Are you copying me?

So, for anyone that has played Risk of Rain 2 (an excellent game if you haven’t played it) then Gatekeeper Gatekeeper will seem immediately familiar. Whilst visually the game is not that similar to Risk of Rain 2, in terms of the gameplay there are a huge number of similarities, thoguh this it not a bad thing.

Gatekeeper is a rogue-like, third person (isometric) shooter, the gameplay is fairly straightforward, you start a level with a certain task to complete, once complete the level boss will spawn, you kill the boss and then move onto the next level. In between levels you can upgrade your character and unlock items for future runs. There are a lot of items and a lot of interesting combinations that you can employ to make your character more pwerful. There are also a number of different characters to unlock with different gameplay styles. Each character has a number of different skills which recharge at differnet rates after use and these skills can be upgraded along the way as can other things such as movement speed, attack speed and base damage.

Older doesn’t mean bad

These days, often when people are buying a new game (more especially those with a shiny new RTX graphics card) they will stampede to the newest AAA game (new game with a big budget from a big game studio) and buy it because ‘it’s new, has better graphics and is therefore a better game’. If you applied the same principle to buying a car, you could (often, though not always) give a broken down car that hardly runs a fresh coat of paint and new interior and then sell it as the ’latest and greatest’ thing since the last ’latest and greatest’ thing (which was probably a few months ago). If a game is bad, amazing new 2025 (or whatever year it is that you are reading this) graphics with multi-sampled ray tracing (or whatever the latest trend is to sell graphics cards) will not make the game good, just more expensive.

A winding stem for a climbing plant?

Apart from the name, which seems to have little relation to the game itself, Tendryll is a game to buy or put on your wishlist right now if you are a fan of games like Slay the Spire, Inscryption and/or Into the Breach. Whilst still in early access (and only version 0.41), at time of writing there is a lot of content in the game already and it is totally playable and definitely worth the money.

Guns, Ants & Platforms…

Not really a huge fan of platform games though really enjoy roguelite/roguelike games and therefore decided to give Ants Took My Eyeball a chance and was pleasantly surprised how good it is. There aren’t a lot of rogueish platformer games out there (Dead Cells is about the only one that springs to mind and is more of a metroidvania/roguelike mashup) so there are not a lot games to compare it to, though it does stand out as one of the more polished 2D platformer games I have ever played.

Like chess with ninjas++

It’s not actually that much like chess in many ways, and quite a lot like chess in many others, though either way it’s damn good and it’s Shogun Showdown (also on Nintendo Switch and Playstation. ‘Don’t just move, think first’ is perhaps the most concise summary of the gameplay, this is a game of strategy, thinking at least 1 or 2 moves ahead all the time. Looking at gameplay videos you might be put off by the simplicity, thinking it looks too easy and not worth the money. At first glance, it does look like a straightforward game where you are a ninja and move backwards and forwards and kill enemies using weapons. However, the variety of upgrades and the combinations in which they can be used to execute combos makes it addictive, fun and definitely recommended. Even better, there is a free demo version available on all plaforms so you can try before you buy.

A roguelite on steroids++

When you think roguelite/roguelike you might think, ’lots of things to unlock, maybe 50 to 100 and I am a happy gamer’. Doomsday Hunters (also on Nintendo Switch) takes this idea and runs with it, and runs with it and then runs with it again. 50+ hours into the game and I am still unlocking items, characters and game modes, with no end in sight. Playing it, grinding to unlock is not a chore and it has been a lot of fun the entire time.

Cards, pixel graphics & tons of replayability

This was a surprising game, whilst at first look it seemed to be a rather uninspiring ‘just another deck builder’ type game this proved to, in fact, be very wrong. Conjury (also on Android on Google Play Store as well as Free on itch.io) has a lot of depth, a lot of gameplay and is excellent value for money (even more so if you play the free itch.io version). If you like games like Slay the Spire or Roguebook or other roguelike deck builder/card games and you haven’t tried Conjury then, in my opinion, it is definitely worth the time.

Slay Bella’s Blood Spire (maybe)

As the title suggests, this game has borrowed ideas from Slay the Spire (something to put on the to-play list if you haven’t - also on Xbox Game Pass) in certain areas though the gameplay itself has nothing to do with cards. Instead, you build a road (called a ‘gutter’ in the game) along which enemies will travel, and place traps along the way. The goal being that all enemies (called monstrosities in game) must die, giving Bella blood, before reaching her mouth, otherwise the meter on the right side fills up and then it is game over.

Fun & death, all in a neat package

Have an hour or two to spare and like dying a lot? The HardAF Demo might be worth trying if you like precision 2D platformers where even a few pixels in the wrong direction means that you will die. The game has a rather unique concept, the level is illuminated by your blood, the more you die, the more red gets splattered all over the place and the more of the level that you can see. If you are stuck there is even the option to explode yourself to illuminate your surroundings by depositing blood over the numerous circular saws and spikes that make up a large portion of every level.

Random dungeons with moving player

Demonstrates how to create a simple dungeon map of room rectangles for use in top-down games. This expands on the Simple Dungeon Map Example which should be used as a starting point. Creates random dungeons and tiles the floors and walls and adds a player that moves and is animated. W A S D keys move player, SPACE to make a new map, UP ARROW to change the camera zoom, RIGHT ARROW to turn colors on/off and DOWN ARROW to turn on/off debug mode. Every map will be different from the next map and you can change the number of rooms and map size easily to allow for creation of larger or smaller maps. View on Github