After speaking with a few game developers here I’ve noticed a quote pop up time and time again. It goes something like this:

“We’ve been doing this for years now, but every time we are at an event or a video goes viral on TikTok there are people surprised that we’re making games in Portugal!”

If even a lot of Portuguese people do not know about Portuguese-made games, I bet a lot of you are wondering: Portugal Makes Games?

Hence why I chose it as the title for this newsletter that will be arriving in your inboxes or Substack app every week. I’m aiming to publish it every Saturday, but don’t quote me on it.

The purpose of this newsletter is simple: I want to ensure that as many people as possible know the correct answer to the question (hint: it is yes!). To do that, I will be bringing you tidbits and interesting stories from interviews with Portuguese developers and keep you up to date on the most relevant things that happen in our little corner of the gaming industry.

Let me know if you there is anything in specific you’d like to know about how videogames are made in Portugal!

Lastly, I’d like to extend a huge thanks to , who was kind enough to bring good weather to Lisbon, and who reminded me that the best way to get something done is to just start it!

Hope to see you Saturday for the inaugural edition of Portugal Makes Games?!

A few years ago seemingly everyone pulled out a tape measure and frantically typed “howlongtobeat X game” while it awkwardly sat in their Steam cart. “60$ for a 12h campaign? That is 5$ per hour!” said John Doe. “I’ve clocked over 500h on Skyrim for the same money, that is much better value”, he added. The discourse could be positive, too. Hollow Knight was universally praised for, among many other reasons, offering almost unmatched value when it came to $ per hour.

But I am squarely in the opposite side of this argument. Should videogame size matter when bigger is often worse in this industry? The open world era ushered by Bethesda, Ubisoft, and Rockstar back in the early 2010s filled many titles with enough bloat to make my Crohn’s flare-ups feel mild. I’m here in defence of the two to twelve-hour experiences, be they polished or janky (complimentary). Here’s why.

Why I’m Writing About This Now

While I do think about this every time any sort of quantity versus quality argument comes into the fray (like it has with Crimson Desert), the reason why I’m finally putting this in writing is because of Ricardo Cesteiro. Ricardo is one of the co-owners of Camel101, alongside his brother, Bruno. They’re a three-person indie studio based in Portugal who’ve published six games on Steam, an average of one every three years.

I interviewed Ricardo this week and questioned him about their small development cycles in comparison to the industry average, and the reason behind them. Ricardo laughed and said that Beneath, their latest release, took five years to develop and “that’s too much”, he told me. There are financial and business incentives behind smaller development cycles, but Ricardo wanted to highlight that it was also a decision based on Camel101’s personal preferences.

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Like you, like me, and like the average global videogame player, Ricardo is an adult with a job and with personal responsibilities. This means that he simply doesn’t have as much time to play games as he used to. While he has always loved RPGs, he confesses that the last one he’s finished is Dragon Age: Inquisition (released in 2014), a feat that took him an entire year to accomplish.

You can probably relate to this, as can I. Baldur’s Gate 3 has been sitting on my Steam library (shameful, I know...) for almost three years now because I simply cannot fathom devoting over 100h to a videogame outside of work. Instead, I’ve been cherishing smaller, contained experiences that end quickly, but stick around even after the credits roll.

Ricardo and Bruno at Camel101 excel at just that, short but intense horror experiences that immerse you into a terrifying world that you’ll remember for a while. Syndrome took me around 6h to complete and Those Who Remain can be finished in under 5h. Their next game, Dead Stop: No Vacancy, will be the first of a collection of episodic horror stories, even shorter than their previous titles.

Put The Measuring Tape Back In Your Pocket

As players buy fewer and fewer full price games, F2P and legacy titles eat the majority of the cake, but a door opens for smaller, cheaper experiences. While expensive and extensive games still dominated leaderboards and The Game Awards, 2025 was a year of successes for titles that were either short, cheap, or both.

Hades II, Blue Prince, Hollow Knight: Silksong are squarely in the impossible category of being both cheap and massive, but they’re also accompanied by some short kings and queens as some of the best games released last year.

• Despelote- 13,99€ on Steam, takes around 2h to finish.

• Rhythm Doctor- 19,50€, 4h to 8h.

• Sword Of The Sea- 28,99€, around 3h.

• Lumines Arise- 39,99€, 4h to 7h.

• Dispatch- 28,99€, around 9h.

Players want value, but that doesn’t just equal playtime. Most players will wince if you ask 69,99€ for a game with less than 10h of playtime, but even Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 was well received despite its 49,99€ asking price.

This isn’t new, mind you. Some of the most legendary and revered games of all time took less than 10h to complete: Portal 1 and 2, Silent Hill 1 and 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Uncharted 1. And when you compare videogames to other mediums, as you so often do, the whole argument seems dumb.

Do you measure a book by the thickness of its spine? Do you judge a movie by its runtime? A series by how many episodes it has? Do you refuse to listen to music albums that fail to reach 1h of playtime? Then stop pulling out the measuring tape as you prepare to buy your next videogame. Enjoy the hundred-hour behemoths as much as you want, but give the short kings and queens the opportunities they deserve.

You might bump into a What Remains of Edith Finch, play it for 2.5 hours, and think about it for the next 25 years. How’s that for value?

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Reviewed on PC

Roguelike Deckbuilders are a dime a dozen right now. Pressing the tag on Steam brings me to a page with 1119 matches. So why did South Korean developer I M GAME take the risk of betting on such an overcrowded genre with their first PC game?

Likely because Master of Piece is genuinely unique. It is, at its core, a Roguelike Deckbuilder, but it is wrapped with enough novelty to give players a fresh experience. Here is how the first PC game from an experienced mobile game developer succeeds where a lot of others fail.

What Is Master Of Piece, Exactly?

According to Steam tags, it is a:

• Roguelike Deckbuilder

• Auto Battler

• Turn-Based Strategy

If I had to describe it via comparison, I would call it a mix between Darkest Dungeon and Into the Breach. Describing it as an Auto Battler feels wrong because you are making decisions every turn, and if you don’t, you won’t succeed.

The comparisons to Darkest Dungeon are the most obvious. Master of Piece kicks off in a sort of town area called “Departure Ground”. This is where you prepare for your Journey. In the Hall of Fame, you can check your achievements and, in a lovely touch, they manifest as actual objects inside the building.

On the opposite side of the Grounds, you’ll find the Archive. Here’s where you can learn more about Master of Piece’s lore and how the Black Fog took over the world. Additionally, you can evaluate your previous journeys and check your overall stats.

The left side of the Grounds hides the Garrison, the game’s main form of meta-progression. You can construct four buildings out of the five possible ones here. Your options are:

• Barracks: The piece your receive as reward after battles will be upgraded for 1/2/3 encounters.

• Command Center: Obtain the Pioneer’s Compass relic, which can be used 1/2 times during the journey.

• Warehouse: Obtain +1/2 additional item slots. Obtain 1 random item upon entering a different region when fully upgraded.

• Windmill: Obtain 2/4/6/8/ additional dice at the start of the journey.

• Workshop: Your will recover your flag durability by +3/4/5/6 upon defeating the boss.

All buildings can be constructed and upgraded using the same currency, Resources, which you get at the end of the journey. The farther you go, the more Resources you get.

With all those explanations out of the way (we’ll explain the Garrison system bonuses later), let’s get into a journey and brave the black fog.

The Journey

You start your first journey as Sigmund, the knight. Master of Piece kicks you off with a tutorial battle, which brings us to the Into the Breach comparisons.

This is an Auto-Battler in the most general sense. All pieces do the same actions, with very few exceptions: they attack what is directly in front of them.

Similar to a classic Auto-Battler, they have differing stats and passives. But unlike most games in the genre, the battles don’t play out automatically after initial positioning. You get to place new pieces or move the ones already placed every turn. Additionally, you also get Relics, powerful passives for your character, and a main ability that can turn the tide of a battle.

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Your objective is the same in every single battle: destroy the enemy’s flag before they destroy yours. In boss fights, which take place at the end of each region, the enemy flag is the boss. Losing your flag means that your journey comes to an end, and you need to start from the beginning.

You’ll also lose if you run out of pieces, aka Mercenaries, before you destroy the enemy. After winning a battle, you’ll get to choose your next destination, and there are a ton of options:

• Bookstore: Obtain items.

• Bootcamp: Randomly change a mercenary’s base stats and grants and Upgrade or Rumor.

• Boss Battle: Obligatory challenge at the end of each region. Defeating them rewards you with an upgrade to a Trait of one Mercenary.

• Card Event: Random events which allow you to trade Flag durability for higher rewards, or recover Flag Durability for no rewards.

• Elite Battle: Tougher fight which reward you with a Relic.

• Enemy Battle: Normal encounters which reward you with one Mercenary.

• Gallows: Execute a Mercenary to pass their Trait to another.

• Relic Shop: Choose one out of two Relics.

• Shaman’s Hut: Upgrade a Mercenary’s stats out of two options.

• Trait Shop: Choose one trait from two options.

More options show up in later regions, but I’m not going to spoil the surprises. Your strategy is as important in the actual battles as it is in planning your journey. Making the wrong choices will often lead to impossible battles, no matter how well you play in the battle itself.

Like any good roguelike, Master Of Piece excels in its variety. There are 28 Mercenaries to find for each Commander. For now, you unlock Livius after playing with Sigmund. They have very different playstyles and Mercenary pools to choose from.

There are four regions with 15 enemy types per region, so a total of 60 enemy units to find. On top of all this, there 32 relics, 9 items, and 22 card events. If that isn’t enough variety for you, the possibilities become nearly endless when you take into account the possible trait combinations alongside the Rumor and Upgrade systems.

The Mercenaries

Your units in Master of Piece are your Mercenaries. They all have three main stats:

• Attack Power: How much damage they deal.

• Health: How much damage they can take.

• Speed: Faster units attack before slower ones. If two units with the same speed clash, a dice is rolled to decide who attacks first.

These base stats can be upgraded twice, in any combination. You can invest in two Attack Power upgrades, or a mix between Health and Speed, for example. After two upgrades, a Mercenary’s stats can only be changed by gambling in the Bootcamp.

Furthermore, Mercenaries can have up to two Traits and one Rumor. Traits are powerful passives and are your most important system to keep in mind. Rumors are weaker passives that can nonetheless improve a Mercenary.

While there is a lot of randomness in the kind of composition you end up with on a journey, you have some control. As you progress with each Commander, you’ll be able to use the Guild at the Departure Grounds to change the pair of Mercenaries you start with, your starting Relic, and your Ability.

In most scenarios, your strongest Mercenaries at the end of a journey will be the two you choose in your Guild, or at least they’ll be based on the Traits those initial Mercenaries brought.

But the key in Master of Piece is striking a balance between a bloated deck with a ton of weak Mercenaries and one that has a few powerful units but can be whittled down, especially in boss fights.

Your most successful runs will be the ones in which you manage to create powerful Mercenaries with strong Trait synergies that are improved by both your Relics and Abilities. You’ll likely make great use of Shaman Huts, Trait Shops, and the occasional execution at the Gallows.

Taking down the final boss at the fourth region ends a Journey, but that is where the real game begins.

Replayability And Issues

Master of Piece is an enthralling experience. You’ll be spamming journey after journey and, once you bump the battle speed to 3x (which I recommend you do as soon as you feel comfortable), you’ll be in a trance just experimenting with different combinations.

Taking down the final boss for the first time will unlock Ordeals with the Commander who cleared the journey. These are extra difficulty modifiers that improve how many Resources and how much XP you get at the end of a journey. There are seven Ordeals in total, and, so you can have an idea, here are the first three:

• Enemy pieces are upgraded.

• Enemy flag durability and boss HP are increased.

• The number of pieces in a battle is increased.

These stack, so starting Journeys on higher Ordeals raises difficulty considerably. This is where the real challenge and replayability of Master Of Piece comes out, but also when the problems creep in.
The biggest issue I had with Master of Piece comes down to balancing. First of all, clearing a Journey with Sigmund is considerably easier than with Livius. This is mostly due to Sigmund being able to create extremely tank compositions, which allow you to whittle down opponents.

Livius, on the other hand, benefits from aggressive compositions that excel at demolishing enemies quickly. While this can be fun and give you journeys in which you blast through your opposition, it can also lead you to frustrating defeats in which you run out of units.

This is especially frustrating because you lose when you run out of Mercenaries, but your enemies don’t. So you can run into a situation, one which happened to me a few times, in which you make the boss run out of pieces to play, but they destroy the couple of units you have left before you can defeat them.

I enjoy challenges, so the problem I have with the balancing isn’t that it makes the game too hard, but that it doesn’t play into Master of Pieces’ strength. This game excels when you are swimming in options and basting in its variety.

A successful run with Livius, at least in my case, is one in which I am engaging with as few choices as possible and am instead focusing on turning my two starting Mercenaries into absolute raid bosses.

With all that being said, the issues I have with Master Of Pieces are not only minor but easily fixed. The more people play the game and the more feedback I receive, the faster they’ll nail the balancing, especially in higher Ordeals.

In my view, the developers have nailed the hardest part already: crafting an addictive loop that didn’t get old for me, even after 12h in. They’re promising a third Commander named Serila in the full version, which will bring even more variety to an already sprawling experience.
As it stands, Master of Piece is a bargain at its 15$ asking price, and will only get better from here on out.

Review code provided for free by the developer.

Except there is nothing cynical about StarRupture, and while there certainly was some financial impetus behind choosing successful genres to mix, Creepy Jar combined them because they’re simply fun to experience. In StarRupture, you’re a child filled with wonder and Arcadia-7 is your playground.

What exactly are the ingredients that make up this smorgasbord, though? The tags present in the game’s Steam page are:

• Early Access

• Base Building

• Survival

• Co-op

• Open World

And the ones which I would add:

• Automation

• FPS

• Tower Defense

So you can probably tell why a first glance gives such a cynical impression. How does all of this work together to form a functioning videogame?

Let’s imagine StarRupture as a pyramid built using multiple blocks of differing sizes. Despite the tutorial kicking you off with base building and automation, these aren’t what I would consider the blocks which serve as the game’s— and the pyramid’s— base. The first block sustaining the entire Creepy Jar construction is exploration.

Block One- Exploration

You, the player, are dropped into Arcadia-7, an alien yet familiar world, in a similar way to the character you choose to embody. Whichever convict you end up choosing (Biologist, Engineer, Scientist, or Soldier), you’ll always be someone who’s dropped into a location with very limited information regarding it.

Both of you know that every few real life minutes and in-game hours, the star illuminating this planet goes into some sort of solar eruption completely erasing all life from Arcadia-7’s surface. Soon after, though, the planet regenerates completely.

The Exploration gameplay loop is directly limited by the recurring solar eruptions. While the planet isn’t being incinerated, you’re free to explore the many wonders spread throughout Arcadia-7.

You’ll encounter abandoned bases overtaken by aliens, half-destroyed, or completely infected. You’ll bump into caves which can only be explored during the time following a rupture event, before the vines that block its entrance regrow. Dead bodies of previous explorers lie sprinkled through the landscape hiding precious resources.

But the most valuable treasures are always found in the aforementioned decrepit bases, which also house the only real sources of information that you— the player and the character— get, via written and audio entries from previous colonizers. Every time a ruptura is about to happen, your AI companion warns you, giving you a couple minutes to run back to your base, which brings us to the two next blocks in our pyramid.

Blocks Two And Three- Base Building And Automation

Most of the goodies you’ll find in your explorations of Arcadia-7 serve to feed the blocks present in our pyramid’s second floor. Your base is where you build your habitat, the only building able to protect you from the inferno that is the ruptura.

Inside that same habitat, you’ll build multiple structures directly fed by the exploration loop. Items found throughout the planet can be consumed at the Analysis Station for some Data Points. These can then be used to learn new recipes at the Recipe Station, or to further progress the trust level of the five corporations investing resources into Arcadia-7.

Recipes allow you to craft new buildings and new items produced by those same buildings. But unlike in Creepy Jar’s previous title, Green Hell, you’re not actively crafting these items. Instead, you’re building your base with automation in mind.

When building an efficient base, you’ll create a system which automatically feeds five different Orbital Cargo Dispatchers, one per corporation. These will export the items which the corporations demand, netting you Data Points per item sent. The Data Points automatically level your trust factor with that corporation, eventually taking you to the next level.

Doing so gets you new items, recipes, building, and serves as the game’s main progression. Your character does get stronger depending on your action, akin to an RPG system, but that isn’t nearly as impactful as the unlocks you receive from the corps.

The thing is, every time you level a corporation up, it will demand new items. The only ways to get access to these items are to progress with the other corporations or, more often than not, finding blueprints while exploring.

But your exploration of the planet isn’t only impacted by the cyclical ruptura. You’ll have to fight off the hostile lifeforms that call Arcadia-7 their home, which brings us to the pyramid’s third floor.

Block Four- Combat

Hostile lifeforms are present everywhere in Arcadia-7, but even more so in points of interest. Every time you get into an abandoned base, hordes of aliens will pop out of the soil.

You can carry two of the following:

• UPP 7 “Reaper” Pistol

• Mar-9 “Phantom” Assault Rifle (AR)

• SLAMS-12 Shotgun

• M175 “Grim” Light Machine Gun (LMG)

They play as you expect them to, but you can invest into weapon mods to change their playstyles. The AR works well as an all-rounder and is the best long-range weapon in the game. The Shotgun excels at close range, especially when dealing with hordes of squishy aliens. The LMG also works at close range, but more-so when mowing down tankier aliens, like the Slashers.

While you can deal with the majority of the aliens by standing your ground and shooting, there is one pesky enemy that doesn’t go down so easily: the Goliath. These massive Vermin have two heavily-armored claws which protect them from almost all incoming damage, so the only way to effectively kill them is to hit them from behind.

So even in this beginning phase of the Early Access, StarRupture already boasts decent enemy variety and a good combat system featuring grenades, a dodge button, a medpack which is charged by killing enemies, and a stamina bar.

You’ll also have to deal with these Vermin attacking your base in the aforementioned Tower Defense sections of the game, which will happen every once in a while after you upgrade your Base Core. In addition to the core combat loop, you get access to automated turrets to help you keep the aliens at bay.

This fourth block of the pyramid serves its purpose by bringing some sense of danger and variety to the exploration, but also by showing that not even the Vermin are safe from the cyclical ruptura. If you venture out into Arcadia-7 before it is finished regenerating, you won’t find a single Vermin around.

Even if you head into an abandoned base or activate a Geo-Scanner— a device which reveals a large portion of the map but summons a horde of Vermin—, you won’t encounter a single alien. This is a great example of “show, don’t tell”, regarding how the entire ecosystem of Arcadia-7 revolves around this cyclical cataclysmic event. But how do we learn more about this bizarre planet?

Block Five- Story

As expected for an Early Access title, StarRupture’s story isn’t complete. I won’t go into it here since I want to keep this review as spoiler-free as I can, and because you can’t exactly gauge a story until it is finished.

But what we have so far is intriguing enough, and it serves as an extra incentive to keep us exploring. Crucially, it also fleshes out an already interesting world, leaving us with a lot of questions.

What it proves above all else, though, is the genius behind StarRupture, and what makes Creepy Jar a uniquely capable studio to make this ambitious project work. StarRupture can indeed be viewed as a four-storied pyramid made up of five blocks. It looks more or less like this:

But like the optimized automation base, every component connects to another, creating a genuinely addictive gameplay experience.

Loop Within A Loop

If you’re as lazy about optimization and visual fluidity as me, your StarRupture base will look like a spaghetti monster. Any Italian would be proud of the lengths you go to just to avoid breaking a single spaghetti rail.

Funnily enough, these spaghetti monster bases represent quite well what makes StarRupture such an intoxicating experience. No matter how messy it might look on its surface, everything connects and works into a cohesive whole.

At the base of the pyramid, exploration keeps everything alive. But that exploration only exists because there is a purpose to it: to collect resources that improve your base and further optimize the automation system. To keep that exploration engaging and stressful, you have the top blocks of combat and story, bringing variety to the experience. But these also only work because they directly feed the blocks below them.

Every block of this pyramid has been done better by another game out there. Reddit will be quick to tell you that Satisfactory did 3D automation much better. Most FPS out there feature better combat. The story, by itself, is serviceable when compared to narrative-focused linear experiences. The open world is fun to explore, but doesn’t remotely reach the heights of giants like Skyrim. Base building is fine, but much clunkier and more limited than something like Dune: Awakening.

But no other game has built a pyramid with such tightly connected diverse blocks like StarRupture. There is no part of this game that jumps out as uniquely awesome, but the experience as a whole really turns Arcadia-7 into an unrivalled playground.

So if any of the pyramid blocks caught your attention, give this one a try. You might be surprised to find that you actually like base building, or automation, or FPS combat. And the best part? If you really can’t jive with one of the blocks, just bring a friend, two, or three, and have them do that part for you, while you enjoy focusing on the ones that cater to your preferences.

You are Blue, a mediocre Wizard who doesn’t particularly stand-out in a magical academy filled with Wizard as or more capable than you. That is until you are defenestrated— I coincidentally learned this word while playing Scrabdackle, pure magic in itself. It means being thrown out of a window.

Your journey begins post-defenestration in a world wholly unfamiliar to you, and to Blue, who’d never left the Academy before. Explore the world, learn what happened, and enjoy your time in the best metroidvania you’ve never heard of.

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What The Hell Is A Scrabdackle!?

I heard about Scrabdackle on November 12, 2025, courtesy of Jasmine James, an excellent PR person working with Double Jump. I was late to the party, but not late to the release, thankfully. The game came out in Early Access December 2, 2025, but its story begins considerably earlier.

March 16, 2021. Scrabdackle’s Kickstarter campaign goes live. An ambitious jakefriend is asking for CA$ 24,000 to make their first game into reality. Here is how Jake describe it then:

Explore a curious world worth getting lost in, armed with wizardly skill and unwizardly empathy.

Not a lot has changed since then, even though Jake wildly underestimated how much time it would him to get the game released, even in early access. Back in 2021, he was hoping to get Scrabdackle out sometime during 2022. Here we are, at the end of 2025, and the game’s first act just came out.

But before we get into that, what the hell is a Scrabdackle, after all? Jake explains:

Every name I tried to think of for the game sounded very generic, like “Wizard Adventure” and things like that. It seemed like a better approach to come up with something that had the right mood and build around that. I made up “Scrabdackle” because it made me laugh and it’s fun to say, and nothing better ever came to mind - and that was pretty much that.

What The Hell Is Scrabdackle, Though?

Besides a word that’s fun to say, Scrabdackle is a scribbly, hand-drawn, unexpectedly deep metroidvania. At the time of writing, Jake has only released the first act of three, but that already comes with 12 to 15 hours of gameplay. These include:

• 6 spells to learn,

• 9 bosses to challenge,

• 10 11 regions to explore,

• 60 unique stickers and stars to find,

• 90 minutes of music to nod to,

• 122 130 notebook entries to scry,

• and about 70,000 80,000 words to read!

The two final acts promise a similar amount of content as free updates. That would put Scrabdackle in a price-to-scope ratio similar to the likes of Hollow Knight, with both games costing around 15€ while offering dozens of hours of play. But there’s more to this comparison.

Jake names Team Cherry’s masterpiece as one of his main inspirations, and it shows. Scrabdackle looks simplistic with its scribbly artstyle and limited moveset, but that is a cute facade. This is a complex game which will humble you in its highest difficulty, all while keeping count of your deaths in each encounter as a mini-map pop-up.

You begin your journey with a single spell, Scry. It serves no purpose other than letting you scan creatures or objects to learn more about them. During the first few minutes of your foray into the wilderness, you’ll encounter your second spell, the Strata Blast. Simply press left click to throw a bundle of geometric shapes with a wave of your wand. This is your basic attack, and your first Primary spell.

This category of spell is your main combat arsenal. Scry is a Tertiary spell, a category which encompasses situational magic. A few hours into your journey, you’ll be able to invest some Magic Bits— the only currency you own— to buy a pair of Dashing Boots, allowing you to dash. This is considered a Secondary Spell, a category reserved for mobility-focused abilities.

For the majority of your time in Scrabdackle’s first act, you are limited to the following actions:

• Left-click to attack enemies or objects with Strata Blast.

• Hold Right-Click to Scry, scanning enemies or objects for information.

• Press Spacebar to Dash. Dashing does not have invincibility frames.

• WASD to walk.

Despite featuring so few mechanical tools, Scrabdackle uses these four simple ingredients to cook a cake that is packed with flavor and, crucially, variety.

Although it is tagged as a Soulslike on Steam, Scrabdackle shares few similarities with FromSoftware’s creations. At its heart, Jake’s passion project feels like a modernized, yet classic take on the original Metroid games, but with an isometric perspective, and with a focus on dialogue and lore that puts it closer to Hollow Knight.

Swashbuckling In Scrabdackle

My biggest problem with Scrabdackle is with one of its best systems: the combat. Not because it is bad, but because it is so close to greatness yet keeps stumbling an inch from the finish line, which ends up being frustrating.

I played Scrabdackle in its highest difficulty, Dramaturge. It is likely that Poet, the second highest, is Jake’s intended experience. I would argue that Scrabdackle is best experienced with a considerable challenge, but the higher difficulty does exacerbate the issues I had with its combat.

As previously mentioned, Scrabdackle does a lot with few and simple ingredients, and that includes common combat encounters and bossfights. But the problem with cooking with few ingredients, is that if you overdo or underdo with any of them, it will stand out.

Scrabdackle underdoes it with the way it implements its parry system. As you progress through the game, you will unlock a second Primary Spell, Witchbrand. It is a melee attack in which Blue materializes a sword. It can destroy projectiles and parry melee enemy attacks if you attack as you’re getting hit.

In another happy coincidence, I bumped into this great piece written by Khehoon Khan for Game Developer titled “What goes into a good parry system?”. In it, Khan speaks to a few developers about what makes parrying good in video games, and there is a key detail that keeps popping up that isn’t present in Scrabdackle: risk versus reward.

Parrying in Scrabdackle is incredibly risky, especially when you are playing in a high difficulty. Missing your timing means you lose one and a half Vial Brews (out of four total), and you only recover half a Vial per boss phase. It isn’t rewarding, though. At best you get one hit more than you would if you dodged, and that’s it.

In general, Scrabdackle consistently nails risky, but tends to feel lackluster on the reward. You don’t heal in the game unless you find vial blobs or a Place of Power (save-point). During boss fights, you get a vial blob per phase change (which recovers half a Vial in Dramaturge difficulty). This sounds fine on paper, and it is in most scenarios. The longer the bossfights and the tougher they are, though, the more this system crumbles.

In most games, namely in Soulslikes, you own some sort of healing item, Estus Flask, whatever it may be. You have control over using it, and the reward you get for not taking damage is that you have more uses of it left in the future. This makes it a perfect system in multi-phase boss fights that you bash your head against multiple times. The better you get at the early phases, the less potions you’ll use, the more you’ll have available for the phases you haven’t yet mastered.

In Scrabdackle, though, you get a half-vial blob regardless of your current HP. There is a boss in the game with six phases. If you get through the first three without getting a single hit, you die in four hits in the fourth phase. If you got hit twice in the first phase and didn’t get damaged in phase two and three, you still die in four hits in the fourth phase. You played better in the first occasion, but the end result is the same.

You are not rewarded for mastering an early phase in Scrabdackle, which can turn the hardest fights in the game into a chore when you’ve died a couple dozen times— I finished my Act 1 playthrough with 148 deaths. In the aforementioned six phase boss fight, I ended up breezing through the first two phases by the time I got to attempts 20-25. I beat the boss at attempt 49.

I was not being rewarded for reaching phase four without getting touched, I was simply being punished with having to do phases one-to-three over and over again, even though I had already mastered them. A game with would potions would minimise this issue by rewarding me with a surplus of healing which I didn’t use in the first three boss phases. Scrabdackle’s system does not function like that.

This can be fixed by giving the player a shield blob instead of a health blob, or even by just dropping Magic Bits upon phase changing instead of health that they don’t need. Alternatively, the healing blobs could remain indefinitely in the boss room instead of de-spawning after a few seconds, so the player could still have use for them if he made it through the first phases unscathed.

The six phase boss also exacerbated my biggest issue with Scrabdackle’s combat: randomness, the ingredient which this game overdoes the most, giving the entire cake a funny taste. The most tried-and-true method of raising complexity is stacking mechanics. You start a boss fight off with a simple attack pattern which the player has to dodge. Second phase brings in an extra attack, an AOE, for example. Third phase combines those two together, forcing the player to come up with a new solution.

The last boss you fight before rolling credits in Scrabdackle’s first act is a masterclass in mechanic stacking and was my favorite encounter in the game. Six phase boss is the one I wanted to love the most though, and it takes all my boxes: thematically interesting, extremely challenging, a marathon of a fight, forces you to use most mechanics in the game. Yet it all falls short due to an over-indexing on randomness.

In the pre-credits boss, you’re fighting three enemies, each with a different attack pattern. During the first phase, you fight one at a time. Phase two has them fighting you interspersed. Enemy 1 comes in for an attack, and retreats when enemy 2 shows up. The third and last phase throws them all at you at the same time. Perfect boss design.

Six phase boss has the makings of being the best fight in the game, but it squanders the mechanic-layering design due to how random it feels. I beat it on my 49th attempt, but that wasn’t my best one. Instead, it was an attempt in which I happened to play decently at the same time as the mechanics didn’t stack in a nearly-impossible way.

While pre-credits boss layered mechanics like clockwork every time I tried to kill it, six-phase boss seemed to do it entirely at random. I had runs in which mechanic B and C didn’t overlap once. In other attempts, mechanic B and C overlapped together with D all in the same phase, multiple times. This led to frustration, felt unfair and, worst of all, made my victory feel unearned. Partially, I beat the boss because I got lucky and, after 49 attempts, that sucks.

I might be sounding too negative here, but that is not my intention. Scrabdackle’s combat doesn’t infuriate me because it is bad, it infuriates me because it is so close to perfect. With that out of the way, let’s get into what truly makes this the best metroidvania you’ve never heard of.

Scrabdackle’s Scribbly Spell

There was one spell inside Scrabdackle which I didn’t learn in Act 1: Whimsical Sense of Wonder.

Besides Hollow Knight, Scrabdackle’s Kickstarter page mentions Link’s Awakening and An Untitled Story as two other inspirations. It shares with the 1993 and 2007 classics the sense of wonder brought by a lack of handholding that is sorely missing from games released in the past decade. While Blue is literally thrown onto the outside world through a window, you are defenestrated alongside her, on this side of the monitor. You’re both dropped into Junk Heap, given mild directions by a fishing Peanut (don’t ask), and the rest is up to you.

You’ll find NPCs willing to give tips— for a price, of course—, but if you don’t pay for these minor instances of hand-holding, the game will never volunteer its hand to you. You’ll miss entire areas and boss fights if you’re not paying attention, but if you are, you will be rewarded time and time again as you explore the whimsical scribbly world of Scrabdackle.

While there are some ingredients in excess and a lack of others, the one ingredient that Scrabdackle perfectly nails is “show, don’t tell”. There is a wonderfully illustrated journal full of lore, backstory, and information, but you can play through the entirety of Scrabdackle without ever opening it. Not only that, you can play through the majority of Scrabdackle without opening your map. You’ll still be able to follow the intriguing story and understand what is going on in the world, as long as you’re willing to pay attention.

Despite the scribbly minimalistic veneer, this flawless execution makes Scrabdackle one of the most immersive open-worlds I’ve played in recent memory, and cements it as the best metroidvania you’ve never heard of. Wizard hats off to you, Jake and co., and thank you for casting Whimsical Sense Of Wonder on me.

Scrabdackle is available to purchase on Steam for 13,49€ until December 16, when it will go to its MSRP of 14,99€. For either of these two prices, it is a steal. Support indie devs and, in this case, the maddeningly ambitious project being done by mostly one maniac— Jake does most things in the game, including “world and concept, design, art and animations, music, writing, programming, UI/UX, some sound design”, but is supported by a small team.

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How does a studio follow up a first-try success story? Moi rai games is one of the rare cases of an indie studio debuting with a game— which was started as a free-time project, no less— published by a renowned indie publisher (Team17) and instantly striking gold. At the time of writing, Monster Sanctuary has nearly 5000 Steam reviews with a 97% Overwhelmingly Positive rating.

Seven years after the €100k Kickstarter campaign, and five years after Monster Sanctuary hit 1.0, moi rai games has returned with a different iteration of what has come to define the studio: monster taming. While Monster Sanctuary mixed it with a metroidvania, Aethermancer is mixing monster taming with roguelite. Here’s how the studio found the balance between innovation and staying true to their loyal fanbase.

If the moniker monster taming isn’t ringing a bell, what about Pokémon? Nintendo’s megalithic giant is the most famous example of the genre, and the main reason why most have never even heard about monster taming or creature collecting. While Minecraft kickstarted the survival sandbox genre and spawned an endless supply of games following in its footsteps, Pokémon has had such a stranglehold on the genre that its footsteps are the only ones around.

Or, at least, that was the case when Monster Sanctuary came out. Speaking to Button Musher on the matter, the moi rai team gave their perspective:

We definitely feel like [monster taming] has been an under-served genre for a long time. When we released Monster Sanctuary there were so [few] monster taming games, especially [indies], and [we] do think that the big footsteps of Pokémon and the expectations players might already bring to the table played a role in that.

Thankfully, a lot has changed since then. We’ve now seen Palworld, the glorious return of Digimon with Time Stranger, and many more join the fray. For moi rai, the previous vacuum was an opportunity for “offering the players something they have been missing”. For better and for worse, Pokémon has remained mostly the same for nearly three decades.

Mixing monster taming with genres like Metroidvania and creating games “that are challenging and for a more mature audience” allowed moi rai to stand out and to land a hit with Monster Sanctuary. Following it up meant taking some risks while building on the studio’s sturdy foundation.

”Having had a first project like Monster Sanctuary (…) certainly helped in many ways. (…) We managed to build and nurture a very engaged community [which] trusted us as a development team and were interested to see what we do next.”

Aethermancer, mixing monster taming with roguelite, surpassed the first game’s peak CCU (concurrent users) on Steam during its launch week. A couple months after release, it is about to reach 2000 Steam reviews while maintaining a 90% Very Positive rating. While moi rai agrees that being a Roguelite helped, they attribute most of this success to the community they built with Monster Sanctuary, to which they appealed when they transferred their core strengths (“like the deep skill system for each monster”) from that game to Aethermancer.

And that loyal community is what was at the forefront of moi rai games’ worries when they decided to mix monster taming with Roguelite instead of Metroidvania. When I asked if they were concerned about how ubiquitous the Roguelite genre had become, especially on Steam, they weren’t thinking about it at all, but were instead worried about “how our existing community from Monster Sanctuary would react to the change in genre”.

So far, it seems they’ve received it quite well, which shouldn’t be too surprising. What made moi rai games stand out with Monster Sanctuary was how deep they went with the skill system for each monster. While the Metroidvania genre worked well in giving players a glimpse into it, Aethermancer’s 3v3 Roguelite system excels at showcasing how dynamic and versatile it truly is.

Players are already concocting some devilish builds, and moi rai are all for it. “Making every monster useful and viable in some way was certainly a focus of ours.” The love and effort put into every single creation is evident, and they acknowledge that “broken builds are part of good roguelite games”. Their focus when balancing the monster isn’t to prevent these builds from existing, but instead to make them challenging to reach so the game doesn’t become too easy.

Given the success of Monster Sanctuary and the invaluable support moi rai games got from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action through a public application, Aethermancer is being developed by a considerably bigger team and came out in Early Access in a much more polished state.

The plan is to have Aethermancer in this state for only around one year, so we might see 1.0 come out as early as Q4 2026, but as moi rai games proudly state in their website, they develop games in a “it’s done when it’s done” way. Aethermancer is available now on Steam and is Deck Verified. It is 10% off until December 4th, so if you have any monster taming itch you’d like to scratch, what are you waiting for? The fantastical world of Terastae awaits.

• What I’ve been playing

• Where I’ve been playing it (platform, not actual physical place)

• When I’ll be posting next

• Who I’ve been reading

This past week I got funkier than usual by playing through Alpha Nomos’ demo twice, learning a new language through Morse’s demo, and getting a lot of reading done.

What?

This past week was quite slow for game releases, so I stuck with demos instead. I’m still playing through Dishonored— and enjoying it—, I dabbled a bit into League of Legends (my forever game) with some friends, and I played two demos.

The first one was Alpha Nomos, an exciting action rhythm game that is sure to scratch the Hi-Fi Rush itch. I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the developers, Emil Lager, at DevGAMM Lisbon and had been looking forward to playing through the demo when it reached Steam.

While it still has some bugs and a few things to iron out, it is already a great experience and the demo’s constantly being updated by RibCage Games. I’m writing a review that will be published sometime soon at James Francis’ Adventures in Indie Gaming.

Keeping with the rhythm theme but in as different of a setting as possible, I played through MORSE’s demo and absolutely loved it. This is a “minimalist strategy game”, essentially a tower defense title that grows in complexity by increasing the number of attacking enemies and paths they can take.

As the title implies, though, its main draw is that you control everything in the game through Morse code. Using the default one-button telegraph control the only two buttons I had to press where spacebar and enter. Spacebar typed the Morse code in dots and dashes, Enter shot the missiles at the attacking ships.

Even though I only spent around an hour with the demo, I won’t forget how to type 1 (.————), 2 (..———), 3 (…——), and I (..) in Morse code. A truly unique experience.

Where?

This week was very PC-centric (as most weeks tend to be for me). Everything I played I did so at my desktop computer with the exception of Dishonored, my upcoming Steaming The Deck review.

I’d love to try Alpha Nomos on my Steam Deck, though, and I know for a fact that you can play MORSE on it because Alex Johansson, the game’s developer, posted a recent video doing so with a very interesting setup…

When?

I’m still working on my Steaming The Deck Dishonored review and I’m on track to release it during the first week of December. This week I’ll be posting an article based on an interview I did with moi rai studios, and probably a MORSE review.

Who?

This week I’m highlighting 5 articles again, so you have something to ready every day of the week:

• Mirror, Mirror: AiliA, by Christena Maurer for AIIG- Christena Maurer, a fellow video game Substacker who writes the excellent Tunesday articles, pens another AIIG guest piece, this time reviewing AiliA, an enchanting puzzle game.

• How the games industry sees the decline of traditional reviews, by Harrison Polites for Infinite Lives- Harrison keeps proving his chops as one of the best videogame reporters on Substack with this piece covering how traditional reviews have mostly turned into “scores and pull quotes”.

• My new surprise obsession: A game about running a 1930s newspaper, by Stephen Totilo for Game File- Totilo reviews News Tower, a small indie game which, despite its arcadey tycoon look, creates an unexpectedly realistic simulation of running a US paper in the 1930s.

• Renowned indie studio Inkle announces something quite different: a found-footage World War 2 code-breaking mystery, by Robert Purchese for Eurogamer- Robert covers the announcement of Inkle’s upcoming game, one of the most unique-looking titles we’ve seen in recent years.

• Tavern Keeper: It’s Good, by Luke Plunkett for Aftermath- A loving review of the self-published indie title Tavern Keeper, a “cosy-chaotic management sim” where you’re building your own fantasy taverns worthy of hosting any first session of a DnD campaign.

See you next week!

• What I’ve been playing

• Where I’ve been playing it (platform, not actual physical place)

• Who I’ve been reading

• When I’ll be posting next

• Why you should care

I’ll not always answer the last W successfully, but I’ll always try.

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This week I’m writing about Anno 117, ARC Raiders, and Dishonored, three completely different games, variety, yay! The amount of time I spent playing ate into the part of the pie that’s meant for reading, but we still have a few article recommendations. I do have a clear plan in my mind of what I’ll be writing about next, so stay tuned for that later in the article.

What?

As part of my main job as a freelance journalist I’ve been covering two of the biggest recent releases: Anno 117 and ARC Raiders. Two games whose titles start with A, and that’s where the similarities end.

Anno 117 was a new experience for me. RTS, 4X, Grand Strategy, City Builders, these are all genres that I am woefully educated in. I’ve tried time and time again to get into them, but I haven’t quite managed. So outside of what I was required to do for work, I didn’t play much of it.

ARC Raiders, though… I’ve now clocked nearly 47h into the game, a little over two weeks post-launch. Most of those were spent alone in the Rust Belt making friendships with strangers. Some of them were with my own friends, but that usually ended up in constant bloodbaths.

Not only am I more used to games like ARC Raiders, Embark Studios has done an excellent job trimming the fat and giving us a truly juicy experience without the endless list of unpleasantries that come attached to a title like Escape From Tarkov— take a look at Steam reviews for that game, if you need an explanation.

Besides this two, I’m finally back to my Steaming The Deck series with Dishonored. It is my first time playing it (I know) and I’ve been enjoying my time so far, although I am only a couple of hours in. If you also own Dishonored, Steam Deck is an excellent way to play it. It runs at a locked 60 with great visual quality, I highly recommend it.

Where?

Got a bit ahead of myself in the last paragraph, but that’s alright, it is only the first edition of Monday Mushings, after all. Both Anno and ARC Raiders have been played on my PC, while Dishonored as been walking with me inside my Steam Deck.

No complaints regarding performance of any game, except some issues with Anno 117, but you can fix those easily by toning down the graphics a bit and capping FPS to avoid massive dips when zooming in and out.

When?

I have a few pieces planned. A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing the team at moi rai, the studio behind games like Monster Sanctuary and Aethermancer. Expect a piece on that conversation soon.

I interviewed a few more individuals in the gaming sphere but I’m still shopping those pitches around to a few outlets, if none take it, they’ll end up here!

A Steaming The Deck piece for Dishonored is already in the works, I’ll have it published sometime in December, if all goes well. Got a review key for an indie game in my mail today, so I’ll start working on that review, too (it’s a surprise!).

Why?

I didn’t think how difficult this one would be to answer. As Margot pointed out in her small yet brilliant piece— which I’ll link below, don’t worry—, you shouldn’t really care about any of this.

BUT if you are interested in video games, reading and/or writing about them, I’m fairly confident you’ll get something useful out of these weekly Mushings. If not, voice your frustrations below and tell me what I could do to make it better (these will be more effective as pleasant constructive criticism than harsh, mean words)!

Who?

I didn’t read nearly as much as I should’ve this week, but I still managed to find some excellent articles in the wild. Here are five I’d like to highlight, one for each day of the (work) week:

• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond preview – “A surprisingly magical return to Nintendo’s legendary metroidvania series”, by Ashley Bardhan for Gamesradar+- A whimsical yet informative preview of Metroid Prime 4 Through Ashley’s Looking Glass.

• These Developers Are Bringing Canceled Game Concord Back To Life, by Nicole Carpenter for Aftermath- An enlightening interview of the people who’re bringing back the most infamous release of 2024.

• Elevating Canadian video games industry, one MIGS at a time, by Katya Ryabova for Playing This Week- Katya’s thoughts on the Canadian video game industry based on her time spent at a recent conference.

• Thoughts: Do I actually WANT to play that game?, by Margot for Margot Plays Video Games- The aforementioned piece where friend of the Substack, Margot, covers the crucial difference between wanting to play a game and feeling like you should play it.

• A word of warning from the Steam Machine’s ‘ideal’ customer, by Harrison Polites for Infinite Lives- Harrison clues us into what would make the console-PC hybrid ideal for customers like him.

See you next Monday!

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What do you mean I’m meant to go alone into a place full of people I don’t know and just talk to them?

Thankfully, I actually knew most of those people. They’re geeks and gamers like me. People who love to play and create video games, and who do it for passion first, money second. That might be the reason why a magical optimism seemed ever-present inside the Myriad Cristal Center.

DevGAMM was filled with business people— it is B2B focused, after all— but these weren’t the suits that you’re used to hearing about on gaming podcasts. They weren’t CEOs of megacompanies dealing in billions and trillions. They’re interacting with small teams who can make greatness out of a few thousand dollars, not 250 million bucks.

Here’s how DevGAMM Lisbon 2025 gave me hope about the future of the industry, and how it reminded me of why so many people keep making games.

Day One

My first hour inside the Myriad Cristal Center was a microcosm of what was happen to happen for two entire days. I got my Media badge, looked at the map, check the talks I wanted to attend later, and then ventured into the first showcase area, filled with computers and developers.

I was looking curiously at the monitors and bumped into a friendly guy who was showing a cool game. I looked down at his badge looking for his name, Rafael Mogas, an unmistakably Portuguese name.

We talked for an hour or so about Arctic Awakening, a first person narrative adventure game with minor survival mechanics made by GoldFire Studios. Despite living in Santarém, Portugal, Rafael is the 3D artist for the studio and did a lot of work on the game. The studio was founded in Oklahoma City, but it works fully remote now.

After speaking with Rafael I realized how easy my job at DevGAMM Lisbon would be. I love talking to people about video games, and I love playing video games. Doing both simultaneously was just the easiest work I’ve done in my life.

I spent the remainder of the first day bouncing from desk to desk and meeting wonderful people. Yelyzaveta Lemeshko talked me through her team’s ambitious plans for Delusion Out of Space (and beyond). She was paying close attention to how people were playing her demo and asking for feedback afterwards.

Eva Manuilovich, the co-founder and artist at Nozomu Games, was humble in describing Burn With Me, the Devil’s Deckburner she is creating with her husband, Ivan. Her incredible art was catching the eye of most people that looked towards her desk, and the fact that she turned some of the card designs into Nozomu’s business cards was a stroke of genius.

Emil Lager, Tech lead and Co-Founder of RibCage Games is one of those enthusiastic artists you could talk to for hours, his love for Alpha Nomos was contagious. He enjoyed seeing people figure out advanced mechanics on their own, or nudging them towards those exact tricks if they were having issues with the game.

Angela Wu, Game Artist, Designer, and Developer at Ada Eden games, was one of the two developers showing 1001 Nights, one of the most intriguing projects shown at DevGAMM. Since the game uses an LLM (large-language-model AI) as the core mechanic, the two developers were ready to answer all AI-related questions.

I finished the day playing Crabby Fishes, an adorable tower defense game where you play as crabs, fishes, and other aquatic beings protecting their land from pesky chemicals. Unfortunately, I did not note down the developer’s name, but she was incredibly kind and a true master of marketing: her business card is made out of biodegradable paper filled with seeds, so you can plant it in a vase to grow some flowers instead of throwing it in the trash— she also had shark gummies so I might’ve been bribed.

Day Two

I entered day two knowing that I would not be attending any talks. There were too many news games to try out on top of the list of games that I hadn’t been able to try the day prior. The DevGAMM awards were happening at 6PM though, so I arrived at the Myriad Cristal Center even earlier, around 9:30AM.

Given my day one experience, I decided to do a sort of two-part plan. I would make a full round of the two showcase areas and make a mental list of the games I’d like to try.

My morning started with me playing Hell Clock and speaking to the Brazilian developers about the real-life disaster which inspired the unexpectedly serious narrative at the core of their roguelite ARPG, the War of Canudos (Massacre de Canudos).

I then played Deka Duck, yet another game by a Brazilian studio, and had a blast. It is a colorful Megaman-like. The team is also working on another game Toada Brava, inspired by Chrono Trigger.

Before heading off to lunch, I bumped into what I will call the Portuguese wall. There were three desks side-by-side with three games made by Portuguese studios: Beyond The Board, Hell Maiden, and Mirai #167.

I managed to play Beyond The Board first and was entranced by it. You can read more about it on my previous DevGAMM piece.

The last game I played before lunch was Mirai #167, a runner game that tests your reactions and your ability to pay attention to two things at once. I somehow bumped into a constant bug that was new to Diogo Sousa, the main programmer, so I had the pleasure of watching him work around it live— he did manage to get me to the next stage so I played the entire demo.

Only after lunch did I get the chance to play Hell Maiden, the last member of the “Portuguese wall”. But first, I spent maybe half an hour speaking with João Caetano, AstralShift’s CEO and co-founder.

His love for the project is undeniable and he was thankful that I praised the fact that, despite featuring gender-bent anime-inspired takes on famous characters, they weren’t sexualized. Apparently, I was in the minority because most people were asking if there were any plans for alternate, more revealing outfits. He prefers to leave such options in the ever-imaginative hands of the internet.

The fantastic artwork inspired by classic 90s anime is the studio’s defining trait and was displayed in their beautiful business cards.

After passing by their desk dozens of times— it was always packed— I got my hands on The Negative Edge, a Returnal-inspired third-person shooter made by a small studio out of Italy. Most of them were around the table watching people play their game and taking on feedback. It is a snappy shooter with great sound design which I can see myself playing for hours.

Although my second day came to an end with the Awards, I managed to steal another fantastic conversation from the ever-charismatic Emil Lager before playing two more games.

What drew me to Oniria wasn’t the game— which looks great, don’t get me wrong—, but the fantastic desk setup. I’m still regretting not taking a picture of it, but imagine a double-desk setup covered with a pitch-black tablecloth filled with creepy red eyes. How could you not get seduced by this setup? The entire dev team was there and they were as talkative as they are talented. Follow this project if you’re into horror games.

Lastly, but certainly no leastly, I had the pleasure of playing through Money Waste’s demo. Developed by a team of two Italian stallions, this project hides an incredibly ambitious videogame— part complex tycoon, part top-down GTA with functioning traffic and NPC interactions— behind a blocky aesthetic. If I hadn’t been sold on the game after the demo, I would’ve become a fan anyway when I asked for a business card and one of the devs discreetly placed a small plastic bag in my hand with a QR code while saying “Don’t snitch, alright?”.

The Humans Behind The Games

What made DevGAMM such a positive experience was the fact that it was focused on the humans behind the games and on the games themselves. It was not about advertisements or broadcasting deals or small updates to gigantic games.

A lot of the games I played haven’t gotten funding yet, some of them started as student projects, most of them were participating in the public pitches that happened on Day One. Some of them, inevitably, will never be completed. But you wouldn’t know that by interacting with the games and the developers.

All of them are doing this work out of passion. Most of them have full-time jobs and are using what free time they have left to work on their creative baby. Yet all of them are talented people doing what they love best, and it shows.

If you ever get tired of the encroaching wave of pessimism spreading throughout the video game industry, the constant news of mass-layoffs, of bloated games made under bloated budgets, look to what started the entire industry: small teams making small games.

You’ll be amazed by the treasures you’ll find and by the magical optimism surrounding the people who make those gems.

At around 10AM on Thursday, November 6, I arrived at the Myriad Cristal Center in Lisbon to attend DevGAMM Portugal 2025. Armed with a plan to help fight the pesky social anxiety trying to take over, I had multiple talks scheduled that I wanted to attend. After all, there were a ton of speakers and various interesting topics happening in three different halls.

When I left the center around 7PM, I hadn’t attended a single talk. Despite arriving even earlier the next day, the only time I got inside one of the halls was to attend the DevGAMM Awards at the end of the event. And the culprits behind my absence from those talks were the seemingly endless supply of exciting games spread throughout the Cristal Center.

Here are 8 DevGAMM Portugal 2025 games to add to your wishlist, and the main reasons why I did not attend a single talk throughout the entire event.

This list is in alphabetical order, I’m not ranking these games.

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1001 Nights

What first caught my eye when I looked towards Ada Eden’s booth was that there was a laptop on top of the desktop computer with a written disclaimer.

Since AI is so frowned upon in game development, Ada Eden decided to be as transparent as possible with how they’re using it in their game. They went so far as to make two different published papers— and had printed copies of them at the event— which you can check here and here.

1001 Nights is such a unique game that when I asked one of the programmers to describe it to me in a succinct pitch he kind of blocked and we both laughed it of. You play as Scheherazade, the legendary storyteller in Persian folklore, and you are trying to please and trick a King with your stories in order to defeat him.

What makes 1001 Nights unique is the fact that King is an LLM who reads the text you write— there are basically no restrictions, you can write whatever and however you want— and who reacts accordingly. You want to trick the King, and the LLM, to say specific words that can then become cards which you can use in your final battle against him. A truly interesting use of AI in games.

As highlighted in their disclaimer, the wonderful pixel art seen in 1001 Nights is all done by humans. The “generative AI is only applied to gameplay for real-time generated content”. There is a demo available on Steam now, so give it a shot.

Alpha Nomos

Despite the game looking fantastic, Alpha Nomos wasn’t what pulled me into the booth. Emil Lager, RibCage Games’ Tech lead and Co-Founder is the one who did that. Every time I passed by I could see and hear Emil’s excitement. He would yelp in response to something a player did, or enthusiastically tell a story about music, sound, or game animations.

I played Alpha Nomos for half an hour and then passed my seat to someone else. I already decided that this would be a day-one purchase for me, but I did return to the booth the next day simply to talk to Emil again. He told me some amazing stories about the game (I might reveal those if I ever get the pleasure of officially interviewing him) and we had a blast.

Alpha Nomos is a rhythm action game inspired by the likes of Hi-Fi Rush. Although it is a title made by a much smaller studio and with a minor scope, the attention to detail, the polish, and the level of quality of life features is beyond what I could ever expect.

There are metronome settings, HUD customization, audio settings, and all this in a demo playable at an event, not even one that is live on Steam (yet). Alpha Nomos mixes the rhythm-based 3D action combat with roguelite elements with meta-progression. It takes place in a world entirely inhabited by living dolls trying to find out why they’re alive, which are animated so well that they would fit right into a high-budget animation short.

Beyond The Board

I’ll preface this paragraph by saying that I am biased towards all games listed in this article, but I am even more so for this game (and one other). Beyond The Board is made by Fragile Shapes Studio, a two-person team based in Portugal. Bruno and Guilherme, the two developers, were at the booth seeing the player reactions and openly interacting with everyone.

They’re both men of few words, but, much like their game, their work speaks for itself. Beyond The Board is (NOT) a chess game. You control and interact with chess pieces, but this is a surrealist puzzle game which tries to break your brain through clever mechanic-stacking and perspective tricks.

It looks unique, it teaches you everything you need to know in as few words as possible, and scales the puzzle complexity in a smooth curve that keeps testing your abilities. The demo experience culminated in a boss fight— yep, there is a boss fight in this puzzle game in which all you can do is press the mouse button on the tile you want to move onto— which expertly combined most of the mechanics you previously encountered.

Play the demo which is available now on Steam, and put it on your wishlist if you enjoy it.

Burn With Me

Deckbuilders are a dime a dozen, especially if they happen to also be a roguelite (which appears to always be the case), but have you ever heard of a Deckburner? Burn With Me caught my eye as soon as I looked at the screen. When this happened there was someone playing the game already, so I started talking to Eva Manuilovich instead, the co-founder and artist of Nozomu Games, and one half of the studio. The other half is her husband, Ivan Bushmin.

Eva’s art is what will get Burn With Me into your hands, but Ivan’s addictive systems will keep it there for a long time. And speaking of hands, there is an incredibly well animated and well drawn hand on screen for the majority of your time spent in Burn With Me, and I love it, not sure why.

As the name implies, Burn With Me has you burning cards more often than building your deck. You can never have more than six cards on the table at once, so not only is there no point in having a lot of cards, having too many will actually hurt you. Plan your moves carefully and burn away all the fat from your deck so you can reach each chapter’s bossfight powerful enough to take it down with just half a dozen plays.

You can join the Burn With Me playtest now on Steam.

Delusion Out Of Space

There is no developer to whom I spoke more than Yelyzaveta Lemeshko, Have A Dream’s Studio Representative, and for good reason. Every time someone approached the booth where Delusion Out Of Space was being shown, Yelyzaveta showed immediate interest. She was eager to speak about the game, a project she and the rest of the small studio have been working on for years.

Delusion Out Of Space isn’t breaking any boundaries. It is a relatively simple sci-fi horror shooter heavily inspired by Dead Space and Lovecraft, but it comes with enough ambition to feel the entire Myriad Cristal Center. This game is the first of a possible franchise with multiple genres that Have a Dream and Two Cakes Studio want to make. The bizarre world was built with that in mind, but Yelyzaveta assured me that Delusion Out of Space would be a self-contained experience with an open-ending, giving players a conclusion while leaving the door open for possible future projects.

I saw multiple people play the game before I had the chance of sitting down to try it myself. When I did, I had already been speaking with Yelyzaveta for close to an hour, which only made the experience better. While it is still at a very early stage with a few bugs and unavoidable clunkiness, it already looks phenomenal with excellent art direction. The narrative setup is also excellent, albeit as ambitious as everything else in the project.

I truly hope to see Delusion Out of Space coming out sometime in the next couple of years, the passion that Yelyzaveta and the rest of the team have for this game and universe was palpable. The demo I played isn’t available on Steam yet, but it should go live once it is more polished. In the mean time, you can add it to your wishlist.

Hell Maiden

The second and final Portuguese-made game in this list is Hell Maiden, the winner of the Best Game From Portugal prize at the DevGamm Awards 2025. While you might not have known their country of origin, you might’ve heard of AstralShift, the studio behind Hell Maiden. They also developed two other games, including Little Goddy Two Shoes, which was published by Square Enix in 2023.

I had the enormous pleasure of playing Hell Maiden after spending quite a while speaking about it with João Batista, AstralShift’s CEO and Software Developer. Hell Maiden is, in most ways, a departure from the studio’s previous works, but it is also a doubling-down on what they do best. AstralShift excels at making excellent artwork inspired by classic 90s anime— which is on display throughout every aspect of Hell Maiden— and at crafting narrative experiences.

Despite being a Bullet-Heaven game à lá Vampire Survivors, Hell Maiden does not settle for second-monitor material. There is a dash button, a core narrative with a beginning and end, and with expertly crafted cutscenes and fantastic hand drawn characters to know better through dialogue. There are also bossfights.

You’re not waiting for the clock to hit 30 mins and to be killed by a nigh-on unbeatable enemy, your build will be put to the test at the end of each run in a boss fight that forces you to use your brain (and fingers) if you want to come out victorious. You can try Hell Maiden out for yourself through the demo available on Steam, and you really should.

Money WASTE

Changing gears and tone harshly enough to give you whiplash, we move onto Money WASTE, a weird looking game inspired by early GTA titles like Chinatown and Vice City. At first glance, Money WASTE seems like a cool-looking edgy game where you drive cars and sell drugs, but that is just a shiny veneer. There is an entire combat system once you step out of the vehicle, and an entirely second game when you pull out your phone.

Money WASTE is being made by a two-person studio that goes by the name of From Void (previously known as 7Games). Hailing from Italy, these guys have their work cut out for them. Not only are they making a game inspired by one of the biggest franchises in the history of videogames, they’re also hiding some absurdly deep systems behind the low polygon aesthetic.

The game features a complex and realistic traffic system, some incredibly satisfying driving, NPCs that move so fluidly and erratically that they look like other players, and an entire tycoon maxigame (as opposed to minigame) in which you can expand your drug dealing business, get into real estate, hire people, check the crypto market, and more. Money WASTE’s demo got me excited to see what’s coming, and it will surely get you hooked once it goes live on Steam.

Oniria

Finishing the trifecta of Latin languages comes Oniria from Frog Team, hailing from Spain. This small studio made up of young people between 20 and 26 years old is crafting a beautiful first person psychological horror. Oniria takes place in a fictional village of the same name, inspired by real parts of Northern Spain.

The demo kicked off extremely well with a sort of PSX take on Resident Evil. You’re dropped into a creepy hotel that is much too dark and much too empty. Through puzzle-solving and item descriptions you being to piece together what is happening and who you are, until you are cornered by a terrifying monster and… transported into an entirely different game?

Frog Team do not have the budget to make character animations and cutscenes the way they wanted to, so instead of doing it poorly, they decided to create an entire second game inside Oniria, a 2D horror-narrative experience. In it, you will uncover what happened to the protagonist (Angy), her father, and her hometown. If Oniria’s fantastic art style and atmosphere isn’t enough to convince you, the demo is available to play now on Steam, so go ahead and try it out for yourself.

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Expect a piece covering the event as a whole in the next few days, but I want to start by highlighting the event’s grand finale: the DevGamm Awards.

This is a competition split in two: $35k USD from various sponsors, and a whopping $100k USD from Scorewarrior, the event’s main sponsor. The awards are split into a ton of categories with a boatload of nominees— this year there were 610 game submissions.

Winners are selected by a panel of 150 jury members, ranging from developers to voice actors and other gaming-related talent. Let’s get into the nominees and winners, which are sure give you some new additions to your wishlists.

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Sponsored Awards

The show kicked off with the various sponsored awards distributing a $35k USD prize-pool. We’ll go one award at a time, highlighting the nominees, the winner, and the prize.

Best Indie Game- Sponsored by TinyBuild

• Acts of Blood- “Beat ‘em up, Action, 3rd person game which focuses on fast-paced, brutal hand-to-hand combat. Set in dystopian city of Bandung, Indonesia.” Demo available now.

• Cosmic Race: Galactic Showdown- “Sci-fi Combat Racing game inspired by retro arcade racers. Race across vibrant alien worlds, defeat opponents in destruction-rich environments, and become the Cosmic Champion.” Demo available now.

• DDOD- “Single-player and co-op tactical roguelite shooter set in the near future, deep inside an abandoned industrial zone. Explore, fight, and mutate your way to the source of a semi-sentient biological AI anomaly.” The devs told me that the demo I played at DevGamm would go live on Steam soon.

• Glintseeker Island- “Descend into mysterious caves with countless treasures to excavate in a mining exploration adventure. Upgrade your gear, fight bosses, uncover secrets and save the island from an ancient threat below!”

• Lost in the Roots- “A 2D adventure with psychological thriller elements exploring guilt and fear. A young girl wakes in a stranger’s attic, lost in the middle of nowhere. Who took her—and why? With no way out and something lurking in the shadows, escape may be just an illusion.” Playtest available now.

DDOD won this award, getting $2000 USD and “extensive consultation” directly from TinyBuild.

Best System And Strategy Indie Game- Sponsored by Astra Logical

• Crowded: A Crow Citybuilder- “Strategically design a nest-city to support and shelter your flock. Engineer, scavenge and explore your way to a self-sustaining society in the sky!”

• Dead In Antares- “A turn-based survival management game with RPG elements, set on an alien planet. Lead a crew of survivors sent on a mission to save humanity. Manage their needs, strengthen their teamwork, and explore this mysterious world to find a way back home.” Demo available now.

• Die In The Dungeon- “Fight your way through a mysterious dungeon in this deck-building, turn-based roguelike game where you don’t use cards, but dice! Deal with enemies by combining powerful dice on your board, boost their effects with magical relics, and risk it all hoping for a good roll on unexpected encounters.” Early Access available now.

• Drop Duchy- “Build your duchy piece by piece in this refreshing hybrid rogue-lite game. Use block-dropping mechanics to collect resources, recruit troops to fight against belligerent armies, and let every block shape your realm, leading your path to victory!” Full game out now.

• Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure- “A blend of automation and real-time strategy for both the die-hard fans of the automation genre and the automation-curious. Explore a strange fantasy world, uncover the mysteries of the past, automate your workshops, and go on adventures with your odd & adorable Sparks!” Full game out now.

Crowded: A Crow Citybuilder took this crown and got $2000 USD home. This title is the studio’s first game and actually started off as a student project!

Game Changer Award- Sponsored By Aptoide

• Battle Cars: Nitro PvP Shooter- “This is more than just a racing or fighting game. It’s Battle Cars, a car realtime competitive multiplayer shooter where your skills behind the wheel and in combat are put to the ultimate test in a cyberpunk post-apocalyptic MOBA action game with a unique 3D graphic style.” Mobile game out now.

• Greak: Memories Of Azur- “A single-player puzzle platformer adventure. Azur is under threat from an enemy attack who have control of strange creatures infecting the land. Take on the role of three siblings: Greak, Adara and Raydel and utilize their unique abilities to escape the invasion together.” Available on Steam and mobile.

• MicroMacro: Downtown Detective- “Investigate crimes on a huge city map, jam-packed with hidden details, challenging puzzles, weird folks—and lots of crimes. Search for clues, follow suspects and make clever deductions to solve twisted, yet witty criminal cases.” Available on mobile platforms now.

• Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines- “Draw tracks, dodge crashes, and rescue lost buddies in Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines—a colorful brain‑teasing railroad builder with 100+ handcrafted levels.” Available now on mobile platforms.

• Realms of Conquest: Rapture- “Choose your Champion, summon your Companions, and unleash Crests of power—only the smartest, fastest, and boldest will ascend.” Available now on mobile platforms.

The winner of this award was Battle Cars: Nitro PVP Shooter, taking home $5000 USD and becoming featured in the Aptoide App Store.

Epic Games Store Indie Spotlight- Sponsored By Epic

• Go Home Annie- “A twisted psychological thriller and an original story set in the SCP universe. As an employee of the SCP Foundation, test artificially created paranormal events, solve puzzles, interact with anomalies, and uncover the secrets of the Replication Division.” Available now.

• Mark of The Deep- “An epic pirate-themed adventure with a strong narrative and a thrilling mix of Metroidvania and Souls-Like elements. Embark on this journey, explore the mysteries of a cursed island and find your missing pirate crew!” Availalbe now.

• Kletka- “A co-op (up to 6 players) horror game about going down in an elevator that is trying to eat you. Feed the elevator, explore deadly floors and descend deeper.” Available now in Early Access.

• VisceraFest- “A Sci-Fi Fantasy Singleplayer Arena FPS with minor Collectathon elements. Fight through hordes of aliens and eldritch monstrosities wielding a slew of powerful weapons, juggling your resources, and exploring over 23 intricately designed hand-crafted levels.” Available now.

• Promise Mascot Agency- “Explore a cursed Japanese town! Recruit mascot friends and come to the rescue when disaster strikes! Solve the mystery of your exile! Help a living finger work through her many anger issues! Turn Promise Mascot Agency into the best agency in Japan in this open-world narrative adventure!” Available now.

The biggest single prize of the night, $25k USD, went to the wonderfully silly Promise Mascot Agency.

Scorewarrior DevGamm Awards

The remainder of the awards were all sponsored by Scorewarrior, DevGamm’s main sponsor. There were 11 categories in total, but before we get into those, let’s highlight the Hidden Gems, the most interesting games that barely missed being nominees.

Hidden Gems

• Goeland- “You’re a seagull. The island is your playground. Adventure awaits, if you’re not too busy being a menace.” Demo available now.

• Mexican Ninja- “A frantic fast-paced beat ‘em up roguelike full of crass, brass and incredibly badass. Become THE Mexican Ninja as you slice your way through the streets of Nuevo Tokyo in this retro 2.5D arcade throwback. So what’chu waiting for? Show me your skills pinche ninja!” Demo available now.

• Tokyo’s Neon Monsters- “Embark on an electrifying journey through the neon-lit streets of Tokyo– an adrenaline-pumping fusion of real-time strategy and tower defence like you’ve never experienced before!”

• Lost In Art: a Mniniature Realm- “Explore the miniature universe filled with Eastern mythology, forgotten folk tales and surprising historical events in this puzzle adventure game. Step into real artworks, reveal mysteries by solving unique puzzles, and be the hero of the miniature folk.” Demo available now.

• Retro Gadgets- “A sandbox where you build, code, and customize gadgets inspired by old-school electronics.” Out in Early Access.

Community Vote- 5 Most Voted Online By Fans

• Dungeon Rampage- “Battle your way to victory in this 1-4 player co-op hack-n-slash dungeon crawler. Play as a dynamic cast of heroes slicing their way through dungeons, earning weapons and loot. Rampage past a gauntlet of enemies and destruction to end the evil Lord Dinglepus’ reign!”

• Misery- “A 1–5 player co-op survival game set in a nuclear disaster zone. Here, every day is a struggle: search radioactive ruins for resources.” The Steam page is gone due to a GSC DMCA complaint. There seem to be a lot of problematic content in the game’s Discord related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so don’t take hasty conclusion on this one.

• Outbond- “Build your own home on wheels and live sustainably off-grid. Craft workstations and power supplies, source energy from the sun, wind, or water, upgrade and customize your vehicle, grow crops, and explore a colorful world with up to 4 players.”

• Heroes Of Might And Magic: Olden Era- “The official prequel hailing back to the origins of the genre-defining, critically acclaimed series of turn-based strategy games. Raise grand armies and wield devastating spells to overcome your foes in both solo and multiplayer.” Demo available now.

• Popucom- “Venture together with your friends on an unknown planet. Use color switching, match-3 shooting, and artifact powers to overcome challenges and keep advancing. What lies ahead of you is an adventure filled with wonder, hope, and much more to discover!”

Misery was the most voted game with close to 2000 votes. It won $2000 USD.

Developer’s Choice- Devs voted for each others’ games

• #Drive Rally- “An arcade-inspired rally-driving experience set in the golden racing era of the ‘90s. Grab your co-driver and burn some rubber on iconic race-winning cars across a variety of terrains in some of the most iconic rallying locations in the world!” Out now.

• Light Odyssey- “A soulslike boss rush where every battle is a test of mastery. Play as Bandi and fight to restore light to a world consumed by shadows. Face off against towering colossi in three deadly phases that demand precision, patience, and adaptation.” Demo available.

• Monowave- “A whimsical puzzle-adventure platformer about the humane power of emotions. Explore beautiful landscapes and empathize with their quirky denizens to restore harmony in an emotionally turbulent universe.” Demo available.

• Glasshouse- “Feudalpunk Turn-Based-CRPG set in a lockdown apartment block at the dawn of a world war. Investigate the mysterious triple murder next door, fight the Political Conspiracy, and make terrible choices before the flatmates do it for you!”

• Map Map: A Game About Maps- “In this game YOU make the maps! Embark on a treasure hunt as cartographer of an adventure crew. Orientate yourself on uncharted islands and measure distances to mark locations as accurately as possible.” Demo available.

Glasshouse won $3000 USD. The game does not have a release date yet, but it had a playable demo available at DevGamm that looked quite polished already. Unfortunately, I did not have time to test it.

Best Innovation

• A Webbing Journey- “Adorable spider chaos! Swing around the house, weave crazy structures, play with physics-based objects, and pull off chores with nothing but your webs and your wits in this madcap sandbox adventure.” Available in Early Access.

• Stretchmancer- “STRETCH THE WORLD! In this comedic first-person puzzle adventure, you are The Stretchmancer. Squash and stretch everything around you to solve fiendish puzzles, defeat the Claustro Empire, and save the galaxy!”

• 9 Kings- “A fast-paced roguelike kingdom builder. Grow your empire and fight massive battles against powerful rival kings. Break the game with thousands of insane builds to become the King of Kings.” Demo available.

• Compress(space)- “A mind and space-bending puzzle game where you fold space to cheat your way through puzzles. Master space manipulation and reach beyond the stars to uncover the mystery at the end of the universe.”

• Xenopurge- “A tactical auto-battler where you are a Commander tasked with purging the Xenos threat. Operate from a remote command center, issuing indirect orders via multi-screen interfaces. Plan routes, set priorities, and adapt as missions escalate and feel the true weight of being in command.” Demo available.

Stretchmancer, the game in which you complete puzzles by stretching the world, took home the prize of $5000 USD. The wonderfully bizarre concept of the game apparently came to one of the creator’s when he dropped an apple and though “what if I could pull the world toward me to catch it?”. It must’ve been a pretty special apple.

Best Game From Portugal

• Beyond The Board- “THIS IS (NOT) A CHESS GAME - A single-player puzzle game that transforms traditional chess into a minimal, immersive journey. Every move is a step deeper into the world Beyond the Board, where shifting tiles and puzzles reveal the hidden fractures within the game’s very foundations.” Demo available.

• Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines- “Draw tracks, dodge crashes, and rescue lost buddies in Rail Rescue: Puzzle Lines—a colorful brain‑teasing railroad builder with 100+ handcrafted levels.” Available now on mobile platforms.

• Hell Maiden- “Traverse the depths of Hell and beat its toughest demons on your way to Heaven in this horde survival deck-building game inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.” Demo available.

• Mirai #167- “A 2D pixel-art runner where you control two characters at once, rewinding time and jumping through portals. Embark on a frantic adventure to save humanity in a world where AI surpasses human control - upgrade your characters, break records and rewrite history before it’s too late!” Demo will be live later this year.

Despite being such a small country in the south-western corner of Europe, Portugal is creating excellent pieces of art in the gaming space— reminder that as a Portuguese person, I am completely biased, but try them if you don’t trust me! Hell Maiden was crowned the winner of this award, earning the small studio the massive sum of $10k USD.

Best Mobile Game

• Is This Seat Taken?- “A logic puzzle game where you play matchmaker for groups of hilariously particular people. Each character has pet peeves that make seating them a delightful challenge. Find the perfect spot for each person to unlock new levels in this cozy, silly, and relatable experience.” Available now on Steam and mobile.

• Greak: Memories Of Azur- “A single-player puzzle platformer adventure. Azur is under threat from an enemy attack who have control of strange creatures infecting the land. Take on the role of three siblings: Greak, Adara and Raydel and utilize their unique abilities to escape the invasion together.” Available on Steam and mobile.

• MicroMacro: Downtown Detective- “Investigate crimes on a huge city map, jam-packed with hidden details, challenging puzzles, weird folks—and lots of crimes. Search for clues, follow suspects and make clever deductions to solve twisted, yet witty criminal cases.” Available on mobile platforms now.

• The Storyteller- “A fire in the hearth, cozy armchairs, a window to the world and little creatures that seem to be waiting for something... All the conditions are there for a gentle evening story. Welcome to Omu’s hut and the interactive storytelling game The Storyteller.”

• What The Clash?- “Play solo or challenge friends to on-on-one battles in this hilarious party game! Hundreds of silly mini games through endless absurd (and very stupid) card combos!” Available now as an Apple Arcade exclusive.

Best Mobile Game and the $10K USD prize went to What The Clash?.

Most Anticipated Game

• 13Z: The Zodiac Trials- “Fight through shifting realms in this solo and co-op roguelike hack-and-slash inspired by Eastern mythology. Experiment with divine powers, overcome deadly trials, and rise again after each fall to become the 13th Zodiac Guardian.” Demo available now.

• Sacrifire- “RPG boasting a unique combat system, elaborate pixel art, and music by genre legend Motoi Sakuraba. Ezekiel Ridan, a young priest, struggles to keep his faith as the world he loves is threatened by a war between gods and demons. The adventure begins!”

• BreathEdge 2- “Sent on a reckless mission, you find yourself in outer space filled with numerous dangers and things to explore. Build, craft, manage your crew, look after the chicken, and defeat the evil space corporation in this new breathtaking survival game.” Demo available now.

• Lou’s Lagoon- “Traverse the vibrant Limbo Archipelago in search of your Uncle Lou, who mysteriously disappeared and left you his seaplane delivery service. Explore the islands, harvest resources, and hone your crafting skills to complete jobs and grow your business!”

• Berlin Apartment- “One apartment, many stories: Witness turning points in the lives of the inhabitants of an apartment in Berlin over the course of a whole century.” Demo available now.

BreathEdge 2 took home the $10k USD and the coveted crown of Most Anticipated Game with a promise of bringing a sequel that aims to be better than the original in as many ways as possible.

Excellence In Narrative

• Arctic Awakening- “A first-person narrative adventure set in the unforgiving Arctic. Your plane crashed in a storm, leaving only your court-mandated therapy bot for company as you journey to find your co-pilot and uncover the mysteries buried beneath the ice.” Full game available now.

• Despelote- “A slice-of-life adventure about childhood and the magical grip soccer held over the people of Quito, Ecuador in 2001.” Full game available now.

• New Arc Line- “Take a stand in the eternal conflict between Arcane Magic and Steampunk Revolution and tip the uneasy balance between sorcery, elves, dwarves and mysterious monsters on one side and steampunk gadgets, zeppelins, and tesla guns on the other in this single-player, party-based, story-rich RPG.” Available now in Early Access.

• Davy X Jones- “Ascend to the highest fathom of a pirate underworld with the infamous Davy Jones on this action-adventure, revenge-driven journey. Control the captain’s headless body, stay on pace with his autonomous skull and keep his legend alive.” Available now in Early Access.

• Hell is Us- “If war is the closest we get to hell on earth, it’s because Earth harbours the worst of demons: humankind. In an isolated country ravaged by infighting, discover the secrets of your past and deal with the repercussions of a mysterious calamity.” Full game available now.

Although Julián Cordero, Despelote’s main creator, couldn’t attend the event in person, his cousin accepted the award and the $10k USD prize with some heartfelt words, highlighting how they were proud to have won an award for the country of Ecuador.

Excellence In Audio

• JDM: Japanese Drift Master- “Discover Japan’s legendary car culture in JDM! Take on challenging mountain roads, visit Japanese legendary drifting spots in licensed JDM cars and immerse in the story about second chances told through manga pages. Explore an open world where every turn invites you to master the art of drift.” Full game available now.

• Koira- “Save a puppy and embark on a heartwarming, hand-drawn adventure together. Journey to the heart of an enchanted forest, solving puzzles and avoiding hunters to protect your newfound friend.” Full game available now.

• Rockbeasts- “Lead a band of misfits on a roller-coaster ride to stardom in the age of MTV, rock anthems, and bad haircuts. ROCKBEASTS is a story-driven, role-playing management game that puts you in the shoes of a manager of an up-and-coming rock band. Your job – take them to the top.”

• Keep Driving- “An atmospheric management RPG about life on the open road. Pick up hitchhikers, work odd jobs, customize and repair your car, and map your route across the country. Use upgrades, skills and items to overcome challenges. And remember to take it easy. You’re young. You have time.” Full game available now.

• PBJ: The Musical- “Imagine Romeo and Juliet… but it’s Peanut Butter and Jelly? This handcrafted musical game tells the badly research story of the iconic sandwich’s tragic origins.” Available now on App Store.

Rockbeasts, the only unreleased game in the nominees, won the award and the $10k USD prize. There was a demo playable at DevGamm, but the game does not have a release date yet.

Excellence In Visual Art

• Truckful- “Drive your pickup truck through seemingly peaceful countryside valleys, deliver much-needed goods to local townsfolk and unravel the small town mystery. Beware, the old forest is watching.” Demo available now.

• Hotel Galactic- “Combines cozy management with a heartfelt tale. Build and decorate your dream tourist getaway, aid Gustav in his search for redemption, and explore a nostalgic world where bonds with creatures and serene gardens sustain a thriving colony.” Available now in Early Access.

• Sacrifire- “RPG boasting a unique combat system, elaborate pixel art, and music by genre legend Motoi Sakuraba. Ezekiel Ridan, a young priest, struggles to keep his faith as the world he loves is threatened by a war between gods and demons. The adventure begins!”

• Tukoni: Forest Keepers- “A cute & cozy puzzle adventure. Play as the forest spirit Tukoni as you meet unique characters, solve captivating puzzles, brew fragrant tea and explore a magical world filled with kindness.” Demo available now.

• Winter Burrow- “A cozy woodland survival game about a mouse returning home to restore their childhood burrow. Explore, gather resources, craft, knit warm sweaters, bake pies and meet the locals.” Demo available now.

With its fantastic children storybook aesthetic, Tukoni: Forest Keepers took the $10k USD prize and the award home. The game is coming out sometime in 2026.

Excellence In Game Design

• Compress(space)- “A mind and space-bending puzzle game where you fold space to cheat your way through puzzles. Master space manipulation and reach beyond the stars to uncover the mystery at the end of the universe.”

• Drop Duchy- “Build your duchy piece by piece in this refreshing hybrid rogue-lite game. Use block-dropping mechanics to collect resources, recruit troops to fight against belligerent armies, and let every block shape your realm, leading your path to victory!” Full game out now.

• Stretchmancer- “STRETCH THE WORLD! In this comedic first-person puzzle adventure, you are The Stretchmancer. Squash and stretch everything around you to solve fiendish puzzles, defeat the Claustro Empire, and save the galaxy!”

• Is This Seat Taken?- “A logic puzzle game where you play matchmaker for groups of hilariously particular people. Each character has pet peeves that make seating them a delightful challenge. Find the perfect spot for each person to unlock new levels in this cozy, silly, and relatable experience.” Available now on Steam and mobile.

• Jump Space- “A mission based co-op PvE for 1-4 players, where you are the crew of a spaceship. Transition seamlessly from crewing the ship to on-foot exploration and space walks. Explore, upgrade, and survive intense encounters in deep space together.” Available now in Early Access.

Despite being one of the smallest projects in the nominee list, Drop Duchy won the award and the $10k USD prize with its unique take on the roguelite genre.

Grand Prize

• Hell is Us- “If war is the closest we get to hell on earth, it’s because Earth harbours the worst of demons: humankind. In an isolated country ravaged by infighting, discover the secrets of your past and deal with the repercussions of a mysterious calamity.” Full game available now.

• Rockbeasts- “Lead a band of misfits on a roller-coaster ride to stardom in the age of MTV, rock anthems, and bad haircuts. ROCKBEASTS is a story-driven, role-playing management game that puts you in the shoes of a manager of an up-and-coming rock band. Your job – take them to the top.”

• Despelote- “A slice-of-life adventure about childhood and the magical grip soccer held over the people of Quito, Ecuador in 2001.” Full game available now.

• Keep Driving- “An atmospheric management RPG about life on the open road. Pick up hitchhikers, work odd jobs, customize and repair your car, and map your route across the country. Use upgrades, skills and items to overcome challenges. And remember to take it easy. You’re young. You have time.” Full game available now.

• Stretchmancer- “STRETCH THE WORLD! In this comedic first-person puzzle adventure, you are The Stretchmancer. Squash and stretch everything around you to solve fiendish puzzles, defeat the Claustro Empire, and save the galaxy!”

The second biggest check of the night ($20k USD) and the most important award of DevGamm Lisbon 2025 went to Keep Driving. Looking like a fusion between a young Liam Gallagher and games critic Tim Rogers, Y/CJ/Y’s Josef Martinosvky took the stage alongside Christopher Andreasson ecstatic.

This wonderful game was born like a lot of artworks are: reminiscing of times well spent, in this case driving through Norway with his dog and his best friend— alongside the influence of some hypothetical drugs and the classic Oregon Trail.

As Scorewarrior’s Adam Sibson so eloquently put it, Josef already is a “gaming rockstar” and “is going to be a massive legend in the industry”. I can’t wait to see what Y/CJ/Y puts out next, and neither should you.

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Videogame difficulty has been a discourse for as long as videogames have existed. Unlike most other forms of art, videogames are malleable and ever-changing. They can be patched, settings can be changed by players searching for their preferred experience, so it is only logical that we expect the same when it comes to difficulty. Should we, though?

Here’s why difficulty settings should never become mandatory in videogames, and why it is okay to not be able to appreciate everything.

This article was inspired by and is a direct response to this wonderful piece published by Cat on her Controller Corner: What Does Difficulty Accessibility Really Mean?

Read it now if you haven’t yet, and come back to this one after.

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Complex tasks make our brain react differently than simple ones do. While you might’ve not known this, you have previously experienced it. Doing something new and difficult is extremely engaging. Doing it again after you’ve completely mastered it will come with diminishing returns in most cases, even if the engagement isn’t entirely gone.

The tricky part about it is that there is a fine line between “extremely engaging” and “frustrating”. When we do something difficult successfully, our brain can literally change in reaction to it. Attempting too difficult of a task, though, will lead to frustration and, eventually, quitting. So the ideal piece of art is one that challenges us enough to keep us engaged, ideally more than we’re used to being, but not so complex to understand that we get frustrated and give up on it.

Videogames are in the enviable position of giving players some leeway when it comes to finding the right balance. Historically, games have often shipped with three difficulty settings: easy, medium, hard. Sometimes, medium was instead described as Normal, implying that this was the “correct” difficulty.

While choice is excellent, it is not inherently good. The reasoning for this is two-fold: we do not always know what we want. If you give players a sandbox game with no specific task, most of them will bounce off of it because they will not be able to make a decision on what to do.

While we tend to assume that more choice is a good thing, research has shown that, in many cases, we have a harder time choosing from a larger array of options.

Three choices is not exactly a “large array of options”, but it is a lot more than none.

The second reason is that it is impossible to perfectly tailor three different experiences, let alone the nearly infinite possibilities brought by games with slide bars allowing you to customise most aspects of their difficulty. When creating a videogame, developers obviously have an intended experience in mind. I argue that all games have a difficulty in which they’re “meant to be played”, even if not all of them spell it out.

Of course, the intended experience will not be a perfect fit for everyone. The developers making that decision are human, and humans are inherently subjective when making such decisions. The intended difficult will be perfect for the developers, too easy for player X, and way too hard for player Y. Yet that is the nature of how humans work.

With that in mind, difficulty settings still seem to be the obvious choice. Why not let players tailor their own experience, even if it doesn’t end up being the “intended” one? Difficulty choices are not inherently bad, but they aren’t inherently good, either.

Avoiding the memefied Dark Souls example, let’s take a look at the Super Mario franchise. Nintendo is famous for following the “art is for everyone” take that Cat highlights in her article. Their games appeal to kids and adults, hardcore and casual gamers, they’re for nearly everyone. Super Mario, Nintendo’s most successful franchise, is incredibly easy to get into. Yet, it does not have difficulty settings.

Super Mario Wonder, the latest game in the franchise, is rated PEGI 3, so it is meant to be played by anyone over 3 years old. Yet it does not have difficulty settings. It does feature characters which make parts of the game easier, but so does every game in existence, including the ones most criticised for not having them:

• Souls games have builds which are overpowered and make the game easier and players can be summoned.

• Hollow Knight also has inherently stronger builds which can make the game considerably less challenging.

What decisions like this one allow games like Super Mario Wonder to do is to polish an experience to perfection. Most levels will be trivial for the majority of gamers, but they become harder if you try to grab all the collectibles. Super Mario 3D World has the infamous Champion’s Road level which is incredibly difficult to complete, yet most levels are, like in every other Mario game, trivial to complete.

My argument boils down to seeing the game industry as you see Super Mario games. Champion’s Road is there to tackle, but it isn’t mandatory. If you find it so hard that it becomes frustrating, don’t play it. In that same vein, if you find Elden Ring offensively difficult, there are thousands of games released every year. Why do all of them have to fit to your personal preferences?

We argue that making art accessible for everyone is inherently good, but is it? Would James Joyce’s Ulysses remain a masterpiece if it was as accessible to read as a YA novel? Would we talk about Lynch’s movies decades after they released if they were as easily interpreted as the latest Marvel movie?

There is nothing wrong with accessible art, neither is there anything wrong with art that is hard to access. Our lives are not long enough to experience everything that was made with people like us in mind, so why do we waste time complaining about the few things aren’t made accessible to us?

James Joyce wrote Ulysses the way he did for a reason. David Lynch’s movies are structured the way they are for a reason. FromSoftware games lack difficulty settings for a reason. You might not understand or agree with it, but it is not up to the artist to change that. It is up to you to decide: will you accept it and engage with the art they created, or will you move on to one with which you can engage?

Expecting a third option in which all art pieces in the world have to be adapted to fit everyone’s demands is preposterous. So why does it stop being so when it comes to videogames?

The Unique Magic Of The Difficult

My personal take is the one which gave me the title: the unique magic of the difficult. I do not have a problem with casual gamers at all, they are the majority of the industry’s audience and, therefore, its life and blood. Yet I am one of those masochists who enjoys difficult games. I also enjoy trying to watch movies I don’t understand, or failing to read James Joyce’s Ulysses—I’ll get back to it, eventually.

Some of my most cherished memories in games come after overcoming a difficult challenge. I’ll never forget the moment I managed to progress through the start of Dark Souls II after I found it impossible. I yelped in joy after completing the Champion’s Road with a powerless Mario after two weeks of failures. I love when games make my palms sweat, when my breath is caught in my throat, when I’m convinced that something is impossible to do right before finally being able to do it.

You would argue that I can still get this experience if I crank a game’s difficult to the maximum, but the problem is that difficulty settings are rarely done correctly. Cranking damage dealt and taken or enemy health up is easy to do, but is rarely fun or engaging, Yet it remains as one of the most universal descriptions of difficult modes in videogames.

The best experiences I’ve had with difficult moments in games happened in ones with no difficulty settings. That could be a coincidence, of course, but I’ll selfishly attribute it to the fact that I was playing something which was polished to perfection because the developers weren’t thinking about how to adjust it to be easier or harder.

You don’t have to appreciate Modern Art, read Joyce, watch Lynch, or play FromSoftware, neither do you have to enjoy the unique magic of the difficult. They’re there for those of us who want it.

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We reached the hospital around 4PM with basically no information. The ER was an absolute mess, as it usually is here in Lisbon, and there were people everywhere. An older man pale as chalk was puking his heart out. A younger man with his shirt completely torn following a bike accident was so drunk that he was slowly falling forward as he blew on the breathalyzer, like the leaning Tower of Pisa if it was held by a cop’s index finger.

It took hours just for a doctor to check grandma out. She got a CT scan somewhere around 9PM, but we wouldn’t know its result until the next morning. An ER waiting room lives up to its name. You’re not doing much other than waiting, wondering, creating your own— often overly-dramatic— idea of what happens beyond the sliding doors. So after a quick exit for a terrible meal close to the hospital, I went back to the ER waiting room, took my phone out, and went travelling.

Abeto’s Messenger had been on my list since I read the Aftermath article aptly titled: “You Could Play Messenger Right Now, There’s Nothing Stopping You”. Turns out Luke Plunkett was more right than he probably guessed. Even though I was sitting in an ER waiting room, there truly was nothing stopping me from playing Messenger. That is because the game’s most unique feature is how playable it is, in every sense of the word.

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It is a browser game that works seamlessly on most devices you own. You can play it on a laptop, a powerful PC, an iPad, or a basic android phone. I wasn’t sure how well my Samsung A25 would do, but it turns out that Messenger runs well even on lower-end phones. So I searched for the game— which was harder than expected, google always thought I was looking for The Messenger, a 2D side-scroller. To avoid this, simply search for “Abeto Messenger”— and opened it.

You’re immediately greeted by a fancy animation of a comically small planet with a stylized logo spelling “MESSENGER”. First impressions are crucial, and this starting menu is more interactive than most. The planet keeps endlessly turning, the sky has particles swirling, the logo is animated and reacts to your touches. Press Begin and, following a short loading screen, you’ll find your character, the titular Messenger.

LOOKS LIKE I SLEPT IN… I BETTER START TODAY’S DELIVERIES.

Without a tutorial, a pop-up, or anything remotely similar to it, you’re inhabiting the body of a teenager who has to make five deliveries. Open the hamburger logo and you’ll have a five item checklist with hints regarding your tasks. You’ll also see three logos: one turns the music on or off, the second allows you to customize your character, and the third lets you use emojis. Why would you use emojis, you ask? Because Messenger is an MMO (Minimally Multiplayer Online) game and you can see other players exploring the tiny planet. You can easily identify them as the only characters constantly jumping around.

And that’s it. There is no compass, no tutorial, no waypoints. Explore the planet and talk to people who have a tiny triangle above their head, and figure it out as you go. This planet is essentially a spherical square of a Japanese town. Despite having a convincingly realistic layout, it features just enough distinct landmarks and buildings to prevent you from getting lost (too often). Once you’ve completed all five deliveries, you’ll be greeted with the following message:

This tiny game was created by Vicente Lucendo and Michael Sungaila, with lo-fi music done by Kevin Colombin. It was published by Abeto. It is completely free, playable from most devices, and it is an hour of pure, relaxing escapism. In a world where cozy is a term that includes games where you are mostly grinding, Messenger distils the cozy experience to nothing more than its purest essence. You are immediately thrown into the gameplay, there is no barrier of entry, and the experience is seamless. There’s no frustration, no time limit, no overstimulation. You go at your own pace, tackle tasks in the order you choose, and you stop playing whenever you want. From now onwards, this will be the game I use as an example when I want to describe what cozy means to me.

Once I has done with my deliveries, an hour had gone by. Throughout that hour, I wasn’t inside the ER waiting room, I was exploring a tiny planet. Despite being limited to the tiny 6-inch-something screen of my mobile phone, Messenger immersed me deeply, drowning out the endless chatter, the deafening pings from the TV every time a new ticket was called, and the procession of stretchers coming in and out of the hospital. For that hour, I was just a kid delivering letters, like kids used to do when my grandma was one.

Grandma’s left the hospital today, thankfully free from any long-lasting issues. I’m confident she’ll still be around 20 years from now, celebrating 100 years of travelling through her own tiny planet, in her little corner of Europe.

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Despite this, I’ve noticed a pattern that has left me with the following question: shouldn’t performance be taken into account when reviewing a game? This is a pertinent question at this time because, unfortunately, 2025 has brought us amazing videogames, but it has also seemingly broken the record of notable AAA releases that come out with a myriad of technical problems. More relevant to the point at hand, though, is the fact that these issues do not seem to have an impact in critic reviews, even if they don’t go unnoticed when it comes to the audience feedback.

Monster Hunter: Wilds

Monster Hunter: Wilds came out on February 28th, 2025. According to the mega thread of reviews on Reddit, the game had a score of 90 on Metacritic prior to release. As of writing this, it sits at 88 critic score, and 71 audience. On Steam, though, recent reviews have dropped to Mostly Negative. The game was released on current gen consoles and PC, and it had issues on all platforms (most of which remain to this day). It ran terribly on most PCs, was quite blurry on consoles and it did not maintain a stable FPS on either PS5 or Xbox Series X.

Eurogamer’s review did not mention any performance issues at all. IGN’s reviewer mentions some pop-in texture issues, but then follows up by saying that “things ran great apart from that” on PS5 Pro. PCGamer’s review highlights crashing issues, but also says that “ the game runs great on my rig”. These websites scored the game at 4 out 5 stars, 8 out of 10, and 85 out of 100, respectively.

This Digital Foundry video covered the performance of the three modes on both current gen consoles and neither of them manage to maintain the target FPS, even though the game does not boast the kind of visuals and technology that would be considered cutting-edge in 2025. PS5 Pro was the best console experience, but even it dropped below 60fps in frame-rate mode, despite the game running with an internal resolution as low as 720p.

DF’s Alex Battaglia had the unfortunate task of covering the PC port, which was atrocious. Terrible performance, poor visuals, stuttering, texture problems, VRAM problems, the list is endless.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

“Hitches, sub-60fps drops, crashes and uneven frame-pacing on its 30fps quality mode blight every platform, including PS5 Pro tested today. Also curious is the manner in which continuous play time affects performance on all console platforms.” This is the description on Digital Foundry’s video revisiting the Oblivion Remaster on all consoles, released May 10th, 2025, over two weeks after the game came out. On PC, Alex Battaglia had another nightmarish experience plagued with incessant stutters that affected even the most powerful rigs available.

Oblivion Remastered has a score of 80 from critics and 75 from the audience on Metacritic. Much like with MH Wilds, Steam reviews tell a decent story with the recent ones dropping the score to Mixed. Most of the issues are still present in the game today on all platforms. IGN’s review highlights “poor performance”, but scores the game an 8 out of 10. PCGamer scored it 84 out of 100 and did not address any issues in their review. Gamespot went with another 8 out of 10, but does mention frame drops, although it claims that the game’s “performance (was) good on (a) 4080ti.”

Borderlands 4 And Silent Hill F

A AAA duo finishes our list because these two games were released in the same month, September 2025. Both titles suffer from performance issues on all platforms, notably stutters that have been too frequent on Unreal Engine 5, the engine used by both games. Despite this, Borderlands 4 got an 81 critic score and Silent Hill F an 86 on Metacritic.

While Eurogamer, PCGamer, and IGN all mentioned performance issues on Borderlands 4, the only relatively low rating given to it was Eurogamer’s 3 out of 5 stars. The reviewer does not pin this on performance though, as they say that they aren’t “in a position to comment” due to their PC being weak.

On the other hand, Silent Hill F’s stutter issues that affect all platforms weren’t mentioned by any of the aforementioned websites, and all of them rated the game highly: Eurogamer 4 out of 5, IGN 7 out of 10, 90 out of 100.

Four AAAs Are But An Example

I chose these games, but there are many more to pick from. All of these were big AAA productions, even the shadow-dropped Oblivion Remastered. All of them had issues on every platform in which they released— with Borderlands 4 just recently having to indefinitely delay its Switch 2 port— and these remained even on beefy PC rigs.

These four games were also critical successes. Even when the reviewers mentioned any technical issues, these did not seem to have weight in their final verdict, or were occasionally brushed off. Before we move on, I’d like to point out that I didn’t single out these websites for any reason other than their cultural relevance as some of the biggest mainstream gaming coverage platforms out there. I do not blame either the websites or the individual reviewers, hence why I intentionally didn’t link do the reviews.

This is a problem of industry expectations and of logistics. Most of these reviewers are playing pre-release versions without day-one patches. A lot of the bugs and issues they encounter might already be gone on the full release version of the game. So how exactly do we fix it?

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Problems in this industry never have an easy fix, but there are changes that we can do as game reviewers to have an impact, no matter how small it is. If you notice performance issues, you should mention them in your reviews, as many of the mentioned reviewers did. Articles can be updated after publishing, like games can be patched after release. We’ve had way too many examples of AAA releases coming out broken, often with most of the performance issues present in pre-release builds.

In the same vein, keep these technical issues in mind when you are scoring a game or coming up with your final verdict. If they impact your experience and change the way you interact with the game, isn’t it relevant? It is subjective, of course, but so is 95% of the rest of your review. I would argue that technical issues are the closest thing we have to an objective criteria in games reviewing, but it will always remain subjective due to how player sensitivities to these issues change wildly.

What if technical issues don’t impact your experience with a game at all? If that’s your case and you are a game reviewer, you shouldn’t take them into account when scoring a review. I just find it hard to believe that these reviewers are noticing issues and pointing them out but don’t feel impacted by them.

Do technical issues bother you? Have you felt misled by highly-reviewed titles that end up being technical messes? Do you feel like issues like this don’t affect your gaming experience at all? I’m genuinely looking for diverse opinions on this. Thanks!

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I was glad to find out that this was tough to answer for some of this piece’s contributors too, not just me. Some think that we do this as a hobby or a job because it is fun and easy. It is fun, indeed, but it is not easy at all. So, with time, I’ve come up with different tactics to help with a variety of roadblocks. Plan A might fix a writer’s block, while plan B puts me squarely in editing mode. Here’s a glimpse into 10 different writing experiences from videogame writers on Substack, including my own for Button Musher.

I’d like to extend a massive thank you to all the writers that participated in this piece. You’ll find a link to their Substack below, and in the header preceding their respective excerpts.

• Cat- Cat's Controller Corner

• Harrison Polites- Infinite Lives

• Joe- The Saved Game

• Katya Ryabova- Playing This Week

• Laura Bibby- BabyGamer

• Manon- Books, games & life 🌻

• Margot- Margot Plays Video Games

• Matt Buckley- FinallyGotAroundTo

• Oya- oya’s game hub

Cat

My process as a whole is to just write my thoughts, although my brain is wonky so sometimes they come out missing a word or two or 5. Because of that my partner reads over everything I write so they can tell me if I need to fix something and then I'm just bouncing ideas around of how I'm supposed to write something that makes more/actual sense.

I write my articles in the middle of the night because I can't sleep, or when I'm on my couch with a show playing to fill the silence (something funny like Community or Teen Titans Go or Regular Show), or just at my desk because I really need to focus in and get my articles done.

I think up ideas for articles randomly and sporadically which means I have articles I've been working on for months just chilling in a documents folder that I go back to every so often and others where I write it in a day because I have to get it out. Then of course reviews are just write as I'm playing because otherwise I'll forget.

My writing process is chaotic and I can't write any other way.

Gonçalo Santos

As is often the case with creative crafts, most of my work doesn’t look like work at all. Ideas come when they feel like it, the divine inspiration from the poets of yore. Turning them into words, though, is where the “real” work begins.

I usually cut my work into two separate phases: creative and practical. If I am writing a new topic or beginning a review, I often start writing on my notebook by hand or typing words onto my iPad mini in a café. Being outside helps me focus and being surrounded by people and having a commute gets my creative juices flowing.

Playing a game, editing an article, or writing something less creative (like this guide I wrote about the Steam Deck) is done at my desk. My desktop PC is much faster and the double 27-inch monitor setup is too good of a productivity boost to pass on.

Button Musher is my creative haven, the place where I publish the pieces that do not fit into the SEO-focused world of freelance writing (which I have been attempting to do full-time for a couple months now), so they are usually 80% done at a café— I’m writing this while drinking a Pumpkin Spice and staring out into the beautiful Sun-soaked Lisbon. While, like many others, I view this Substack as something that might one day turn into a (dream) job, it is a passion project that keeps making me a better writer, and a better reader.

Harrison Polites

This might sound boring, but I write my articles at my desk during the day. Original, I know. Often between calls and emails, while waiting for others to get back to me. Pretty standard for PR work. I need to be at a desk with my computer to reply to people quickly, but while I'm constantly monitoring my inbox, I can spend entire days literally waiting for responses.

But perhaps the more interesting aspect is where I come up with ideas for stories. Generally speaking, I do my best thinking in the shower or while gaming. Both tend to put me in a flow state where my brain makes better connections and digests what's happening around me. Chances are, if you read a piece of mine and thought "Oh, that's really unique" or "that's a cool idea," I came up with it with a controller in hand. Or while washing... but let's not dwell on that.

Just One More Turn's Substack covers this extensively, but there's a growing body of research suggesting gaming benefits your brain in ways we're still measuring. I guess this is just one more anecdote for that body of work.

Joe

I often feel a tinge of jealousy when I see someone showcase their cozy, perfectly-organized writing spaces or an Instagram-worthy shot of their coffee shop view while they’re working. Meanwhile, I semi-jokingly compare my writing workspace to the Millennium Falcon because it’s barely holding itself together! It is, however, where I get my best work done!

Much to my dismay, I definitely don’t possess the good looks or charm of Han Solo with the actual Millennium Falcon. What I do have is a beat-up MacBook that’s barely trudging along to its 10-year anniversary, my old but favorite keyboard that has tried to die on me several times to no success, and a white folding table that everything sits on with the legs held together by duct tape and hope! My whiteboard on the wall above the table is smudged from random notes and outlines. I have secondary monitors that surround me, giving myself a backup for the times when the screen on the MacBook starts to randomly flicker. There are empty coffee cups from long mornings with the scent of day-old coffee, background electronic/Lo-fi music playing through some speakers that helps me focus, and random Fallout decals on my MacBook that remind me of fun gaming moments I’ve had from one of my favorite game series!

Over time though, I’ve come to fall in love with my cluttered and hanging-on-by-a-thread setup! I know that, after I say a prayer for my MacBook to wake up each morning, I can lock in and get some work done. Even though some things are barely holding together, I know that this workspace is my writing sanctuary that holds me together and helps me as I brainstorm ideas.

Katya Ryabova

Writing, for me, is an effort. It is work. It isn't a chore, but it takes a lot out of me. Given that I have so many other, often conflicting, priorities in my life, I squeeze in the time to write for Playing This Week (PTW) whenever I can. I wish I could say that I drop my daughter off at a daycare and sit in a quaint cafe sipping a flat white, typing up my reflections on the game I played the night before.

But the day-to-day for PTW looks different. It's writing after the work that pays the bills is done. It's getting a crappy paragraph in and not touching the draft until later that day or night. It's the guilt of publishing late or skipping weeks. More often than not, it's deciding between writing and playing video games, the very same thing that gives this publication life.

I own being busy and giving attention to different things. Writing this Substack also means the fun of playing a great game and giddily composing an intro to the essay about it; it means playing something new so that I can discuss it with readers; and reading other video game writers on here. It's the fun and magic of video games, translated into words.

Like many on Substack, I have a dream of monetizing this publication one day, but for now, I can't lose sight of the fact that writing it is meant to be fun… and keep it fun I shall, no matter when I'm able to hit publish!

Laura Bibby

Most of my writing takes its first steps in my trusty notebook. Whether it’s a new BabyGamer article or working on my novel or even just thoughts and rambles, pretty much all my first drafts come to life by hand first.

Every Saturday morning, I head to my favourite coffee shop and spend an hour or so writing or planning what I want to write. So much of it is half baked ideas, but I’ve always felt that they flow better and I can organise my thoughts in a more linear way when writing by hand.

So far, ideas for BabyGamer have come to me while I’m in the middle of writing the last post or when I’m talking about games with another person. I have a barrage of nonsense in my notes app that I sometimes use for inspiration for my “coffee and notebook Saturdays”, but most of the time I have no idea what “past me” meant when she made those notes!

Manon

My writing process might seem unpredictable: I write early in the morning, on train rides to work, or during the day on weekends in my home office. I write whenever I have enough time, because once I start, I find it hard to stop and I dislike being interrupted mid-thought.

When I started to write on Substack about video games, however, my approach became more structured. I start by thinking about the angle I want to take and note down some ideas in Notion: questions I’m asking myself, emotions I felt while playing, connections to other games that sparked the same feelings... I always try to focus on a specific topic and find something universal, an element that resonates with many players. Conversations with friends on how they felt about a game also offer me different perspectives sometimes.

Once I have enough material, I finally write a detailed plan with the elements I want to address from the chosen angle, then get to writing!

Margot

“Margot Plays” has always been a bit of a personal diary; a space to document my journey through gaming. Whether I’m playing something new, attending events, or reflecting on broader themes, these are things I write about on my substack. Sometimes it’s a straightforward game review; other times, it’s a deeper dive into gamer identity and how I relate to it. Always from a point of view of curiousity.

I aim to post once a week, though life doesn’t always cooperate. Most of my writing happens in the evenings after work, usually on my laptop. I like the flexibility of writing from the sofa, my desk, or even my partner’s study while he’s immersed in his flight sim setup. Sometimes I write solo, sometimes with background company.

My process is simple: I draft, then revisit a few days later to refine or expand. I’ve got a handful of unfinished drafts sitting in my folder—some may never be completed. Often, I jot down a sentence or even just a word when an idea strikes, hoping to return to it later. Though recently, I stumbled across a couple that I couldn’t make sense of... haha!

As for my writing soundtrack, it’s a rotating mix of the Hollow Knight soundtrack, Cult of the Lamb’s eerie tunes, and Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy soundtrack.

Matt Buckley

If you were to take a look behind the scenes of my Substack, you would find chaos. I am, unfortunately, a very scatterbrained person. I’m far too easily distracted, and I have far too many ideas to reasonably execute in a practical timeframe. But every so often, inspiration will strike and I’ll have an idea that I can really focus on. Those are the glorious moments of clarity when I can write a newsletter in an hour (sometimes in the hours before I planned to send it out).

I write about video games for my day job, so it helps with keeping up with what’s relevant. But I find the most inspiration in talking to other people about games, especially those who enjoy the hobby on a different level than I do.

I fully believe in the power of spaces. I generally will never work in bed, and sometimes I will take my laptop somewhere relaxing for a newsletter to keep my desktop more of a professional space. Handheld gaming is also a lifesaver. It can make a huge difference to play a game away from the desktop. I’m currently saving up for a Steam Deck!

Oya

I tend to have two moods when I write: I either get caught up in whatever I’m writing about and spend so long in front of my computer that my back starts aching, or I stare at a blank page trying to gather my thoughts together unsuccessfully - remember that SpongeBob episode where all he could write in an essay was “The” with the really fancy “T”? That’s me.

If I’m in my productive mood, where I am doesn’t really matter; I can write a lot without distractions, having dozens of tabs open for research and screenshots. Especially if it’s about a game that strongly impacted me, or a topic that I care deeply about, my words per minute can get really high.

If I’m in my SpongeBob mood, usually a quick walk to the nearest cafe helps. I get recharged with some coffee and fresh air while listening to my favorite tunes. This way, I can focus on the task at hand much better and get some writing done.

I always try to remind myself that I write for fun, no matter what, so either way, I try not to stress myself out; I do that enough in real life. I try to cultivate a nice and chill environment, and do my best to maintain it.

Once again, I want to thank every writer that contributed to this piece and everyone else who makes the videogame Substack community such a welcoming space. If you’re just starting or on the fence about doing so, don’t be afraid to reach out with any questions.

Since my first post I’ve felt like there were always people reaching out and lending a hand, and I’m here to do the same for anyone who wants it. You don’t need to make money or have a ton of subscribers to write about videogames, just make sure you enjoy doing so!

Valve’s storefront has a seemingly endless supply of games, and an impressive share of those are already considered “Deck Verified”. You would be hard-pressed to run out of games to play on the device, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have titles acquired or received elsewhere. You might grab the occasional Epic Games Store freebie, or receive the Prime Gaming offers that are usually redeemed on GOG or Amazon’s own launcher.

If you’ve wanted to give some of those games a try on your Steam Deck but don’t consider yourself enough of a techie to make it work, or— we’ve all been there— you simply lack the will after a day’s work to do anything around your console other than play with it, fret not! Getting these launchers to work is easy and should take no more than 10 minutes. Here is how you can Unleash The Deck, giving you access to the biggest PC storefronts with the exception of PC Game Pass.

Are you on the fence about acquiring a handheld, perhaps having a tough time deciding between a Steam Deck and a Switch 2? Check out this piece I wrote about going through this exact same thing, and why I ended up going with Valve’s excellent product. Furthermore, if you’re interested in Steam Deck-focused content, check out Steaming The Deck, a series in which I review games which I played exclusively on my handheld.

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Installing Heroic Games Launcher

Heroic Games Launcher is essentially an all-in-one program which fuses all compatible pc libraries into a single application. Furthermore, it allows you to add the games to your Steam library as any official Steam title, so you only need to access the launcher when you want to install new games.

Firstly, you’ll need to switch your Steam Deck into Desktop mode. Open your Steam Menu, open the Power tab, and press Switch To Desktop. Press the blue icon in your taskbar and search for Heroic— you can connect a USB-C or bluetooth keyboard, but you can also open the Deck’s virtual keyboard by pressing Steam+X. Download and install Heroic Games Launcher.

Once installed, open the app by pressing the Steam Deck icon in the bottom-left corner and heading into the Games tab. Once you’re inside the Heroic Games Launcher, log in to all platforms in which you have games. Heroic is compatible with EGS, GOG, and Amazon Games. Following all log-ins, your library tab will have all games you own from the platforms you logged-into in a single list.

You can now navigate your library and install whichever games you’d like to play as if you were using a normal games launcher.

Adding Games To Your Steam Library

Installing games will make them available to boot from the Heroic Games Launcher, but you can make things even easier by adding them directly to your Steam Library. To do so, simply choose the game on your Heroic Launcher, press the triple dot icon on the top right corner of the app, and choose “Add to Steam”.

Once you’re done adding those games to Steam, we only have one step before leaving the Desktop mode behind for good. Open the Steam app on your desktop, press Add a Game on the bottom left corner, Add a Non Steam Game, and choose Heroic Games Launcher.

This will allow you to open the launcher in the future without having to go to Desktop mode every time you want to install a new game or add a new library. Once all this is done, double-click the Return To Gaming Mode icon on your Desktop and you’ll be back in the usual Steam Deck interface.

The games you added will be found under a tab called Non-Steam on your library. You should also see the Heroic Games Launcher there. If any game you added is missing from this tab, simply reboot your Steam Deck and the problem should be fixed.

Caveats

These games do not come optimized for the Deck, even if they are available on Steam. So some games might run poorly out of the box, but that won’t be a problem for lighter games like 2D titles, or older games. For the heavier games a few tweaks will be required to get them running well, but selecting a lower preset will solve most issues, even for the laziest of us.

Some games will not work at all, like online titles that require anti-cheats incompatible with Linux, which is the Deck’s Operating System. The overwhelming majority of single-player games will work, though. You’ll simply have to tweak the settings yourself occasionally.

Finally, the first time you boot up a game can take longer than usual. It will take even longer the first time you boot up a game from each storefront, but these issues only occur upon the game’s first boot. Subsequent sessions won’t boot up as quickly as native Steam games, but they’ll kick-off fast regardless.

PC Game Pass And Beyond

I’ve been also playing around with adding PC Game Pass titles and emulators to my Steam Deck. If you’d like to see a similar piece to this one but covering those two options, let me know in the comments. Just keep in mind that those will require a bit more effort and some possible financial costs (purchasing older games for roms or a higher Game Pass tier).

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Gamescom had a lot of medium to massive hitters filling the show with headline content, but what piqued my interested was how many smaller projects were announced or shown with playable demos already out in the wild. Here are the ten that intrigued me the most, which are all available to download on Steam now.

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13Z: The Zodiac Trials

Embark on a quest to become the 13th Zodiac in this frantic hack-and-slash roguelike action adventure. Take on a celestial trial of grit, speed and power, and rise stronger after each fall as you upgrade your skills. Your trial awaits!

Mixed Realms are already experience in the gaming space, but they’ve mostly stuck to the niche-within-a-niche that is VR. 13Z seems them diversifying their portfolio with a Hack and Slash Roguelike. The demo promises around 3h of gameplay and already supports both keyboard & mouse and controllers.

Aethermancer

Monster Taming meets Roguelite. Become the Aethermancer and fight alongside mythical creatures. Explore the ever-changing Fractured Ruins, plan your moves in challenging turn-based battles, and watch your Monsters grow stronger from previous lives and defy death!

I’d unfortunately been oblivious to Aethermancer’s existence up until recently, but thankfully Gamescom fixed that issue. The game’s demo was released on Steam back in Feb 10, 2025, and has already gotten over a thousand reviews with an impressive 95% positive ratio. It seems like an exciting twist on the monster taming genre that is eternally dominated by Pokémon.

Compensation Not Guaranteed

Experience the first chapter of Compensation Not Guaranteed. Take a small peek into Southeast Asian politics through a lens darkly. Check ownership for authenticity, listen to stories, decide who should give up their land in the name of PROGRESS!

While Aerthermancer has already gotten a lot of attention, this one has flown under the radar. Compensation Not Guaranteed is the first game from Team Project Lunch, a small studio from Singapore. Inspired by Papers, Please, it gives the player the nightmarish task of having to decide who gets to keep their houses and who will lose them to the government. Its most unique aspect is the fact that it takes place in Southeast Asia, which is rarely explored as a location in games.

The Darkest Files

The Darkest Files is a historical investigation and courtroom game based on true crimes during the Second World War. Investigate cold cases, search for clues, interrogate witnesses, immerse yourself in the crimes, and defend your case in court to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The Darkest Files is the only demo in this piece that for an already released videogame. This demo has been available since 2023, but the full game only came out in March 2025. Steam reviews are Very Positive with 95% ratio, but there aren’t many (yet). This detective puzzle game puts you in the shoes of a prosecutor who is hunting nazis that are hiding in plain sight. Will you crack the cases?

DarkSwitch

DarkSwitch is a vertical survival city builder. Build a city on a great tree and defend it against the Fog. Face the challenges of limited real estate, scarce resources, and tough moral choices as you seek to uncover the mystery of the Veil. The Tree Provides! The Tree Protects! The Tree Prevails!

In a genre as overcrowded as city builders, seeing something unique is rare. Seeing a game that’s both unique and promising is even rarer. DarkSwitch gets you building a city on a tree surrounded by the scary Fog. Harvest the tree’s resources and keep it safe through the game’s tower-defense challenges. There’s no release date for this one yet, but you can already get your hands onto its demo.

Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road

Beware, Monsters are Coming! In this Tower-Survivor rogue-lite, you protect an ever-moving city from unrelenting hordes. Gather resources, fortify defenses, and boost potential through enhanced player progression. Will you reach the Arch?

Raw Fury rarely miss as a Publisher, and this one already feels like a bullseye. Ludogram already received a lot of praised following their previous game, Worlds of Aria, and are yet another example of innovation in overcrowded genres. Monsters are Coming! Rock & Road is a Tower Defense, City Builder, Rogue-lite in which your “tower” is constantly moving, forcing you to quickly harvest resources.

Morsels

Morsels is a fast-paced creature collecting roguelite with a rotating roster of characters to switch between at will. Overcome a clique of killer cats as you fight your way out of the sewers in this unique, action-packed journey.

Keeping with the “publishers that never miss” theme, Annapurna Interactive is the one bringing us Morsels, a beautiful roguelite that is all about collecting creatures while swapping between characters, another interesting iteration on the ever-present Pokémon influence. The demo has been available since June 9, and the full game is coming November 18.

Town To City

Build an idyllic 19th century Mediterranean town and help it flourish into a prosperous city. Freely place and customise each element to create the perfect home for your growing population in this cozy city builder from the creators of Station to Station.

Town To City is the epitome of cozy. This city builder ditches the grid system and lets you place buildings and roads at your leisure, all made possible by a fantastic voxel-based architecture. You’ll get a taste of the experience through the demo, which will likely suffice to let you fall in love with the gorgeous artstyle.

Twinkleby

Twinkleby is a cozy decoration game where you map out an archipelago of floating islands and build dioramas for a society of spacefaring neighbours. Try out a little piece of the upcoming game in this demo!

Keeping with the cozy theme, we have Twinkleby. This is another demo which had been previously released (May 13, 2025), and it is self-published! Might and Delight have released a ton of games, and players have reacted well to the Twinkleby demo. If a simpler take on Animal Crossing with dioramas sounds like your jam, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Woodo

Woodo feels like a 3D coloring book you can touch, a relaxing tale told through handcrafted wooden dioramas. No pressure, just a cozy world that remembers what it felt like to be a child.

Woodo is our list-closer, and it is one of the most unique-looking games I’ve seen. It looks like live-action toys animated via stop-motion. This is the first game we’ve seen from Tiny Monks Tales, and it has already put us on our map. Daedalic Entertainment have a great eye for talent. Woodo’s demo came out less than a month ago, on August 7, and has already gotten over 200 reviews. The best part? 99% Positive ratio.

Let me know if you try any of these demos and what you think of them! Feel free to also point out any that I might’ve missed.

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After spending an entire game reconnecting the broken remnants of USA into the UCA, Death Stranding 2 kicks off with the subversive tagline of “Should We Have Connected?” I won’t go into the meaning of the question when it comes to the game, but I want to highlight the irony it carries when we’re just a couple of days away from Kojima’s visit to Riyadh.

Esports— the weird corner of the gaming industry in which I got my start— carries all the warnings we need on the negative impacts that Saudi Arabian money carries, and how the hopeful narrative of Western values “rubbing off” are mere delusions. Here’s why you should care that Hideo Kojima is now becoming one of the main strands in Riyadh’s connection to the gaming industry as a whole.

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Connections aren’t always needed, nor are they necessarily good. The Guardian published an excellent piece on the unexpected consequences of integration of the Korubo people in Brazil, which include the dangers of becoming sick with diseases against which the tribe carries few protections due to the lack of “immunological memory”. Good things came out of this new connection, like better medical care and access to crucial items for healthier living, but it didn't come without a cost.

Following a considerable exodus of venture capitalist investment in esports, team owners and tournament organizers in the industry turned to one of the only players still betting money at the table. And that player was betting big. In February of 2022, Savvy Gaming Group purchased ESL Gaming and FACEIT for 1.5 billion USD. Savvy is funded by the Public Investment Fund, the Saudi Arabian government’s investment group.

A few months later, the first edition of Gamers8 came around. A multi-game esports festival featuring millions of dollars in prize pools, often considerably multiplying the usual prizes for smaller titles like fighting games. 2023’s edition upped the ante with 45 million dollars on the line, but the plan only fully came into fruition last year, when the event rebranded to the Esports World Cup. In the midst of what was dubbed the “Esports Winter”, a tough phase for the industry featuring a scale-down across most operations— quite similar to what’s happening in general gaming now—, Saudi Arabia managed to purchase around 40% of the entire esports market.

The Esports World Cup now includes huge tournaments for every single major esports in the industry— including the previously absent League of Legends. Teams get stipends to participate, Saudi Arabian Team Falcons is (always) crowned the victor, and esportswashing goes into full effect. The setup is simple and lets us understand why they’re now bringing Hideo Kojima into the fray.

Cristiano Ronaldo was the first big piece in the Saudi Arabian puzzle, in the much bigger and more relevant world of football (soccer). The athlete with the biggest social media following in the world became a sort of media ambassador for the country, and is now the official ambassador of the Esports World Cup. The bigger the fish, the easier it gets to wash the blood off. Every time a big sports event takes place in Riyadh, Ronaldo is in the crowd. He’s often accompanied by some of the most relevant figures from whatever discipline is being played, like Conor McGregor when combat sports are involved.

A similar plan unfolded in Esports, with Falcons now having purchased Niko and Monesy, two of the most recognizable games in the Counter-Strike scene. Red Sea Global, a PIF company, recently announced that it would be sponsoring T1, with Faker front and center of the announcement image. Faker is the most famous player in League of Legends and all of esports, and coincidentally has Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud as one of the top three celebrities he wants to have a meal with.

So Saudi Arabia has:

• Cristiano Ronaldo, the biggest sports star in the world.

• Faker, the most famous esports player on the planet.

• And now Hideo Kojima, the most recognizable figure in the gaming industry as a whole.

• (Amongst so many other massive investments that listing them here would be a waste of time).

Hideo Kojima isn’t the only face from our industry making an appearance in Riyadh this weekend, but he is, by far, the most impactful. Yves Guillemot, Peter Moore, Shuji Utsumi, Toshimoto Mitomo, Dan Clancy. These are all names related to the gaming industry, but none of these are front-facing, with the exception of Guillemot who used to make a few stage appearances. Regardless, chances are that the majority of gamers would have no idea who he is.

Hideo Kojima is our Ronaldo and Faker, he is the only figure so recognizable across the industry that most people have at least heard his name before. He is the biggest fish in the pond, and Saudi Arabian have him hook, line, and sinker. Not only is he participating in NGSC as a speaker with the aforementioned names, he is bringing his DEATH STRANDING WORLD STRAND TOUR 2 to Riyadh with a meet and greet to boot. The plan is simple, and effective. Gamers googling1 for Saudi Arabia will get mentions of Kojima’s appearances instead of the surge of executions happening in 2025.

This is a harmful connection to our industry, and one that can have consequences for years to come. Following months and months of layoffs— which are still happening— and the incessant mentions of a need to “downsize” and to “focus on profits”, the doors to Saudi Arabian investment are as open in gaming as they were in esports back in 2022, and Hideo is ushering the PIF right in.

Richard Lewis covered on his Substack the blatant propaganda piece that EWC-produced “Level Up” documentary is— which is hosted by Prime Video, and he has done fantastic work highlighting the many ramifications that come with Saudi Arabian influence in esports. There’s too many to list, but this is a recent one that I’d like to highlight. Mikhail Klimentov published an excellent piece on his ReaderGrev publication that shows XX century-style censorship taking place in 2025’s Saudi Arabia. Team Liquid’s CEO— an organization which has time and time again mentioned that Western values would positively influence the Saudi Arabian culture— Steve Arhancet had remarks about his homosexuality removed from the “Level Up” version streamed to Saudi Arabian viewers, and symbols even vaguely associated with LGBTQ+ causes, like the small rainbow flag on Team Liquid’s jerseys— which isn’t even the official Pride Flag— were blurred out.

So if you’re tuning in this weekend to watch Hideo Kojima speak about Death Stranding 2 in Riyadh, remember that he is doing so as part of a sportswashing exercise that is trying to obfuscate the fact that Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations have gotten worse, not better, since they’ve started to “open the doors” to Western culture

So, answering Death Stranding 2’s tagline: “Should we have connected?” No, not with Saudi Arabia.

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• a small pile of stones made, especially on mountains, to mark a place or as a memorial.

• a videogame about climbing, developed and published by The Game Bakers. Out November 5th, 2025.
  

Whether you’re on a mountain surrounded by daredevils, or on a climbing gym wall packed with fellow hobbyists, everything fades away if you climb high enough. Your mind goes blank, your worries morph into the background noise they were all along. All that remains is you and the wall.

The experience of climbing is difficult to describe to someone who’s never tried it, which is why the entire team at The Game Bakers went climbing as part of the making of Cairn, their upcoming “simulator”. Descriptions might be tough to grasp, but a game that aims to recreate the strong emotions that one gets when climbing is easier to absorb. As Emeric Thoa, the game’s Creative Director, put it:

[The goal is] to make you feel the danger when your balance is wrong, and the joy of reaching a good hold and making slow but meaningful progress.

Climbing games are neither popular nor common. Despite the sport now being firmly inserted in the mainstream, it hasn’t translated into videogames. This intrigues me because it feels like an obvious connection. Climbing does not need to be “gamified” the way racing is with time-trials and AI racers, which made the early concept of Cairn easy:

There’s a summit to reach. You see it at the start of the game, and every step you make, every movement is progress towards it. It doesn’t need any explanation. Also, the goal of the player is the same as the character’s. It makes everything simple, relatable, and rewarding. There is a lot to explore in (Mount) Kami, which reinforces the desire to climb, but always with the idea that ”going up is progressing”.

Other projects weren't a factor for The Game Bakers, though, who were inspired by “real world climbing, rather than existing video games with climbing in them.” If you’ve played any of their previous titles, you know that they don’t settle for common. “In every new game, we try to find an outstanding idea. Something never played before”, Thoa tells me.

Cairn is a realistic climbing simulator, but unlike the many staples of the simulation genre, it proudly boasts a stylized art direction— helmed by the talented comic book artist Mathieu Bablet. Not only does it help Cairn stand out, “it reinforces the idea that (it) is a journey into a different world.” In this fantastical setting climbers have the aid of a climbot, a spider-like smart robot which assists Aava’s every need in her climbs, and something she dearly needs in her attempt to climb the massive Mount Kami.

While the looming mountain is a fictional creation, Aava’s obsession with being the first to reach its summit is one of the most realistic aspects of the game. She’ll sacrifice her own safety in order to reach that objective, no matter the costs. Philippe Petit, the daredevil who wire-walked between the Twin Towers, 400m off the ground, said: “They called me, I didn't choose them.” Mount Kami is calling Aava, and we’re going to find out why it chose her.

If you’ve played Furi or Haven, you might notice that music is much sparser in Cairn, although it still has a star-studded roster of artists crafting its soundtrack— Gildaa,Martin Stig Andersen, and Toxic Avenger. That’s because the game aims to transmit Aava’s feelings through the experience. This is partially achieved by letting players “focus on the breathing or simply enjoy the wind and the mountain soundscape.”, but in the right moments music is used to create strong memories and to reinforce beautiful or tense situations.

Crafting a realistic depiction of such a unique activity requires an unusual approach. The team worked with “Loan Giroud, a Chamonix mountain guide” and “Elisabeth Revol, an Alpinist who climbed several 8000m mountains”.

Trained climbers who’ve playtested the game describe it as “very realistic”, and that was achieved because The Game Bakers themselves got a taste of it. Not only did they learn a lot from working with “Loan Giroud, a Chamonix mountain guide” and “Elisabeth Revol, an Alpinist who climbed several 8000m mountains”, the entire team tried climbing.

We even went all together on a workshop in the Alps in France, in Chamonix. We did rock climbing together on outdoor cliffs, learned climbing techniques, talked to mountain guides and to Elizabeth Revol. We also did a hike, and we went up to 3840m high at Aiguille du Midi, face to face with the summit of Mont Blanc. It was a lot of fun and a lot of learnings to apply in the game (and a good deal of muscle soreness too).

Emeric Thoa didn’t think of Cairn as a “possible climbing initiation tool” when I brought it up as such, but he’ll be very happy if the game can be useful to new climbers. “More importantly, I think Cairn can be a motivation to climb. Half the team started climbing for real during development”. Maybe Cairn will get you face to face with a summit too, one day.

Censorship is a tenuous issue, especially when it comes to art. Someone has to draw a line, one which rarely remains where it was first drawn. If you follow the gaming industry closely enough to read an obscure Substack about videogames, you’ve at least heard of the censorship aimed at NSFW games on platforms like Steam and Itch.io.

But before you proceed, I would recommend you a couple pieces. TWIV’s Edmon Tran covered the issue in this article, and Nicole Carpenter wrote an excellent piece on it for Game File. The second one is for paid subscribers only, but Nicole also posted the full interview with Naomi Clark, the director of New York University Game Center, for free on her own Substack, Save Spot.

As you can see, better journalists than me have covered the (still developing) issue. So I want to add a different perspective. After all, most things that happen in our burgeoning industry have happened before in other entertainment and art industries that have been around for centuries. One of those is literature, which keeps returning to the fray as a target of censorship. What kind of impact would an open letter from Collective Shout have had in the creation of capital L Literary works?

Let’s have a look at an example from my little home country, Portugal, a monumental book that you have never heard of, Os Maias (The Maias), and how Collective Shout’s drawing of the line would likely require banning a book that is read in schools as a recommended part of the Portuguese high school syllabus.

The Collective Shout Open Letter

Everything started with Collective Shout’s Open Letter campaign, which came soon after the group created a viral petition campaign— garnering over 70k signatures— to remove No Mercy, a game which has the player raping family members, from Steam.

Collective Shout drew the line here. It was an easy place to draw a line in. After all, who would openly support a game which aims to let players fulfill a disturbing power fantasy in which they sexually dominate the closest women in their lives? This is a piece of shovelware with no merit or higher meaning. But, as previously mentioned, lines rarely remain in place. The tendency is always to move them, and it didn’t take long for Collective Shout to move theirs.

After the successful removal of No Mercy from Steam, the group posted the aforementioned open letter addressed to “payment processors profiting from rape, incest + child abuse games on Steam”. In the letter, they mention finding “hundreds of other games featuring rape, incest and child sexual abuse on both Steam and Itch.io.” They explain that “these games endorsing men’s sexualized abuse and torture of women and girls fly in the face of efforts to address violence against women”. That poses a problem. Instead of drawing a line, Collective Shout spilled an entire bucket of paint onto the metaphorical floor.

Who decides when these games are endorsing abuse and torture of women, and when they are portraying it with a higher intention in mind? Can you not represent incest or rape in any way lest your game will not be published in either of the two biggest gaming platforms on PC? Collective Shout do not highlight problematic games beyond No Mercy, nor do they list what they specifically consider to be “over the line”.

Even if they did, what would make them the righteous drawers of said line? They are an Australian activist group that claims to be “for anyone concerned about the increasing pornification of culture”. Would they ban Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita if they could? It is a book depicting a sexual relationship between a 37 year old man and a 12 year old girl. Is that just stepping on the line, or does it go too far?

Whatever you think of Lolita, it is considered Literature (notice the capital L). It is a work of art that has outlived its author, and will outlive all of us, as great art tends to. And that is what brings us to Os Maias.

WTF is… Os Maias?

Os Maias is a book written by Eça de Queirós, one of the greatest Portuguese writers in history. Queirós is often featured in conversations alongside Fernando Pessoa and Luis de Camões. Contemporary writers compared him to the likes of Gustave Flaubert and Charles Dickens.

While he might not be famous outside of Portugal, he is a name known to all here. Even if you were not into literature, you didn’t have a choice. Until 2018, Os Maias was a book that you had to read in high school, and it was often one of the most important elements of your Portuguese classes in 11th grade. Students are no longer required to read Os Maias specifically, but instead an Eça de Queirós book at their teacher’s discretion. It commonly ends up being Os Maias regardless.

The book follows the Maia family through three generations, focusing on the men of the family. While lauded by its impressively accurate representation and description of 1800s Portugal, its narrative surrounds the lives of rich men who enjoy pursuing married women. Avoiding any major spoilers, sexuality is a focus, and incest is addressed at points. Family members engage in sexual relationships. Would the Collective Shout have approved?

What about another of Queirós’ books, O Crime do Padre Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro)? This is a novel that follows the life of Amaro, a young, sexually frustrated priest who is obsessed with women. He eventually engages in a sexual relationship with a widow and gets her pregnant. As expected, disaster follows.

Surely, this would be worthy of an open letter from Collective Shout, right?

The Problematic Line

Anyone with a low to average reading comprehension would be able discern that there is no sexploitation or “endorsing (of) men’s sexualized abuse” in any of Queirós’ books or in Nabokov’s Lolita. But you would have to read the books to know that. Did Collective Shout play through the thousands of games banned from both Itch.io and Steam in order to decide which were or weren’t ban-worthy?

I’m not advocating for games like No Mercy, few are. If you take Collective Shout at their word and ignore the obvious political implications behind their actions, you can interpret their actions as well-intended. After all, we know how much of a problem platforms like Steam have at monitoring what kids have access to. I don’t claim to know what the solution to that is, but I’m sure it isn’t widespread censorship.

Are we going to ban Red Dead Redemption 2 because Arthur can treat women like garbage? Will GTA VI be in trouble if any depictions of sexual relationships or, worse yet, rape are present in the game? Is Stellar Blade problematic because of how sexualized its main character is? As Naomi Clark expertly put it in her interview with Nicole Carpenter:

”What’s at stake when people try to restrict the acceptable topics for games is nothing less than the stunting of an entire creative form.”

Let me conclude by bringing you back to March 17, 2017. Nier Automata had just come out on PC, and it didn’t take long for the internet to be filled with memes about how you could see 2B’s panties every time she went up a ladder. Multiple female characters in Nier Automata are sexualized, including its protagonist.

Despite this, there is nothing sexual about the game beyond its provocative veneer. Nier Automata is a true work of art in our industry and a videogame that stands out as a unique achievement that I think I’ll never forget. Those of us who made it through the multiple endings likely watched the multiple credits on the verge of tears or bawling our eyes out. Would Collective Shout have played through the entire game to figure that out?

Let’s not draw lines if we’re not even sure what we’re painting over.