This is an "evening-size" indie exploration adventure. Half of the game is you flying around as a bird, navigating a world of floating islands in the sky. The other half is you exploring intricate underground architecture and caverns. There's also some lore regarding a creation fable and a world savior that I didn't really pay much attention to. I loved the flying more than the spelunking, but overall the game was nice, calm, and visually stimulating.

This was an interesting match 3, beat-em-up, visual novel hybrid. It's a pretty clear homage to Iron Chef where you fight enemies to gather ingredients, which you then cook together into dishes through a match 3-style system. It's very innovative, and I thoroughly enjoyed what I played. Unfortunately, the game, I feel, tries to do too much. It keeps throwing more and more things at you, adding plot points and mechanics. I wanted to just be able to just play the game, but the story mode railroads you into a sort of protracted, extensive tutorial that ended up losing me.

It's not a bad game by any means. It just wasn't for me. I can definitely see how, for those it clicks for, it really clicks. It's novel and unlike anything else I've played. Though it pulls from a lot of other genres, it ends up creating something entirely its own.

It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with this game, it's just that I had no interest in playing it further than the little bit that I did. It's a bit like Tetris meets Jezzball, where you lay down tiles to create quadrilaterals to claim area on a big grid. The game is music-based, but not an outright rhythm game, and it did have some nice tracks. I can see how it's the kind of game you can get into a good flow with.

This one was actually a really impressive game. It's one I may come back to in the future to give another shot. It reminds me of Celeste in terms of its artwork and presentation and VVVVVV in its gameplay. Your main character can launch from surface to surface, sticking only to specifically identified areas of levels. It uses this main mechanic and sprawling level design to create a metroidvania with a very unique traversal method. I found that I loved the concept and execution of the game (it's very well made) but didn't love the gameplay itself. I also found it hard to mentally map the game and kept getting lost, even in the early areas.

This is an interesting, relaxing sandbox where you build up an ecosystem. Think SimCity but with nature instead of buildings. The game starts you out simple and has a quest system designed to act as a tutorial and also a guide, teaching you how to do different things in the game. It's very chill and relaxing, and has a wonderful soundtrack to accompany it. The game has started to get slightly more complex and I'm having a bit more difficulty getting to the next steps, but it seems like there isn't really a failstate, so even if I mess something up (as I have many times) I just have to wait for my resource generation to replenish my currency before I can give it another go. It seems like the kind of game that, once you get going, would be great to run in the background and check-in on every so often. It's kind of like a digital terrarium.

Equilinox moved from something I was trying out to something I'm going to keep installed and come back to every so often. It's kind of like a clicker game, but in the best way possible. At it's basest level, you're slowly generating resources that you can spend to unlock new things, which help you generate new resources, which help you unlock new things, and so on. The game is richer than that though, and getting to sculpt your little ecosystem is great. It's nice and relaxing, and a perfect game to have on for audiobooks.

This comes very, very close to being a "hidden gem". It's a 3D grappling hook adventure, very much in the vein of A Story About My Uncle, with some rail-riding sections that reminded me of Bioshock Infinite. When it's right, it's right. You soar and fly and it feels amazing when you nail the right movement sequence. When it's frustrating, it's frustrating. Sometimes the stuff you're supposed to grapple onto is pixel-thin, and at times the grapple's distance window feels super small. I got through some of the ending parts of the game by cheesing it and "landing" on surfaces that I wasn't supposed to.

The game held my interest enough for me to see it through, and I automatically give bonus points to any game that releases with a native Linux build.

This was a short and sweet puzzle game involving time manipulation. Instead of controlling characters directly, you control time, moving things backwards, forwards, or pausing it. You then direct the characters to manipulate certain objects that persist or change outcomes independent of the timeline, in order to get the characters to their destination for each level.

I really enjoyed this. It has the simplicity of a mobile game with depth and graphics that won't leave people who play it on PC feeling short-changed. It tells a nice, wordless story about friendship, and the environments it creates are wonderful to look at, both aesthetically and conceptually. I also thoroughly enjoyed the music. Puzzle-wise, it's a little on the simple side, but I also think it's going for younger audiences, which I think it's perfect for.

Also it's got a native Linux build, which is an easy way to curry favor with me!

This is a retro throwback game -- the kind where it's hard to tell if it's referencing a specific game or just a specific style. It's a 2D scrolling space shooter where you can reverse directions, and your goal is to get high scores. I played it for a bit, saw what I needed to see, and decided to move on. Not for me.

This is an "escape room" style first-person adventure that I enjoyed way more than I was expecting to. It doesn't have an adjustable FOV and it was right on the borderline of playable for me (if it required more "active" player movement it would have made me nauseous, but since you're just slowly walking around, it was doable).

The game has a horror vibe to it but never really goes in that direction, keeping a creepy atmosphere but never doing anything to outright scare or threaten the player. Its puzzles were, for the most part, interesting, and the game was way bigger than I was expecting it to be initially. I kept thinking I was close to finishing, only to find out there was even more.

The game is a bit rough around the edges, but I'm willing to overlook those sorts of things, especially for smaller indie studios. One puzzle, however, would not trigger with a correct solution, so that stopped my progress for a while. I thought I was going to have to abandon the game, but eventually stumbled into a solution for it, even though it was technically "wrong" according to the game logic. In searching around for a solution, others seemed to have the same problem. If you can get past the bugs and some of the clumsier puzzles, I'd say the game is an outright hidden gem.