Greg Costikyan

GDC: Day 1 The Game Developers Conference proper (and the Independent Games Festival where I expect to see some interesting games) does not start until Wednesday; the first two days are for “Summits,” which merely means themed panel tracks. I spent most of my time either on the Narrative track or the Indie Games track, […]

I have been a massive fan of the Life Is Strange series since its inception, so I had high expectations, but is one of the best Life Is Strange games ever. All of the Life Is Strange adventures involve people who have powers. In the first game, Max Caulfield can rewind time, and in the second, one of […]

In Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain, you play the eponymous character (although you can choose a different name and customize your appearance). You are a minor supervillain, living in a slummy apartment and barely able to make the rent, but you are signed up with Crimr, which is kind of like TaskRabbit for scoundrels. You […]

Wylde Flowers is a farming-and-crafting game, in the mold of Harvest Moon, My Time at Sandrock, Coral Island, and so many others. But its strong narrative core may make it of interest to our readers. As with those games, you spend a lot of time planting and reaping crops, petting your farm animals, mining, and […]

Midnight Ramen, from Asian developer Cointinue Games, is a game in the mold of Coffee Talk and VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action. In other words, it’s a mostly narrative-based experience in which people wander into your shop where you serve them food and/or beverages and have conversations. Here, though, you’re operating a ramen stand, and […]

is in many ways delightful. It takes place on a human-settled exoplanet called Cigalo, where your character grew up. However, Cigalo is something of a dying world, ruthlessly exploited by a company called the Consortium, which is apparently building a Dyson sphere about the local sun and has strip-mined the world for resources. You, like […]

reminds me of an art CD-ROM from the 1990s, when CD-ROMs were considered “new media” and had their own section in book and software outlets – and if it had been released as such, would probably have gotten critical attention as a “significant new form.” It’s not exactly a game (although I’ve given up trying […]

bills itself as a British comedy game, and so it is; but the comedy owes more to Benny Hill than to Monty Python – that is, low-brow farce rather than cerebral humor. But it is genuinely funny at times, and while I cannot in good faith present it to you as a superb example of […]

From the moment I started Last Time I Saw You, I decided this was a game worth playing – partly because of the animation, partly because of my initial character interactions, partly because of the mystery of its dream sequences. Last Time I Saw You is from Osaka-based studio Maboroshi Artworks, but curiously enough, the […]

Old Skies is the newest game from Dave Gilbert’s Wadjet Eye Games; in some ways it is very typical of his oeuvre and in some ways quite different. If you don’t know his work, he’s been delivering point-and-click adventure games as an indie developer for 20 years now. This is an astonishing length of time […]