Misthold Welcomes You

The Novelist (2015) is a narrative adventure game with visual novel leanings. You play as a ghost who interferes with a family's life to try and move them towards making better decisions over the course of one summer. The father's a novelist (hence the title), the mother is an artist, and the kid is being bullied at school (maybe because of a learning disability?).

Gameplay is: you wander through the house trying not to be seen by the family while looking for clues on what they're worried about. Then you pick one narrative choice and one compromise choice per session. So, for instance, the dad might be worried about finishing his novel on time, the mom's concerned with networking with local artists, and the kid wants his dad to pay attention to him. You can pick one of those concerns to resolve, which then blocks the other characters' concerns from being resolved. But you can choice a "compromise," where one of the non-picked choices is only a LITTLE messed up, instead of a lot.

The story alters depending on what you choose for the family, and every choice has good and "bad" outcomes. I suppose it's more realistic that way, but I felt so bad for every member of this non-communicating little family that I really tried to choose the most positive outcomes for everybody, which mostly worked.

Added difficulties are: if you get spotted more than once by the same family member they get "spooked" and you can't choose their option for the compromise, which might make it suck more. Also, you move through lamps and some lamps get turned off at different times, making it nearly impossible to get into some rooms safely. Otherwise it's a pretty easy gameplay, just looking for glowing items and hovering behind people to read their memories, etc.

I think it was an interesting idea and the characters were well-written, but I was also a little bored after about 30 minutes because it was so simplistic. It took about 2 hours to get through the first run and most of that was just trying to dodge the family members. If I had turned on the "don't need to dodge" option it would've been closer to an hour, maybe?

Price: $4.99

Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. I played the Mac OS version.

Your Future Self (2018) is an interactive fiction game set in the future, post-worldwide catastrophe. You play as a genderless protagonist trapped in a time loop, ordered to convince your future self not to commit a terrible crime.

It's a very intriguing storyline, with very simple gameplay. You're trying to match up your dialogue choices with the current mindset of your future self: the more matches you get, the more they trust you and the further you can go into the game. But it's not that easy!


There's another group outside of your area trying to make contact, and of course the time loop keeps resetting. Each replay has similar dialogue but slightly different emotional variations, which makes it tricky to get 100% right.

I don't want to spoil it too much, but the ending was unexpected! I liked how the game sort of subverted whatever standard story expectations I might've had. That said, I don't particularly understand what gaining insight points did, since "leveling up" didn't seem to do anything. And failing dialogue options still gave the same dialogue information, I just had to loop a few more times until I got the right correct percentage.

Also didn't much enjoy the graphics. The old school computer style was really neat, but there was a LOT of flickering and juddering, even after turning it "off" in the settings. After an hour or so of playing, my eyes were NOT happy with me.

Still, it's a neat little game with some clever twists.

Price: $2.99

Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. I played the Mac version.

Secrets of Rætikon (2017) is an open-world action/adventure game set in the Alps. You play as a bird, exploring the world to find runes, interact with animals, solve puzzles, etc.

I played about 20 minutes before having to give up. It recommends using a controller, and I agree. Using the keyboard to try and navigate my bird over mountains and into the woods was very difficult; a controller would've made it much easier to do ANYTHING.


I actually have a Steam controller, but the buttons don't match up with the keys, and I can't change the bindings. I checked the Itch.io page and apparently it's set to an Xbox controller. If you have one of those, you're set!

Not being able to play this is a bummer, because this has really nice art! And the background sounds of a busy forest are very soothing.

Price: $9.99

Available for Windows, macOS and Linux. I played the Mac version.

Little Comet (2018) is a mini-golf game set in space!

The goal is to get Little Comet into the black hole at the end of the course, collecting any candy along the way. It has standard mini-golf rules, with some space-related difficulties. As you progress through the levels, you have to solve quick puzzles, avoid getting sucked into gravity fields, ride the solar wind, etc. Plus get under par!

Really bright colors, adorable graphics, cute background music. Just an overall adorable game!

Price: $2.99

Available for Windows, macOS, and mobile. I played the Mac version. Apparently the mobile version doesn't have ads or in-game purchases, which is great!

New Ice York (2017) is an adventure RPG set in a frozen New York City. You play a detective trying to track down the villain responsible for freezing New York.

Unfortunately this was a complete mismatch almost from the start. The story is an good concept and I like how easy the controls are, but I dislike almost everything about this game.

First, there was bad punctuation in the intro. Not a deal breaker, but not a great sign. Then, as I moved throughout the game, I kept finding more typos and punctuation-- not sure if it's the "style" or just bad editing. ( More words and 1 image )

There's no comments at all on the Itch.io page which makes me think I'm not the only one who wasn't thrilled with it. There are some good reviews on Steam. Also, it won the 2019 Freeplay award for excellence in design. A mixed bag, I guess.

Price: $6.00

Available for Windows and Mac OS. I played the Mac OS version. Play time guesstimated from Steam reviews, where it seems like most people finished at 5-6 hours.