• For those who don’t want to read the article, it’s a list of games. Each game gets a paragraph to summarize it and a paragraph of thoughts from a writer.

    The games listed are:

    • Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor (PC)
    • Monster Prom (PC)
    • ValiDate: Struggling Singles in your Area (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • The Sims (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • A Summer’s End - Hong Kong 1986 (PC)
    • Signalis (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • Even Cowgirls Bleed (PC)
    • Heaven Will Be Mine (PC)
    • Ikenfell (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • Gone Home (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • Citzen Sleeper (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • Tell Me Why (PC, Xbox)
    • Milky Way Prince - The Vampire Star (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • Paradise Killer (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • The Outer Worlds (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
    • If Found… (PC, Switch, iOS)
    • Citizen Sleeper is incredible. The writing is absolutely top notch, and the dice rolls as daily action points (basically) system works great for a life sim/time management game and keeps the tension up but not too impossibly so.

      Though the free dlc expansion isn’t as well written imo (at least as of when I played it, when they were still working on at least the third part of it). I suspect they changed writers. It’s still good, just a lot more straightforward and cliche, and the characters have less depth, imo. Granted it could also just be that I was in a worse mood when I played it or something.

      Signalis is fantastic as a horror game, but it involves a LOT of backtracking to manage a tiny inventory. This is intentional and plays into the horror but can get annoying fast. It’s a really atmospheric game, and it might appeal to fans of the original Resident Evil or its remake, and to space horror fans in general.

      Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is really cool, but I never finished it because it’s an absolute nightmare to try and navigate. Everything is blinding neon and you don’t get easy landmarks nor an intuitive map. It was part of the giant Black Lives Matter itchio bundle I believe, so if you bought that you might as well give it a go! I’m glad I played it for a while even though I didn’t finish.

      The Outer Worlds went on a bit long for me, but it’s really good fun, and it did feature an ace character, which is really really rare still and I appreciate it much. Especially since she’s a human and not a robot or alien, like many ace, aro, or nonbinary characters end up being. It’s lampooning of capitalism is sort of cathartic but also can get sort of really depressing after hours and hours in that world.

      Outer Worlds is NOT to be confused with The Outer Wilds, which is basically a perfect game with its dlc. The Outer Wilds also counts as lgtbqia+ because you play as an alien from a race that refers to each other exclusively as “they”; they never use gendered pronouns. Whereas another race in the world does have ‘he’ and ‘she’ in their language. In an interview the writer said that the 2nd race also has nonbinary people in it too, but she just couldn’t figure out how to work that into the writing in a clear way, because of the way the writing works in the game I guess. I’m trying to talk about this without spoilers so forgive me if this sounds muddled.

      Anyway, The Outer Wilds is great if you want an open world mystery/archaeology game, though you need to be okay with the fact that you aren’t told what to do at all - it relies on the player to bring their own curiosity and questions to motivate your exploration, and I’ve heard of that tripping some people up. But if you have a question, or notice something weird that you don’t understand, in this game 99.999% of the time you can trust that it’s not a bug and is a mystery for you to figure out if you want to.