Game EXP Trilogy Part II: Castle Crashers, Crayon Physics Deluxe, & Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (PC)

We're back with another trilogy of unrelated games, one of which I bought and the other I received as part of past Humble Indie Bundles; specifically, 4 and V back in 2011 and 2012, respectively.  I finished all three of these games (I'll elaborate where needed on that statement), and for the most part, I enjoyed all three of these games (I'll elaborate where needed on that statement).

Castle Crashers
Systems: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows, OS X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
Release Date: August 27, 2008
Publisher: The Behemoth
Developer: The Behemoth
Time Spent: 35 Hours, 30 Minutes - 177 Hours,  54 Minutes

First off, I put down 35+ hours at the time that I first beat the game, which, according to the date tag on my screenshot when The Squire and I first beat the Evil Wizard, was in February of this year (2026).  In the five months since that time, we've put in an additional 140 hours.  Although I had introduced The Squire to the game sometime in late 2024.  And before that, I played it a bit with Chreekat, probably sometime around 2015, when he stayed with us for a while.  So I've been playing Castle Crashers in some iteration for just over 11 years.  But it wasn't until I reintroduced it to The Squire earlier this year that we got serious and beat the game with the Green Knight.

Since that time, The Squire has wanted me to collect all of the animal orbs, collect all of the weapons, and try to unlock all of the playable characters, although that's kind of where we've stopped since some of the characters can only be unlocked by beating certain levels with certain characters on Insane Difficulty.  So we've spent a lot of time in the mornings playing and replaying levels.  The Squire has also recently discovered the different characters available in the Steam Workshop, and I've had to limit him to selecting only one character per week, otherwise we'd end up spending 30 minutes just sifting through the same group of poorly designed characters, characters that a six-year-old shouldn't be playing as, and characters that are just a real person's face slapped on the design template.

Crayon Physics Deluxe
Systems: Windows, iOS, OSX, Linux
Release Date: 2007
Publisher: Kloonigames
Developer: Kloonigames
Time Spent: 6.5 Hours

Back when I was putting together "The Ultimate Spreadsheet Database," I remember I came back across Crayon Physics Deluxe, a 2D physics-based puzzle game where you try to get a ball to interact/collect a star.  It's actually pretty similar in feeling to Scribblenauts, but instead of controlling a character, you're drawing objects with a digital crayon to interact with a ball.  Like most puzzle games, the levels start out very simply, getting the player used to the mechanics and rules, slowly upping the difficulty until the game hits the player with a puzzle that absolutely stumps them into stupid.  You end up staring at the screen, trying to figure out how in the hell you're supposed to get the ball to the star, feeling like a complete idiot who shouldn't've been allowed out of kindergarten. 

Similar to a lot of games from around this time, the late two-aughts, the game operates on a star/flag basis, meaning the "better" your solution, the more flags you earn per level, and if you earn all three possible optional flags in a single stage, you earn an additional star on top of the one required to complete the stage.  So if the first world, or island in the case of this game, has 10 stages, then there are a possible 20 stars you can earn: one star for completing the level, and an additional star for earning three flags.  The primary feature of these kinds of mechanics is to lock access to levels down the road, often requiring the player to replay levels to better their score to unlock additional worlds/islands, because you're going to need 120 stars to unlock the final central island.  There are a total of 150 stars before getting to the island, and I currently have 98.

In my head, I have completed the "main campaign" of the game, in that I've completed all of the levels and earned stars on every level, if I consider the 120-star island an optional end-game stage.  In order to collect the remaining 22 stars for the center island, I would need to look up tutorials for 22 more levels, and even then, because the game is physics-based, if your drawing differs even slightly from the walkthrough you're looking at, it can throw everything off.  That feels like it kind of defeats the purpose of playing a puzzle game, if you're just going to have to follow a walkthrough to earn a flag for an Elegant Solution: a solution that uses only one continuous line; an Old School Solution: you don't click on the ball or draw any pins to essentially create a fulcrum; or an Awesome Solution: you can click this box yourself only after you have completed the other two solutions.  So I called it there.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

Systems: iOS, Windows, OSX, Linux, Android, Nintendo Switch

Release Date: March 24, 2011

Publisher: Capybara Games

Developer: Capybara, Superbrothers, Jim Guthrie

Time Spent: 5 Hours 18 Minutes

I feel like I would have liked this game a lot more had I played it as god intended, on an iPad or on the Nintendo Switch.  Basically, a platform where the touchscreen was the novel mechanic in controlling the game, because playing this on my laptop, with mouse controls, felt like I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword again on the Nintendo Switch.  What I mean is that Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was originally developed for iOS and touchscreen devices, so a lot of the mechanics and puzzles in the game were created with the novelty of a touchscreen device in mind.  I felt that to really enjoy this game beyond the quirky dialogue, intriguing story, beautiful pixel art graphics, and haunting music, you had to put yourself in the headspace of someone who was playing on a touchscreen.

There were a lot of times when you had to tap specific areas of the environment to either solve or start a puzzle.  Drag your finger/mouse from one thing to another in a specific order.  Tap a specific place on the screen at a specific time to trigger the next part of the puzzle.  In one instance, you were supposed to drag two stone statue-like figures towards the center of the screen, but since that was impossible, it took away from the significance of the puzzle, which meant that how to solve the puzzle wasn't clear, and it lost a bit of its meaning.  Even battles in this game, where you had to tap either a sword or a shield at a very specific time, felt poorly optimized for a player using only a mouse.  Maybe it's just me, but it felt that there was a significant difference in response times between moving and clicking a mouse, and having a finger from each hand hovering centimeters over a shield or sword icon on the screen.

The only other thing that put a sour taste in my mouth was feeling that I was only scratching the surface of the story in the game.  Like I was given a primer on the characters and the world, but there was more to discover that I hadn't figured out.  After finishing the game, I discovered that there were several ARG elements by way of phone numbers you could call based on the actual cycle of the moon, hidden grooves within the vinyl soundtrack, and a conclusion of sorts from a video located on Vimeo (which is no longer available, even on the Internet Archive).  This made me feel left out, but I guess that's partly my fault for not playing a 15-year-old game when I first got the game back in May, 2012.  Even then, the fact that needing to buy additional products to experience the full story makes me a bit salty.  As in spitefully salty.

And yes, I did wait for the actual moon cycle to be accurate for two of the in-game quests, which I appreciated was a mechanic in the game.  I didn't cheat.

We'll be back next month with three more games for another Game EXP Trilogy article, although with these next games, there was a little bit more of a struggle than with the previous six games in this series.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

[Pixel Font - Olde Tome by Lady Liefy]

MIDI Week Singles: "Space Pirates" - Castle Crashers (PC)

 

"Space Pirates" from Castle Crashers on Windows, OS X, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 & 4, Nintendo Switch (2012-2019)
Composer: Waterflame
Album: Age of Flash
Label: Bandcamp
Publisher: The Behemoth
Developer: The Behemoth

Castle Crashers is one of those odd games where about half of the music in the game was pulled from pre-existing sources.  Taken by itself, "Space Pirates" does have several elements of quirky science fiction, from the spaceship sound effect in the opening seconds, the instrumentation behind the keyboard/synth, to the electronic-sounding bass throughout the song, it's all very tongue-in-cheek sci-fi.  But within the context of Castle Crashers, it manages to fit perfectly within the confines of a forest overrun by thieves, possibly in the employ of the Evil Prince (I don't know his actual name, but that's what The Squire and I refer to him as).  Because of how much I've played the Thieves' Forest stage, I can really only hear how well this song works in a forest setting beset by an annoying band of bow-happy thieves ohmygod they're Robin Hood and his Merry Band, minus Robin Fitzooth.  And a group of trolls who have taken up residence in an abandoned mill.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

If You Cross Our Path in this Nation of Death

First Impressions: Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!

Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library
Systems: Windows, Steam OS, Linux
Release Date: April 30, 2026
Publisher: ArtRising
Developer: ArtRising
Time Currently Spent: 2 Hours 30 Minutes
Playthrough Videos on YouTube

So you're telling me that there's a game where you're stuck in a library by yourself, and you have to put away over 3,000 books on the correct shelf?  And that's it?

This game is 100% my jam.

I'm two and a half hours in, and I've only put away 4.88% of the books.  I've put away 150 books.  There's an achievement where you have to put away all 3,072 books in fewer than 3 hours.  That achievement is not for me.  

Because this is an arcane library, and you are presumably a student at this arcane institution, you do know some spells from the beginning that you can use to help you organize books to a certain extent.  I wouldn't actually know because I didn't know spells existed in the game until I had already played for a literal hour.  Not that I'll be using magic at all, because that's not why I'm playing this game.  I'm not playing to see how fast I can put away books, or to build out my spell tree to maximize the number of books I can put away in 60 seconds.  I'm playing this game because I love organizing books.

About five years ago, when Conklederp and I reorganized our house, we moved our two bookshelves into the basement. I was excited because it meant I got to take down all the books from the shelf and then put them back in a slightly more efficient way.  About six months ago, I did the same thing because I wanted to make room on the bottom shelves of the bookshelf for some of our board games.  At the same time, I reorganized the two bookshelves I have full of DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

I know I'm not playing this game very efficiently.  I'm not taking notes on which shelf each genre of book is kept so that I don't have to run back to the stairs at the front (back?) of the library that has a visual diagram.  I also don't organize the stack of up to 10 books I can carry by where they are supposed to go in the library to minimize the time I'm spending putting books away.  I'm going to take my time with this game and enjoy every hour of it, because once I got mentally past the sheer number of books in the game (albeit a bit sad that you can't actually open any of the books), I fell into my kind of satisfying zen game.  This is a game I play to mentally decompress while on my lunch break at work.

There's plenty more that I haven't gone into yet, but I will save that for the eventual Game EXP article.  So I'll see y'all in about 50 hours.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Just Let Me Be A Freak

MIDI Week Singles: "Lullaby" - Crayon Physics Deluxe (PC)

 

"Lullaby" from from Crayon Physics Deluxe on Windows, Linux, Android, iOS7, & macOS (2009)
Composer: _ghost
Album: Crayon Physics Deluxe
Label: Humble Bundle
Publisher: Kloonigames
Developer: Kloonigames

"Lullaby" is the perfect song for a game like Crayon Physics Deluxe, where you can go from puzzle to puzzle with this ethereal voice singing while you try to figure out how best to get the ball to the star using the fewest number of crayon strokes.  The piano/chimes and guitar are a nice accompaniment that helps to break up what essentially is the same 14ish-second vocal part sung over the course of the whole song.  There isn't much development in the song, even with the flittering flute and additional electronic instruments and sound effects, but it doesn't need to be anything more than it is.  The song feels like it exists for the player to lose themselves in, bringing any aggravations from either receiving only one star at the end of a level or having to restart a level because the game wigged out when your single line became too long for the game to comprehend.

I've only been able to find out a little bit about the artist _ghost, primarily their SoundCloud page that I found from a Reddit thread.  It looks like the song was written independently of the game, three years before it came out, and that it uses samples from skoria and brad sucks.  They haven't uploaded any new music in seven years, although they're part of Ghost Kollective, who were last active five years ago.

That's all I've got for "Lullaby," a calming song used brilliantly in a game that is calming in and of itself, until it isn't.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I've Been Waiting So Long

Game EXP: HORSES (PC)

HORSES
Systems: Windows
Release Date: December 2, 2025
Publisher: Self?
Developer: Andrea Lucco Borlera & Santa Ragione
Time Spent: 3 Hours 22 Minutes

Probably like a lot of people, I first heard about HORSES in late 2025 when there was the hubbub about the game being pulled from Steam and Epic due to material content.  Intrigued, I went over to GOG, where the game is still available, plunked down a digital $5 bill, and got the game after watching the trailer.

HORSES covers a lot of ground in the ideas and themes it explores: human trafficking, sexual assault, generational abuse and trauma, the Milgram effect, social hierarchies, and functionalism.  But how the hell do you write about a video game in all of its parts while glossing over such heavy topics like generational trauma, human trafficking, and sexual assault?  The honest answer is that you can't.  Or you could, but then you'll find yourself writing things like, "I don't mean to gloss over thousands of years of slavery in human history, but..." or "I don't want to ignore the trauma of survivors of sexual assault..." and even just writing those fictitious sentences feels wrong.  So, as I get into this bare-bones Game EXP article for HORSES, just know that these things were at the forefront of my mind as they came up in the game.

In HORSES, you take on the character of Anselmo, a young Italian man who is dropped off at a farm to work for two weeks during the summer, presumably because his father wants him to understand the meaning of hard work.  A significant portion of the horror and tension in the game surrounds the people forced to live as "horses", but the other half of the game, Anselmo doing his daily chores and the mere existence of living on this farm, makes up the other third of the horror.  Over the course of the game, more and more disturbing aspects of the farm come to light.  First and foremost, as the title suggests, and if you haven't seen any of the trailers, all of the horses on the unnamed farmer's farm are captive and tortured, naked humans forced to wear horse masks.  All of the horses are kept in a small pen and treated as one would an actual horse, including feed, water, and working conditions, although, thankfully, never shod by a farrier.  

The existence of so many people kept in pens is horrific enough without the implications that the farmer never leaves the farm, so there must be significantly more people involved in this operation.  And then the question if Anselmo is also an accomplice who could be implicated in all of these crimes because you, the player, go along with nearly everything that is asked of you by the farmer.  Pointing out which "horses" misbehave, assisting with doling out punishments, and covering up torture perpetrated by the farmer.  For me, this was one of the primary sources of horror, and it was exceedingly effective.  All of the implied horror that you don't see, similar to all of the murders in Se7en that you don't see, along with what you do see, is now all a part of your daily routine.

Every morning and evening, you sit down to a meal.  Often in the mornings, the farmer has left your breakfast out, while in the evenings, you sit down with the farmer to eat your dinner with him.  The TV is usually left on behind the farmer, and you can watch the looping program, often equine-related, and then eat your meal while the farmer either converses with you or just stares.  I don't know if it was intentionally implied, or the idea popped in my head because I've played The Walking Dead: A TellTale Games Series - Season 1, but any time there were steaks or sausages on Anselmo's plate, I immediately suspected the farmer had used "horse" meat.  And since there wasn't any way to turn down your food, and you had to eat the food to progress with the game, I stubbornly choked down the food, one bite at a time.

There is a story that goes along with the game, and it's not just a horror-based farming simulator.  Over the course of the weeks you spend on the farm, Anselmo interacts more with several of the "horses," and the interactions become more and more disturbing.  You find out more about the history of the farm, a few of the "horses," and even the backstory of the farmer towards the very end.  In the last third of the game, the main story really kicks into overdrive, focusing less and less on Anselmo's daily chores and activities, and more on the plight of the "horses" and what Anselmo does to affect any kind of change, be it overtly or subvertly.  Several surreal sequences could be dreams or Anselmo's descent into psychosis by merging his waking life with nightmares.  The game ends on what could best be described as an upnote, but in the same way that a Lovecraftian story could have a "good ending" because humanity has been momentarily saved at the expense of the narrator, who descends into madness.  There's a goodness in the ending, but at what cost to Anselmo and the player?

HORSES was indeed a strange, horrific, and disturbing game.  I don't think it deserved to be delisted from both Steam and Epic, considering some of the NSFW games on Steam's storefront; not that you can search for NSFW tags since they were removed in May of this year.  I am obviously not denying that there are disturbing and potentially offensive elements in the game, but they're not there to be offensive, or at least I didn't feel that way.  It's definitely an Italian art-house horror experience, Susperia or Phenomena, that aims to both seduce and disturb the audience, all the while telling a story that you're likely not to have come across before.  And HORSES certainly is that.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

But Lately It's Been Screaming in My Ear

Monthly Update: July, 2026

 

Hmmm, where do I start?

On one hand, the SCOTUS narrowly recognized the fact that the Constitution exists by voting 5:4 that Trump's executive order declaring the Birthright Citizenship had been misinterpreted for the last 158 years, because he's a constitutional scholar, we all know him to be.  On the other hand, the same SCOTUS upheld the transphobic laws in Idaho and West Virginia in a 6:3 vote, agreeing that trans athletes can only compete in sports related to the genitals they were born with.  So, look forward to a rush by republicans to create their own Girls' Sports Certification businesses in the coming weeks.  But why all the negativity?  We're all profiting from this feces show, right?  What is absolutely crazy, in the kind of way some Canadian comedians would appreciate, is how much bullshittery happened last month that I would probably run out of room, time, and energy to talk about video games.  I had nearly forgotten that Trump tried to create a 1.776 billion dollar fund to pay back people he claimed were hurt by the government, but that only he would be the one to approve payments, which was just about a month ago.  But we're not in the business of recapping a month's worth of political intrigue, so let's drop this in the cesspool that is currently the Reflecting Pool and move on with our thoughts.

A few days ago, on Monday, I believe, The Squire and I beat Donkey Kong Bananza, and by "beat," I mean we beat the final boss and saw credits roll.  The Squire did want to start some of the post-game challenges because he's watched a lot of videos (before we nipped commentary videos in the bud) talking about the "Elder Rehearsals," but after Wednesday night and all of the annoyances that came with that ("The Nintendo people that made this level are not nice!  They're not nice people, and they shouldn't make this level anymore!  I gave them a second chance!!" The Squire yelled through tear-soaked eyes and grunts of frustration), we're likely going to be taking a break for a while.

I did buy Star Fox (StarFox ?) day one, which I know is out of the ordinary for me.  I just got caught up in the updated look of the game, remembering how much fun I had with Star Fox 64, and the fact that most stores had it at $10 off if you pre-ordered.  I've currently only played through three stages, and apart from the dialogue scenes between stages, there doesn't seem to be any fluff added to pad out the levels.  The level where you defend Fichina from the first appearance of Star Wolf still takes about five minutes.  It's quite refreshing to play a game where each level doesn't require a 45-minute time commitment.  Plus, I'm only playing it at night after The Squire goes to bed since he likely has it in his head that the Switch 2 belongs to him.

Last week, I decided to bring in the Switch OLED to the office since it's only playing physical cartridges now, (see this slightly outdated post from a year ago), and I wanted to finally finish Triangle Strategy.  I think I realized my biggest hangup with the game, if I haven't already mentioned it, is that the characters feel like they're in a YA novel, and there is absolutely zero chemistry between the main character, Serenoa, and his wife, Frederica.  It's not that her character is badly written, as I find her backstory and the blind hate she and the Rosellans received from the ultra orthodoxy of the religious kingdom of Hyzante written so well that it elicits a physical and emotional response from me.  Half the time, I forget that Serenoa and Frederica are married, as a lot of their interactions can be awkwardly characterized by the tap heard round the world (minus the flinch because Serenoa doesn't roll that way).

Speaking of lack of chemistry, I reached the point in Fire Emblem: Awakening where it's revealed who Chrom ends up marrying and having a kid with.  Since I wasn't aware that the game was tracking who Chrom had the strongest relationship with up to that point by the number of interactions in battle, apart from the usual relationship rank, I was a bit taken aback when he revealed that he loved Sully.  Unbeknownst to even myself, I had apparently been shipping (do kids still use that these days?) Chrom and Maribelle.  It became my head canon that after a particularly long and arduous battle, Chrom and Sully, who had grown close over the ensuing weeks, slept together.  Chrom does what he feels is the most honorable thing, à la Robb Stark, and marries Sully.  I get it.  It's dumb.  And being a 46-year-old man, I'm not really interested/invested in a dating sim tactics game, which I already understand Fire Emblem to be.  But that's not really my interest, and I felt like I lost a significant amount of interest in the game around that chapter; similar to how I lost interest in Mass Effect 2 when it felt like a sci-fi dating sim with combat added for flavor.

Lastly, the other game I've been playing on the Switch 2 (although originally released on the Switch 1, and see above for compatibility issues with the OLED) is Hades.  I'm about 27 runs in, I've made it past the first mini-boss fight against the Minotaur in Elysium, and I'm having a great time.  I'm constantly impressed with how the game feels alive in the character interactions, where one Olympian God will comment about Zagreus's recent conversation with another, or how Poseidon casually drops that Zagreus must have tried to escape Hades about 20 times by that point.  I recall a Polygon video (before their sale and downfall to Valnet) about how not succeeding in Hades actually allows the player a better understanding of the personal dynamics of the characters and reveals more of the background story and characterization than if the player does everything right and manages to escape Hades after only a handful of runs/attempts.  I've never experienced a game that operates in this way, and I'm finding that I really like it.  I think y'all should keep your eyes on Supergiant Games; I think they're going to have a bright future.*

Briefly, since we're now entering the seventh paragraph of the Monthly Update of the Seventh Month, on the Steam Deck, I'm happily playing through Super Lesbian Animal RPG at night, although I think a few hours of my play time are from accidentally falling asleep and leaving the Steam Deck on.  Conklederp and I are also playing 8:AM as a way to wind down with a dark and quiet game.  I think we've currently made it up to just over 120 anomalies out of 164 found, and the last four times I've played, I've been kicked back to 12 AM after missing an anomaly.  I don't know if the game counts the anomalies you've spotted if you don't make it to 8:00 AM, but I guess we'll see the next time I complete a full shift and my anomaly count is in the 150s.

I also picked up a handful of games during Steam's Summer Sale courtesy of Conklederp and Father's Day, so I plan on jumping into Red Dead Redemption once I'm finished with Super Lesbian Animal RPG.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
You'll Have to Find out the Hard Way

MIDI Week Singles: "Build That Wall (Zia's Theme)" Bastion (VSD)

 

"Build That Wall (Zia's Theme)" from Bastion on Windows, Linux, Steam OS, OS X, Xbox 360, Xbox One, iOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch (2011)
Composer: Darren Korb
Vocals: Ashley Barrett
Album: Bastion Original Soundtrack
Label: Supergiant Games
Publisher: Supergiant Games
Developer: Supergiant Games

I'm thinking I probably should not have picked a song with lyrics if I wasn't all in on doing a lyric analysis, because I know there is a lot I could get into with "Zia's Theme" from Bastion.  8-Bit Music Theory on YouTube already did an amazing music and lyric analysis of both "Zia's Theme" and "Zulf's Theme," and I would be remiss not to acknowledge what was covered in that video analysis.  So let's go a slightly different, yet predictable route.

I love how much emotion there is in the song, brought in part from it being performed by just a guitar and vocals.  Nothing else to get in the way.  In a way, it kind of reminds me of "Will the Circle be Unbroken?" from BioShock Infinite, performed by Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper, which I know came out two years after Bastion was released.  There's a defiance and resistance in Ashley Barrett's voice that doesn't sound like it's on the verge of cracking.  It's sad and mournful, but in a way that remains strong.  I'm not quite sure how else to put it.  I love the melody, and I love Ashley Barrett's singing, both as the voice in the song and the voice for Zia and the Ura.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

That Burns a Building Down

Steam Summer 2026 Next Fest Breakdown

 

For me, I played a surprising number of demos during this most recent Next Fest.  I had initially written it off, but then I actually looked through some of the games that had cropped up on the Next Fest page, and before I knew it, I had downloaded a handful of demos to my laptop and Steam Deck.  All in all, I played 22 demos, most of which I was able to upload videos to our Next Fest Playlist on the YouTubes.  There were a couple I didn't upload because they were a bit on the NSFW side, but I'll get to them below here.  I had thought about doing two separate articles for the demos I enjoyed and the ones I didn't, which would also help break up the 22 demos. Still, there were significantly more games I liked than those I didn't, so we're going to just go alphabetically and go from there.

Ashes of Darkness

I liked the concept and look more than the execution. The parrying system, which seemed the primary hook mechanic, didn't really stick with me as I wasn't able to get it nailed down.

Blade of Mercy: Bloody Countess

I really liked the look and story approach to this game.  The controls felt a little floaty at times, but after a while, it wasn't too bad.

The Doorframe

I wanted to like this game more than I did.  Being part of an experiment should have tipped me off, but once I realized that I was now playing/thinking with portals all over again, I was significantly less interested.  The other two game modes, "Ascent" and "Endless," were also not my thing.

Enigma Heart

I really enjoyed this demo, and I'll definitely be picking it up.  I quickly became attached to the budding relationship between Zalia and Esme.  I loved the letter-writing scene, and even though I accidentally made a detour before going back to the village, it kind of made that scene all the more pointed.  I loved the homage to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

HEAVYDELIC

I really loved the look of the game and its all-hand-drawn aesthetic.  The demo itself was a little lackluster as it really only showed off some minor platforming, how to recognize it within the art style, and the most basic type of combat.  And that was it.  Unlike a lot of the demos I played, HEAVYDELIC has been released so I might just see what the full game is like.

Homo Sovieticus

This one was interesting.  I appreciated the experimental (literally and figuratively) aspects of the game, but I was ultimately confused by the memory removal mechanic, and I think I ended up soft-locking myself during the demo.

Journey

No, not that Journey, but the one involving an emperor penguin in a side-scrolling puzzle semi-platformer.  I kind of get the types of puzzles and how a full game of them would work, but I didn't feel really satisfied, and had the demo gone on for twice as long, I probably would have been over it before it actually ended.

LarsGadiel

I questioned this game a bit solely based on the banner art, but the NES look of the game pulled me in.  I liked a lot of the game as it reminded me a bit of Cave Story+ (please don't at me) in its look, floaty jumps, although its focus on melee instead of ranged combat was a nice change of pace.

lily's world XD

Easily one of the standout highlights for me from Next Fest.  I loved the computer-using simulation, I loved the "found device" type of game, and the types of puzzles you needed to complete to unlock more of the story.  I am 100% buying this when it's released.

Link Cameras

Another computer simulation game, but this one with more of a Paper's Please role to it as you moderate a camera streaming site circa late 90s/early 2000s.  The two things that I wasn't a fan of were the wording of the questions you were asked to answer; either they're right or wrong, so I had to rethink the questions to get the correct answer.  The second thing was that I wished there were more cohesiveness in the source material for the jump scares.

Locked in Love: The Office

Our first FMV demo, and this one was interesting.  I wish that there had been more puzzle-solving and less "You'll have everything solved after you click all the clickable things."  I saw in the description that it was written as an escape room, and an FMV escape room sounded like a lot of fun, even within the confines of a Korean rom-com.  I did like that making bad/failing choices didn't result in a complete loss, and that you could start over from the last story point.

Magical Thief Silky

I was unaware that having an avatar of your scantily clad character taking up a quarter of the screen was something that wasn't entirely uncommon.  I did appreciate that while your character didn't have a traditional life bar, I was greatly amused that the condition and amount of their clothing was what was supposed to indicate how much life they had left.  I only played the first 16 minutes, which felt a lot like the prologue to Mega Man X, but with less clothing and with bouncing bosoms.  The gameplay was alright, but the music was actually really good.

The Old Flesh of Nuraga

I really, really liked this demo.  I loved the mechanics of locating objects in the desert and the two-pronged mechanic of cleaning them off.  I loved the relationship between the old man and the playable character (his daughter?).  I loved the visual aesthetic of not quite PS1 era graphics, but reminiscent of what those feel like in a modern setting.

Plinkidle

This demo ended up being a portmanteau of a Plinko-like idle game.  It seems like it would be something that you could leave on in the background, and some of the music is calming enough, but it's not really my thing.

Sex, Secrets, & Used Tech

I played the demo for about 36 minutes, and despite the "sexual content" and "nudity" tags on Steam, I didn't see anything that wouldn't be in a PG-13 movie from 2015.  It played half like a visual novel, and the other half like a job sim with a phone repair mechanic that was really satisfying.

Silver Pines

Another highlight of Next Fest for me was this side-scrolling creature dive into a mix between Twin Peaks and The X-Files, but with less government involvement.  I still feel a bit sad about not finishing the demo, but I'm sure that by the time the game is released, I'll have figured out where the key to the ferry building is.

The Sleepless Nights Origin
I'm not going to say that this is a bad game because I failed to fully read and understand the directions, but the mechanics of crossing from one setting to the other, regardless if you spotted an anomaly, felt incredibly clunky.  And, I didn't like that you had to travel the length of the street twice if you thought you didn't spot something wrong in the setting.  Just felt like a forced way to extend the gameplay.

Sylva: Curse of the Demon Woods

This was an interesting demo in that I felt I was getting a lot of Dark Souls vibes with a semi-vague story with lore and background being found in item descriptions and hints from talking with characters as to what is actually going on.  And that opening song we're going to cover very soon, mark my words.

T.W.I.R.L.
This was interesting in all of the right ways, and only odd in the height and dimensions of the doors.  I found the demo to be very unsettling in both the snippets of story that were revealed and the sound work after you enter the closet.  The voice acting was a little stiff at times, but that might've been on purpose to make the scenes awkward and additionally unsettling.

Tenebris Somnia
An interesting demo (that might have gone on a bit too long, even though I didn't finish it) and an equally interesting approach, using a combination of pixel art side-scrolling point-and-click with FMV cut scenes.  Like I mentioned in my video, I found these FMV scenes a lot scarier than if the game had made the cutscenes seamless with the rest of the game.  I also now wonder if there will be some kind of in-game revelation later on as to why there are two different visual styles.

The Transylvania Adventure of Simon Quest
I was kind of taken aback by the tongue-in-cheekiness in the opening story.  I guess if it was a direct copy of Simon's Quest, there might be lawsuits on the horizon, but I really appreciated the humor here.  I also really liked that Simon Quest only had a set number of lives when doing dungeons, which still gives the game some tension, but not the same aggrivating kind that was ripe in the NES era Castlevania games.

Well Dweller
Another demo that I started, got a great feel for, and decided not to finish.  Maybe because it was a Metroidvania set in a forest with this particular art style, I got Ori and the Blind Forest vibes, which was another game I played the demo of for about 30 minutes (a great many years ago) and decided that I would not play anymore because I knew I would (eventually) buy the game; so why bother make progress I couldn't carry over?

So those were all of the demos I played during this most recent Next Fest.  I honestly don't know what it was about this collection of games that got me as excited about playing than in previous Next Fests.  Maybe it was the quality of indie games, maybe it's been frequent announcements of major AAA game studios closing down another indie studio they bought up during the pandemic, and this was just another reminder of how great games are still found from indie developers.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Let Us Raise Our Clenched Fists in Pride

Game EXP: Game With Balls (NS2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Game With Balls through Keymailer, a third-party company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played, and content be created.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Game With Balls
Systems: Steam OS, Linux, Nintendo Switch 1 & 2
Release Date: April 6, 2026
Publisher: Sumatras Studio
Developer: Geert Verhoef
Time Spent: 2-3 Hours

When I first saw Games With Balls, I was excited for what I hoped the game would be.  When I saw that the game was controlled using the gyroscope in the Switch Joy-Cons, I was thrilled because, apart from using the Joy-Cons like traditional motion controls, I feel like there are not enough novel uses of the gyroscope that aren't centered around aiming a weapon.  There's the game Give me toilet paper, and that's just a Joy-Con in the center of a roll of toilet paper, and I honestly can't think of any others off the top of my head.  Maybe WarioWare: Move It!, but I've only played a handful of the minigames.  There's also Myahm Agana Shrine in Breath of the Wild.  But this is the kind of novelty that I would love to see more of, even if it's not directly from Nintendo.  A game that uses real-world pictures as the basis for a Labyrinth toy-type game.  Game with Balls is that game.

Before we get into the weeds, I should preface that this review is specifically for the Nintendo Switch release, which is playable on both the Switch and the Switch 2.  I saw on the game's Steam page that there are additional challenge modes, which include Breakout, a Pac-Man-type game, air hockey, and possibly others.  Unless there are unlockable challenge modes after you complete some/more/all of the levels, I cannot confirm if they are available on the Switch.  So now is the time to bring up that I was not able to complete this game, at least for the moment.

In the Switch version of the game, there are five different themes for the marble labyrinths.  "Crafted" is your traditional wooden labyrinth, consisting of a maze, and after the second stage, is filled with holes to gobble up your little marble.  The difficulty of solving the labyrinth itself is not the real challenge here, but instead, is navigating around the holes that, at times, feel like they're annoyingly everywhere.  In the eighth stage, there isn't so much a labyrinth with walls as it's a labyrinth with holes.  I decided to move on from "Crafted" after the 11th stage for no other reason than to explore the other stages, although based on some of the images from the trailer, I'm a little terrified of some of the later stages.

The second group of stages is titled "Drawn."  These start out as more traditional mazes, but then morph into moving around a space filled with non-traditional walls and barriers.  Some of the mazes are more focused on design and the look of the maze rather than the maze in one stage being significantly more difficult than the maze in an earlier stage.  I did finish all of the "Drawn" stages because of how calming they were compared to the later "Crafted" stages.  Along with the music that was introduced in these stages, I felt like I could enter a zen state and just enjoy the digitization of the physical art that was created for this game.  Just moving my little marble through these stages was nice, in the Christopher Lee sense of the word. 

Now would be a good time to bring up, as far as I can tell, an optional aspect of the game.  In each level, there are hidden stars to collect.  The level tells you ahead of time that there are X number of stars, anywhere between two and five (from the levels I've seen), often in out-of-the-way areas, hard-to-reach areas, or sometimes right behind the starting area, which you can easily miss if you only go forward.  Coupled with the timer, you could try to collect all of the stars in the fastest time possible, although the game only recognizes your overall fastest time.  So if you play a particularly large level and finish it with zero stars in 48.982 seconds, the game is going to remember that time versus if you collect all three stars in 4:23.877 seconds.  Sometimes I've felt compelled to hunt for stars if the level design looks like I can spot where I think a star could be hidden, but for other stages, reaching the goal is my primary target.

The third group of levels is called "History," although I'm not entirely sure why.  A handful of the early "History" levels are linear, although they're designed to trick your eye, getting you easily turned around if you're not paying close attention to which way you came and how the paths can loop back around and cross over the middle several times.  I ended up having to stop on level 10 because my ball got stuck in an area where it should not have been able to get stuck.  Kind of.  In my video, you can see the first one, where it seems like the marble is too big to fit between two lines.  The second one, the ball got stuck in a corner.  And since both of these happened within the first quarter of the labyrinth, I didn't want to invest 3-4 minutes just to have the marble get stuck/wedged between two lines and have to start over again.

The fourth group, "Redblue," is the best at telling from a video what is going on.  "Redblue" as a title is a reference to the old red and blue 3D glasses, a 173-year-old form of stereoscopic 3D effect in art called Anaglyph 3D.  I was pretty excited to play these 3D stages with my red/blue glasses, but when I started the first level, with an appropriate "3D" in the middle of the level, I was disappointed that there were no red/cyan colors to create the stereoscopic effect.  It wasn't until Level Seven, when I paused the game because my hands were shaking ever so slightly from failing for the last five minutes, that I discovered that there was an option to turn the red/blue effect on.  I sadly now cannot locate my red/blue glasses, as I thought I had put them with my copy of the original 13 Ghosts.

The last grouping of levels is titled "Mixed" for mixed media, and unlike the other four collections, this one contains only 13 levels, whereas all of the others have 20.  These levels felt closer to "Drawn" as each level was more about the visual aesthetic than the difficulty.  The first level was what looked like blue marker or paint on a bathroom tile.  Another level was a painting of a maze on an easel in a bedroom.  My absolute favorite was the cross-stitched pattern of a maze in a loop.  Just a traditional-looking maze, but the avenue through which the maze is delivered is what made that level memorable.  There were even two levels that used clay for the walls of the labyrinth, and the clay would actually slow the marble down if it came into contact with the walls.

I'm somewhat reluctant to call the entirety of Game With Balls a relaxing and casual game because there are some absolutely difficult levels in "Crafted" and "Redblue" that are anything but calming.  "Drawn" and "Mixed" feel like they were made for the pure enjoyment of visual art and mazes, and while I would like to include "History" with the latter group, being afraid to progress because of getting stuck put a damper on that one.  I would like to say that I will be finishing this game in its entirety, but I know that for some of the more difficult levels, I'll have to take my time and enjoy a game that's all about completing a labyrinth using the Switch in one of the more novel ways I've seen since the console was released.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Békében élhessen népe pusztának