PixelJunk Shooter's obvious highlight is its fluid physics. In its first (of three) acts, this is evinced by water and lava, each of which can flow with gravity, and which cool into dirt when combined. The eponymous "shooter" ship can shoot dirt to open passages, and to divert flows of water and lava around the stage and into each other.

It's a neat trick, and there are a few interesting twists in the form of items and enemies that can spout additional fluids. But the novelty wears off before long, and what's left underneath is essentially a twin-stick maze navigator, with missiles and an "overheat" dynamic in place of health. The real fundamentals of the game are a bit on the dull side.

I also got a little annoyed with the level design's reliance on the game's own interpretation of a monster closet, with enemies spontaneously appearing upon returning to an earlier and/or central part of the level. I get that there needs to be some kind of scripted event to push the level along, but the suddenness of the enemy spawns smacks of laziness, where a more sophisticated design would include hints at the upcoming event and allow the player to think ahead.

Anyway. I enjoyed PixelJunk Shooter for a short while, but got too bored of the mechanics to see it through.

Progress: Finished Episode 1.

A passing observation might leave you concerned that Dust: An Elysian Tail is steeped in "furry" subculture fandom. This really isn't true at all; at most, Dust is in the same vein as Disney's Robin Hood, a mostly-human story and setting that's told using anthropomorphs. It's quaint, maybe, but not excessively weird or esoteric -- especially because there's so much more going on in this game.

At its core, Dust is both a character-action game and a Metroidvania-styled platformer. The game world is split into multiple regions, each with a grid-based map that shows rough treasure locations, quest objectives, et cetera; and progress is frequently gated by Metroid-style ability upgrades, like a slide and a double-jump. (Significant backtracking is never explicitly required to progress in the game, although it is highly recommended for collecting extra treasure.) Within each map area, hordes of enemies stand in the way of the exit -- fortunately, titular protagonist Dust is equipped with a magic sword that makes total mincemeat out of them. There are a handful of combos and special attacks, but the combat system is mercifully simple, allowing even hopelessly mediocre players like myself to feel completely badass.

Said combat gets mixed up further by character attributes - which can be boosted after gaining enough experience points for a level-up - and equipment, which can be bought or crafted using item drops. Like the fighting itself, these stat-game systems are kept simple enough to be very rewarding with a minimal investment of time and attention. Stat previews clearly show what will happen with each change; the pause menu even allows you to purchase crafting materials directly from the blueprint screen. The whole affair is pleasantly streamlined, at the risk of, maybe, feeling a bit too "easy." But it's still satisfying enough to put the pieces together and see stat numbers go up, and to subsequently overpower enemies with overwhelming force.

(Relevant anecdote: I felt like I was pretty smart maxing out my attack stat and largely ignoring the stat attached to magic, up until about halfway through the game, when I encountered an enemy immune to physical attacks. Learn from my mistake -- invest in all the stats. They are all important.)

If it seems like I'm glossing over the explanation of Dust's game systems, that's because I am; they don't really need very much explanation. In truth, the secret "shame" of Dust is that - like Darksiders - it is just an amalgam of mechanics from other standout titles. There isn't really anything in Dust that hasn't been seen before. But Dust succeeds, with flying colors, at bringing these mechanics together and polishing them all into a cohesive whole.

Unfortunately, there is one aspect of the game that really suffers from that lack of creativity, and that's the narrative. Dust's setting and plot, while phenomenally executed for an indie game (with full, generally-good voice acting), are too generic. It's a relatively-shallow fantasy world with a hackneyed premise that, while fulfilling the requirement of moving the game along, doesn't stand out enough to be compelling. It's a real shame, because it's obvious that no small amount of effort went into its writing and production; it certainly isn't under-developed. But it isn't, fundamentally, very interesting. (Fortunately, almost all the story sequences can be fast-forwarded or skipped outright.)

That aside though, Dust's collection of tried-and-true components is a joy to partake in. Jacking up Dust's stats, and scouring the map for collectibles, make for some of the best Metroidvania-ing in recent memory. Dust may not be very innovative, but it's admirably well-implemented, full of content, and just plain fun to play.

Better than: Shadow Complex
Not as good as: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Gotta give some extra respect: to yet another indie game with in-game callouts to other indie games (Super Meat Boy, Braid, et al).

Progress: Finished on Normal, 113% (?) completion.

I. Hate. Rogue-likes. Losing progress - due to poor checkpoint placement, for example - is near the top of my list of general pet-peeves in games -- and the signature mechanic of a modern roguelike is losing all of your progress if you happen to slip up and die. (In retrospect, hey, Dead Rising was sort of a rogue-like wasn't it?) Rogue Legacy is commonly classified as a "rogue-lite," meaning it's a little more forgiving than all that; so I hoped I would be able to tolerate it. But I was wrong.

Rogue Legacy violates the death-resets-everything rule with purchasable upgrades. After you die, the money you've collected can be used to buy "manor" upgrades (which unlock new classes, or increase base stats); or, after finding blueprints or runes, to buy equippable items and skills. This sounds totally sensible in theory. But in practice, two of Rogue Legacy's core mechanics completely ruin it:

1. The "manor" upgrades become more expensive as you buy more of them (in other words, after investing in upgrade B, upgrade A will be more expensive than before).
2. After the upgrade-purchase process, but before re-entering the dungeon, Charon takes all of your money. (Yeah, exactly like Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know!).

So, after grinding my way to (fairly quick) death a few dozen times, new upgrades are actually more difficult to get than they were before, because the costs have risen so prohibitively. And it's impossible to gradually accumulate wealth, because, you can't. The more I play, the harder it gets. Bullshit.

I won't even get into how badly screwed you can get by the randomly-chosen class options (sometimes you just don't have any good options), and the randomly-generated dungeon layout (sometimes the first room is just a death trap). Rogue Legacy is designed to work against you. It is intentionally frustrating.

If you're into that sort of thing, then by all means, go for it. Personally -- I hate this shit.

Progress: Level 19, never killed any bosses

To the Moon is at its worst when it's trying to be a video game.

Part of this is down to the RPG Maker engine powering it: the point-and-click controls feel awkward when they work correctly, to say nothing of how irritatingly broken they become when the pathfinding falls apart; using keys to simulate a gamepad is more reliable, but hardly convenient; contextual actions and their hitboxes malfunction regularly. And some problems are really only attributable to the game's design: like the frequently lazy and tedious maps, and the universally boring puzzles.

That being said, gameplay is not what makes To the Moon noteworthy -- it's the writing. The game's plot, although slow to build at first, is genuinely interesting and unique (despite some superficial similarities to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). And the way that this story is told through dialog is generally pretty great. To the Moon's writing is markedly better than the vast majority of craptastic video game stories, and arguably approaches the quality level of critically-acclaimed films.

It's not perfect. Comic "relief" sometimes comes at inappropriate moments, breaking dramatic tension. Some portions of the game move slow, whether due to the unwanted interruption of bad gameplay, or simply from scripted elements literally moving very slowly. And I have some minor, distributed quibbles, like the dialog's weird approach to non-profane exclamations.

To put a point on it: this isn't the best game story I've experienced. But it ranks pretty high, with some particularly sophisticated use of foreshadowing, and fairly effective ... emotion, type, stuff. Feelings and shit.

To the Moon is bad as a game, but good enough as a story to make that game worth tolerating.

Better than: Dear Esther
Not as good as: Analogue: A Hate Story (which really had a better sense of brevity)
The story is memorable: but the game's strongest message might be don't make an adventure game in RPG Maker.

After Ittle Dew, I really wanted to delve deeper into Ludosity's catalog, and Card City Nights was dirt cheap relatively highly-recommended. But, for an allegedly "simple" game, its mechanics are varied and nuanced enough that its rewards don't really seem worth the effort. There are so many different effects to wield -- beyond straight-up offense and defense, there's disabling cards, removing cards, rotating cards, and more. The variety of hypothetical situations would theoretically benefit a balanced deck, with a little bit of everything; but the way the game's numbers work, if you aren't stacking your deck with the right attribute, there's just no way to keep up with the variously min-maxed AI opponents. It's rock-paper-scissors against a computer that always throws "X," but you won't know what "X" is until you've lost to it. And don't even get me started on the awkward rarities attached to certain link directions.

Don't misinterpret my complaints: the basic mechanics of the game are interesting, and I think they could actually support some fun sudden-death matchups against humans and balanced AIs. But the campaign's characters are dedicated to playing in ways that just aren't fun to play against. And the campaign itself is such a thin facade over the core conceit of collecting more cards that it just doesn't feel worthwhile.

Progress: Won 3/8 legendary cards.

Magrunner goes off the rails a bit in its third act. Not the story -- the story was never on any rails to begin with, floundering helplessly on the side of the track. No, what starts to fall apart in the third act is the gameplay mechanics. There are enemies that you need to "fight" by magnetically hurling things at them, and there are chases that are just totally out of place. These wacky tangents converge in a final boss fight that was obviously rushed out the door, where even the victory condition is completely unintuitive.

That aside, there were only a couple of places where I really felt like the game's puzzles were unfair, i.e. mechanics or objectives were cruelly non-obvious. In general, Magrunner's puzzles are really well-designed, and the amount of content is pretty admirable as well. Although the first act's levels tend to go by pretty quickly, in its second act, Magrunner presents some real head-scratchers. Forget the fact that this isn't really how magnets work; this is a good Portal-like puzzler.

What makes it fall short of Portal, in addition to the aforementioned third-act decline, is Magrunner's narrative weakness. The intro is pretty cutscene-heavy, as is the finale, with a pretty disappointing ending to boot. And there's only one character - the mentor - in the whole cast who's worth a damn; the protagonist has no personality whatsoever, other friendly characters come and go without a second thought, and even the villain is a flat, throwaway stooge. Although Magrunner succeeds in setting up a Lovecraftian atmosphere, its story elements are thoroughly underwhelming.

Despite those shortcomings though, Magrunner is definitely worth its running length. Its core puzzle mechanic is unique enough to support some really fresh puzzle design, and its atmospheric twist is unlike anything you're likely to have played before.

Better than: Quantum Conundrum, Q.U.B.E.
Not as good as: Portal, Portal 2
Story not as good as: Event Horizon

Progress: Finished on Normal

At first, Magrunner appears like nothing more than yet another Portal-alike -- right down to the elevators that carry you from test chamber to test chamber. And not unlike Portal, its puzzle conceit is simple, but compelling: you'll use left- and right-clicks to charge objects positively or negatively, using magnetic attraction and repulsion to make blocks and platforms move around, in order to make a path to the exit.

(Important science note: Magrunner's implementation of magnetism is wrong. In Magrunner, similar polarities attract one another, and dissimilar polarities repel. Ultimately this makes more sense for the game's puzzles, since you sometimes have to attract a collection of more than two objects. But the fundamental disagreement with reality is still bothersome.)

Anyway. The Portal comparisons are all well and good for several levels, and then shit gets really fucking real. I don't think it's a spoiler that, within the game's first act, it rips off its sci-fi mask to reveal some dark and spooky Lovecraft business. I've still got plenty of game left to go, but so far it's using some great environment design and ambient sound to nail a creepy atmosphere.

Which is especially good since the dialog writing and voice acting isn't really keeping up. With the exception of one supporting character in particular, pretty much everyone in this story has really dumb lines and a really hammy actor spouting them out. Parts of the plot are also a little weird, and not, like, R'lyeh weird -- just. Well, for example, one of the supporting characters is a clear satire of Mark Zuckerberg (his name is even an anagram of Zuckerberg's). It's a bit ... out of place.

But the atmosphere, and the rapidly-increasing puzzle complexity, are keeping Magrunner interesting regardless. I'm suitably anxious to delve deeper into this hard sci-fi nightmare.

Progress: Finished Act I

I can't be certain if the developers of Puzzle Bots intended for it to be a slow, dull, schlocky homage to point-and-click adventure games from 20 years ago; or if they legitimately found a time machine, and recovered this game from Lucasarts circa 1990. But deliberate or otherwise, its primitive mechanics and flat narrative make it hard to maintain any amount of interest in.

Progress: Made it to the kitchen.

Kingdom Rush is a mostly-well-crafted tower defense game. I mean, I could essentially end the post here. It doesn't go too far beyond what you'd expect from a modern tower defense: you can build towers of varying melee and range effectiveness, you can upgrade them with money you earn from defeating enemies, you can follow alternate upgrade paths for different unique abilities, you can use out-of-combat points ("stars" you earn by completing levels) to upgrade your upgrades so you can upgrade while you upgrade. You have a hero unit, selectable from different options (with different strengths and weaknesses), who can level up during combat.

What makes Kindom Rush noteworthy is, basically, that it's well-made. It's easy to control, it has a shallow learning curve - up until the end - and it's polished with a moderate coat of fun, from cartoony animations to game-industry in-jokes. There are plenty of unit and upgrade options to play around with, so it never really feels repetitive. And, although I didn't get into it myself, there is a wealth of end-game content to explore in the form of bonus mini-campaigns.

But, the game isn't without its share of issues. The last couple missions ramp up sharply in difficulty, such that many previous strategies no longer work, and there isn't any real direction on how to improve. Replaying a level in a more difficult mode disables certain features, turning the game into a puzzle where you have to find the one or two possible tower setups that will work. There are a couple of balance issues that just seem unfair, like the Lich, which infinitely spawns skeleton minions that count toward failure if they reach the end of the lane, but don't yield any rewards when they're killed. And it's a bit disappointing that the extra bonus missions (which constitute almost as much content as the main game) don't open up until completing the core story -- until which time, levels only progress in a forced, linear order.

These irritations are really only remarkable because the rest of the game is just fine. Not excellent, but certainly not bad, either. Kingdom Rush does very well for itself within the established mold of tower defense; but its potential is ultimately limited by how comfortably it still fits inside that mold.

Better than: Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim
Not as good as: Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten
It does help: that the game is full of classic references, like tesla-tower dwarves yelling "Toasty!" when you upgrade them.

Progress: Finished the main campaign on Normal.

What I expected from Incredipede was a kinematics-based puzzle game, attempting to construct a weird muscle-bug creature to manipulate objects and climb over obstacles. That expection is ... partially accurate. But I'll get to that in a bit.

Incredipede's campaign is presented in two difficulty options, "Normal" and "Hard." In the Normal mode, there doesn't seem to be any construction element at all -- the game provides your insane creature, and you attempt to maneuver it, as if it isn't in constant, horrifying pain, to a goal at the end of a level. Given that the levels aren't really that complicated, the challenge isn't in solving obstacles so much as it is in solving the creature's wacky movement patterns. This gameplay is pretty much QWOP plus collectibles.

The Hard mode is where the construction elements come into play, but not necessarily. Even in this mode, the majority of the game seems to be about taking what the game gives you and trying not to play it like a tool. Just, uh, more ridiculous. Sometimes, you'll have to build upon a given creature in order to make something better. Allegedly. I didn't actually get far enough in this mode to try that aspect of the game.

I only even got to try the construction mode by ignoring the story levels and going to the game's "Sandbox." But imagine my disappointment when discovering that controlling the construction mode was even more difficult than trying to control the pre-constructed creatures. How do I undo or remove limbs? How do I actually connect muscles? I'm not going to say that this mode is impossible, but - my patience having already worn thin by that point - I simply gave up trying to figure it out.

Incredipede is fairly well done for what it is: the presentation is good, and given that its goal is to be hard to control, it really nails that. But in light of what I wanted-slash-expected, the game is a definite let-down.