Recent reviews by voidrender

You ponder the orb at the heart of your tower. It hums softly, a steady pulse of light and magic that seeps into your hands when you reach for it. The glow is warm at first, almost comforting, but there’s a pull to it—a slow, irresistible gravity. You tap once, and power trickles in. You tap again, and the flow quickens. Soon you are returning to it without thinking, the orb’s rhythm stitching itself into the pace of your day. Around it, the tower begins to take shape.

Numbers rise, relentlessly honest: magic, knowledge, wood and more. Buildings appear. Spirits multiply. Floors expand, your tower climbs, bright and pixel-perfect under your gaze. Nothing blocks your path—at least, not yet. But somewhere far above, there is a presence. A shape you can’t quite see, a limit you can almost feel. The climb is easy now, but it will not always be.

This is a game of patience and planning, of stacking small advantages until they become something formidable. *Tower Wizard* rewards the quiet satisfaction of fine-tuning your build, of discovering that a single upgrade unlocks a new rhythm for the whole tower. The joy is in watching systems interact, each floor pulling you closer to a point you can’t yet see but can already feel.

The core loop is quiet alchemy. It lulls you into a trance of incremental growth, punctuated by flashes of discovery. There is satisfaction in watching the tower grow, in feeling your plans snap together just right before an eventual *prestige* begins the cycle anew.

In the end, *Tower Wizard* is less about reaching the top, and more about the methodical, magical way you get there. It is a wonderfully concise game amongst peers filled with endless bloat, never relenting on its core premise: the tower must rise. And rise, it will.

1. Get Discord.
2. Get friends.
3. Get good.

The black waves lap quietly against the rain-slick sides of your vessel as your fingers work the line. Somewhere in the darkness below, an unseen battle plays out. The pole dips—a sudden, sharp tug—testing your gear, your patience, your nerve. You crank the reel, again and again, as if your life depends on it, stopping only when the line protests.

Then, it appears. Just beyond the glow of your lamps, something writhes in the dark. At first, it looks ordinary, a fish like any other. But then your vision adjusts. *There are too many eyes*. Dozens, maybe more, twitching and blinking across its slick body like so many barnacles. Watching you.

You drop the thing into the holding tank and slump back onto the bench, breath catching in your throat. What is this creature? How is this even possible?

Then, from the corner of your vision — a red light. A single lifeless eye, peering from the mist, vanishing the moment you try to focus on it.

You turn, heart pounding, eyes scanning the mist. But the sea offers no answers—only silence and the low groan of the hull beneath you. Whatever you saw is gone. Or was never there.

This is how Dredge gets under your skin. It begins with the simplicity of a fishing game: bright, charming visuals, the gentle rhythm of hauling in catches, upgrading your boat, charting new waters. You rise with the sun and work until dusk, your hands busy and your mind calm. But it doesn’t take long before cracks appear in the surface, and something ancient begins to seep through.

The horror in Dredge is not loud. There are no screams, no frantic escapes, no bloody messes. Instead, it is quiet. Patient. It settles into the marrow of the world—whispers in the fog, the wrong glint in a fish’s eye, the steady dread of the sun dipping below the horizon. And it asks you to keep going. To ignore the unease. After all, there are still upgrades to earn. Debts to repay. An encyclopedia of horrors to write.

In this way, Dredge becomes a game about compulsion. About the things we continue to do long after we’ve stopped asking why. You fish because it’s what you have always done. Because the townspeople need their deliveries. Because the lighthouse keeps spinning and the ocean doesn’t sleep. You tell yourself you’re just collecting resources, expanding your capabilities. But deep down, you feel it: something isn’t right.

The fish are watching. And something far below is waiting.

It feels almost foolish attempting to write about Dark Souls for the first time some fourteen years after its release. What is left to say? Actual tomes have been written, their words pressed into the pulp of long-dead trees and preserved for the ages. Countless games have tried to borrow its soul. It is a monument now, a foundation stone buried deep beneath the landscape of modern gaming, its echoes felt everywhere. Soulslike.

Of all its many triumphs, it is the world—Lordran—that stands the tallest. A place of crumbling ruins and forsaken gods, where time itself seems to rot. With few exceptions, every path is bound to another, every distant bell tower and fetid swamp stitched into a single, decaying whole. In the early hours, there is no fast travel, and there should not be. You must walk the dying earth yourself, bleed into its soil, and learn its sorrow by heart. When a door swings open onto a familiar place you thought forever lost, it is not merely convenience—it is revelation. Everything is connected.

To stand at the Altar of Sunlight, gazing out across all that you have endured, with more yet ahead, or to glimpse the broken ruins of Lost Izalith and the primordial roots of Ash Lake while stumbling through the pitch black of the Tomb of the Giants—these are moments that anchor you to this world. That remind you of what is at stake. Of how small and desperately lost you are.

It is easy to miss the beauty of Lordran, for it wears a mask of cruelty. It demands your suffering, your patience, your will. In other games, death is a punishment. In Dark Souls, death is doctrine. It is the first lesson, and the last. A missed dodge. A broken shield. A warning unheeded. Every failure is a voice calling back to you from the dark. Every shard of lore, every withered sword or broken ring, weaves another thread into a story written in blood and ash.

Listen, if you can.

Stay safe, friend—and don't you dare go hollow.

Simple, chaotic fun for the whole family. This deceptively simple roguelite food fest provided several hours of fun for me and my 8 year old son in co-op mode, unlocking 100% of the achievements in just under 4 hours. It was a bit confusing at first, but you start to understand how things work after you lose and restart a few times. The items add a lot of fun, and the passive items are a necessity for a successful three-crown run.

The graphics are simple but really pleasant to look at. The audio is nice and syncs to some of your actions which is a great touch; the drum solos when consuming large pieces of food add to the chaos. Not many bugs, but you could run into some pathing issues.

Runs great on Linux via Proton so probably a great Steam Deck game.

Definitely worth the asking price.

Life Is Strange, indeed. Rarely does a game so thoughtful and special come along. The story is rich, deep, and filled with memorable characters. It ventures into territory that few other games have, and with a delicate tactfulness, showing the deftness of the writers and the team behind this game. There are so many calm scenes drenched in moodiness, artfully cast atop one of the best soundtracks of any game. And for once, the episodic format truly shines, as it gives a chance to reflect at predefined intervals. And reflect, you will.

Buy this game. Play the entire first chapter and try not to get turned off by the teenage drama, and you will be rewarded. This is a story that will stick with you for a long time.

I'm hesitant to recommend this game because I didn't love it, but for some reason I kept playing it until the end. I found myself speeding through some of the more boring bits of the game just to see the main storyline through to completion, but honestly, the main story leaves much to be desired. The world is huge and feels very complete, but unfortunately much of this is lost if you--like me--can't quite cross the threshold into obsession with exploring the world.

The gameplay is fairly fun and varied for an action RPG, but the skill progression for the sorcery tree is VERY unbalanced. You'll spend the first third of the game abusing the same couple of abilities over and over again, feeling somewhat underpowered and dependent on your physical weapon to fill in the damage gaps. It starts to balance out a bit in the middle of the sorcery tree, but then the scales are tipped ridiculously upon reaching the highest tier. The Meteor ability is capable of wiping out an entire group of enemies, and while it does have a long cooldown, it is always ready by the time you reach the next group and doesn't consume enough mana to slow you down. Speaking of mana, itemization was a bit frustrating and seemed too random. I finished the game with a staff bought from a vendor, but then again, I was just destroying armies of fools with giant meteors summoned from the depths of space, so who needs a nice staff?

One of the things that continued to irritate me in this game is the sound. I'm not sure if they didn't have the budget for a good sound team or if they hired amateurs, but the sounds in this game feel completely wrong. One example is the sound they used for a shattering clay jar. It doesn't feel like part of the environment, but instead a flat sound file played slightly out of sync with the action. There are many other examples of terrible sounds throughout the game. The music was occasionally decent, but for the most part it was forgettable.

The graphics in this game were nice enough, and the art style felt consistent and well-done. Framerate was never an issue on my aging machine--even with settings on max--so clearly the core tech team behind the engine knew what they were doing.

All of my complaints aside, I still found myself coming back to this game day after day to see what was around the next bend. Upon completion, I almost felt as if I could do more exploring or wrap up some of those faction quests I left unfinished...but, I have better games to play. If you like MMO-style gameplay and want to get lost in a big, lonely world for hours on end, give Kingdoms of Amalur a shot. However, if you--like me--find yourself with less and less time to play games these days, you may not get as much out of this game as you put into it.

Fun, challenging indie roguelike. Fantastic music, great art style, and good gameplay (although there isn't much new here). A must-play for fans of games with roguelike elements.

This game is a lot of fun. I initially dismissed it as yet another Tomb Raider game, but this one is great. Awesome combat, character progression, environments--even the story is good. Some of it is pretty predictable, but I was having so much damn fun that I didn't care. A few tricky puzzles, too. I haven't tried multiplayer, but the single player campaign is definitely worth the time and money.

Great stealth gameplay with an interesting story. New game+, too!