🕹️ Jars and Hard Work

🆕 On the Shelves

🔨 Wilmot Works It Out

• From the designers of Wilmot's Warehouse (a sokoban game) comes this new, much more chill puzzle game.
• Essentially, it's a digital jigsaw puzzle without the protrusions and dimples to attach together.

🦇 Batman Arkham Shadows

• Remakes of some of the previous Batman games in VR.
• NOT cheap!
• BUT "Batman: Arkham Shadow is included with the purchase of Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3S"

🦔 Sonic x Shadow Generations

• A Sonic game! Spin, fly, go fast, woohoo!
• I'm not too familiar with the more recent Sonic games (having only really played Sonic on the Mega Drive back in the day [wait, wow, that really ages me...]), but this one is supposed to be a good remake of Sonic Generations with some extra Shadow content.

🗼 Jusant

Jusant is a brand-new action-puzzle climbing game and a meditative journey to the top of a tall tower.

• 👆 As described. Cosy, but exploratory and thought-provoking. It's a game that doesn't have a time limit or high scores so you can take your time and get a feel for it in your own way.

🎮 In Rotation

To be honest, I've been getting deep into PICO-8 again this month, so most of these are going to be from this fantasy console!

🔺 UMBRA

• Excellent use of the darker shades in the PICO-8 secret palette.
• The roguelike elements of this platformer really make it shine.
• Sprite work is also excellent.

🫙 Jar Life

• A cute platformer by Zep, creator of PICO-8.
• The game reminds me a lot of PICO PARK (which is NOT a PICO-8 game!) where characters work together to reach items.
• Break open a jar, get the little critters out and save them by getting them to the door at the end of the level!
• The game has puzzle elements in the sense you aren't quite sure the best way to advance. Sometimes you have to open the jar first and use the critters to jump up to higher places; other times you want to wait to break the jar until later so that the critters don't fall in lava or something else catastrophic!

🚀 Ex Terra

Inspired by titles like Crimson Clover and Cho Ren Sha, this caravan-styled shmup has two fast and punchy stages that emphasize close quarters and highscoring. Each stage challenges the player in different ways, both designed to be quick and "in your face", with short runtimes and a demanding, run-ending final boss.

• A solid shmup on the PICO-8 platform. There are a bunch coming out right now thanks to the wonderful tutorial series by Lazy Devs. Side note: I've been through the same tutorial and have been loving the way Krystian gives attention to all the juiciness of games, adding in flashes, particles, sounds and shakes as the tutorial progresses.