs in the woods.

Dad’s broken your camera, but don’t worry, he’s set it up so that you can still take pictures using a brand new technology that’s built to scale. That’s the story behind this GMTK Game Jam 2024 entry by Rianna Suen, Dan Emmerson and Dan Pugsley (each sure-fire candidates for smartest-in-the-room). In it, you’ll resize your browser window (which does mean it’ll only work on desktop computers) and scoot it around your main screen in order to capture a great shot of the various insects and minibeasts that now roam it.

You’ll progress by taking nine photos, each of which require certain insects in them and also need the photo to be of a set type — portrait, landscape, or square. You’ll also often need to make sure that another, specific, insect doesn’t invade the shot. What you end up with is a few minutes of you resisting the urge to try and use your mouse or ..

Judero explores Scottish folklore as players wander a hand-crafted countryside and take on the shape of creatures for puzzling and battles.

Our main character is a Celt who has a deep connection with the natural world around him. With those abilities, you’ll be fighting back against some sinister forces that are secretly working in the background of this striking handmade world. How do you fight back against these forces? Sometimes you’ll do it by joining with some of the various creatures that live in the world around you. You never know when a little critter roaming around is the perfect helper to solve a puzzle. If a particular monster isn’t impressed by your intellect, you can always smack them with your club instead.

You’ll be forgiven if you lose your nerve a bit when some of these stop-motion creatures fight back against you, though. The animation style has a tendency to give the monsters a really eerie feeling as they move, making them far more intimidating than I thought the..

Special Effect is holding a Steam sale for One Special Day with tons of great games supporting a wonderful cause.

Special Effect is a charity that helps level the playing field for disabled gamers. They create alternative ways to play many different titles so that everyone can get immersed in games. With so much stuff going on sale (and all going to a good cause), we’ve picked out a few that caught our eye.

Flotsam

“Clean up the ocean, build a bustling sea-town, and enjoy a beautiful cel-shaded style along with it. If you’re looking for your next city builder and feel like helping out this virtual trash-ridden world, Flotsam might just float your boat.”

You can read our full review and check out the game on Steam.

Wobbledogs

“Wobbledogs is charming just to watch, filling your screen with a bunch of ever-changing dogs. It’s more than just a dog-watching game, though, offering some interesting options to toy with the environment and food to see what sort of changes you can make in..

In Projected Dreams, you find yourself in a beautiful room full of toys, all ready for you to use to create shadows to solve little puzzles.

Creating shadows on your walls feels like a timeless thing that all children do at one point or another. Projected Dreams captures that childhood activity with a cozy puzzle game where you have a goal shadow that you need to create. The room itself is always packed with items, with drawers to open and stuff to move to find even more to play around with. These different items can be placed on tables to then create the desired shadow shape.

At first these are fairy easy, requiring you to just stack a few objects, but as you get further into the game there’s a perspective shift and you will find yourself needing to make sure you’re placing the right items on the right tables. There is also a star rating system to show how exact you are to your goal, providing a good guide as to what you need to work on. You can rotate items, but there is a real ph..

It turns out spite is an excellent motivator, especially if you’re making a video game. The developer of chaotic city-builder Overthrown removed one pesky mechanic specifically to go against the grain of the cautionary words of their mother.
Removing fall damage from Overthrown was a decision made by the game’s creator because it’s “annoying” but more importantly because their mother used to tell them “you can’t just do whatever you want”, according to a post on Twitter. As it turns out, when you’re an adult you can totally just do whatever you want, at least within the technical confines of the game you’re making.
This means you can leap off any cliff or fall from any height without needing to deal with the consequences that would plague you in other video games whose developers aren’t trying to spite their mothers.
Game balance be damned, as removing fall damage will seemingly make things more chaotic by allowing you to surprise attack enemies from high vantage points or even just a..

Out and About sees you visiting your grandmother and learning about the real world plants that surround a mountainside town.

A natural disaster strikes while you’re visiting your grandmother. In the aftermath, you’ll find a lot of fallen trees and hard-to-follow paths, but this encourages you to explore and talk to the other people in town. As you wander, you can take pictures of plants and use those pictures to identify them. These plants are based on real plants, with the idea being that you can casually learn about the natural flora in your own travels.

Once you have taken a picture of a plant, you then get a bunch of information on what to look for to identify it. Often that’s petal shape, leaf shape, and stem shape. You can then tick these off to decide which plant is which. You’ll then get a little information on if it’s safe to eat or use in some way (or if it’s poison). There are also sorting tables in Out and About that give you a plant part (leaves, for example, or petals) ..

Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians sets you free in a sumptuous underwater kingdom where every plant and sea creature adds to the music.

It’s been a very long time since I last played this charming rhythm game. Originally released over a decade ago, the game charmed me with its lovely music and the way in which everything in the game would bring something new to the music. Even if it’s a laser hazard looking to make your life a bit more painful, it’ll bring some sort of riff from an instrument to the game. This means that, the more danger you’re in, the more complex and satisfying the music gets. So, it leaves a smile on your face even as you’re threading your way through dangerous places.

Beatbuddy is also pleasant to look at while it’s sending you through challenging seas. The game’s underwater world does an excellent job of continually surprising you with striking new places to see and creatures to run into. I love the constant variety in the locations, and really enjoyed taking in ..