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Somehow, I seem to be playing demos quite often these days. I didn't use to play them much unless a developer approached me first. I suppose I thought it was better to see a story all the way through before trying to analyse it. That way, you have the complete picture. But I've started to think there's something worthwhile about playing and talking about demos too. You're only experiencing the opening part of a game, of course. But even that can be enough to see how well a game explains itself. There's something quite interesting about that. When I'm looking for games to curate, I usually just apply the Horror tag on Steam and sort by newest. And perhaps it's just me, but lately there don't seem to be all that many newly released horror games that immediately catch my eye. Oddly enough, I seem to be finding more interesting things among the demos that turn up alongside them. Anyway. This time, it's the demo for Metro Anomaly. I mentioned in a previou...

I received this game through Curator Connect. And I'm not going to review it. I read the description on the Steam page and the reviews from people who had already played it, and I never even clicked the Install Game button. So let's make one thing absolutely clear from the beginning. This is not a review of Paper Pusher. It can't be. I haven't played it. This is simply an explanation of why I decided not to. The premise is straightforward enough. You work for Extricate Inc., described on the Steam page as a non-consensual euthanasia service connected to the US government. Every day, you're given information about several people. Their age. Gender. Job. Income. Physical abnormalities. Drug use. And so on. Then you decide who gets to live and who gets to die.  That's already political territory. Which is fine. People are political. Once you're old enough to vote and participate directly in society, it's perfectly normal to develop political opinions of you...

I don't think this is really a horror game for hardened horror fans. Nor is it the first thing I'd pick for a YouTuber looking for something to stream. Unless they're completely defenceless against horror games. Then it might work beautifully. What it does seem remarkably well suited for is a date night at home with a partner who doesn't normally play horror games, accompanied by a few glasses of Scotch. In other words, the horror-game equivalent of a date-night horror film. Play it together and perhaps the two of you will even come out of the evening feeling a little closer. I'm explaining what I think the right audience is before anything else because, from this point onwards, I'm going to complain about the game almost without interruption. For me, I found myself in a strange house and I'm scared sits in an awkward place. It isn't bad enough for me to condemn it. But I can't quite bring myself to recommend it either. To explain why, I think I need...

This game really will break your sanity. Especially if you're relatively new to horror games. For seasoned horror players, though, that may not apply quite as much. I imagine the response to Sanity Break will usually fall somewhere between two extremes. You might find yourself practically cheering it on, thinking, "Now this is a horror game!" Or you might say, "This difficulty is absolutely brutal. Rubbish RPG. Refund." Personally, I was firmly in the first camp. That said, Sanity Break was also my first proper dungeon crawler, so I don't think I'm qualified to judge how well designed it is specifically as a dungeon crawler. As a horror game? Yes. Very much so. There is one complication, though. As I said, experienced horror players may not actually have their sanity broken by it. Mine certainly wasn't. Perhaps horror veterans need something more extreme. Something like raising a gigantic living hamburger as a pet. I suffered through that recently. M...

I really don't like puzzles. After spending all day using up most of my mental energy simply getting through ordinary life, the last thing I want to do in my free time is make my brain work even harder. And although I never mentioned this in my Steam curator review, Creature Kitchen is, more or less, one long chain of puzzles from beginning to end. To get new keys, you need to photograph your animal friends and serve them food suited to their individual tastes. To find new ingredients and recipes, you need to solve all sorts of puzzles or use those keys to open locks. Then you do it again. Even working out what somebody actually wants to eat could probably be considered a puzzle in itself. It's rather like spending every evening wondering what to feed a boyfriend with very refined tastes. Thankfully, cooking for the creatures here is much less stressful. And somehow, despite all of that, I played Creature Kitchen all the way to the ending without ever developing much of an aver...

I was originally supposed to review Creature Kitchen next, but I've already spent a fair amount of energy on my day off writing about mad hamburger games. So I'll finish today with something a little simpler. NO DOUBT. Steam lists the developers as Te Sam and ICT@SU, with ICT@SU also listed as the publisher. ICT@SU looks more like the publishing side of things to me, so Te Sam seems to be the main developer behind the game. And as far as I can tell from Steam, NO DOUBT may also be their first game on the platform. NO DOUBT is a simple cleaning simulator released for free. Except, of course, they've added horror to it. Rather than being particularly frightening, though, it stars a cute young employee and some rather lovely ghosts. I'm not being deadpan here. They're actually kind and sweet. So if you're expecting terrifying horror from this game, you probably won't find much of it. What you will find is the pressure of knowing that you might get fired if you ...

Another mad burger idler immediately after reviewing a mad burger job simulator. I'm starting to wonder whether I should have lunch at Byron Burger today. Before talking about this game, I think I need to briefly say something about the studio and some of their previous work. To get straight to the point, Hiderum Studios is one of the few developers whose games I've reviewed several times. Sysreb Games is one of a handful of others, but their turn hasn't come up yet, so I'll talk about them later. Perhaps doing a developer-focused review one day might be interesting too. I've had a surprisingly long-running relationship with Hiderum Studios. It started several years ago, when I was digging through Steam looking for a decent slasher game and found Flaming Friday Night. I added it to my wishlist at the time, but never bought it. Then, before I knew it, the game had been removed from sale. I felt as though someone I'd had a crush on had suddenly died and I would ne...