Dead

Valheim and I had some good times during Early Access. Three years later, returning for 1.0 revealed that those times are probably best left in the past. What once felt fun and interesting now feels dated. Modern quality-of-life conveniences I’ve grown accustomed to in survival games are absent, with something as simple as crafting at the base using materials already sitting in storage not possible and digging through chests becoming an unnecessary chore. ...

BioEden promises a chill journey about cleaning up a dead world and slowly bringing life back to it. ...

Big Ambitions has a fantastic premise. Build businesses, expand into an empire, manage the logistics behind it all, while a light life sim puts an actual person behind the balance sheet. After barely touching its original Early Access release, 1.0 (and Zero Company crashing non-stop for me) seemed like the perfect time to finally dive in for a few days. ...

Mortal Shell II is an easy game to respect and a much harder game for me to love. ...

Static Dread: The Submarine puts Lovecraftian horror aboard a military submarine, mixing crew management, hard decisions, multiple mini-games and the growing feeling that something invading the ship would be better left undiscovered. ...

Airport Manager Simulator 2026 promises airport management, but its Early Access debut seems to have misplaced the manager. Instead, you become what appears to be the airport’s only ground crew employee. Taxi the aircraft into position. Bring over the stairs. Place the cones. Unload the baggage. Repeat. Occasionally, excitement arrives in the form of fueling the plane or some other new task that takes a couple minutes. New scenarios offered minor variations, but mostly repeated the same tasks without having much progression. Whatever deeper game may eventually be planned simply isn’t here yet. ...

Security 51 takes the Papers, Please formula underground, putting you behind a security checkpoint at Area 51 where documents, clearances, and a variety of odd employees need to be carefully inspected. It is a great premise, and there were several ideas here worth appreciating. Unfortunately, the experience never quite clicked. Early time limits added pressure before the procedures became comfortable, but the bigger issue was how new rules and requirements were explained from one day to the next. Too often the wording created more confusion than the actual task, and the constant changes in what you do from day to day kept you from building up that muscle memory. ...

Impartial is a short narrative game built around making moral decisions, but some of its best pieces come from everything surrounding those choices. The premise of being the middle-man between heroes and police seemed a very interesting and is what brought the game onto the stream. The hand-drawn artwork gives the game plenty of personality, while the office hides entertaining distractions. Writing with the pen sitting on the desk, working on a crossword, or making questionable phone calls all add some welcome lightheartedness to the otherwise serious job. ...

ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs delivers exactly what its name promises: a relaxed electronics repair game set in Japan during the early 2000s. The repair work provides an enjoyable, deliberately paced gameplay loop, while a story and cast of characters give the shop some personality and help guide progression and new unlocks. After nearly five hours, the combination proved surprisingly easy to settle into. There is little wrong with ReStory itself. The unfortunate problem is timing. With a packed release schedule leaving little room for another game, returning to the workbench anytime soon seems unlikely. ...

IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator builds an entire game around a wonderfully specific idea: operating an enormous mobile artillery and figuring out how to put very large shells onto very distant targets. It is a concept carried by an impressive amount of personality. Both the writing and visual presentation are filled with small details that give the world character, while the targeting mechanics turn each mission into something more than simply pointing a cannon at an enemy and pulling the trigger. ...