I always hate writing introductions for these things, so let’s dive right in. There’s a few housekeeping items I need to go over even though eagle-eyed readers will have already noticed some of what I’m about to bring up.

Firstly, I have a Steam Curator page, though things are a little barren at present. I’m not a huge fan of administrative work, and I need to manually add every game I’ve reviewed on Steam since Curators are a completely separate system from Steam Reviews.

As such, I’ll be slowly adding reviews for the ~250 different games that I’ve covered here over the past 9 years of writing. My plan is to add 10 titles a week because that felt like a pace that I could maintain without causing my soul to leave my body.

Having said all of that, give it a follow if you’re so inclined. My buddy Thomas suggested it as an easier way to see what games I’ve written about (and recommended) over the years, so you can thank him for this latest addition.

Secondly, I’ve added a section to my About page about Gen AI Content. I didn’t think it was necessary, but I’ve been informed that most people assume everything written on websites is AI generated now, which is fucking depressing. 

Regardless, I still write everything the old fashioned way: with my hands, and my brain. Ergo, I’ve spelled that practice out in no uncertain terms, so that everyone else is aware of it too.

Thirdly, for a while now, I’ve wanted to add a section to this post where I highlight a handful of upcoming releases that I’m interested in. The specific reason for doing this would be to highlight upcoming titles before they’re released, instead of covering them well after the fact. I don’t know how helpful that’ll actually be for various Indies, but I figure it can’t hurt.

Either way, you can read the first Indie Spotlight, which I’ve attached to the bottom of this post. It’ll cover both January, and February since I missed the first month of the year already. However, I’ll just be covering upcoming releases going forward, so the next Spotlight will just be games releasing in March like Slay the Spire 2.

Finally, back in December I was asked to participate as a jury member for The 3rd Annual Thinky Awards on Thinky Games. If you hadn’t heard of them before, Thinky Games is a website dedicated to covering Puzzle, Strategy, and Tactics games. For 3 years now, they’ve hosted an awards show highlighting some of the best brain-bending Indie releases of the year, and I’m extremely grateful for being given the opportunity to participate as a panel member for 2025’s award showcase.

The results, and an accompanying Youtube video, should be available on February 4th at 1PM EST (10AM PST | 6PM UTC) if you wanted to watch the show for yourself. Pretty well all of the games that were nominated are worth checking out though, and I’ve already recommended several of them including StarVaders, Öoo, and The Roottrees are Dead.

With those 4 items finally squared away, let’s get into some video games.

Type Help

First up for January, is Type Help, which is one of several free games that I checked out for the Thinky Awards. It’s a Detective game from the designer of The Roottrees are Dead, and features similarly strong puzzles. Though, Type Help feels a little threadbare given its ASCII UI, but I’d argue that’s fine for a free game that runs in your browser.

As for the gameplay side of Type Help, it’s a new spin on the search engine inquiries of Roottrees. Here you’ll be searching up transcripts from throughout an evening where a murder took place. The trick is that you won’t know any of the filenames, which is where all of the puzzling comes in. It’s on the player to determine the name of each transcript, so they can read its contents while slowly piecing together exactly what happened.

I don’t want to spoil the specifics, but the clues for determining the name of each file are littered throughout the transcripts that you’ll be investigating while playing Type Help. It’s an incredibly compelling spin on a familiar idea that I quite enjoyed playing. Though, I will admit that I got stuck more than a couple times since there isn’t an in-game hint system.

All said, Type Help is an excellent Detective game to untangle, doubly so since it’s free. However, I don’t know that I’d recommend checking it out because it’s getting the Roottrees treatment, and will be re-released as The Incident at Galley House later this year. Planned additions for this version of the game include proper artwork, voice acting, and a soundtrack alongside additional puzzles. As such, I’d encourage you to wishlist the game on Steam if I’ve piqued your interest – though, you always have the option to play the original on itch.io if that’s more your tempo.

Whiskerwood

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot more to say about Whiskerwood, an Early Access City Builder, beyond what I already covered after playing the game’s Next Fest demo. That’s entirely on me though. There’s far more on offer in the full release than there was in the demo, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. My settlement is still fairly rudimentary. As such, my 15 hours of playtime have looked fairly by-the-books for a City Builder.

That said, I’ve really enjoyed playing Whiskerwood, doubly so because it feels like the game is pushing me towards playing how the developers intended. I have a tendency to play these types of games like a ruthless, bloodsucking CEO, and will regularly sacrifice the health, and well-being of my populace if it means I can save some money. However, Whiskerwood keeps rewarding me with even more economic supremacy for actually looking after my settlement properly.

Just as a quick example, a happy population gives you a ton of approval everyday, which you can spend on a handful of different perks. I’ve used almost all of my approval on a perk wherein my Whiskers will craft trinkets in their downtime. These trinkets can then be used to pay a portion of my ongoing tax bill to the crown. This means I’m sending less raw resources into the void, which has allowed me to reinvest those resources into my settlement’s industrial sector. This in turn has resulted in higher quality goods (ex. tailored clothes instead of woven cloaks), which everyone is using ergo a higher quality of life overall.

Huzzah!

It just feels really good when my goals as a player (efficiency, fiscal responsibility, etc.) align perfectly with how the game has been designed. I know there’s a case to be made for when games make doing the “right” thing hard. Namely, it creates more interesting problems for the player to solve, while also contributing to a more fulfilling narrative arc. However, sometimes you just want to solve math problems, while gazing upon your beautiful rodent utopia.

Backpack Battles

I hate that I like this game as much as I do. Namely because of how often I got distracted playing Backpack Battles when I was meant to be working on something else.

I suppose the primer for Backpack Battles is that it’s an Auto Battler. That is, you assemble a collection of items, each with unique effects, before heading into battle. Then the game plays itself, and you either win, or lose based on how well your collection of items work together compared to your opponent’s.

While it may be a member of a different genre, Backpack Battles ticks a lot of the same boxes as Deck-Builders. It’s just that instead of drafting new cards, you’re drafting new items and stuffing them into your titular backpack. Though that does add a new wrinkle to solve: how do I fit this new item into my pack? That’s an interesting question to solve as you rejig your items, and decide which ones you’ll leave behind when you don’t have the required space for everything.

There’s also a whole crafting system wherein certain items become entirely new ones when combined together. In the majority of cases this is a net positive, but there have been a few instances where I was better off leaving the items in their base forms. Namely because the newly crafted item changed the effects of either item so radically that it no longer served its intended function within my build.

My only real criticism of the game is that winning feels a little too luck dependent. The items that you’re offered in earlier rounds have a disproportionate sway over the overall trajectory of your entire run. As such, getting several poor earlier pulls all but guarantees a loss, which doesn’t feel great.

Either way, there’s a ton to unpack (ha!) with Backpack Battles, which is why I’ve found it so compulsively playable over the past few weeks. If you’re also a Deck-Building junkie, like I am, then I’m fairly certain you’ll have fun playing it for a lot of the same reasons that I have.

Big Hops

Finally, we have Big Hops, which answers the question what if Breath of the Wild was a 3D Platformer. I don’t just mean that because you can climb every surface though. The crux of Big Hops lies in giving the player a handful of tools, and asking them to solve a variety of different open-ended problems with those tools.

As an example of what I mean: the game’s tutorial requires the player to cross a bottom-less chasm. It’s a little too wide to jump across, so I built a bridge for myself out of vines. Alternatively, I could’ve placed some very bouncy mushrooms, and used the additional height, and momentum to cross the gap.

That’s a fairly simple example – it is from the game’s tutorial after all – but I think it clearly illustrates the level that Big Hops is operating on. It’s going to provide the tools, and the problems. Figuring out the solution is entirely up to whoever is playing, which I’m a fan of. It’s the kind of problem solving that made computer programming so alluring to me 100 years ago when I was deciding what to study in college.

Movement in this game also has that rare quality of being easy to understand, but hard to master. You aren’t really required to do anything too crazy, but I had a lot of fun chaining together player character Hop’s various jumps, dives, and lay-ups. Though, I had just as much fun when I relied on far simpler movement too.

My only real criticism is that your hat can fall off while you’re in the midst of platforming. This meant that I couldn’t look quite as stupid as I’d have liked throughout the majority of my playtime. As someone who rather enjoys silly character customization, I took a great deal of offence whenever my hat decided to depart on its own adventure.

All said, Big Hops was an absolute joy. It comes highly recommended, especially if you’re someone who enjoys 3D Platformers, or less-strict puzzle solving.

Review Round-Up

Blightstone

I said as much in my full review, but Blightstone offers a solid foundation for Unfinished Pixel to continue building upon across Early Access. The game has been in the hands of players for around 2 weeks, and I’ve seen 6 different patches with tweaks to address common pain-points, and new additions based on player feedback. To my mind, that’s an excellent sign, and I wish the team all the best as they continue updating Blightstone in the coming months.

It’s definitely a game to keep your eyes on – one that I think will continue to get better, and better as time shuffles forward.

Confidential Killings

While it isn’t as puzzle-focused as its contemporaries, Confidential Killings does excel in its presentation. That’s ultimately why I landed on a soft recommendation for the title. I didn’t find playing it all too different from reading a Mystery novel where the case is ultimately solved by the end even if you, as the reader, weren’t doing a great job of keeping track of the clues throughout.

You can get my full thoughts here, but I think Confidential Killings won’t necessarily satisfy you if you’re in the market for a more involved puzzle game. If you’re willing to meet it half-way though, then Confidential Killings is a good time.

Super Chipflake Ü

It’s an N64-era Platformer, which is very much my sort of thing, where players spend most of their time completing fetch quests, which is very much not my sort of thing. Ultimately, I didn’t end up recommending Super Chipflake Ü, since I didn’t find it all too fun to play. Obviously, your mileage may vary, so read my review in full if you’re curious about it.

Indie Spotlight

MIO: Memories in Orbit

Last year, I covered MIO as part of the June Next Fest saying that I’d point to it whenever people complained about Silksong. Unfortunately, Silksong beat it to the punch by releasing in September of last year.

Regardless, I’m keen to dig into more of MIO. I quite enjoyed how aerial movement felt in the demo, and the broody, Sci-Fi aesthetic was very much my jam.

Steam page

Cairn

My other pick for January is Cairn, a game with a painfully accurate recreation of real-world rock climbing. As far as I could tell from the demo that I played last year, your aim is to complete an arduous climb of a particularly tall mountain. As such, I imagine Cairn will be about overcoming adversity, and surpassing the limits of the human body.

Steam page

Tearscape

My first pick for February is Tearscape, which is a retro 2D game that takes a heavy dose of inspiration from both 2D Zelda, and Bloodborne. I quite enjoyed the demo that I played last year during the October Next Fest, and am keen to see more of it.

Steam page

Monster Train 2: Destiny of the Railforged

Dear God. A Monster Train 2 expansion.

II feel like I don’t need to explain why this is exciting, but I will anyway:

  • A new faction with ~40 cards
  • A completely new game mode that changes how the game is played

I already sunk an ungodly amount of time into Monster Train 2 last year, so it wasn’t going to take much to pull me back in for more. It also helps that the Wurmkin (from MT1’s expansion) are being added as a free addition to the base game too, so there’s actually closer to 80 new cards for me to play with.

Steam page

Demon Tides

My final pick for February is Demon Tides, which is another 3D Platformer since we haven’t had enough of those yet in this article. 

Similar to Big Hops, Demon Tides features fairly expressive character movement, a good sense of humour, and level design straight out of an older Mario game. In my books, that’s a winning formula, and I’m keen to continue whiling away the hours playing great Platforming games throughout February.

Steam page

Hopefully, that puts a couple different games on your radar for the coming weeks. Though, I’d be interested in hearing what titles you’re most looking forward to in the comments if you’re willing to share.

And, as always, thank you for reading if you made it to the end. Your support is the lifeblood of what I do here. Stay safe out there, and I hope to see you in the next one.

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