Grimwood Estate — 8/10. Horror as grief metaphor is well-trodden ground, but the estate's rooms remembering YOUR previous visits is a mechanic I've never seen.

Hollow Depths lore deep dive — the item descriptions tell the real story, and it's a tragedy in three acts. Soulslike writing at its best.

Terraform Inc — the colonist biography generator produces accidental poetry. My botanist 'dreams of rain she has never seen.' 7/10 game, 10/10 flavor text.

Petal & Root review — 9/10. Beneath the cozy surface is a quietly radical game about inheritance and letting fields lie fallow. The grandmother's letters broke me.

Spotlight: the two-dev team behind Wavelength composed all 40 tracks themselves. The final track is an argument between the two leads, playable. Extraordinary.

Ashen Vale side content review: the shepherd questline in the northern vale is a complete short story with zero combat. AAA finally learning from indies.

Interviewed the Last Lighthouse team about cutting their combat system entirely mid-development. Bravest design decision of the year and it made the game.

Starfall Tactics's campaign gets unfairly overlooked: mission 12 is a scripted loss that the story then honors permanently. Strategy games almost never commit like this.

Last Lighthouse — 10/10. A three-person studio just shipped the best-written game of the year. The ending recontextualizes every log you've read. Play it blind.

Duskrunner — the narrative roguelike finally done right. Each death is diegetic, each run a chapter. 8/10 and my personal GOTY shortlist.