Slots & Daggers

The designer lacks the basic understanding of what a fun game is. It works because it mimics some of the good similar games. but it falls short on every aspect, the build making, the rogue lite (which is always a downside but its done to achieve something, here its just a rogue lite maybe because its popular genre; (and no Balatro is a rogue-like not a rogue-lite) Play die in the dungeon, or Balatro, or if you want slot machine fun; play luck be a landlord. which is 100 times better. The main issue with this game is how grindy it is. you don't know if you are improving or not because how much you can get stronger by just buying upgrades and repeating the game. I am fine with unlockable but to give me an impossible game that I can keep clicking buttons and get so much stronger without even knowing what's a good strat or what is a good build is just plain bad. The executables (skill checks) add an uneeded layer of noise. it gives you a bit of fun because it lacks in build-making, and then you realise the skill checks weapons are just overall better weapons, another game design sin with understanding what is (high risk high rewards) and these weapons easily turn into dominant strats. To be completly fair; This is a fun game but everything its trying to mimic is more fun. so go play those other games.

Antichamber

This is a really enjoyable puzzle game. I got sleepy in some areas, but I really enjoyed my mind being twisted.

UFO 50

I. The Skeptic I came to UFO 50 late. I had heard the whispers, of course. Everyone had. "Fifty full games." That was the line. And here's the thing: I wasn't skeptical. Not even a little. Snoman Gaming, my favorite YouTuber, a man whose taste I trust as much as my own, had put it in front of me. And it was made by Derek Yu. Derek Yu. The designer behind Spelunky, the game that didn't just join my list of favorites but single-handedly made roguelikes my favorite genre in the first place. Nuclear Throne, Spelunky, FTL, and so many more all exist in the shapes they do because of the lineage Derek helped create. So no. I wasn't skeptical. I was ready. I expected a strong collection. I expected to walk away with a notebook full of clever mechanics to shamelessly steal as a game designer. I expected to have a genuinely good time. I’m telling you, I had no idea. Because "full game," it turns out, can mean a twenty-hour RPG. It can mean a Metroidvania. It can mean two Metroidvanias. It can mean an arcade title so clever in its bones that playing it in 2026 makes you nostalgic for something completely modern; a phantom memory of a retro machine you never stood in front of, in an arcade that never existed, on a summer afternoon you never had. The sheer volume of what UFO 50 hands you for the price of a single game is something we haven’t seen before in this medium. It shouldn't exist. It’s ridiculous, and yet there it is, sitting in my Steam library, fifty lovable cartridges, daring me to keep up. The team's stated philosophy is simple enough: "Our goal is to combine a familiar 8-bit aesthetic with new ideas and modern game design." Trust me. They delivered. They overdelivered to the point of absurdity. So it turns out I was a skeptic after all. Not the loud kind, with folded arms and a raised eyebrow. The quiet kind. The kind who nods along to "fifty full games" and assumes, without realizing it, that the phrase has a ceiling. That "full" can only stretch so far. That you roughly expect what's coming. I didn't. No one does. And that's the first gift UFO 50 gives you: the gentle, joyful discovery that your imagination, however generous, was too small for this. This is the story of how a pack of retro art games became one of the most meaningful things I've played in years. Maybe in twenty years. Maybe since I was a kid, sitting too close to the TV, waiting for my older brother to let me play for 5 minutes before he would take over again. II. The UFO 50 Moment You don't fall in love with UFO 50 all at once. It happens in moments. The first night, I did what a lot of newcomers do: I clicked around at random. A shmup here. A platformer there. A strange little strategy with dinosaurs and resources I didn't understand, which overwhelmed me in about five minutes and sent me looking for something simpler. And I was having fun. A lot of fun. But it wasn't the fun of loving any single game yet. It was the fun of pure discovery. The rush of booting up a cartridge with no tutorial, no expectations, no idea what the buttons even did, and just figuring it out. Every game was a small surprise. That feeling alone would have been worth the price of admission. But there's a limit to it. After a while, hopping from game to game starts to feel like flipping through a catalog. You start wanting to stay somewhere. And then, without knowing it, you click on that one game. The one that will make you part of the club. The one that will give you the thing everyone who loves UFO 50 eventually gets, and eventually tells other people about in the exact same excited, slightly crazed voice, as I now describe to my friends: “The UFO 50 Moment.” For me, that game was Avianos. Yes. That little game with the dinosaurs and weird resources. I came back to it, almost out of stubbornness, thinking maybe I'd missed something. And I had missed everything. Because Avianos, it turns out, is a bite-sized 4X civ game. 1v1. With specializations and builds. Real strategic weight under all that pixel charm. I sat down to give it "one more try." Four hours later, I was still there. I had cleared the normal difficulties without too much trouble and started climbing the harder scenarios, and then, on the fifth one, I lost. And I smiled. Because losing meant it wasn't over. It meant the game still had more to show me, and I would be coming back tomorrow, the day after, and probably the week after that. A four-hour session hadn't exhausted Avianos; it had only introduced us. In a pack of fifty games, I had just found one I could happily live inside for a month, and somehow that made the other forty-nine feel bigger, not smaller. That was the moment. My UFO 50 Moment. Everyone gets one. Not necessarily with Avianos. And you realize, with a kind of disbelief: I would have paid twenty dollars for this game alone. And it's one of fifty. I put down the controller. I sat there in the quiet for a while. I felt my expectations shifting, even if I couldn't have put it into words yet. I went to bed that night carrying a feeling I hadn't carried in a long time. The feeling of knowing there was something waiting for me tomorrow. When I went to work the next day, I was waiting for it to end so I could go back and discover more games. Here I am, a 35-year-old dad, waiting to go home to grab the box of games my older cousin tossed aside as junk, never knowing it was my treasure. Blow the dust off a cartridge, and just play. I felt the warmth of those long summer nights when I was a kid, when Dad let me play way past my bedtime. III. Trust the Cartridge The next day, I came back with my sleeves rolled up. I wasn't browsing anymore. I was digging. Surely, I thought, there must be more gems hiding in here. Surely Avianos was not the only one. Of course it wasn't. But what hit me on day two wasn't another Avianos. It was something stranger and, in a way, more profound. It was the realization that the games I had written off as ‘just cool’ had been crying in the corner, waiting for me to come back. The little arcade titles I had skimmed past on day one? I went back to them, and they opened right up. The ones I had filed under "filler"? There was no filler. I started this strange new relationship with the pack where I'd boot up a game I had previously dismissed, and soon enough, I'd be saying out loud, "There you are! I knew this one had something special, too." That was the second click. And it changed how I played everything afterward. I developed this quiet trust. A faith, actually. Every cartridge in this collection had been made with a purpose. Nothing was here to fill a slot. Nothing was here because they needed to hit a number. Every one of these fifty games had someone who cared enough to give it a reason to exist. If I gave them a chance, the proof would always bubble up. IV. Sorting the Cartridges Something happened around the second week. I stopped thinking of them as a collection. These are my games now. They live on my screen the way old cartridges used to live in a shoebox under the bed. I know which ones I reach for on a tired evening. I know which ones I put on when I want to feel clever. I know the ones I'm still getting to know. They are, in every way that matters, family. Some of these are the ones I brag about to my friends. Some of these are the ones I'll argue for when a friend raises an eyebrow in rejection. And some of these are the ones I didn't think I'd love, and now I do. Take Barbuta. I haven't cracked it yet. But I trust it. I trust that somewhere in there is the thing that made its designer proud, and one day I'll find it. Even the art that looks like it was drawn by the programmer who couldn't find an artist, especially that art, is why I love it. Old games looked strange because the people making them were doing everything themselves, and that strangeness is a kind of honesty you can't fake. That's what a retro family of cartridges wants. To be loved. To be sorted. To be understood. So I'm going to sort them. Not pretending I'm not ranking them, because of course I am. I pick up the box of games, and I sit on the floor. I place Avianos first. Of course I do. On top of it goes Party House, where the drafting is so charming you almost don't notice how well-designed it is. Then Campanella 2, Spelunky 3 in space. And Mini & Max on top, a game built on the simple idea of shrinking smaller, which would have been enough on its own. And then it hits me with a second surprise of the “same size”. I put the controller down and laughed. A few more join the stack. This is the pile of Full Gems. The next pile grows the fastest. Attacktics goes down first, where both sides move on the same beat, and your plans survive contact with your opponent for about 1.5 seconds. Then, Rail Heist, the game I think about when I want to remember what "creative" really means. Hyper Contender, Overbold, and more. This is the pile of Mechanical Geniuses, and it's the biggest one by far. The last pile is smaller, but I love it the most on some days. Ninpek lands on the floor first, feeling so good in your hands, even your little daughter will tell you that you are a real ninja. Mooncat next, the ‘good’ Barbuta successor, filled with secrets if you stay long enough to find them. And then Elfazar's Hat, which nails the nostalgia of the era's highly produced games. This is late UFOSoft. They know what they're doing. This is the pile of True Craftsmen. I sit there for a while, looking at the three piles. Some games belong in two of them. Some would move if I sorted again tomorrow. I don't mind. Families are messy. V. The Layers After trying all the games, goldening some cartridges, cherrying a couple, I came to the conclusion that the games are just one layer of the experience. Just one. I am going to say it again, ONLY ONE! And every other layer of UFO 50 can be equally enjoyable, sometimes even more so. I didn't see that at first. I came for the games, but then, slowly, without noticing, I realized I’ve been living in a place with its own weather, its own history, its own rules. 1. The games themselves. They are great. We know that. 2. The joy of discovery. There is a specific feeling, a warmth almost, when a game finally clicks, and you realize what its designer was reaching for. UFO 50 hands you that feeling fifty times. It is the rush of stepping into a parallel universe where these games existed all along, and you are only just now finding them. What is great about this, even if you discover all the games, this joy will stay far longer than you think, because of the following layers: 3. The lived retro. This is the one I wasn't expecting to enjoy personally, despite what people said. You cannot get this feeling any other way anymore. Either you go back and play actual old games, which, let's be honest, are often clumsy by today's standards, or you play modern retro-styled games that come pre-packaged with tutorials and accessibility and helpful arrows pointing at everything. UFO 50 refuses both. You boot a cartridge. No tutorial. Some games have a two-player mode (which sometimes is even better, way better, I am looking at you Hot Foot). Some have save files. Some make you start the entire thing over when you die, and you have to decide whether you love them enough to try again. The art looks like it was made by a programmer who is way too confident in his art. Ninjas collecting burgers. Fighting cows, fish, and weird heads that spit at you. A balloon is your 1-up, and somehow, purple-eyed arrows in that world make sense. Sometimes it is better than having a real art director in the room. It feels true. It feels like 1985. Of course, some games are gorgeous, and they trigger that nostalgia in a different way. 4. The lore. Every game in UFO 50 is a piece of a bigger story, the rise and eventual collapse of a fictional studio called UFOSoft. You do not care about this at first. You're too busy playing. But once you've spent enough time inside that world, you start noticing things. Oh, they made a bad game here. Oh, this is when they started using the new logo. Oh, they clearly rushed The Big Bell Race to capitalize on the success of Campanella. The studio becomes a character. You watch them find their voice, then find their feet, then lose them again. By the end, you are somehow mourning a company that never existed. 5. The interconnections. The Campanella games are the obvious thread: the trilogy, The Big Bell Race, Pilot Quest, and Planet Zoldath. But it goes deeper. Velgress's DNA shows up years later in Overbold. Mechanics get reused, refined, and repurposed, the way a real studio would. And then, small joys, you spot the car from Paint Chase sitting inside Elfazar's Hat, and you laugh out loud alone, because you are the only person who noticed. 6. The secrets. There are so many, and I have barely touched them. As I write this, I have not yet opened the in-game terminal, the one that unlocks cheats and skins and who-knows-what-else. I've glimpsed it on YouTube. It's incredible. I am simply not ready. I want to live in this universe a little longer first, the honest way, before I start pulling levers I don't fully understand. Legend says (spoiler, read with caution): there is a game in UFO 50 that contains another 50 games. How crazy is that? 7. The Not-so-retro game design. This one is a new feeling of mine, literally. I am not talking about feeling nostalgic alone. I am talking about appreciating the modern design of these “retro games” in a what-if they made games like this back in the day, every genre revisited with these modern designers. It is not nostalgia for that era; it is nostalgia for an alternative decade you could have lived in. And you cannot help but wonder what life would be like if we had this modern mentality back in the day. 50 games, each with a modern twist and a mechanic that, while technically possible, was beyond our imagination back then. That's a lot of enjoyable lessons if you are into game design. VI. What It Actually Is UFO 50 is not a collection of games. UFO 50 is a love letter to a decade, to a craft, to a kind of game-making that valued surprise over polish and ideas over scale. It is the closest any of us will ever get to discovering a forgotten studio's entire back catalog in a dusty attic and realizing, slowly, that every cartridge inside is a small miracle. I am hoping, really hoping, the new generation, who didn’t grow up with the games we did, will feel the nostalgia and appreciation for the craft that we once did. Not only the pixel art or the 8-bit music. It is every layer I talked about. And if any project can pull this off, it's UFO50. Trust me. Boot it up, click around at random. Wait for your own UFO 50 Moment. It’s coming. You'll know it when it hits.

Opus Magnum

I really enjoyed this game, I feel like the rating might go up if I play more.

Mewgenics

More than a rogue lite.

Brothers A Tale of Two Sons

What Remains of Edith Finch

This is a great game. I enjoyed every second of it. Every corner, every "memory" is made with love. You can feel it. Everything feels alive, you feel like you're in a real place, with a lot of memories, and you feel connected to the Edith family despite not knowing much about them. It is a very unique experience. What I don't like about the game is the lack of a better conclusion. usually this is a big flaw in a story game, for this one, though, it is a bit of the point to lack the conclusion in a way? It is a story about an unsolved mystery and the struggle of living with such a myth (or maybe it's not a myth), but the important thing is how some ideas can affect people's lives. The game makes you think about the impact of such "stories" on people, as well as how everyone copes with the idea of death and losing loved ones.

Peglin

Peglin left me with the impression of a game built on a somewhat good conceptual foundation yet unable to fully harmonize its systems, resulting in an experience that feels more chaotic than intentionally deep. Its core loop borrows the familiar structure of turn‑based roguelikes. Still, unlike titles where “builds” gradually become a language the player learns to speak, Peglin’s systems resisted to be mappable in my mind. The pinball mechanic -charming at first glance- creates a randomness window so wide even with executional mastery rarely translates into predictable outcomes. Even when you understand the board, the orbs’ trajectories introduce volatility that undermines the strategic layer the game wants you to care about. This disconnect makes build‑making feel strangely ... weightless; you never quite reach the point where you strongly declare a direction for your run (”I am going for this build” or “this ball is perfect for this situation”), maybe there is a washed-out version of that here. The result is a cognitive burden in which knowledge accumulates but doesn’t make a clear map in your mind for connecting all the layers of the wildly different systems -which what defines great roguelikes- remains frustratingly out of reach. (and I am assuming there is a map to be drawn here) The irony is that the pinball system could have been the game’s defining innovation. Yet it never meaningfully fuses with the traditional damage‑poison‑shield‑pierce vocabulary of turn‑based combat. Peglin treats pinball as a decorative layer rather than its mechanical spine, leaving both halves of the design underdeveloped. The orbs have a few navigation quirks, but they rarely combine in ways that feel like genuine pinball‑driven synergies; instead, the board behaves like a slow, theatrical random‑number generator feeding a combat system that could almost function without it. If the pinballing were truly the core, the build‑making should revolve around manipulating trajectories, chaining orb behaviors, and constructing boards that amplify those interactions, letting the “outside combat” layer serve as the supporting gimmick rather than the other way around.(and to be fair there is an ok amount of board manipulation to your build advantage) As it stands, the game’s most distinctive mechanic feels strangely decrotive, or a very cool gimmick at best, never shaping the strategic identity of a run. This structural disconnection is the root from which most other issues grow: the slow pacing of battles, the difficulty of forecasting outcomes, and the sense that the game’s creativity: its varied floors, thematic shifts, and occasionally delightful orb designs, never coheres into a unified design language. There is depth here, and with enough persistence, you begin to glimpse the outlines of interesting builds and clever interactions, but the game’s imbalance, combined with how unclear it is when your decisions actually matter within its layered randomness, keeps those moments from defining the experience. Peglin is built on good ideas, but its interactions never quite cohere into a satisfying whole, leaving it a competent yet conflicted experiment. And because I enjoyed some pinballing (it gives an advanced slot-machine-excitement feels) and some clever board/boss design, it earns its 6.2/10 for unrealized potential.

Potion Craft

Potion Craft excels most where it matters: the alchemical craft itself. The game absolutely nails the tactile joy of experimentation; charting new potion paths, refining techniques, and gradually building a library of perfected recipes gives a genuine sense of apprenticeship maturing into mastery. In those moments, the game feels like a cozy place. You buy ingredients, you mull over how to improve your recipes, and you lose yourself in the quiet art of potion craft. Outside that core loop, however, the experience thins; and unfortunately, very much so. The gardening, shopkeeping, and customer-request systems feel more like sketched frameworks than meaningful layers of strategy. They rarely push you to rethink your approach or engage with the alchemy mechanics in deeper, more varied ways. The haggling system, in particular, becomes tedious quickly; its execution-heavy rhythm feels oddly out of place in a game otherwise built on calm, relaxed pacing. What remains is a loop that, while charming, leans heavily into repetition: grinding ingredients, tending the same garden, and performing identical motions thousands of times. The game’s presentation is undeniably striking. Its art direction and overall polish elevate the experience, making the world feel made with love even when its systems don’t fully keep pace. A good game with an incredibly established core, but one that leaves you wishing the surrounding systems had been “crafted” with the same depth.

Suzerain

I got impeached before reaching the elections, led the economy (my main focus) into depression (despite sacrificing too much to make it work), got divorced, lost friends, got corrupted, gave too much power to greedy capitalists, lost my party support, got condemned by the army, gave up my country's real independence, weakened the army, lost my reputation forever as a corrupt and failed leader, but I LOVE this game! This game is brilliant and unique in many ways; it is especially unique in what it offers and in how unlikely it is to find a game like it (what are the chances another dev will be this interested/well educated on politics, decide to make a game like this: story-driven political game, and pull off the insane production of it? (I think it took them 4 years, excluding the initial writing and pre-development, which god only knows how long it took). The game offers the full "president" experience, and please don’t take the word "full" experience lightly. You will face the decisions of fixing your depressed economy and implementing your ideology. But that can be offered by many strategy/management games. The difference here is dealing with the ins and outs of every individual who has any control or influence over your country, whether it's powerful Supreme Court judges and former government supporters (perceived by many as the ‘deep state’) or business whales who control the economy. You will be bribed/threatened/misplayed/betrayed, or you can do these things to others. In other games, Privatization of schools (one of the “lighter” decisions in the game) will affect the economy and maybe public opinion. But in Suzerain? that one decision can make or break the game because it will affect: 1- economy. 2- public opinion (varies based on your promises in the elections) 3- The media (based on how much it supports you) 4- your relationship with key Assembly (congress) members who will vote on your new Constitution. 5- Some minority groups that are getting more radicalized as you go. 6- Your relationship with Business whales (who can support your campaign) 7- It will feed into your global stance on economic ideology. 8- because of 7, it can affect the wars you are trying to win/avoid. 9- your personal relationship with your ministers. 10- personal relationship with your wife. 11- your future opportunities to use it to your advantage, or even make personal gains from it. You will experience every pressure and pleasure a president will face. Not a single decision will have good or bad effect in the game, every thing will have consequences, often they might spiral out of your control. one guy who working against you in the assembly might end your dreams, halting your progress, causing even your own party to condemn your action, leading to your innvetable fall. At the end, when you close the game, though you are stressed, you might have a few white hairs, and you might feel glad this ended. And no matter what you achieve (if you magically achieve something), like changing the constitution, getting rid of bad people, getting the economy out of a depression, winning a war, or winning the election, you will ask yourself: Yeah... but at what cost? From a guy who is really interested in History books, this game will teach you, in a very engaging way, the real complexity of politics, and why politicians might do the things they do, and not do the “obvious”. And will help you understand reading history (no doubt about it) My major complaint about this game is this: some mechanics are really hidden, especially when it comes to the economy or voting on the constitution, anything with numbers, like how much debt can affect your economic stability. Many of these are not explained very well (despite the nice new updates), and you cannot learn from your mistakes unless you read online discussions. a bit of bad feedback in such a rich decision-making game. If this ever improves, I will give it 10/10 because it would be a perfect game. I give it 9/10 as of now.

ULTRAKILL

The best solo FPS I ever played, Its a game that I will finish, refinish and refinish once more. Its not perfect because I feel it needs better feedback to let you learn from your mistakes quicker. for a game like this, this is the must.

Lysfanga

My initial take on this game, was that I didn't like the mix between puzzles and action games. But then I saw it for what it really is, and I think this is more of an adrenaline rush action kind of game. I mean; if you want to compete for high scores (time) it will feel like a puzzle, but if you are aiming to just win (or even getting some of the time challenge rewards) will not feel so puzzley. Not in a way that different than most level-based games. that being said, I loved the mechanics, the abilities, and when they let you take a breather and 'think' before you attempt the area again. I thought it was a good "indie" game, a fun new mechanic that feels great with controllers. and I wanted to give it 7(good) rating, but man for an experimental/fresh game like this, the production level for this is way above expected; the art and the diversity in abilities or the story/voice acting took the game to the next level,I would have liked it as a basic pixel art game, but it deserves my 8.

Punch Club

This game is good. Best music, I don't know how you create awesome beats without anyone getting bored with it for hours, but they did it. Filled with Easter eggs and surprising moments, this game (despite looking like a silly tycoon) is richer and more alive than you would think. I would give it 8 on tablets, but as a PC game, it's a bit slow, I think. Maybe I am being more critical as a second playthrough, but it also lacks real decisions when it comes to fighting. The fighting system must be way deeper and connected to your training, and you should adjust your training based on the fights you focus on. All in all, I believe it's a great chill game, with memories that I have not forgotten years later.

The Hex

This game was very creative; there is a touch of creativity in everything, not only in the story but also in the game mechanics. I totally recommend it to everyone, but especially to gamedevs.

War for the Overworld

I see my old self playing this. If it wasn't for bad UX I would have enjoyed more of this for sure.

This War of Mine

Loved the first run, but I doubt I will like another run, hence the lower rating.

Balatro

One of the best games, I think I will be enjoying this for a long time.

GRIS

Like the art, did not hate the game, but the slowness with bugs combo stopped me from wanting more.

Die in the Dungeon

Loved the game, will definitely visit more. Would already be the case if it wasn't for Blatro stealing my time.

OMORI

I really would love to continue playing, but my brain is refusing.