Review: Rhell: Warped Worlds & Troubled Times
So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a lot of games come out these days. Here at IndieLoupe we’ve set ourselves the achievable task of covering just one of those per week, but this week more than most, that’s presented something of a challenge, because there’ve been a hell of a lot of interesting-looking games released over the last five days. From Pluto to Pizza Slice, from Piece by Piece to, um, Piece by Piece (yes, there were two games released with the same name within three days of one another), there were a lot of options to choose from. I almost decided to take the easy option and just put out an article highlighting all the games that came out this week, but there was one that just – and I mean just – piqued my interest a little more than the others.
Perhaps if I’d been in a slightly different mood when looking at them I could’ve gone another way, and you’d be watching a review of an entirely different game right now, but man am I glad that I gave Rhell: Warped Worlds and Troubled Times the nod ahead of the other possibilities.
Review: Hermit and Pig
Hermit and Pig is the debut title from two-man studio Heavy Lunch, and features a pair of what I don’t think it’s unfair to describe as unlikely protagonists. Video games are – certainly more than any other medium, in my opinion – quite good at getting their audience to just go along with unusual protagonists, but I still have to admit my initial reaction to these two was a sort of: ‘wait, really?’ as opposed to any level of excitement at the prospect of putting myself into the main character’s presumably pretty nasty shoes.
Review: The Berlin Apartment
We’re closing out our reviews for 2025 with a game I’d been looking forward to since I first saw it towards the start of the year: because I mean, look at it. The Berlin Apartment is one of a couple of games recently released by German developers Blue Backpack, along with metroidvania Constance but long-term readers will know something like The Berlin Apartment is a lot more in my lane.
Review: Heroes of the Seven Islands
I have no idea how small the subset of gamers who’ll know what I’m talking about here is, but a huge number of the PC games I played pre-2005 were sold by publishers Sold Out Sales & Marketing through their £4.99 label Sold Out Software. That company, through a journey that I’m fairly sure is only of interest to me, is now Fireshine Games, but the orange and white boxes those games came in are still ingrained deep within my memory…
Review: Henry Halfhead
Full disclosure: with this game’s protagonist being a weird little bald guy with a big nose, I did feel something of a personal affinity with them before I’d even seen a title screen. Henry Halfhead, from Swiss developer Lululu Entertainment and publishers popagenda, began life as a university project where students were tasked with designing a character who had both a significant disadvantage and an exceptional power. The result was Henry Halfhead whose fairly-obvious disadvantage is that they are, as their name would suggest, half a head. Luckily for Henry, they’re not stuck that way forever, as their superpower allows them to transform into any object of their choosing.
Review: The Drifter
Look, I have to be honest, I don’t usually like Point & Click Adventures. I’m in my thirties, but when I was a kid it kinda felt like they were already on their way out; I never really got into the likes of Monkey Island or Grim Fandango… so surely this Australian Pulp Adventure Thriller isn’t going to be for me either?
Retrospective: Citizen Sleeper
With Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector dropping recently (and, for what it’s worth, IndieLoupe’s review of it coming soon™) we thought we’d take a look at the previous two games from Jump Over the Age (JOTA) - namely In Other Waters and, surprisingly enough, Citizen Sleeper. JOTA is the one-person game studio of developer Gareth Damian Martin, so it’s their brain we have to thank for these worlds and everything in them. Spoilers for both games to follow…
Retrospective: In Other Waters
With Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector dropping recently (and, for what it’s worth, IndieLoupe’s review of it coming soon™) we thought we’d take a look at the previous two games from Jump Over the Age (JOTA) - namely In Other Waters and, surprisingly enough, Citizen Sleeper. JOTA is the one-person game studio of developer Gareth Damian Martin, so it’s their brain we have to thank for these worlds and everything in them. Spoilers for both games to follow…