Is Guilty

 Is Guilty is a quick little game that has you working the graveyard shift at a small coffee shop, with the additional task of keeping an eye out for certain criminals that you are informed about at the beginning of the shift.

The game is full of quick little jump scares to try and give that creepy "working too late at night" feel, including thunderstorms and power outages, but what I found most frustrating is that when I found people who fit the profile *perfectly* I was still getting things wrong, which ends up being part of the story at the end of the week.

(Spoilers ...) Your brother who has been getting you to work this shift to help pay for some sort of surgery is actually the real criminal and needs the money for a passport and there never was a really guilty car coming through the drive-through with all the hints, it was all subterfuge to try and get you to pay attention to your brother? .. or something ..

Indie feel - but well made.

Resident Evil Village

I don't typically care for "scary" games and put off playing this for a while, but I'm glad I finally got to it.

Resident Evil Village is a deviation from the typical RE franchise of zombie games.   It's set as a prequel of sorts where the main nemesis is a sorceress who is building monsters ala Dr. Moreau, lycans, vampires, ... blobby kronenberg mutations.   I suppose the lore would be Umbrella Corporation is the company who understood the formula for the zombie virus?

Your daughter is taken and your wife's ghost leads/taunts you on your journey to defeat these creature lords that Madam Miranda has created.  It's pretty formula and on rails for the most part, complete with an odd merchant who shows up in every odd haunted location to sell his wares and buy the treasures you have collected.

It was a great game atmospherically when it was going for that, there is a point where it shifts pretty hard into generic FPS shooter, which is where I lost my interest.

I ended up watching someone play the end and had no desire to finish it myself, very much "empty clip in baddie while strafing and avoiding the fire".  But I am looking forward to the next now ... 

The Vale: Shadow of the Crown

This game was an interesting concept, and full of fantastic voice acting.

You play at the blind daughter of the previous king, and your carriage is upended in an attack when you are travelling because of "realm politics".   The game has to travel, mostly on rails, but occasionally seeking out audio hotspots (like the clanging of a blacksmith's hammer or someone saying "over here!").

Game play is audio storytelling with interspersed segments where you're fighting wolves/humans/monsters listening to their audio cues and reacting directionally with shield/sword/bow.   It works okay, the hotspots seem fairly generous, and like I mentioned the voice acting is fantastic - I imagine there to be an interesting story (I'm guessing the brother in league with the fae instigated the civil unrest to seize the crown?) but so the path is overly littered with bandits and wolves, which ended up feeling a bit boring/repetitive.  DNF. 

The Medium

"You see dead people" the game.

The Medium was a third person game billed as psychological horror, the really felt more like a walking sim at times - navigating room to room to find hotspots for some unexplained "reason", really just to propel the dialog.   

The puzzles were such that you are split between two realities, and have to work with yourself to bypass obstacles.

It might have had an interesting story, but a game should not put you to sleep looking for hot spots as a rule.  DNF - probably stopped at 10% TBH.

Meltopia

 The world has frozen, and you've got a flamethrower.

That's effectively it in a single line.  Things you uncover in the snow might be upgrades or artifacts or reasons to dig further.   There is a "coldness" you have to contend with that adds a bit of a timer to your missions and the mazes are a bit chaotic to figure out because you traverse them a few times as they transform before you've melted all of the snow.

I found myself getting lost - it was fun but the last few artifacts I needed I didn't care to hunt through areas I had already scoured.

Indika

Indika feels more like a contemplation than a "game".  You slow walk as a nun who is having some hallucinations, questioning your faith and contemplating evil.

Through this and the bizarre 8-bit interludes (a realism based game with pac-man sections for exposition between levels (it was weird) we learn that Indika became a nun based on a situation where she felt guilt for a friend that was killed by her father.

The finale has her tracking down some religious artifacts to try and free herself of the demon she feels is haunting her, only to find the "kudets" empty.   She sees a demon in the mirror - but when she sees the kudets do not exist, it disproves her belief in both god and demons so she sees herself in the mirror.

Fade to black.

What?

Hidden Folks

 Hidden Folks was a game that might have a lot of promise in a different form.

It is a Where's Waldo sort of game where you try to find people in a busy town, but there is no ... rhyme or reason or puzzle or ?? to do other than calling it done.

It also appears that some of the levels must have randomized elements because I'm about 90% positive there was a perfectly matched person that did not match for me. 

This game will put you to sleep ...