Block Shop - ★★★★☆
In Block Shop, from FoolBox Studios, each puzzle has the player take various machines and conveyor belts to transform the level’s input blocks to those displayed in the output.
It’s a game that provides me plenty of personal “Eureka!” moments, but also impresses with its concept and level design.
The Roottrees are Dead - ★★★★✮
In The Roottrees are Dead, the Roottrees are Dead. Namely, the President of the Roottree Corporation, his wife, and their three daughters. You’re tasked with identifying all the remaining blood relatives of the Roottree family, ostensibly to sort out the inheritance issues that might arise with the family’s untimely demise.
It’s often compared to Return of the Obra Dinn - which is likely IndieLoupe’s only five-star game... can it live up to that hype?
My Little Life - ★★★☆☆
My Little Life from 9FingerGames is - to quote - “a life simulator that lives on the bottom of your screen, allowing you to focus on other tasks while periodically checking on your own little person.” Those tasks can be anything, from watching football to working, from writing reviews for My Little Life to fueling your crippling SuperTaxCity addiction… you get the idea. If you’re familiar with Rusty’s Retirement, it’s that, but with the Sims instead of Stardew Valley…
SuperTaxCity - ★★★★☆
SuperTaxCity from Japanese developer soramame-koubou describes itself as a city-building/roguelite crossover. I thought I’d grab it for a quick little game to look at while working on a review for a longer game, and ended up playing it for almost nine hours - a number which is sure to increase. Suffice to say, it has managed to get its little roguelite claws into me: perhaps not to the extent that Balatro might have, but it’s certainly not loosening its grip yet.
Digseum - ★★★☆☆
For someone who has played a fair few incremental games over the years, I have a confession to make: I somewhat despise the genre. What starts as a dopamine-inducing rush to hit each fresh milestone quickly descends into a part-time job that demands your attention for quarter of an hour each evening, until you question what it is you’re actually doing, fight against the sunk cost fallacy, and abandon it altogether. That is, until a shiny new idler turns your head, and the process starts all over again. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to enjoy that initial rush, without having to commit to it for the foreseeable future, all in the name of incremental progress?