In this casual co-op birdwatching game, you and up to 10 friends explore a nature preserve with the goal of photographing all the different kinds of birds.
The adventuring party converges on a Rock Pigeon This game really captures the ways in which birding is like Pokémon. (In fact, it's said to be particularly reminiscent of Pokémon Snap, but I haven't played that game so I couldn't tell you.) There are all these little creatures with funny names all over the place, and you've got to, well, catch 'em all. There are even shinies, which are sparkly rainbowy versions of a bird that make delightful UFO sounds when you get close to them.
Flock Around is usually on Steam for $4.99 USD but it's currently on sale for $3.99, and for the price it's absolutely worth it. I have played many games that offered a lot less fun for a lot more money!
In this Lovecraftian horror game you play as a man who's been shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and separated from his daughter. While searching for her, he discovers evidence that many other people have been lured here before him and have been enticed to do the bidding of eldritch horrors. So when a mysterious voice in his head promises to help him find his daughter if he just does it a couple of quick favors, well... what could possibly go wrong!
Full disclosure: I was not able to finish this game because it gave me motion sickness. This does happen to me occasionally with first-person games, but usually only when there's flying or swimming, so I did not expect it in a game where you're just walking around. I played about half of it and watched a Let's Play for the rest.
The game certainly looks great, especially when you get out of the real world and into the eldritch realm. It's like if Cthulhu's interior decorator were H.R. Giger. Unfortunately, I found it was mostly style over substance.
I learned a few days ago that the Latin American Games Showcase is happening this week. This is very relevant to my interests, so I downloaded some demos. Too many demos, really, so I'm going to break my thoughts into two posts.
⭐ I want to play this. ❓ Maybe someday if it's on sale or if issues are fixed by release. 🚫 Not for me.
Happy Pride! This month I'm going to be reviewing games and books by trans and nonbinary creators.
First up is In Other Waters, a sci-fi exploration game by Gareth Damien Martin (they/he). You play as an AI who's been abandoned on an ocean planet and doesn't remember why. You're reactivated by Dr. Ellery Vas, an exobiologist who came here searching for her missing partner and colleague Minae. The planet is teeming with alien life, but all the human research bases are deserted. Together you explore the sea, collecting data on the alien ecosystem and piecing together what really happened here.
In Other Waters is available for PC and Mac on Steam and GOG for $14.99 USD. There's also a Switch port, but I'd be hesitant about that; I found navigating the UI very awkward with a controller and switched to the mouse right away when playing on PC.
This is a sequel to Australian studio Uppercut's post-apocalyptic exploration game Submerged, which I reviewed some years back. In the first game, you played as a teen girl searching the drowned ruins of a flooded city for supplies to help your injured brother. Hidden Depths rejoins the same characters a few years later, as this time they work together to solve the mystery of a crushing black vine that has taken over a different flooded city and left only mystical echoes of the people who had been living among the ruins.
The story isn't that important, though. It's basically the same game, just more and better. You still boat around to various buildings that you can parkour through (this time alternating between playing as the sister and the brother) but the locations are prettier and more impressive, and there are more creative worldbuilding surprises and a lot more things to collect. It actually has the vibe of a "collectathon" platformer like Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie, with the open ocean being the overworld and each building a level with several different categories of collectibles to find there.
Submerged: Hidden Depths is available on PC and consoles for $29.99 USD, which I think is too much for such a short and low-impact game. (Same thing I said about the first one!) But it seems to go on sale a lot, so if you want a relaxing title in your library for the kind of day when you need it, I'd say it's one to add to your wishlist.
In this no-combat exploration game, you play as an unnamed diver venturing into an underwater world filled with colorful sea life. You're thrown in with no indication of what you're supposed to be doing, and at first all you can do is take in the environment—you can swim with the fish, grab onto rays and whales and be carried along by them, and stop at meditation spots that let you just watch the animals.
The game does have a story, though, which you discover as you go on. You never get a full explanation of what's going on, but there are destructive, alien forces in the sea, and you'll need to ally with the animals to defeat your shared enemies.
Abzû is usually $19.99 USD on Steam, which I think is awfully steep for such a short game, even though I liked it a lot. However, it's currently on sale for $4.99 USD through July 11th, so this wouldn't be a bad time to grab it if it sounds appealing.
Continuing my month of games by trans and nonbinary developers, I played Fallow by Ada Rook.
This is the summary from the game's store page:
"Isabelline Fallow lived with her sisters in an isolated corner of a world that had begun to forget itself. Soon, it forgot her sisters as well. Now Isabelline walks in her sleep, every morning a new road home, every morning that home a little different than she remembers it. In her dreams, a shadow twists in agony through the smoke-steeped orange sky."
Normally I like to write my own synopsis when I review media, but I didn't know how to do that here because I don't feel confident that I understood anything that happened in this game. Which might have been the point? But I'm not confident about that either. The game is very heavy on Vibes and very light on explaining things.
Fallow is on Steam for $19.99 USD. Many reviews noted that the price seems high for a game that can be completed in 5-6 hours, and I would agree with that. If it sounds up your alley, maybe wait for a sale.
Accessibility note: A few puzzles incorporate audio cues. You could complete the game without hearing by doing some guesswork, but it would be harder than intended.
This DLC for Outer Wilds adds a new area to the game—a ringworld called the Stranger, hidden in orbit around the sun. Your translator gadget is useless here, as the Stranger was built by different and even more ancient aliens, so you'll have to figure out new ways of accessing their technology and piecing together their story.
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye is on Steam for $14.99 USD, which I think is a fair price for an expansion that is longer and more involved than many full games I've played. I completed it in 17 hours.
I think it's a great addition to the game, but one word of caution: If you buy the pack with the base game and the DLC, you could easily find the DLC before you finish the main game and not realize that's what you were doing, which could be confusing since the DLC's storyline doesn't directly connect to what you need to do to complete the main game. So if you do buy them together and want to avoid this, just don't go to the spoilerradio tower on Timber Hearth until you finish the main game since that's where the DLC begins.
In this open-world exploration game, you play as an alien astronaut whose people have just begun to explore their solar system. You're excited to see what's out there, but not long after you launch your first spaceflight—22 minutes later, to be exact—disaster strikes as the sun goes supernova, destroying you and everything you know...
...and then you wake up, back at the same campfire where you began the game. You quickly realize that you are caught in a time loop which resets every 22 minutes, giving you brief windows of time to look for answers. Why is this happening, and why are you the only one who remembers anything from one loop to the next? Clues are found in ancient inscriptions from another alien species that visited your system millennia ago, leaving their writings and ruins scattered across the planets.
Outer Wilds is on Steam for $24.99 USD, which seems more than fair for a game with plenty of content and challenge. There is also a DLC, which I'm currently still working on, so I'll report back when I finish that.
Submerged is an indie no-combat exploration game (not to be confused with a more recent VR title of the same name) that I ran across while looking for ocean-themed games.
The setting is a post-apocalyptic future in which sea levels have risen so high that only the upper skylines of major cities break through the water. You play as a teenage girl traveling in a tiny motorboat with your younger brother, who has been injured. As you search the flooded city for supplies, the story of what happened to the kids and why they're on their own is gradually revealed, as is the story of what happened to the world and its civilization.
I finished the game in only about six hours, and I was far from hurrying, which brings me to the main problem I have with it: They're asking $19.99 USD for a game that's good for a couple of peaceful, enjoyable evenings, but seems too short and lacking in replayability to merit that price. (And I don't think it should be longer — it's simple enough that if there were any more of it, it would probably wear out its welcome.) I saw reviews saying it was good but overpriced, so I waited until it was on sale for two bucks, and at that price it's a steal. So if this sounds like something you'd like, I would recommend adding it to your Steam wishlist and waiting for a good deal.
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