| Game Engine: Godot 
| Steam Net Revenue: $5,825,919.78 5.8m
"It's a sadistic game born almost entirely out of spite." - Ville Kallio
A man on the phone promises you a financial future as an activer shooter lays waste to the streets below your window. So it goes in the grotesque world of Cruelty Squad, an FPS game/finance sim in which you are assigned wetwork tasks by your handler that become increasingly unpredictable. At the risk of sounding pretentious, this is the purest example of a cyberpunk game I think might be possible in the modern sense. Every part of your very being is stripped and torn apart in the quest for money and continued employment, everything is a jumbled nightmare of textures bereft of meaning, and the social satire is biting. This game is very much an acquired taste but it's a taste worth acquiring. Check it out!
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A
Cyber Purge is a great cyberpunk action title from The Green Herring. You are Takami Bluesky, contracted hacker for the Cyberspace Bureau, trying to stop a cyber-terrorist by the name of Darkscythe. Darkscythe has unleased a hostile program called the Death Seal that could kill anyone who tries to disconnect from their VR headsets, thereby making everyone in the server his hostages. The game is split up into challenging sections that all reward a key and relevant lore, and hub areas to use said keys. The attention to design principles throughout the levels is great, and the programming on some enforcer enemies is fantastic and makes for a solid action experience even within the limited resources in stock ZZT. This one's a real gem!
itch.io (Original Freeware Ver.) | Steam (satryn deluxe) | Nintendo e-Shop (satryn DX)
You and your friends have been forcibly abducted to a hostile world known as 'satryn', and as the Former, it's up to you to save your friends from certain extinction and rebel against the forces of satryn. The enemy design is a varied roster from the easily distracted Bulbs to the sinister Devoiders mutating your friends to the Blooms who mainly defecate stage hazards - they all come together in devestating patterns that will punish you if you're not moving and shooting. As for shooting, your default shot is a single beam attack that can be set up to auto fire, but the real delight comes from the powerups you get for every 75k points, which alter your weapon to push away enemies or light them on fire, or sometimes just an extra hit point! Delicious arcade action.
Zenith Into Maronarium is the fifth title in the Samozbor series, and is one of the most fascinating entries in the series. The Samozbor Empire, former Russian rebels who evacuated to another dimension, have begun a devestating assault on Earth and the only hope left is the survival of a pilot in her Kotel One. Episode 1, you take to the skies and shoot down an alien menace, while intermittedly exploring cave systems armed only with a rake. You successfully shoot down the alien queen and her envoy, only to crash your own plane and scramble into a featureless landscape for help. In Episode 2, you must traverse a series of platforming obstacles on foot in order to obtain a working ship and kill another member of the Samozbor forces, the one known as Winged Doom. Winged Doom appears to be a satanic creature, but in Episode 3, you are shot down once again while attempting to bring the entity known as Winged Doom under your command and hopefully swing the tide of the war in your favor. In addition to all of this is the option to play the Orika Protocol from the Options menu, which appears to be a training module/brainwashing system. In it, you play as the dev's mascot character Kotel in a clone of a Mario game but with more difficult movement, a more distressing aesthetic and what sounds like the Pilot sing-talking in Russian. The difficulty in each chapter ranges from trivial to patently unfair, but the efforts to move the Pilot are hampered both by an exceedingly glitchy interface and persistant chatter from an HQ that appear to be having several unrelated conversations. Every chapter you play has you only take one hit point of damage before dying, including the ship sections, and they all open with a scene of the Pilot in some sort of physical or mental distress. These elements all add up to a specific commentary on the senselessness of the conflict being presented, but in a way vastly different from how other war games illustrate their point. Any delusion of a power fantasy vanishes instantly once you realize a single enemy bullet rips through your ship like paper. This particular game is one that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since playing it!
| Game Engine: Stencyl 
The simplest way to explain Sparkles & Gems is to take the games Breakout, Columns, and Puyo Pop - and then throw them all together into a cotton candy machine. An enchantingly weird offering from resnijars, the core gameplay loop involves hitting cascading gems with a ball and paddle, aiming to hit as many gems that have three or more of the same type grouped together to destroy them. Gems with sparkles cause multiple gems to explode. You play against an opponent trying to make your paddle hit against a gem or block to win, and just like in Puyo Pop, you can get multipliers on your score to cause the blocks on your opponent side to multiply. The gems respawn as though by magic and will take a quick wit to handle them all! There's a Story Mode in which you get to know the characters of the game, from OAT the ferret plushie to Sandway the business horse, and presents a fun tale similar to a fighting game storyline. Treasure Mode is a game mode where you play rounds of Sparkles & Gems against the PC to rack up stocks, battery power, and jam to help improve your future runs, and to gain treasure in the form of special items you can use to decorate your room in Treasure Mode. Naturally there's a two player mode as well. This game is CUTE, and really really fun! Try it out!
| Steam Net Revenue: $45,548.76 45k
SNKRX is a rougelite arcade game in which the goal is to complete 25 waves of enemies without losing all of your units. You play a crew of various classes that move around a play area like a snake, with only two keys for movement, and no way to stop your movement. This system gets very complex very fast as your enemies are tiny colorful pill-shaped creatures with a variety of powers that demand you think on your feet. You'll find yourself having to figure out how you'll approach enemies and what you'll do if a hero falls in combat. Typical strategy is to pick off enemies from afar with one or two Ranger classes, though you can always build a team of Forcers and breach through enemy lines and throwing them across the room. I personally have gotten a lot of mileage out of using Zoner classes like the Sage and the Psykino to disrupt enemy movement and hit them with psy orbs floating around the snake, similar to a challenge run in Binding of Issac. Heroes have a set number of hit points and cooldown on their powers, and losing enough HP boots them out of your snake, You get any fallen heroes back after every stage, as well as a shop to spend money you've earned on upgrades and new heroes. You get a maximum of 7 heroes, and not all of them are guaranteed to synergize well with each other, so making money decisions with whether to hold your cash or reroll the shop could make the difference between a winning run or a quick run.
| Steam Net Revenue: $122,644.43 122k
Coming in three years after their last game Rym 9000, Sonoshee is back and with one of the most enticing stories of kinship, betrayal, and rebirth that I've seen in a while. While it would be crude to compare this game to something like World of Horror, the comparisions are unmistakable as you wrestle hopelessly against a tidalwave of eldritch horrors and seemingly inescapable fates. But beyond those obvious comparisions is how Sonoshee merges the stylings of Satoshi Kon with a magical realism similar to works like Achewood. You participate in five stories, represented by the 'critters for sale', as various people who all seem to be connected through a web of fate in which everyone and everything hang in the balance. This is a game you'll need to brace yourself for - the endings in these stories are not happy and frequently uncompromising, with one very happy exception that I won't reveal out of respect for the artist. Needless to say, this is one you'll be very happy to have picked up, and here's hoping that Sonoshee can deliver on more stories in this game's universe in the future.
| Game Engine: Unreal 
You enter into the Fuzz Dungeon through a vault that appeared in your workplace and made the Sasquatch Sex Amulet disappear, along with your path back home. You have to go through several mini-games to recreate society within the Dungeon and get the amulet back. The game has a specific viewpoint on the cruelties of modern life and how the dreams of a new society are difficult to reconcile with the material realities we live with, but acknowledging in the player a desire for things to change for the better. A project by Jeremy Couillard, an accomplished artist who has been working since 2008, Fuzz Dungeon is a beautiful and fascinating work!
| Steam Net Revenue: $518,846.05 518k | Game Engine: LÖVE | Part of the Intravenous series (1st of 2)
As the sequel to this incredible game has been announced as of this writing (and it looks beautiful) I figured it was high time to put it on the list here. I still get chills playing this game, trying to figure out where precisely the enemy is coming from and how best to approach them. For all the allusions to the Hotline Miami games this style of gameplay may conjur up, Intravenous is a completely different animal. Stealth is the name of the game here, and the AI for your enemies are extrememly sophisticated. They'll perform safety sweeps, fall back, position themselves, work in groups...all things that make your decisions on how to progress carry more weight. The use of light in this game is wonderful, too - you can feel the sense of creeping dread as you hear footsteps of a patrol moving in and out - are they coming from the left or the right? - and all the while trying to find the best way to avoid detection. You want an intense action title? This is the one for you!
The seventh solo WAD by Doom modder Benjogami and runner-up for the 2021 Cacowards, Down the Drain is coming at you full-tilt right out of the gate! Monster closets full of Revenants and occasional Archvile gangs are just a handful of the problems you'll face. The level Here n There, Now n Then is a blistering rite of passage, featuring a clown car's worth of Revenants that get dropped out of the start of the level like a gumball machine in order to progress. Of similar note is the Tricks and Traps homage, Doors of Opportunity, which nestles you in a hallway full of dysfunctional doors and having to use lateral thinking (and save-scumming in my case) to overcome what it's throwing at you. The whole production is wrapped snug with MIDIs of Radiohead and Sailor Moon OST rips that give the familiar walls of Hell a distinct feel from the usual. Fantastic work, definitely worth your time!
Call it a consequence of getting older if you like, but after a certain point this month after seeing several game announcements come and go, i realized that what I really want out of gaming is the baseline stuff that's been there the whole time - solitaire. While there is a fancy Microsoft solitaire that comes pre-installed on Windows 10, Big Klondike has a signifigant advantage of not making you have to look at ads for predatory gambling apps unless you pay for a subscription to a solitaire game. No thanks. This game has a choice between 'draw 1' and 'draw 3' styles, as well as regular and Vegas style Klondike. The cards make a very satisfying 'plap' as you turn them over, which is a small thing to note but it really does make a lot of difference on how good a card game feels to play. Actually, this game comes with a lot of small touches that feel really cozy, from a clock at the top right that lets you know how long you've spent on solitaire and help you keep time management in mind, to thoughtful little axioms that are included when you win a hand or exit the game. There was a point where I thought it wasn't actually possible to lose a game of solitaire, but Vegas style made a humble enby out of me. And, there's also paid DLC for spider solitare, freecell, pyramid, and tri-peaks. Overall, a delightful addition to anyone's game collection!
Steam | Google Play Store | Nintendo e-Shop | Playstation | Xbox
| ESRB Rating: Teen 
| Game Engine: GameMaker 
| Steam Net Revenue: $147,051.85 147k
It's difficult to explain the appeal of SUPER CHICKEN JUMPER without waxing poetic about the era of earlier indie work that inform its design, most notable BIT.TRIP Runner, and certain stages that are reminiscant of Paul Robertson's work. You are a spy chicken ordered by the president to take down the insidous XX forces and eliminate their leader once and for all! There are 36 levels in total with six unique stages and bosses. The goal of the game is to run and jump across 1 kilometer's worth of stage hazards. While this doesn't sound so hard, the persistant movement of the stage means you have to think fast to avoid most enemies. Certain levels can be cheesed with the right weapons and tools, like using the Uzi to clear out hazards section by section, but the final third of the game makes this a non-option and demands higher skilled play. Getting through each level unlocks a boss rush and challenge stages with unique gameplay modifiers. It's a really solidly built title!
| Game Engine: GDevelop 
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A | Part of the 💀 SCREAM JAM 2021 💀
One of the earliest games from Luthfialdi Nouval, you play an unfortunate kid named Dave who is now a ghost, defied by Death and now must retrieve his body! It's a very small game, all of four levels in total, but the material makes for a pleasant logic puzzle for its sparseness. Scare people, possess them to open doors, and avoid the clergy who are dead-set on banishing you from the earthly realm!
The secret research station nestled within the Arceon asteroid has just experienced a cataclysmic failure of containment, and the resulting breach has altered the course of Arceon directly into the star it orbits! As one of the last remaining survivors of the disaster, your only hope is to activate the gateway that will get you onto one of the ships that managed to flee the station. Arceon boasts a level design that encourages incidental combat, and in that capacity it's victorious - I've never been as worried about seeing imps in a group of enemies as I am when playing Arceon, which speaks to DMPhobos' talent in making every enemy dangerous! Six levels plus one finale level make for a tight but tough experience!
| Game Engine: Unity | Steam Net Revenue: $16,247.89 16k
"The mountain told us to take up arms so we would have a voice. It told us to cover our faces so we would have a face. It told us to forget our names so we could be named. It told us to protect our past so we would have a future. In the mountains the dead live: our dead." - Remarks at the opening ceremony of the Encuentro
Coming to us from our friends at Brainwash Gang and publisher Digirati comes a marvelous stage play in which you are the brightest star, for better or for worse. You are the Soothsayer, a hermit living in a dank corner of a great mountain. You are visited by many who seek the counsel from the stars, and you find yourself in an unflattering position. You become entwined with the fates of the members of the tribe seeking you out, and the voices you hear in the dark with no one present. The advice puts you at the mercy of those that would shoot the messenger. Are you truly helping anyone? At first, your advisors are your own conscious, but as the plot continues apace, you find yourself seeking guidance on decisions from the long-dead and the soon-to-be. It's a truly beautiful piece of artistry!
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A
A very simple and straightforward arena shooter from The Green Herring this go-around! You are a hapless human who has been yanked from their home into the pits of hell for the amusement of a goat demon. Your escape depends on moving around an arena rapidly filling up with ravenous fire-spitting felinoids whose entry point must be destroying with explosives. Upon doing so, you go up against the goat demon itself, who is impervious to your bullets and has to be exploded to death. It's a nice tight little gameplay session with three seperate skill levels - Normal is close in difficulty to her earlier ZZT game Cyber Purge with locked doors preventing the red felinoid variants from from overwhelming the player; Hard, which removes said doors and turns the arena into a completely open space, and Evil which is the same as Hard but the enemies spawn faster and shoot more often. Can you defeat the goat demon in time?
December 25th, 2021 - The James Webb Space Telescope is launched as part of a joint effort with NASA, ESA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. The purpose of the telescope is to conduct infrared astronomy and glean stronger insights for the fields of astronomy and cosmology.
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A
Lily is a nine-year-old girl on a mission to save someone trapped in a well! It's up to you to guide her around her homestead and find suitable materials to make a rope long enough to descend to the bottom. Made by Sam 'Ice' Woodrick, Lily's Well is a horror game with lovely easy-to-read CGA style graphics. It is also in the vein of titles like Space Quest in the sense that death is frequent and gruesome. This game merits a content warning as some truly awful things happen to Lily throughout the course of getting the True Ending. However, the game rewards sharp thinking and strategic use of your items to improve your odds of making it down the well intact. The story wraps you up like so many vines as what initially starts out as a call to action gradually reveals itself to be a mission to help a victim of nauseating abuse stop the cycle of trauma plaguing her. Are you up to the challenge?
| Game Engine: Unreal | Steam Net Revenue: $3,860.72 3k
In case you didn't get it from the title, your player character intones at the start of every level "I'm going to die if I don't eat sushi!" He's not joking, either - if you let your 'Inochi Gauge' run out from lack of sushi, he explodes and goes "I'm dead." I'm going to die if I don't eat sushi! is a 3D platformer in the vein of Super Mario 64, in the sense that a number of missions you have to finish are heavily influenced by Mario, specifically the ones where you have to collect eight red clams. Oftentimes, however, the game is a hunt for sushi in a specific environment with a handful of modifiers to keep things interesting. Platforming is a bit of a hassle in some places, as your characters horizontal leap makes some precise movements tricky. Thankfully, you have a shop in your hub world with a host of optional upgrades to your jumping that can help keep you eating sushi for longer. 40 levels and a peculiar storyline await you to rise to the challenge!