Garden Story is an indie adventure game developed by Picogram and published by Rose City Games. Twitter’s algorithm is why I know this game, which is the discovery story for most indie games reviewed on Level Editors. I wish I had more interesting indie game discovery stories. But it’s true, Twitter is a marketing gold mine.
Reviews
Review: Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet
It’s not unusual for old video game franchises to reinvent themselves. With releases like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild taking on an open-world gameplay style that is in stark contrast to its 1980s predecessor, or the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise moving away 2D platforming roots to 3D open world, it was only time until Pokémon would follow.
Detective Grimoire: From Scruffy Beards to Charmed
Review: Yo-kai Watch
Yo-kai Watch is a Level-5 franchise with a cult following in Japan but modest success in the US. My discovery of the franchise began at a Walmart in 2014. Yo-kai Watch, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, and a bunch of generic releases were on the shelf. I was familiar with Dragon Quest and the JRPG genre in general, so of course, Dragon Quest is my first pick. But I kept thinking about Yo-kai Watch after I left. I find that it’s common to leave Walmart with Komasan’s coy eyes staring at your back from the glass window.
How I Recovered from the End of Flash Games with Itch.io
My middle school years of online activity consisted of websites like Addicting Games and GamesForGirls (this site refuses to load). My online history contained hours of playing flash games; the game categories I frequented were cooking or point-and-click.
A vast percentage of flash games on Addicting Games are cross posts from Newgrounds and Armor Games. They continue to live on as more flash game sites spawn and players repost them. But with the death of Adobe Flash, a lot of these games are dead or require a Google Extension. So now many of these sites are hollow. In the younger me, Itch.io does not exist, and I will not start my love affair of indies games until I’m an adult. Itch.io starts in 2013 by Leaf Corcoran.
Review: Shin Hayarigami – Blindman
CONTENT WARNING: Brief description of body horror, minor story spoilers.
Urban legend: Shin Hayarigami – Blindman is the first installment of the detective visual novel series Shin Hayarigami by Nippon Ichi Studio. It was originally released on the PS3 and PS Vita in Japan, then later ported to iOS and Android globally. For English speakers, only Blindman has been released at the time of this writing, while in Japan Shin Hayarigami is an ongoing franchise of six adventures. Blindman is infamously known for being the first visual novel by Nippon Ichi on mainstream platforms to be rated with CERO Z due to body horror and graphic gore.