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The gaming landscape, now more than ever with the modern proliferation of indie games, has shown that great games can come in all sizes. There are low quality AAA games that cost millions of dollars to make, and there are fantastic games from one-man studios that were crowdfunded, and some not even that. Further, while all of us wish we had the kind of money in real life as we tend to end up with in our favorite video games, that’s not always the case. And even for those who do, there is no income limit where you are required to stop being careful with how you spend your money. So, why pay a lot for a bad experience when you can pay a little for a great one? For someone with a computer, there is a vast, wide sea of Steam games that are both high quality and wallet-friendly.…

Helldivers 2 can sometimes liberate itself from your control and send itself into orbit like a Helldiver diving into a Bile Titan’s walking path. It’s frustrating to have your samples, your team and your extraction but find that you’ve returned to the desktop, empty handed. While a lot of crashing can only be resolved by the developers, there are a lot of things you can try to shore up your defenses to bring liber-tea to one and all. Update Everything AMD and Nividia have released tons of fixes within their drivers to address issues with Helldivers 2, so get your graphics drivers up to date. While you’re at it, update Windows as well. If you’ve got frequent crashes, you might want to run a “Verify Integrity of Game Files (steampowered.com)” on the game as well. Make sure everything you can think of is updated. If you use a mouse or…

Pixel Cafe has a smooth lo-fi vibe with some of the best music I’ve heard this year. Released early October, we finally got a chance to sit down with what can be considered revolutionary in its own genre. You’ve got gorgeous pixel-art style beats, a soundtrack that kicks off from the start and doesn’t stop and a hypnotic gameplay loop that’s as mediative or brow-sweating as you want it to be. Quick note: The developers have been active in updating the game. A mid-December 2023 update introduced difficulty modes, giving the game more depth from the challenging kitchen manager that it was to a zen like rhythm game to the challenging kitchen manager that many loved as is. Let’s dig into what separates this game from others. Running the Pixel Cafe The game starts off with a cup and a coffee machine and simple instructions. The game’s complexities slowly unveil…

Beyond Sunset is a fairly decent retro cyberpunk shooter and a fantastical journey through the story and sound, provided by Karl Vincent of a wild cyberpunk world. The world is bleak but so full of character, embodying the idea of synthwave / cyberpunk aesthetics weaved with a lot of DOOM. This review covers the November 2023 Early Access Build. This is one of the few games where the smooth door animations actually impress me. A world built around a strong cyberpunk theme waits for players to jump and slide their way through its streets and towering mega-skyscrapers. If you’re at all into the music or the gameplay of DOOM, this is a definite purchase. If you need some more details, let’s dig in. What is Beyond Sunset? Built on GZDOOM, Beyond Sunset is a retro DOOM-like FPS with multiple hub maps, a full story driven campaign, inventory, RPG elements, side…

Welcome to the Gaming Tier List ultimate tier list for SMITE 11.1. If you’re new to the game and looking what to play or trying to climb the ladder, our tier list is ready for you. We’ve consulted with SMITE pros and examined the data to give you the absolute most up to date list of the strongest Gods in the game. Here’s what we’re serving: We’ve got our GTL Tier where we list God by God the best to play for the season. We’re on top of the latest gods by lane for the season. We break down the absolute best God to play for each lane for conquest. Finally we’ve got descriptions and a change log for when Gods move up and down our GTL Tier List. Our guide is updated frequently as the meta evolves and patches release. We’ve got season / year 11 coverage below. Find…

Cult of the Lamb is a game I was iffy on for a long time and was happy to find the motivation to spend a week playing it to completion. It mixes city management alongside a roguelike top-down hack and slasher which is very appealing, but it only really offers great gameplay if you more or less want to run the same few dungeons (four in total) over and over again. There’s a lot of games that evoke the same feelings in the same way Cult of the Lamb does, like Trigger Witch, where they have all the parts that make an amazing game but none of the substance or content to deliver. There are a few weapon types, a few spells you can use. The game’s pacing is predictable and every note you expect it to hit strikes. I both love and don’t love Cult of the Lamb. We…

You should play Mondealy if you have the chance to. That’s our review. If you want to know why we say that, read on, but ultimately, we’re going to tell you to play Mondealy. If you don’t like visual novels, that’s fine. If you don’t like pixel art, that’s fine. If you don’t like indie games, that’s fine. Go play it. That’s as high of an honor as a game can get from us and we’ll gladly hand it to this year’s best visual novel adventure game. Mondealy is a journey of friendship in a weird world that exists slightly below our own. The best way to describe is what happens in Undertale if the barrier went down but no one left and classism is at the top of the discussion list. Modern culture weaves through with love and affection as Michael journeys through a world that evokes both nostalgia…

Adore’s combat is groundbreaking, intuitive and different from creature summoning games that have been needed for a long time. The latest update and full release have shown a polished strategic pet summoning game that has ARPG elements, rogue-like elements and something different than turn-based pet combat. If you’re big into pet games, you shouldn’t take my word for it and head on over to the Adore steam page to start checking the game out yourself – we recommend it. You summon a team of four creatures who fight for you. Your main character can’t actually engage in battle directly, only dodge and you don’t have absolute control over your summons. You’ve got to involve a lot of strategy and tactics to get through combat and what appears to be simple gameplay unravels as you move deeper into the game. If you played the game early in early access, you will…

Alterium Shift is an aspirational JPRG designed to follow in the footsteps of Legend of Mana and Chrono Trigger. Still in Early Access, the development so far has shown great promise that we may yet see another breakout hit this generation with the essence from decades ago. Alterium Shift is an aesthetic charm and once a bit more buttoned up will definitely be a competitive player in JRPG arena. We took a deep dive into the game and gave the early access a preview. It’s nice to note the game has a demo, which means if you’re on the fence about what’s available now you can always check it out before you commit. In the developer’s notes on Steam, which are really heartwarming and extremely fair, they even encourage users to. Be sure to give it a read if you’re curious about more details about the game. What is Alterium…

Truth is what we’re best known for and I’d like to start this off with an honest one: Testament: The Order of High Human is expected to be perfect and is not. It is a beautiful, gorgeous game with deep lore and very fun puzzles with some decent combat. It has an old school scrappy developer vibe to it that makes a lot of old games endearing with graphics that appeal to the modern eyes. We don’t use numerical rankings because it’s sitting on 6/10 on Steam right now and is at “All Reviews: Mixed” on a sample size of roughly ~20. I don’t think games that have the artistic depth that Testament does deserve to be put on a numerical scale where anything below 8 is a waste of your money. There’s an audience out there for Testament who love this style of game and when it comes to…