January 8th, 2023 - A week after the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva following the defeat of former Brazillian president Jair Bolsonaro, a mob of far-right extremists pushing to instigate a coup d'état to reinstate Bolsonaro invaded the Supreme Federal Court, the National Congress Palace, and the Planalto Presidential Palace. The coup attempt failed and among the results of this act were at least 84 people hospitalized and 16 million real in damages.
This WAD is a beautiful set of levels made by veteran Doom mapper Fernito! Lateral thinking and perseverance is rewarded here, more than in some other maps - one main example is when you have two sets of levers to activate to get keys, but one of them is broken, and so you have to work out how to get to the key without it. Forgotten Foundry is one of the most impressive maps both in scope and thematic structure. UAC Resort is a fun Doomcute map leading into the final two maps where the gloves really come off! You're in for a wild ride with this one!
January 18,2023 -A Ukranian Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma carrying seven core members of Ukraine's Interior Ministry amd three helicopter crew members crashes into a kindergarden in the Kyiv suburb of Brovary. The crash took four lives and injured twenty-five others. Five State Emergency Service employees would be charged with safety violations and negligence later that year.
| ESRB Rating: Teen 
| Game Engine: GameMaker 
| Steam Net Revenue: $21,361,609.55 21.3m
Uh oh, Peppino is up to his ears in debt and now an evil pizza is threatening to destroy his pizzeria! So begins Pizza Tower, a game that caused such a splash at the beginning of 2023 that its ripple effects can be felt in every cartoony stylized platformer that's come after. The sheer amount of mobility and handling in this game cannot be understated, every movement feels fluid and every punishment feels earned. A vast majority of the game's mechanics can be traced wholesale back to the Wario platformers, but the influence of cartoons on the game design is undeniable. Every level features a ton of sight gags and off-kilter jams to make every moment in this game a treasure. It also boasts a strong modding community to swap out Peppino with a growing roster of fanmade character sprites!
February 16th 2023 - Members of the Russian State Duma support the country's withdrawal from 21 conventions of the Council of Europe. During the relevant Duma session, the decision was made for Russia to remain party to the Council of Europe conventions on combatting terrorism.
| Game Engine: Unreal 
Aw jeez, you crash landed your boat on an island infested with demonic forces and the undead...luckily, your arm is a shotgun! Presented by Merlino Games as a very different tone from their other projects, the gameplay is simple but intuitive. You're a delightful pill-shaped creature with a shotgun in place of a right arm trying to find parts to repair your boat, among other things. The game is isometric perspective and the aiming on the gun is a little tricky to get down pat, but I'd have issues firing a shotgun from my bicep too. Shoot zombies into gibs, explore a failed Helltech installation, rescue a spherical dog - it's fun!
February 25th, 2023 - The Nigarian general election concludes with the victory of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Conference with running mate Kashim Shettima. This is considered one of the most controversial elections since Nigeria's return to democracy in 1999, as the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) reported men in military garb firing on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) staff on election day resulting in the death of staffer Defeware Okemute, among other illegal violations.
Steam | itch.io | Apple Store | Google Play
| ESRB Rating: Everyone 
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A | Game Engine: Unity 
As we enter into a period of history where climate catastrophe becomes an unavoidable fact of life, it becomes moral necessity for those making entertainment to have some kind of position with which to remark on the path our world is taking. Enter Beecarbonize, a free-to-play climate simulator by Charles Games in conjucture with People In Need. You're faced with four Sectors, and a bar constituting your emission level. With every card you add to any given sector, you either speed up the creation of Tokens that can be spent on other cards, or add/remove emissions from the steadily climbing bar hearding ever-growing increases in temperature. A somber piece of edutainment but managing a working model of a world with zero emissions will always feel satisfying!
March 2nd, 2023 - Võ Văn Thưởng is declared the president of Vietnam after recieving 98.36 of the votes from the National Assembly of Vietnam. The decision was made so as to replace the former president Nguye͊n Xuân Phúc, who resigned after being found guilty of corruption and the removal of two deputy PMs earlier in the year.
A truly incredible work of art, this one! Coming out in March of 2023, it very rapidly made a splash as it toyed with the conceptual 'first level modelled after a modder's house' and turned the concept into a discussion on grief, loss, and what we do when the only thing we have left is what our loved ones leave behind. The full game needs both the WAD and PK3 files to function as intended, but running the WAD by itself is an immensely disquieting experience as moving through MyHouse gunning down enemies produces a grotesque feeling of vouyerism in the player. The link to the game also includes a 'dev log' of the modder's life during the game's production which adds some truly delightful insight into the material. I won't spoil anything here, this is one that has to be experienced completely blind, but there's a reason this game won a 2023 Cacoward. Highly recommended!
March 4th, 2023 - Burundi deploys 100 troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to combat insurgencies, specifically the insurgencies from the Rwanda-backed M23 Movement which began a new offensive back in March 28th 2022.
A powerful love letter to the Love-de-Lic games and the result of years of diligent work on smaller titles on itch.io, Happy Shabby Games has a real winner of a flagship title on their hands! You play as a cursed super-intelligence put into the body of a dead soldier by a godlike alien in the middle of the Indian Ocean. As dark a premise as that is, the game couldn't be further from dark, as this has the aesthetic touches more in line with moon: Remix and Pikmin as you rescue 'mons' from an underground structure via elevator and do fun little errands for them, develop new powers, take photographs, eat beans - it's all incredibly charming, and very worthy of your time!
March 29th, 2023 - China and Brazil have reached a deal to trade in their respective currencies, the yean and reais, in lieu of using the US dollar as an intermediary. Both countries being part of the BRICS reflects the need for them to protect each other's currency health as part of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement.
After having bought this game on the promise of more solitaire than I could dream of, the fine people at TreeCardGames have more than delivered. There's an absolutely mind-boggling amount of solitaire and patience games to choose from here, not to mention a multitude of card types and playing mats, but all of the games involved use the basic French card deck setup, with exceptions for Forty Thieves style games or really any game involving 104 cards or more. Solitaire from all over the world is in this pack, and they all range from 'so easy it nearly plays itself' to 'so hard it makes you question the very nature of solitaire rules'. Among the bells and whistles in this collection is a random solitaire selection; a Solitaire of the Day that allows you to explore the sheer density of solitaire available layer by layer; a handy-dandy internal guide to the rules and origins of the solitaires you're playing; an autoplay feature that goes so fast that you can blink and the game's over if you're not paying attention; and, achievements that track both your win/loss ratio and little awards for beating solitares a certain number of times. I can think of no better endorsement than the fact that I've been playing this program's daily solitaire every day since I got it. You gotta try this one out!
April 11th, 2023 - The Myanmar Air Force attack the opening of an administration office for the Peope's Defense Force - an armed group protesting the Mynamar Armed Forces military junta established when the MAF staged a coup d'état on February 1st, 2021 - in the village of Pa Zi Gyi. Out of the 800+ villagers who attended, at least 165 people were killed by fighter jet and helicopter attacks, at least 34 of which were children whose bodies were mutilated beyond identification. A majority of the revenue that helped finance this atrocity come from the Tatmadaw's two conglomorates Myanma Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) and the Mynamar Economic Corporation (MEC), both of which are staffed by ex-military and have their revenues to the Tatmadaw off the books.
| Game Engine: Unreal | Steam Net Revenue: $7,852.25 7k
You are Molly, a ghost in the machine that's been "given" new "purpose" as a character in an FPS game filled with other dead amnesiacs, the titular Arena of the Dead, hosted by a man known only as the Wizard. Aside from the expected arsenal of weapons, you also get a double jump, a wall jump, and a slide as your basekit, with other powers downloadable off of the in-game web browser. The browser and the information it gives you is very reminiscent of Hypnospace Outlaw, as you trawl through worrisome news reports and forum posts full of machismo and unrestrained id. While being obviously influenced by the Unreal series in terms of aesthetics, the game is pulling from a lot of influences ranging from 1984, Series 7: The Corrections, and No Players Online as you're immersed in a gripping story about interstellar corporate power, the intentional diminishment of the value of human life, and the evil that nostalgia is capable of. The environment around you can turn in an instant from the welcoming and familiar to cold and alien as you're far from the only person interested in the acts of the Wizard. You'll be doing yourself a favor picking this title up!
April 15th, 2023 - Out of an abundance of caution for the risk of nuclear disaster and because of the logistics of storing nuclear waste already generated within the country, Germany officially becomes free of nuclear power with the power plants Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland shutting down.
| Game Engine: Unity | Net Revenue: Freeware N/A | Part of the Retro Game Jam 2023
Now this one's a real treat for the eyes! Made by borbware for Retro Game Jam 2023, at the indie game dev center the HIVE in Turku, Finland, Oscilloids is effectively an Asteroids clone but with the added effect of using Unity plugins to simulate the look of an oscilliscope. It really feels like playing on a proper vector CRT! The ship's movement is not as touchy as some versions of Asteroids and both of your guns have a decent enough range where you can shoot every asteroid off the map without even using the thruster. There is a minor problem where the ship will occasionally spawn directly inside an asteroid at higher levels, but it's from a two day game jam, you know? I had a lovely time with it, and I think you'll like it too!
Got some classic Doom mapping this go-around! Currently a single episode called The Phobos Faux Pas, it is a wonderful standalone episode on its own merits! Plenty of consistant challenges, especially after you hit Map 04: Canyon Station. This is where ARottenKomquat and LadyNims demonstrate how to make every enemy dangerous even in a wide arena setting, and the danger only escalates from there! One of my favorite maps is the secret level Imps and Blimps, where it's an Icon of Sin fight with the added touch of having only imps and cacodemons to fight - a simple combo turned deadly once the map is choked with projectiles going in every direction! It's good stuff!
Even discounting my general love for Doom WADs, this one in particular is really something special. This total conversion is steeped in a highly specific part of Austrian culture known as the Schnabelperchten parade, that occurs on January 5th solely in the Rauris municipality in Salzburg. In this example, you are 55 year old Maria Katharina Berger, doctor and herbalist to your fellow village of Perchts, and the date is December 11th, 1898. A dark and unholy energy has erupted from the peak of Großglockner, and the surrounding village has been decimated by eldritch beings. You set off on a 15 level revenge tale that displays a commendable Blood influence as you massacre all manner of ne'er-do-wells in a setting chock full of dark humor. (E1M2, Seidlwinkl Circus, has a pleasantly grim atmosphere comparable to Blood's E1M4 Dark Carnival - no appearance from Jojo The Idiot Circus Boy, though).The weapon and enemy roster is a fairly direct coorelation to Doom's - your fist is replaced with a broom, thrown hatchets replace the pistol, the single shotgun is a Winchester Model 1887, you get the idea. What really sets this game apart aside from immaculate art direction is how enemy types are kitbashed together to make new enemy types. Of particualar note is Der Ritter, an enemy who is translucent like a Spectre while looking like the Revenant art sprite and attacking like a Pain Elemental. This leads to this enemy being a very high priority target while in a group while also being harder to hit than your stock Pain Elemental stand-in. There really is a lot to love about this game, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot!
| Game Engine: RPG Maker 
| Steam Net Revenue: $20,379.07 20k
An RPG centering around the characters from Japanese artist BAYACHAO and their kemono character franchise Makemon. You play as Kohaku, a mischievous kumiho who is trapped in Iizaka shrine and accidentely releases evil spirits that they end up having to recapture before the Shinhwa Festival while also dealing with their bad reputation around town. Combat is functionally non-existant but you use transformations to deal with obstacles and puzzle bosses. You also are able to grant emas as a way of completing side-quests and getting extra items. It's cute as hell!
Itself a mockup of an improved variation on MAP33: Betray available only on Xbox, the work to make something palatable out of the concept is on full display as the level is just a really well put together map full of fun tricks and traps. One of my faves is the use of rising and falling walls allowing for cover from the Spider Mastermind's hitscan attacks. It's jam-packed with enemies that can otherwise be blasted apart with several well-placed rockets - the ability to deal with the challenges presented is awfully generous. Check it out!
| ESRB Rating: Mature 
| Steam Net Revenue: $69,968.22 69k
THE S-BLADE HAS A HACKBLOOD CHARGE!
- Zane Lofton when the S-Blade has a Hackblood charge.
Zane Lofton, the 14 year old in charge of the best website on Hypnospace, is all grown up and made an incredible video game! Based off of a mod of Doom Kataklysm, this is a FPS in the classic 'boomer shooter' mold. You play as Zane, the X-Slayer setting off on a quest for vengeance against the Psyko Syndicate with the help of his friend and mentor Mikey Sykey, and the friendly rats that occupy the Steel Sewer. You fight sentient feces, weed smokers, werewolves, evil brains, and other unsavory purple threats in your hometown of Boise, Idaho. 10 levels of mayhem await you, X-Slayer!
Steam | GOG | Epic Games Store
| ESRB Rating: Mature | Steam Net Revenue: $1,994,965.19 1.9m | Part of the Amnesia series (4th of 4)
The latest in the Amnesia series is an interesting one because, much like how the modern age came about during a period of turmoil and chaos, Amnesia: The Bunker is grappling both with the inclusion of electricity and more common gameplay aesthetics coming to the surface. The year is 1916, several months into the grueling Battle of Verdun, and the French forces may have found a way to sneak attack the German offensive line. You play Henri Clement, an amnesiac poilu who has been infirm in a bunker, awakening just in time to witness grotesque carnage and madness as a result of said attempted sneak attack. The game has an incredible atmosphere and you are given a lot of tools at your disposal to cope with your situation, everything from empty bottles to cause distractions to grenades. As expected, your nonviolent options are usually your best options, as using weapons makes a lot of noise and ammo is hard to come by in the dark. The gameplay loop itself is a tool-hunting mission with the main goal being getting out of the bunker that's been sealed shut on you. The inclusion of guns has lead to certain gameplay decisions that the series didn't use to worry about, specifically the inclusion of explosive barrels, but many other examples that blend the line between 'adventure game' and 'FPS'. The final puzzle boss was a bit of a letdown for me personally but I can't deny this was a really good game!
| Full Episode WAD (E1M1 - E1M9)
Making a WAD primarily with Doom I's enemies is tricky business, it's generally accepted that Doom II's expanded enemy roster was crucial in rounding out the difficulty of any WADs that came after. Chris Kendell takes up the challenge of making the limited enemy palette work to great effect here! This WAD makes a slight change in scenery as the demon-infested UAC base isn't on Earth or on Phobos, but a real-life TNO oribiting Neptune within the Kuiper belt, known as 486958 Arrokoth. The first thing you may notice that's different from a fully vanilla Doom WAD is how the replacement sounds for the guns are delightfully meaty. The map design is very modern in the sense that every misstep is a major setback in your chances of survival. There's ammo aplenty, but only small medpacks here and there, with the big stimpacks not showing up until the second map and even then only rarely making an appearance. The maps have very clear and readable signposting to help the player navigate to what they need to progress. Seargents waiting behind corners and boxes littering the environment to fill you with buckshot is a favorite trick of this WAD, so remember to check those corners! The secret level is mercifully easy to find as long as you're paying attention. Each level has what I like to call a setpiece battle, where a weapon drop in the middle of an arena opens up a slew of enemies to kill with said weapon drop. This particular WAD is really good with rising amounts of spectacle based on your arsenal, heating up the size of encounters upon getting the chaingun and turning into all out Doom upon getting the Rocket Launcher. The penultimate level is a map mimicking the layout of the first level as a bookend. The latter half of the WAD suffers a bit from the door problem but the whole WAD is good about giving you multiple options to strafe and pin down your enemies with supressing fire. Highly recommended!
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A | Game Engine: GameMaker
This one's a real treat! Performing a twist on the story formula not dissimilar to Moon RPG, you play as a horde of skeletons trying desperately to prevent a knight from becoming overlevelled by destroying treasure before they can reach it, and keeping your fellow undead out of harm's way. Stepford and AndyL4nd prove a formidable combo along with Dougle/Oklahome, JPabuga, and music by Milkypossum as their style of art and programming makes your skeleton pals at both points adorable and nerve wracking as you point your mouse to their destination and hope they don't trip or bump into walls. The knight tracking you down is also relatively easy to distract, but you're in a race against the clock and saving everyone is truly impossible. After several levels, you come to see if your efforts were enough to prevent the knight from killing your boss. All in all, a really terrific game to come out of Game Maker's Toolkit 2023 Jam!
'Ichi nichi' being romaji for 'one day', the central premise of this megaWAD is that it's comprised of levels that were all made in one day, and it's a triumph! The limited time of production means that the levels never outstay their welcome, and you can breeze through each level as quickly as the original Doom II if you're staying on top of things. The weapon distribution is such that half a level in you're thinking 'I could really use something stronger than this'? Boom, a Super Shotgun/Rocket Launcher/etc. The maps are a delight to stomp through and everything feels great to play!
The 14th release from Joe Cassavaugh of his Clutter series, Clutter RefleXIVe is an absolutely titanic number of puzzle games, ranging from sedate to nerve-wracking, but always a lot of fun. Joe's spent a lot of time on this title, but the biggest piece of note is his 100-level long Story Mode in which he goes in depth about his life and how he came to make the Clutter series, along with where he plans to take it. Thoughtful, engaging, and challenging, I love this game!
Steam (Standalone) | Steam (Dread X Collection 2) | itch.io (Dread X Collection 2)
| ESRB Rating: Teen
Hunting games as a whole don't get a lot of opportunity to shine in a horror context, but David Szymanski is here with a piece of art originally made for the Dread X Collection 2. The premise is...well, 'simple' is the wrong word for it, but your beloved has been mutilated by an unexplained act of violence. Your goal as their...widow??...is to hunt squirrels in the grove in which you live, and staple them to their skinless body in a direct affront to God and good taste. The gameplay itself is very much in line with an ordinary hunting game, albeit with the limitations that comes from a solo dev effort, but it is very rewarding to line up a shot and pick off a squirrel from yards away. But beware, because there are many hazards out there for an enterprising hunter like yourself, and don't forget...GOD IS COMING.
| Game Engine: GameMaker
I'm absolutely enamored with the worlds that Yeo creates, and Fading Afternoon is no exception. The best way I can describe it is as a thematic bookend to their previous work, The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. You play as Seiji Maruyama, a yakuza fresh out of jail. From the outset, the player prompts themselves to think of this as a mythic Kiryu Kazama character as they speak with their aniki, Azuma-san. But you learn very quickly that the story of what family controls what part of the city is not, in fact, what the game is about. Without getting into spoilers, Fading Afternoon is about how a person acts when the end is upon them. It's not something anyone talks about, but the way Yeo carefully used game mechanics to make you feel the immense weight on Seiji's shoulders - the way you walk through all these familiar areas of town without any run button, watching strangers living their lives, seeing couples at the disco embracing in a slow trance, the slow comprehension that the most human relationships Seiji has are all transactional...this is a truly beautiful work, and I can't recommend it enough.
| Game Engine: Unreal
This game is heavily compared to the likes of Postal 2 and for not unfair reasons - it even shares a publisher with the makers of Postal: Brain Damaged, but 77p egg: Eggwife can best be described as being trapped inside a 2005 era Newgrounds flash cartoon. It is immensely puerile in subject matter, but make no mistake, the crew behind 77p Studios spared no expense to make this game a wonderful experience. Over 10 weapons, immense interactivity from being able to electrocute yourself urinating on a wall plug-in to burning down your house by leaving the oven on, a sense of humor that plays peek-a-boo with your expectations...I had a great time with this game, and I believe you will too!
Developed by Sigyaad Team, a one-man doujin circle and producer of many Touhou themed visual novels since 2020, Twilight Town: A Cyberpunk FPS is a fine total conversion mod for Doom in which you play as one of two characters, a character known only as Girl and a lonely man named Ikuro. After Ikuro is fired upon by unknown assailants, a police officer comes to them with a deal to get revenge and clean up the streets of Twilight Town in the process. The movement and humor in the game takes some getting used to, but the game has clearly had a lot of love put into it. Good stuff!
October 7th, 2023 - Hamas launces an incursion into southern Israel, killing 1,100 people and taking 240 hostages. A day later, Israel would formally declare war.
| ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ 
As of February 26th, 2024, Die Gute Fabrik has halted production on all upcoming projects, so this entry is in memoriam as the last game from their studio.
From Die Gute Fabrik, the developers behind Where Is My Heart? and Mutiozone, Saltsea Chronicles is an incredible story of love and the things that complicate it. The post-apocylapse has come and gone, leaving the planet as a cluster of islands with the remainder of humanity living upon these islands in reverence of the sea, not unlike the setting of the Earthsea books. In this world, the motley crew of the De Kelpie have come together to locate their missing captian who seemed to have disappeared into thin air. You can really tell just how much work and polish went into the writing of this game, it feels like a cozy book you tuck into right before bedtime. I recommend everything on this page but this particular one is fantastic.
Steam | GOG | Playstation | Xbox Store | Epic Games Store
| ESRB Rating: Mature
The game opens with the grim report: your youngest has just witnessed an act of brutal violence against a friend of the family, at the hands of the imperialist Birds. So begins the story of Laika and her struggle for survival in a world where all she can do is escort the fallen to the afterlife. The gameplay is a fasincating take on the Metroidvania formula in the introduction of an unstoppable motorcycle, which gives the game a captivating twist to the movement and environments reminisent of both physics-based platforming and games like Sonic Spinball. Absolutely give this one a shot!
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A | Game Engine: Unity
The abrupt suicide of Wálter Martins has sent the program Teleforum and their parent network ComuniTV into a tailspin. A reporter named Julianne and her cameraman Silva have decided to visit the home of his widow Adriana to get further information about what happened...and the tape that drove Wálter to take his own life. TELEFORUM is a truly intense story about what we become in the relentless pursuit for knowledge and prestige, and how even caution can be worthless in the face of a reality that changes the rules on you at any given second, how even enlightenment cannot save us. The MONUMENTAL team put their experience on multiple types of horror games in other studios on full display, as you can see influence from everything like The Ring, REC, the Backrooms videos by Kane Pixels, and so forth.
October 25th, 2023 - After months of deteriorating mental health, Robert Card, a former petroleum supply specialist for the US Army Reserves, commits a spree shooting in Lewiston, Maine, killing 18 people.
| Steam Net Revenue: $51,776.10 51k
WOW, is this one a wild ride! You're the newest resident in Bright City, and through a series of mishaps amd debasement, you end up in an employment situation right out of Tales From The Crypt. I would be remiss to spoil the plot of the game further, so I'll just say this game's story and humor has the twists and turns of a mountain road. The gameplay borrows heavily from Warioware with audicious use of minigame mechanics both in and out of combat, but the combat really is the game's crown jewel - Brodhy really has a mastery of how to make the fighting in an RPG engaging and receptive, using the sort of tricks that Undertale used and pushing them in fun new directions. Please check this one out if you haven't already!
You play as Cyl, the last line of defense for humanity against an undefinable threat posed by an enemy known as Picayune that will destroy human life as we know it. Created by the same people who made Underlevel (coded by Stepford, art by AndyL4nd and music by Milkypossum), Picayune Dreams is a remarkable blend of bullet hell and bullet heaven genres as Cyl is beset by strange and mystical enemies armed with an ever-growing arsenal of weapons and add-ons to their person, all displayed as additions to her code base. Each level is selected by the player in a movement-based segment where you pick both your level of agression to go against and the type of enemy you want to deal with for the rest of the run, and as opposed to a timer-based system you have a 'mortality rate' that produces a boss encounter every 5 percent. There's also the nice touch of the progress bar for your XP level being on all four corners of the screen instead of just one, with is such an ergonomic solution to the problem of losing track of the bar that i'm shocked it isn't standard practice. The story is a sad but impressive one, as we are forced to reckon with just who all these characters are and what they're doing in the void of space. It's good!