Zoochosis Game Review   Zoochosis calls itself a “bodycam horror simulation game,” and honestly, that’s not totally wrong. But when I played about an hour and a half on my stream. It wasn’t scary in my opinion. Zoo Life… With a “Horror” Twist You play as a new zookeeper on your first day, getting a tour of this clearly messed-up facility. The place is grimy, they lock you in overnight, and at one point, a human body in a body bag gets dumped into a grinder to turn into animal food — and my character just kind of shrugs it off. Same with the first “jump scare”, which didn’t even…

Fast Food Simulator Review   Fast Food Simulator isn’t about a big story or deep plot — it’s all about running your own fast-food restaurant the way you want. You’re in charge of everything, from ordering supplies and cooking food to cleaning up and serving customers. The game gives you full freedom to manage your place, so you can create your own experience and get into the role of a fast-food employee. You get to work with a bunch of different stations like grills, fryers, ice cream machines, soda dispensers, and cash registers. Beyond just cooking and serving, you also deliver food to tables, organize storage, run the drive-thru, and…

Unpacking Game Review   moving in real life is the worst. But in Unpacking, a game its creators call a “Zen puzzle,” it somehow becomes cozy and comforting. The game takes you through a series of homes that represent the life of a character you never actually see, spanning from 1997 to 2018. It turns out, you can learn a lot about someone just by looking at the stuff they bring with them from place to place. The gameplay is super simple—you’re basically taking things out of boxes and finding where they go—but it works. And it sticks with you. It’s the kind of game that reminds you how creative…

Strange Horticulture Review   he plants in Strange Horticulture do all sorts of things: There’s one that can open anything that’s locked. Others can make someone brave, ease their pain, lure them to their death, or protect them from the cold. These plants and plenty, plenty more line the shelves of a small shop tucked away in the dark streets of Undermere, a strange, rainy town that sits by a forest and a lake. In Strange Horticulture, I play as a person who’s just inherited a plant shop after a family member’s death. But Strange Horticulture offers plenty more: A mysterious, occult story that unfolds around the very plants you sell, along with clever…

The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me I’m reviewing The Dark Pictures: The Devil in Me today. The Devil in Me takes us to Chicago, first at the turn of the 1900s to introduce–or, for horror fanatics, more likely remind us of–H.H. Holmes, who is dubbed “America’s first serial killer.” Holmes’ “murder castle”. A meaningful choice-and-consequence system makes a second or even third playthrough alluring. Particularly when playing online co-op, where you each control one character and independently make decisions with the potential to fuck everything up. When I played, I did a co-op run with a fellow streamer. She played the first character, and I played as the…

The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes I’m reviewing The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes today. House of Ashes begins in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Akkad in 2231 BC, with a compelling prologue that takes inspiration from the “The Curse of Akkad. then jumping to taking place during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, its setting is a far cry from the ghost ships and witch trials. Fortunately, House of Ashes uses the Iraq War as more than a simple backdrop for jump scares, focusing on both sides of the war as allegiances fall by the wayside in the face of a more terrifying threat. A meaningful choice-and-consequence system…

Enshrouded Review These notes and journal entries are interesting enough, but aside from a short opening cutscene and a few quest-related dialogues, they provide pretty much the extent of any explicit storytelling Enshrouded does after you – the Flameborn – spawn in the Cinder Vault at the southernmost tip of its expansive world and then blaze off on your own path. once you build a Flame Altar out of a few common resources and place it down, you can begin plopping down your own structures, furnishings, crops, crafting stations, NPCs, and so forth. This is necessary in order to make progress while exploring the map, since – aside from a…

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope Review I’m reviewing The Dark Pictures: Little Hope today. I like my decisions to come with consequences. Little Hope begins with a flashback to the 1970s and a brief introduction to a troubled family of six. Dad is a heavy drinker. The older sister feels isolated and depressed. And, in a hint at the spiritual warfare that will dominate much of Little Hope’s second half, the younger sister has been held back repeatedly after church to speak with the reverend. These glowing embers of drama soon blaze up into a literal raging fire when the younger sister leaves her doll on the stovetop. In…

This is a Ghost Review This is a Ghost is a supernatural investigation game. You are a member of a secret society that hunts scary entities from our world. Start your investigation with a full set of tools to find clues to a haunting. Gather evidence, identify the entity and send it back to the afterlife. Playable in Solo and co-op with up to 4 players. It can be spooky when you first start playing it, but that wore off quickly for me. The progression system makes it really rewarding to get everything done, and I love they don’t require you to pay a butt load of money for the…

Aloft Early access review If you’ve played pretty much any survival game before, then Aloft will immediately feel familiar. It has swinging pickaxes and axes of the non-pick variety to gather stone, wood, and other materials in order to craft your way to greater power. That familiarity quickly fades away as you discover the main thing that sets Aloft apart: the skyborne islands that serve as both places to explore and magically mobile homes to navigate this floating landscape. You’ll use a glider to fly around to visit other islands. Slapping a couple of sails, a rudder, and a steering wheel onto any island allows you to move it freely.…