One of the things about J. R. R. Tolkien’s vision of Middle-Earth that people often overlook is that he was seeking to create an entire history, right down to forgotten lore and evolving cultures, languages, storytelling traditions, and legends. We often forget that to instead fixate on the fantasy adventure and wars that were at the centre of his major…
In The Wandering Village, you build a small community for survivors of an apocalypse to live on. The world has been ravaged and left effectively uninhabitable, but there is a giant dinosaur-like beast that has enough room and resources on its back to sustain some people. Your goal is to…
Ever found yourself looking at the state of video games and going:…
Upcoming relaxing first-person game Spray Paint Simulator seems pretty darn satisfying. I’ve…
Most annual sporting properties have a reputation for each year’s edition offering little more than a new roster over the top of the base game. Sometimes that’s fair. Often it is not. Football Manager is the one series where “roster update” is actually one of the critical features that you…
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Upcoming factory building game Foundry has been in development for a while, and is now being developed under the Channel 3 Entertainment name. The game gives players the freedom to build the factory of their dreams in a voxel procedurally-generated world. Today, Paradox Interactive and Channel 3 Entertainment announced a…
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One of the great things about Football Manager is that you don’t need to be an incredibly hardcore fan of the sport to enjoy managing your team. You’ll want to know the basic rules of football, of course, but beyond that you’re given a sandbox to try things, fail, learn…
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After all these years, the love of virtual pets is still going strong. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve said I want a new Tamagotchi in the last year; yet I haven’t pulled the trigger, as all my extra cash is going into savings or gifts for…
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I must admit, I never thought I’d see Cricket Captain land on the Nintendo Switch. The Football Manager Touch series does fine, but this is a whole other kettle of niche. In theory, cricket should work nicely for a manager game. Cricket is a sport of statistics and tactics, as…
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I adore stickers, though I’m super picky about where I put them. As a kid in the early ’90s, I had one of those books (okay, many of them) of stickers that let you stick and peel and stick and peel; it was a huge playground pastime to trade. Smelly…
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Sword & Fairy is one of the biggest properties that we in the West barely notice. As Taiwan’s answer to Final Fantasy the JRPG (CRPG?) series offers some excellent production values and gameplay systems, and it’s a pity the series continues to exist in obscurity outside of its homeland, because…
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Dandori is a pretty simple word in the Japanese language. It simply means “plan,” “arrangement,” or “organisation.” A person that’s really effective at organising their time has good dandori. A person that is always late to meetings has poor dandori. For most Australians, dandori isn’t that important. If I could…
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Once, many years ago, I read an argument that the enduring popularity of Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons in its homeland in Japan has to do with a very real desire for a “sea change” or “tree change” among Japanese urban populations. If this is true (and I believe there is…
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Bee-keeping sim Apico is quite bee-loved (Matt even featured it in his interesting games on an itch.io roundup), and is currently available basically everywhere… except anything Xbox. Well, that’s set to change – though I can’t tell you when past it will happen “soon.” As it does on current platforms,…
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