Matt S. is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of DDNet. He's been writing about games for over 20 years, including a book, but is perhaps best-known for being the high priest of the Church of Hatsune Miku.
In a world that is as toxic, complex, and fundamentally unpleasant as the one we now live, whimsical, wholesome little things like Tempopo are the escapism we need. It’s a simple puzzle game in many ways, but the sweet, buoyant presentation, and the brilliant way it integrates music into the experience elevate it to something every bit as memorable as…
It’s been quite the year for fans of niche JRPG properties. First, there was the Suikoden collection a month ago, and now it’s Lunar’s turn. Originally released for the Sega Mega CD, the first two titles in the series were pioneering and beloved titles that somehow never converted into something…
I do think that Indiana Jones shouldn’t have persisted as the property…
Danganronpa-style aesthetics and humour combined with Texas Hold ‘Em poker? Why yes,…
Visions of Mana is Secret of Mana, 20 years later. I said as much in my preview, and the deeper I played the more the game seems exclusively interested in tapping into my nostalgia for that SNES classic. Given that the Mana series has been otherwise highly experimental in recent…
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Nintendo must have liked the response that its remake of the first two Detective Club titles got when it released them on the Switch a couple of years ago. Now, decades after those games got their first run back on the Famicom, we finally have an all-new entry in the…
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Spike Chunsoft is onto a particular theme right now. A few weeks ago it released a game designed to evoke a very specific cultural nostalgia that is core to a lot of aesthetics and narrative themes over there. Now, with Bakeru, it is tapping into something very different in terms…
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Tennis is a difficult sport to bring into video game form. It’s not because the sport itself is mechanically challenging. Compared to the likes of football it is limited both in terms of the number of players competing and the expansive flow of the game. And compared to something like…
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Without trying to be too controversially political about a game that is really little more than a philosophical manifesto with some gameplay bits and comic book graphics squished in between the lecture, there’s an ugly superficiality about what passes for mainstream left-wing politics in America. Dustborn is a textbook case…
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Schools are excellent locations for horror. They’re a shared experience for most of us, so developers benefit from the familiarity and can play on that to set up unease. Attending school is also a highly emotional experience that covers the full gamut thanks to a combination of societal pressure and…
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Ticket To Ride is, along with Catan, on the way to be our generation’s Monopoly and Risk. First released back in 2004, is has sold 18 million copies, been translated into most major languages, and has had innumerable expansions added to it. There have also been multiple video game adaptations,…
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Visions of Mana is, almost immediately after you start playing, like a warm blanket to wrap yourself up in. I can already see some elements complaining that it lacks “innovation” or the intricate action combat systems that we’ve become accustomed to in JRPGs. But not every game needs to be…
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I would be excellent at Survivor. I’m fully convinced of that. The people that go on that show are idiots. I’d go on there, get a little clique “alliance” together, play them off one another like they’re chess pieces, own that I was a total sociopath about it at that…
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It’s amazing to think that this is the first time there has been an official release of Fate Stay/Night outside of Japan. This visual novel kicked off one of the biggest anime properties of all time, turned into one of the biggest free-to-play mobile games, and made the companies producing…
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