windows

GHUNTER sees you helping a gnome with some cooking. Except all of your meals are alive and put up a fight.

I have played a large number of cooking games in my life, but none have ever had cooking in the same way that this game requires you to. You work as a cooking gnome that needs to create food for a local tavern, but cooking isn’t actually done in the tavern at all.

Here, you are actually cooking your prey alive through setting traps and killing them using specific methods, creating a dish as they die. You do need to finish off all of the enemies the same way, though – using your melee weapon. Your main weapon actually needs ammo (which is found when hunting your prey), and loading up your weapon will change how your prey is cooked.

You can also set traps and otherwise work the prey down to low health before slicing them up into a dish. If you aren’t careful or just don’t want to deal with a specific enemy, you can actually fully kill them, though. You’re going to need to pay att..

Kitsune Tails delivers some solid platforming challenges, great power-ups through adorable costumes, and a challenging romantic situation.

Yuzu is charged with delivering messages for a Goddess, a job that gets her into trouble just moments after starting the game. This puts her in contact with a kind sorceress, though, so maybe the trouble isn’t so bad? And she seems to like you a whole lot. Except you’ve got a childhood friend who also has a thing for you. While being popular with these gals might seem nice, it does cause some trouble that you’ll unravel over the course of a lot of vibrant, varied platforming worlds.

When you’re not dealing with your relationship woes, you’ll be running and leaping across an array of different places in all kinds of helpful outfits. The platforming feels solid and precise as you collect coins and smash through blocks. If you bump into any of the wildlife or creatures born from Japanese mythology, you’ll power down into a tiny fox until you can find..

In Tavern Talk, the drinks you mix affect an adventurer as they ready themselves for a quest, almost choosing what they do for them.

You have a lot of power as a bartender, as the drinks you mix change the strength, stealth, logic, and other stats that each adventurer has. These drinks change how they take on quests or go about the rest of your day, so there is a lot of power in them. Often, when a customer comes in, they have a specific stat they are aiming for, along with a number of liquids that stat needs. The rest is up to you. You can pick drinks from a recipe book and then start tinkering around with liquids to match the recipe. Once the drink is done, it’s served. If you make a mistake, you do get to feed the potion to a weird frog guy.

Tavern Talk has a fun cast of characters who all feel unique and interesting, making you want to invest in their adventures and help them out in the only way that you can. While your drinks have an important effect on the adventurers, you can ..

Starstruck: Hands of Time fights battles by playing guitar and overcomes obstacles by making giant hands flatten towns.

An unpleasant fate is heading towards Dawn and Edwin’s town. Bad things tend to happen when artists feel unappreciated in this world, and this destructive force is a doozy. To turn the tide, you’ll need to battle some comical, yet sinister, forces in the world. But since you’re musicians, the easiest way to do that is to play some good guitar tunes for everyone. So, bust out your old Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitars (or just use a regular keyboard or controller – the game isn’t picky) and get ready to save the world with your art.

While your musical talents can get you out of a lot of trouble, sometimes the world just puts too many obstacles in your way. This is when it’s also helpful to have help from a giant hand that can flatten buildings. I feel like people become more respectful of your musical talents when they’re afraid of being bashed by a hammer the size o..

Sally sees players soaring across a peaceful world in a flying boat, sharing tasks among a community of characters.

Slice of life style adventure games are always my jam! I like the idea of relaxing, building out my own little world and seeing where adventure takes me. When I saw Sally at Gamescom, I was pretty excited to hear about what this cozy adventure game would become.

This game sees you playing a young child of the same name. She is an orphan living on a flying boat with two adults and a bunch of other children. The boat itself is massive, flying through the sky and bringing you to new locations. You and the rest of the children on the boat are often working together to achieve goals.

You can actually pick what part of a task you are interested in doing and the rest of the children divide up the other tasks, so there is a feeling of community since you don’t need to take on tasks you don’t want. I ended up making some food by following a recipe and gathering ingredients whil..

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..

Keylocker needs you to play with rhythm and music to protect yourself and slam your enemies in its turn-based combat.

In this cyberpunk future, music is illegal (hence why the game can be pretty quiet at times). This makes Bobo, a singer and song writer, a perfect instrument for a revolution against those who would keep the people down and the tunes low. So, you’ll need to turn your musical talents (as well as those of your fellow rebels) against the regime that’s overtaken the world. Just…do it carefully at times. The trouble with you being a music-based rebel is that it makes you easy to find since you and your band are kinda loud.

Playing loud is the best way of laying down beatings on sinister agents, though. When you get into a fight, you’ll need to figure out the rhythm of you attacks and those of your foes. The game plays a bit like Mario & Luigi titles where you can hit the attack button with good timing to do more damage. Each attack (yours or those of your enemies) have sp..

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..