Tag: Software

Blightstone is a turn-based dark fantasy roguelite strategy RPG, which promises to reimagine the genre with freeform movement, environment impacts through volatile elemental clashes and consecutive runs that will further improve your heroes. In Blightstone, environment is extremely important, especially if you have the required tools to interact with it. For example, water amplifies electric attacks. Also, you can hide in long grass or burn it to stop enemies using it for cover. Unfortunately, that won’t happen in the first few runs, but as you start learning specific abilities, you’ll be able to control the battlefield with ease. The art design and environments remind me of Don’t Starve, a very popular, yet very different type of game. It looks pretty for a game that has only just hit Early Access. Speaking of which, in this early build, you’ll have access to several heroes. For starters, you have Brunn, a brawler who isn’t afraid to charge enemies that are thric...

I pushed my choppers too far, too quickly, and now a significant part of my recon ability is shot for the rest of the battle. I still have two airstrikes in reserve but will have to rely on decent ground spotting to get them on target. The Russians are pushing their tanks forward across the entire front, but I’m waiting for a big group to show up before launching them. In the meantime, my own Challengers are moving back slowly, firing all the while. I have ATGM teams in buildings holding on to their missiles for the moment, and line infantry ready to back them. The Soviet forces have the numbers, pushing a lot of BMPs on the right, but I think most will be down before they have a chance to deploy their squads in good fighting order. Armored Brigade II is developed by Veitikka Studios and published by Slitherine Ltd. I played the title as downloaded from the publisher’s official site, with a Steam version set to arrive in 2025. The video game delivers a familiar tak...

Clawpunk is one of those games that makes us reminiscent of the 90’s arcade games, and in a good way. At its core, this is an action platformer with a healthy dose of arcade gameplay and shoot’em’up systems as well. It’s a game that will push the boundaries and engage you in ways you would not expect, while also offering a variety of characters, abilities, wacky bosses and everything you would expect from a game in this genre. As you enter Clawpunk, you are entering a game world where everything is trying to kill you, and you also face multiple dangerous enemies, all while trying to regain control of your city. But in order to do that, you need to battle a variety of enemy gangs, and some powerful bosses as well. It’s nice to see that the game tries to take you to different locations, and at the same time, you also have the opportunity to test your skills. The game will put you face to face with some pretty crazy, dangerous opponents and bosses, which are unlike any...

macOS doesn’t have a quick-access calendar outside the Calendar app. Sure, you can add a widget to the desktop or Notification Center, but it’s strictly non-interactive. To navigate the calendar or edit anything, your only option is to open the Calendar app. Dato introduces a minimalist yet powerful and highly customizable calendar to the menu bar. It displays the date, time, upcoming events, and multiple world clocks, with easy navigation, time travel, date calculators, and much more.  A menu bar calendar that can replace your system clock One thing I always wanted on macOS was to click the system clock and have a tiny calendar pop up, just like on Windows. It’s why I tried this app in the first place, as I kept opening Notification Center by accident, and it was getting really annoying. You can technically add a calendar widget, but it’s not the same—any attempt to navigate or otherwise interact with it just opens up the Calenda...

We’ve seen a multitude of deckbuilders launching, but few of them try something new or revolutionary. Into the Grid manages to spark the interest of a lot of people because not only is it very creative and it features a stunning cyberpunk world, but it also gives you plenty of choice when it comes to builds and playing the way you want. At first, Into the Grid seems very similar to Slay the Spire, but it has its own distinct core gameplay loop and style. You acquire program cards and then you play them in battle against digital defenders, rogue AIs and also corporate security. You need intel and that’s keep deep into the enemy facilities, which is why you need to be extremely careful not to mess things up. Then, we have the dual-resource command system, where you use Virtual Memory for issuing commands, which will allow you to reduce randomness and mitigate some of the bad hands as well. And of course, there’s the map exploration, where we enter various facilities ...

The Terrifier movie series has quickly become one of the staples in the horror genre. There’s a lot of gore, excellent storytelling and plenty of amusing situations, too. A lot of people were wondering, how would that translate into a beat’em’up starring Art the clown, and that’s exactly how Terrifier: The ARTcade Game was born. In the game, we have Art the Clown who goes through a movie set filled with all kinds of villains. There are 7 main levels here, and each one has their own boss, visual style and interesting soundtrack to boot. The game is playable on your own but also coop up to 4 people in total. If that’s the case, the other players will take the role of Art’s troupe, which includes the little pale girl and Victoria Heyes, among others. It’s sad that they didn’t go with a story from one of the movies, instead they went with something completely different. Yet the gore and core Terrifier elements are there, which is what matters the most. Although there a..

What would happen if you got stranded in the middle of nowhere, and you would need to camp and survive? That’s an idea Gold River Project brings to the table, and it’s quite an interesting one. You play alone or with a friend as you camp in the private reserve located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The problem is that the plane which should come back in a week isn’t coming back at all. So, all you have to do is to survive in the wilderness, which is not as easy as you might think. Thankfully, there is a tutorial that the game provides, so you do learn the core concepts and features in the game. That’s helpful, because I tried to play without tutorial first, and I easily got lost and didn’t know what to do. Doing the tutorial is the preferred option, although you can go fully hardcore and not opt for that, if you want. Of course, you can try to stick with the safer side of the wilderness and create a camp. Which you’re going to do anyway, but a lot of the time,...

Wall World was quite a delightful game that successfully managed to blend a variety of genres, from tower defense to mining and some arcade gameplay. Wall World 2 builds upon that framework, while adding some new, interesting ideas and a plethora of gameplay mechanics. Having played Wall World, I was quite impressed to see a jump in graphics, but also the world design and gameplay. The fact that you’re exploring a very daunting, yet creative world is what sets the game apart from many others. At the same time, it’s the mining and exploration part of the title that’s the most enjoyable for me. But the story is also interesting, since you’re barely surviving a leviathan attack and thus, you need to find a way to stay alive, which is actually a lot more difficult than expected. Right off the bat, the game’s focus is on pushing the limits and trying to stay alive, while experimenting with different ideas. This sequel places a lot more focus on the dialog between charact...

Threatening suspects with a revolver is probably the worst way to extract information. But I’m very tempted to pull out the Magnum and tell one criminal that I’m ready to put a bullet through his knee. Instead, I press pause and consider the information I have again. I know everything about the victim, including that he was pumped full of narcotics. But my surveillance did not reveal much about the suspects, and there’s no murder weapon to be found. The first day of this investigation is almost over, and I really want to get a clear clue before my detective character goes to sleep. Let’s see if there’s a way to decipher a mysterious note and get to the motive. Obsidian Moon is developed and published by Lost Cabinet Games. I played the preview version on Steam on the PC. The video game uses detective mechanics and will challenge gamers to solve ten intricate cases. Sam Carter is a detective on the verge of a personal breakdown, given one last chance to solve cases ...

Investigating a murder case is never easy, but the theater setting makes it even harder to distinguish between real and fake, which in turn makes it harder to discover the killer. Someone managed to deliver an inch-perfect strike to the heart during a duel scene. I have a strong hunch that whoever did that thought a plastic retractable blade was involved. I pick up all the names and other words attached to the people standing over the body on the stage and move to the lobby. Four men are standing here, including the producer of the play, who was already involved in another case I recently cracked. That makes him suspicious, but my virtual detective gut is telling me someone else is to blame here, even if he is not without sin. There are two other rooms to visit and inspect for clues. The plan is to gather them all, take a few small notes, and then start filling in some info. My detective needs to first nail down the identities of nine characters, which should be re...