Misthold Welcomes You

One-Eyed Lee and the Dinner Party (2019) is a puzzle/visual novel game set in a fantasy world where spirits exist and, sometimes, merge with living humans to become...something else. One-Eyed Lee is a something else, and Beracus is the doctor trying to figure out how to change him back. Or at least make him less volatile...

Beracus and Lee get tipped off about a whole heap of spirits in an abandoned bunker-- only to become trapped inside with a family of living skeletons. You (playing as Beracus) must solve puzzles, talk to the skeletons (whether they like it or not), and keep Lee alive to get out of the bunker!

I had heaps of fun playing this game. The art is fantastic, Beracus and Lee have a very interesting partnership, and the bunker-skeleton family setting was great. It starts off uncanny, as a post-apocolyptic bunker without an apocalypse to go with it, and then gets super creepy by the time you leave and find out wtf really happened.


The puzzles are solved through finding clues (e.g. clicking on everything), talking to the skeletons, and matching clue to mystery in a specific order. I'm not sure if it was just my computer or if it's part of the game, but there was a small amount of lag between hovering over a clue and the highlight turning on, which mean I had to go a little slower than I usually do. Also, the highlight was a dark red color, which was a little difficult to see even for a non-colorblind person like me. (The whole bunker is heavy on red/orange tones.)

Side note that you can click on objects multiple times, and some of them lead to funny interactions! Or new clues! So that's cool.

Because you're also talking to people, you have some choices on how to proceed through the puzzles. For instance, there's some tricky situations where you could lock yourself out of a set of dialogue cues that change interactions between Beracus and Lee. Or you could leave behind an item that would come in handy at the very end! There are 8 total endings, so it's worth going back and trying different routes to try and get them all.

To make it easier to get the different endings, the game has a History option (to read back through the text), a Skip option (to zoom past text you've already seen), and a Back button if you immediately regret choosing a specific option. There's also a Journal tab, which keeps short notes about the story/clues, and even gives a few subtle hints on where to go next if you're a little stuck.

It took me about 3 hours to get all 8 endings; I used some hints from the dev (on the Itch.io page) to figure out what I needed to do at the end, and made sure to try different options than I did the first time. The last part is very tricky! I did notice that once I got the happiest ending, the loading screen illustration was also happy! When I got the bummer ending(s), it was super sad. Such a nice little touch in an already detail-filled game.

Great characters, good writing, humorous moments and spooky ones, too: I really enjoyed playing this and highly recommend checking it out!

Price: $4.99

This is apparently the first of a series of games the dev is planning on making with Beracus and Lee, and I can't wait to play them!

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

cityglitch (2017) is a puzzle game set in sci-fi (/fantasy?) world with little pixel people and animals. Pretty difficult! Controls are point-and-click, and you can only move in straight lines. Art style seems heavily influenced by vaporwave. It's turn-based, and there are things trying to kill you or block your way, so you have to time your moves with their moves to get to the exit. Luckily the puzzles themselves are pretty contained, only 5x5 grids, so you're not trying to move across huge platforms.

I played about 10 levels/10 minutes before quitting; there are a total of 95 levels, so a good amount of play time available. Would be really fun as a mobile game, I think!

Price: $2.99

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

Death & Taxes is a 2D narrative point & click game where you play as a corporate Grim Reaper assigned to choose who lives and dies from a selection of profiles sent to you by your boss, Fate. Depending on what you choose to do, you can either save the world or condemn it to destruction.

I liked the dialogue, the art and the voice overs. I thought the whole concept was very interesting, similar to Papers, Please but with a more surreal, gothic theme.

So how you play is: get a bundle of profiles and instructions on what to do with them, then go to Fate for a daily review, then check the shop/dressing room and then go to bed. You'll get an employee review at 7 days, 14 days, and 30 days. 30 days is when the game ends, unless you get fired before then. You can buy widgets to decorate your desk, clothing items, and important observational items which are only useful once you complete the game.

The main goal is make your way through the 30 days, trying to get whatever ending you want. Your only action is to pick which profiles live/die, and to talk to Fate afterwards. Your choices of who lives and dies causes ripple effects, but it's not super obvious which track you're on until closer to week 2. Some cause damage, some help. Meanwhile, which dialogue you choose to use with Fate determine how he feels about you, which eventually affects the ending. ( More words (mostly complaining) and 1 image )

Price: $12.99

Available for Windows, Mac, Linux. I played the Mac OS version.

For a minute I thought it had genderqueer secondary characters and then I realized that the humans' profiles are probably randomly generated and they didn't want to bother matching names with genders (or whatever), and THAT'S why everyone is "they."

Neat thing in the settings for streamers-- special interactive elements you can use in your Twitch stream/chat!

ISLANDS: Non-Places (2016) is an "artscape" game by artist Carl Burton. I played the Mac OS version.

Not so much as game as a collection of surreal, semi-interactive art pieces. The "game" part is just finding things that blink, clicking on them, and then watching the scene change into something else. It's meditative and very pretty, with calming background music. Watching a bus stop turn into an egg incubator (for instance) was fascinating; I liked watching the mundane world turn into something fantastic.

However, I would NOT have bought it for full price because it's not enough game content to make it "worth" the purchase. At only about 45 minutes max, and with minimal interactive elements...idk. I'm glad I got it as part of a bundle. I do appreciate its experimental nature, though!

Price: $4.99

My Brother Rabbit (2018) is an adventure puzzle game set "in a surreal world that mixes reality with a child's imagination." There's not MUCH of a story, but it's basically set in the mind of a child who has fallen ill, and the game is a representation of her experiences in the hospital/getting better/etc. It's not super deep, and the story almost doesn't matter re: the puzzles except giving them a theme-- BUT the last puzzle was a total heartbreaker once I figured out the meaning behind the solution.

The art is really pretty, and the music is fun. It's a point-and-click game, which often works better on computers, but I found the Nintendo Switch port to be pretty good. ( 2 images and the rest of the review. )

It's pretty short-- I finished it in one night-- but has some replayable value, if you wait long enough that you've forgotten the puzzle solutions. If you're interested in picking it up, I would say wait for it to go on sale, and then snag it.

Price: $14.99, though it regularly goes on sale for less than $2 (about every other month, in fact).

Content notes: Sick/hospitalized child.

Originally posted at my personal journal.