Thank you Traverse Research for sending us the Professional version of this benchmark to review!

Since the beginning of computing, there has always been a desire to quantify performance. How do I know if one CPU is faster than another model, other than to test them both? The same applies to the graphics processor as well. How do we test which ones are faster, or leads to a better game experience? While the best test is of course in the applications you use or games you play, applications more focused on testing can still provide a lot of value, especially if they drill down and test individual aspects of a system's performance. Evolve Benchmark is perhaps one of the newest entries in a long history of PC gaming benchmarks.

Like other benchmarks throughout the years, Evolve Benchmark is based around a visually stunning graphical demo, rendered with the latest technologies with cinematic flair. In this case, we get to see a safari where our friend in a large-brimmed hat walks through a Jurassic Park-style tropical paradise and gets to see dinosaurs up close. It really does look great, with ray-traced lighting and shadows. According to their technical documentation, it even uses GPU-based object state tracking. (GPU stands for Graphical Processing Unit.) It should probably be noted that Evolve Benchmark is above all a GPU tester. While the CPU does certainly play a part, it's more in how quickly it can submit commands to the GPU, rather than playing a part in physics modeling like most other benchmarks do.

The demo uses the latest in rendering techniques, and offers five different approaches to rendering the same scene. All benchmarks require ray tracing-capable hardware; without that, no benchmark will start. I tried launching it using the last GPU without ray tracing hardware, the GTX 1660, without success, despite NVIDIA offering basic software emulation on that model. On the other hand, my AMD Ryzen 6800U laptop with Radeon integrated graphics has basic hardware ray tracing support, and it can execute four out of five of the included tests. My other machines have NVIDIA RTX cards, and they can run them all.

The first two tests are called Ray Tracing benchmarks. The first one is called Inline, and the other is called Pipeline. These are both two different approaches to solving the same problem. The folks at Evolve wrote an excellent blog post explaining the difference here.

To summarize, the main difference is that Inline is where ray-tracing shaders are added to an existing rasterization workflow, whereas with Pipeline, multiple independent shaders are used to perform ray tracing operations. Both demos look fairly similar, though the Inline approach probably has the most stable image as it relies on tried-and-true rasterization for as much as possible. Ray Tracing Inline is also included in the free demo version of Evolve Benchmark, which I would encourage those interested to check out, though you do need to create an Evolve account for results submission, which some may object to. It might help in the future if Steam users had automatic account creation based on the Steam login info, but be aware it's not like that.

Interestingly, according to the above blog post, Inline and Pipeline perform fairly similarly on NVIDIA GPUs, while Pipeline performs much better than Inline on AMD Radeon. At this time all of my high-end GPUs are NVIDIA, so I can't really confirm those results with my experience. I was able to run both Ray Tracing benchmarks on my gaming handheld, the GPD Win Max 2 (the 6800U mentioned earlier), though the scores are quite low. Well, except for the Energy Consumption score, but more on that later.

The other major renderer type is the Path Tracer group of benchmarks. The interesting thing here is that they don't seem to use denoisers, or at least they don't fill in the gaps - you see each traced path and only the traced paths, so visually it looks a bit like there's a poor signal on an old analog TV (for those of up old enough to remember that). The gaps in between the rays show up as small white dots. I believe in most real-world use cases, AI denoisers are used.

When it comes to Path Tracer benchmarks, there are three different kinds. They are Inline, Pipeline, and WorkGraph. Unfortunately, there is less detail on their website defining those differences. Path tracing is in many ways the 'endgame' of ray tracing; instead of using ray tracing to enhance a rasterization-created scene, it instead uses rays to simulate all lighting. This article on the history of PC graphics rendering does a great job explaining the difference.

As explained in that article, the Evolve Path Tracer benchmarks are brutal on performance. Where the Ray Tracer benchmarks might offer eighty frames per second on an RTX 5080, you're lucky to see twenty on the same Path Tracer benchmarks. And WorkGraphs are the most strenuous of all. My Radeon integrated graphics laptop can run the Inline and Pipeline benchmarks - well at least they start. I found my system hard locked after a couple of frames, each of which took close to a minute... Regardless, WorkGraph is not available to run at all on that RDNA 2-based integrated GPU. However, it does run on higher end AMD GPUs like the 7900XTX (if the leaderboards are any indication) which is RDNA 3, so it could just be that my little laptop is underpowered for that workload. As a side note, I noticed while preparing for this review that there seems to be a bug where NVIDIA GPUs show as 'Not verified' when running the WorkGraph test, so while the test completes and you get results, they are not showing up on the leaderboard. Update: I reported this bug and it has been fixed.

Each benchmark is broken down into several of seven different score types, though I don't think any single benchmark type uses more than six. The first type is Acceleration Structure. It's used by all benchmark types. This score isn't explained all that well, other than to say that it represents the speed at which the GPU and driver builds the dependencies needed for ray tracing operations.

The second score type is Rasterization. This is used in the two Ray Tracer benchmarks, Inline and Pipeline. This is the classic rendering type, where triangles are converted to pixels. Modern GPUs are very good at this, as it's how games have been rendered for the last several decades.

The third score type is Energy Consumption. This one is interesting because it seems to be some form of ratio of performance to power usage. Incidentally, I happen to hold a world record (for now) on this test, as my aforementioned GPD Win Max 2's 6800U managed to top the chart on the Ray Tracing Pipeline test when forced down to 15W. I'm sure I could do even better with undervolting and such, but I'll take a win where I can get it. Regardless, it's interesting that this score has a wide range of different pieces of hardware represented on the top 25; while the performance ones are dominated by RTX 5090s, in the Energy Consumption score, there are desktop, laptop, and integrated graphics all in the top 25. It is unclear if CPU power usage is factored into the Energy Consumption score, or if it's entirely the GPU that matters.

The fourth score is a key metric, Ray Tracing. This score is present on four out of five benchmarks; it's not present on WorkGraph. As you might expect, it measures what it says on the tin: it measures the performance when utilizing the hardware-accelerated ray tracing on modern GPUs. According to their technical documentation, it includes six different forms of tracing, though these are not broken down in the results.

The fifth score is Compute. This score is also present in four out of five benchmarks, as it's not present on WorkGraph. This category covers a wide range of effects, and according to Evolve, it covers one of the largest sets of tasks. It includes rendering, animations, physics, world updates, and more. It also covers post-processing like anti-aliasing. The scores are interesting here; on one of the PathTracing leaderboards, you can see that Radeon GPUs are more competitive, especially on the Pipeline scores.

The sixth score is Driver, which is one of the few scores that applies to all benchmark runs. This one is the closest we have to a CPU test, but since the GPU driver has a large impact also (obviously), AMD Radeon cards do quite well on this test. This test measures how quickly GPU command operations are issued from the CPU side. According to the technical documentation, it currently measures primarily driver calls from the Acceleration Structures side of the benchmark.

The final score is the WorkGraph score, which is only used on the similarly-named benchmark run. In a WorkGraph run, all work that would otherwise be covered by Raytracing, Rasterization, and Compute work is combined in this score.

It would be kind of nice if Evolve Benchmark offered some kind of overall, aggregate, or weighted average score, as many gamers like having one big number to refer to when comparing systems. The scores as is are no doubt quite useful, as it can help us tweak, or spend time determining what unexpected bottlenecks there might be, and as each score relates to something different, it can be helpful having those extra data points.

Regardless, benchmarks like this really do help us a lot even as is. For example, the Path Tracer benchmarks helped me realize that my gaming laptop's GPU undervolt and memory overclock was not as stable as I thought. It's not because it crashed, but because I was seeing small graphical artifacts, or clumping of noise dots, that I didn't see on my other systems. That's one of the reason we love benchmarks so much - to help us determine if our systems are stable!

Generally, the benchmark has been easy to use, though I have noticed a few bugs since playing with it. I was grateful to be involved in reporting and fixing a leaderboard submission bug; while it's not 100% gone, it only happens occasionally now rather than quite often. I also noticed the bug above on WorkGraph submissions; I reported that, and it was fixed in a few days.

While I was writing this review, version 14.0 was released. That version added some great changes like saving benchmark runs to disk by default, instead of only submitting them online. They also added more features to the Advanced version.

Speaking of, the base version of Evolve Benchmark as sold on Steam is probably enough for most users who just want to see how their systems score. There is an Advanced version DLC that adds offline features and batch/command line running. I was given the Professional version for this review, which allows for commercial use as well. There are also data analysis features available for Professional users, as there is a GitHub repository with scripts and such. They are written in Python and are open source.

Evolve Benchmark is quite a promising new entry into the benchmarking space. It takes advantage of some of the most advanced features of modern GPUs, and breaks down results in ways that few (if any) others do. As a long-time PC benchmarking nut, I'm excited to see where Evolve takes this in the future. I would definitely, at minimum, recommend checking out the free demo, and if you like what you see, picking up the rest. I also can't wait for the promised Linux support to arrive, as I dual boot all of my PCs. Highly Recommended if you are a PC tweaker like I am!

Thank you COWCAT Games for sending us this game to review!

What happens when you combine the investigative mind of a detective, the fists of a street brawler, and the heart of a struggling father? Brok the InvestiGator answers that question with surprising depth and creativity. In a gaming landscape saturated with predictable formulas, this indie title dares to blend genres that rarely coexist successfully.

At first glance, it looks like a charming cartoon adventure. But beneath its colorful exterior lies a story filled with emotional weight, moral dilemmas, and consequences that genuinely matter. The Bar Brawl DLC further enhances this experience, adding more opportunities to test your strength and mastery of the game’s combat system.

The most distinctive feature of Brok the InvestiGator is its seamless fusion of point-and-click adventure gameplay and beat ’em up combat. Players can approach obstacles either intellectually or physically. You might solve a puzzle through careful investigation, or simply punch your way through the problem. This dual-approach design reinforces player agency. Some situations reward patience and observation, while others reward strength and timing. The Bar Brawl DLC leans heavily into the combat side, offering wave-based encounters that allow players to fully explore the mechanics that the main story sometimes treats as secondary.

Combat itself is responsive and satisfying, though not as deep as genre specialists. You have basic attacks, dodges, and special abilities. The simplicity makes it accessible, but experienced beat ’em up players may find it lacking in complexity. Still, the integration into the story makes every fight feel meaningful rather than arbitrary.

The story is where the game truly shines. You play as Brok, an alligator detective and adoptive father living in a futuristic world divided between the privileged and the oppressed. Your choices affect how Brok interacts with others, and ultimately determine the ending. You can play Brok as compassionate and honorable, or aggressive and pragmatic. The game never forces immoral behavior, but it does allow morally questionable choices, and characters respond accordingly.

The Bar Brawl DLC adds a more arcade-like mode where players face increasingly difficult waves of enemies. This mode strips away much of the story focus and emphasizes combat mastery, providing a welcome contrast to the slower investigative pacing of the main campaign.

The visual style resembles a high-quality animated television show. Characters are expressive, environments are detailed, and animations are fluid. Facial expressions and body language convey emotion effectively, enhancing the storytelling. Rather than pursuing realism, Brok the InvestiGator embraces a stylized cartoon aesthetic. This works in its favor, making the world feel cohesive and approachable while still supporting serious emotional moments.

The voice acting is exceptional, and especially impressive for an indie title. Brok’s voice conveys both toughness and vulnerability, reinforcing his character as a flawed but caring father. Music complements the atmosphere well. Softer tracks support emotional scenes, while energetic music enhances combat encounters. Sound effects are satisfying without becoming repetitive or irritating.

The controls are intuitive and easy to learn. Switching between investigation and combat feels natural. The interface is clean and uncluttered, allowing players to focus on the experience without confusion. The DLC uses the same control scheme, making it easy to jump into combat challenges without additional learning curves.

Violence consists primarily of cartoon fistfights. Characters are knocked unconscious rather than killed, and there is no blood or gore. Language includes occasional minor swear words such as "What the H*ll," "D*mn," "Cr*p," and "s*cks." The script is not saturated with these words, but they are employed contextually to express frustration. There are a few suggestive jokes and mild innuendo infrequently used as well.

Brok the InvestiGator’s strongest moral element is its emphasis on responsibility, sacrifice, and the consequences of choices. Players are rewarded for acting with integrity, compassion, and wisdom. Poor moral choices lead to negative narrative outcomes, reinforcing the importance of ethical decision-making. It also portrays the importance of family, particularly Brok’s relationship with his adopted son.

Brok the InvestiGator is one of the most creative indie games in recent years. Its combination of adventure storytelling and beat ’em up combat creates an experience that feels fresh and engaging. The Bar Brawl DLC enhances the combat experience and provides additional replay value. While the combat lacks the depth of dedicated fighting games and there is minor questionable content, the overall moral framework encourages responsibility and ethical behavior. This is a thoughtful, emotionally engaging experience that stands out in a crowded market. Players seeking a story-driven game with meaningful choices, and a bit of action, will find much to appreciate.

Thank you to Kwalee for sending us a review code!

Don’t Stop, Girlypop! (DSG) has got to be one of the most interesting and clever shooters that I’ve played in a while. The idea is that it combines the ever-popular movement shooter idea with a Y2K aesthetic and a style that can only be described as “girlypop.” You take the role of a robot named Imber who’s goal is to take down the corrupt leader Auctus while spreading as much love as possible. Despite being a robot, you have a lot of room to personalize and make your experience unique.

A big selling point of DSG is the movement. The primary encouraged “movement tech” is called wave hopping, featuring a quick succession of ground slamming, jumping, and then dashing for a fluid spin on the traditional famous bunny hopping technique. It’s shown off in the tutorial, and it is the fastest way to gain speed unassisted. The directions for initiating one is also always on screen in the HUD. The movement being the way it is is very nice considering that extra damage and all healing is based off of your current momentum. This makes any enemy arena, open or cluttered, engaging and dynamic to zip around and blast enemies you fly past. Something that isn’t quite preferred would be the hookpoints in some situations. They let you grapple to them, and are usually a good way to increase speed and get around the levels, but parkour sections based off of them often don’t feel very good because of how poorly they preserve momentum.

The weapons are all pretty useful, and I think all of them have their own niche, though some may be dominated pretty heavily by others. For example, the shotgun, which you unlock quite early, has pretty solid damage at long range as well as short range, and can be used for almost everything until the fourth or fifth gun unlock. The shotgun only has three shots for it’s notable reload time, but I discovered a game-changing glitch that pretty much lets you ignore this. At the time of writing this, the game does not store the amount of ammo a gun has left before reloading. Because of this oversight, switching quickly between weapons works as a substitute for this, and only takes a split second. While I didn’t abuse this too much in favor of experimentation and finding weapon synergies, I found it effective to clear out the tankier enemies with spamming the shotgun in parity with the railgun.

While there are many different enemy variants, I find that a very small margin of them are actually threatening. Some might cling to a wall or go to very remote locations of the room to cause chaos, but their attacks are so easy to parry (which, by the way, increases damage and makes the projectile home into the enemy), and they die in one or two hits from almost any weapon. If the enemy might have a larger health pool, then its attacks might be repetitive, or it might just be annoying to kill solely because of the amount of hits it takes. Most of the bosses are later repurposed into regular enemies, but the ones that aren't are definitely unique and engaging.

Don't Stop, Girlypop!’s soundtrack is very fitting and definitely motivated to keep me playing a lot of the time. I really loved all of the tracks, with one exception. A lot of the OST is honestly quite listenable outside of the game. I really liked the ones with breakbeat or house inspiration, and there are some clever vocal chops on some tracks. Outside of the music, the sound design isn’t awful. The sound effects feel in place and don’t hurt or anything like that, and the voice acting is quite impressive. A lot of lore is revealed through echoes that you can find and choose to listen to, but a lot of them are several minutes long and just eat into your level time (which receives a grade) if you don’t listen while playing the level. Generally, there isn’t an issue with doing that, but I did find that if you get to a spot where scripted dialogue plays, the voice lines for all of it will play simultaneously, and it creates some hard-to-follow sounds.

The graphics aren’t impressive, but they get the job done when it comes to conveying a good vibe for the game. Enemy models are fine, but their textures are generally uninteresting. Some lights have too much bloom and completely cover the screen, though that’s rare. Other than those, I really like the HUD and menus. The mouse controls by default are not very good, but the keyboard ones are pretty intuitive and easy to work with. I mentioned a few bugs and oversights already, but I did find a few more. For example, some of the collisions in the levels don't feel right. Another issue was that if a large enemy spawns on top of you, it may trap you until you die and respawn.

There are moral issues to be expected in a game like this, namely with blood and gore, though even there, DSG isn’t too bad. Enemies will fall apart by their limbs when dying, and will spray pink blood on the walls, but it doesn’t look gruesome in really any case. There is some lighter language used throughout the game (d*mn, *ss), but never excessively. There aren’t really any sexually explicit characters, but the main antagonist does look rather unruly, with a very large exposed belly. Not really sure if it’s too concerning, considering how un-seriously the game takes itself, but the announcer that will sometimes commentate your battles sometimes says “Stick it to the man!,” which I assume to be a joke, but is worth noting either way.

Overall, this is a very good game. I enjoyed most of my time playing Don’t Stop, Girlypop!, even through its imperfections. I think it’s alright for the price, and would be worth playing if you enjoy other movement shooters like ULTRAKILL or other Quake-like games.

Thank you Tiny Meow studio for providing us with a review code!

Bura: The Way the Wind Blows was successfully Kickstarted in October of 2024. Currently it is only available on Steam, but PlayStation 5 and Switch versions are in the works. It’s inspired by Adriatic folklore tales, Studio Ghibli movies, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Bura: The Way the Wind Blows beings with you playing as a young girl named Rina. Rina loves animals and exploring. She has a ferret-like creature that’s always flying by her side, and she can also see spirit animals wandering around. The first chapter takes place in a costal Mediterranean village where Rina can swim in the ocean and use her glider to ride along wind currents. Exploration is key, but this isn’t an open world game. If you venture out too far, a gust of wind will blow you back.

The townsfolk will give you some guidance on what to do if you’re unsure. I also found a helpful YouTube video that has a complete play though done in under two hours. It took me closer to five to see the credits. Throughout the game, you’ll have to re-assemble ancient broken tablets, and revitalize multiple altars to bring harmony back to the forest.

[youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP-LAX1pgqk" autoplay="yes"]

All of the chapters will have common collectibles, including seeds (acorns) and rocks. There are rock arrows that will guide Rina, but each of the arrows is missing a stone, and you can complete them with the rocks you find. These arrows often open up gusts of wind to glide on. Acorns are used at wells, where you can unlock new abilities. Each new ability will cost more acorns to unlock. Some of the abilities include jumping higher and having your animal guide point you in the right direction for your next objective.

Rina can gather plants and herbs that will be added to her journal. There are books to collect that will supplement her journal as well. The journal records Rina’s journey and items that she has collected. The Spirit Forest has at least one logic puzzle where you have to push buttons on four different rocks in a certain order to open a locked door.

With the beginning of each new chapter, Rina will noticeably age. You get to play from her youth to her closing her eyes for the (presumably) last time. There are numerous references to spirits, and Rina is tasked with restoring balance to the places she travels to. To restore harmony, Rina will have to reactivate neglected altars by leading fireflies to them again.

The art style in Bura: The Way the Wind Blows is rather unique. It looks nice at times and incomplete at others. I like the nod to Hayao Miyazaki with the artist character named Mijo.

There is no voice acting, but the piano background music in this game is very relaxing. The sound effects are good, too.

There are some references to violence, and you’ll see a man battling against a spirit animal. No blood is shown. One of the characters says “Oh my god”; whatever god they are referring to doesn’t deserve a capital g, apparently.

Bura: The Way the Wind Blows is rated as playable on the Steam Deck. Sadly, this game doesn’t support Steam Cloud, so your progress is not transferred between devices.

If you don’t mind the spiritual elements, Bura: The Way the Wind Blows is worth checking out. I can definitely see the Studio Ghibli similarities. I haven't played enough modern Zelda games to confirm the developer's inspiration there. If you’re on the fence, there is a demo available. The asking price is reasonable and has been on sale for 25% off.

Thank you WhisperGames for providing us with a review code!

The Real Face of a VTuber is a murder mystery visual novel where you play the role of prosecutor Justin Truth. Until now, Justin hasn’t heard of Vtubers and isn’t very tech savvy. Thankfully, his helpful assistant Emily can bring him up to speed, but she demands payment for her efforts in the form of expensive food/meals. The judge is even more clueless and will have to have things explained in simple terms. If you’re not familiar with VTubers, you’ll learn a bit by playing this game.

The Real Face of a VTuber begins with Justin getting briefed on the case. However, the first mystery Justin wants to solve is finding out who ate his pudding. Unfortunately for him, the pudding mystery isn’t solved until later in the game. Justin will then be shown a picture of the murder victim. It’s quite bloody, but also strange since the victim was wearing a chicken costume. Apparently, that was normal for him as his last name was Chicken. Because of how strange this all is, Justin refers to him as Mr. C for the remainder of the game.

The VTuber agency is rather small with six other employees that Justin will have to interrogate to find clues and evidence to solve two mysteries. Justin needs to find out which employee is the real face (person behind the anime avatar) of the VTuber Kirupa, and who murdered Mr. C. Later in the game you’ll have access to a couple internet sites to gather more clues and talking points for the interrogations.

[youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RqHLxADDqg" autoplay="yes"]

The Real Face of a VTuber is broken down into five chapters, and in order to end each chapter you’ll have to accuse someone with evidence you have collected, and back it up in court. In court you’ll have to cross examine witnesses and provide evidence to counter their statements. You have the right to stop leading questions by yelling “Objection!”. If you fail to do so, Emily will do it on your behalf, but you’ll be scolded afterward. There doesn’t seem to be any negative impacts to failing to call out an objection or referencing the wrong evidence.

There are multiple routes to explore, and later in the game you’ll unlock a hint system which can guide you through unlocking the Truth Route. I was able to see the Truth Route in less than nine hours. However, I only unlocked twelve out of the eighteen Steam achievements available. There is a guide available that can assist in unlocking them all.

I like the art style in this game, and the characters are very expressive. The internet site clones do a good job impersonating the sites they’re clones of. The VTuber avatar is nicely drawn and animated, too!

The background music is pleasant to listen to, and the sound effects are decent. There’s isn’t any voice acting, and generic bleeps are used as text scrolls across the screen.

There are some moral issues worth pointing out in this title. There are multiple instances of blood and death. Language is present (b*stard, d*mn) and the Lord’s name is used in vain. There are references to sex outside of marriage and same-sex relationships. Adult content is part of the story, and you’ll see some alluring images that show cleavage.

If you enjoy murder mysteries, visual novels, or the Ace Attorney series, you’ll want to look into The Real Face of a VTuber. Just make sure you're okay with the moral issues before buying this game. The asking price of $11.99 is reasonable and will keep you entertained for roughly nine hours.

Thank you 3DClouds for sending us this game for review!

Formula Legends is an ambitious project that attempts to condense seventy years of open-wheel racing history into a single, stylized package. Developed by 3DClouds, it sits in a curious middle ground: it has the "chunky," toy-like aesthetic of a casual arcade racer, yet demands the strategic focus of a serious motorsport simulation.

A long time ago… no wait, not gonna say it…. But a while ago, I was really hooked on a particular racing game, and I spent many hours a day playing it. I would build tracks for that game and even became one of the top designers of tracks. Needless to say, I was pretty good at that racing simulator. I would get lost in that distraction because it included multiplayer races and even player interaction via texting. I finally had to quit because it was taking up too much of my life. Then recently, I was asked to review a new sim-racer based on Formula One or ‘F1’ cars and tracks. It sounded intriguing. At first glance, Formula Legends is an arcade-style racer where the player is positioned behind the car in various views, either zoomed out of the car in 3rd person, or zoomed in to the cockpit of the car in 1st person view. Actually, I think it feels like your sitting right behind the driver, because all you see is the driver’s helmet and the front of the car and the tires. While driving in that close view, you can see the tires spin and the driver’s helmet lean and tires move when the car turns on the track. It is an interesting design choice, that the view of the car changes as you progress thru the different eras of the game.

Formula Legends starts out with the Tutorial, which is very helpful to learn the basics of the controls and aspects of the game. I then went to “Race Mode” with a car from the Late 60s era, because they are the slowest and easiest cars to maneuver around the tracks. As I got better at handling the cars, I progressed through the different eras of cars, as each era produced more powerful, faster and more maneuverable cars, so reflexes have to be quicker as the cars advanced. The first race I won was on one of the English tracks, by at least 5 seconds; not sure how that happened, but I’ll take it. During a race, there are two options that can be set called “BRS” and “WRS.” BRS stands for Brake Recovery System and can be activated at key moments to improve acceleration and top speed. The "WRS" stands for Wind Reduction System, which acts as the game's version of the real-world Drag Reduction System (DRS). It is a player-activated mechanic used to reduce drag, increase straight-line speed, and facilitate overtaking when within one second of a preceding car.

The undisputed crown jewel of Formula Legends is its Story Mode. It takes players on a chronological journey starting from the cigar-shaped racers of the 1960s all the way to the high down-force hybrid monsters of the 2020s. Within Story Mode, you re-live the history of Formula One cars from the early 60s to the modern era and unlock new rewards. The story mode takes quite a bit of time to go through: I calculated that the entire story mode is 102 races, with each race approximately 10 to 15 minutes long, depending on the length of each track. That calculates out to about 1000 to 1500 minutes or at least 25 hours of play for one story run. There are also many options you can change after completing each era, including the difficulty of the racing. The harder the racing, the more competitive the AI cars become.

There are other sections on the main menu, which includes Time Attack, where you can try to set record times for yourself on each track, and Race Mode, where you can practice on each map that is unlocked with various cars that are unlocked from each era-specific period. You can also make adjustments to the game on the Settings menu, such as Audio and Video settings, and you can make changes to controller settings as well.

I have played Formula Legends for 70+ hours to date, and I have finally completed a Story Mode run in the game, and I have unlocked all the maps in the game. I was racing in the Mid 70s at one point, and while driving on the Carnival Track, which believe is supposed to be in Brazil, I was actually leading the race and lapping the slower AI cars. During the final lap, my car blew a tire and I was passed by a lot of the cars and finished in 8th. This makes it very important to pit at some point and watch your fuel levels and your tire wear. If you watch the track overview in the lower left corner of the screen to see the positions of the other cars, you can see when the NPC cars are pitting during a race, which is usually about half-way or more thru the race. At the start of each section of each era-specific period of the Story Mode, you can make a few changes to settings of the race, such as how many qualification laps are required for each race, which will allow you to qualify at the front of the field of cars, depending on your qualification time. In some of the tracks, I would qualify at the quickest time, while other tracks, I would struggle to complete the qualification laps and finish in 14th position. Just for fun, I would intentionally qualify in last position, just to see how far up I could finish the race and pass the NPC cars.

One thing I noticed about the NPC cars is that, during the race, the cars will stay in the line of each track that is set as ‘the best race line.’ When you try to pass one of the cars, they will stay in the path, even to the point of bumping you out of the way and off the track, so the car can remain in the path. I was bumped off the track on more than one occasion because of the AI design. The NPC cars will brake VERY hard when coming up to a turn, and if you’re following too close to one of the cars, you will hit the car in front of you.

There are quite a lot of settings available to make adjustments to Formula Legends, like screen resolution, changes to the in-game heads-up display, and you can make adjustments to audio and graphics settings. The graphics are not bad for a smaller game; I understand that they lower the resolution of the scenery so that they can take advantage of the actual drivability of the cars and make that a lot more realistic. You can set the graphics to ‘Low’ if you have a low-powered machine, or to ‘Ultra-High” for higher powered machines. I set the graphics to ‘Low’ to see how it looks, and it is strange, because as you race around the track you have “texture pop-up,” and the scenery is automatically created around the track, then disappears after the cars go by. This works great if you have a low powered computer or older generation consoles so that the game minimizes stuttering. I usually put my video settings to the highest possible for the game, since I have pretty high-powered computers.

Formula Legends works great in Windows and Linux, and in my opinion, it actually runs better in Linux. The graphics in the game, while not considered even close to the realism of high-budget AAA racer, are good enough to be enjoyable to look at, although you really are not looking at the scenery while racing around the tracks at high speed. What makes this sim-racer work is the attention to detail in the evolution of the sport. The era-specific tracks are very entertaining and are not static as the eras change. A vintage track might be lined with hay bales and surrounded by rolling countryside, while its modern counterpart is a sprawling, high-tech track with advanced safety barriers. The visual filters are unique for added style to the game, which uses clever designs and optional filters (like a grainy film look for the '60s or a CRT effect for the '90s) to ground you in each decade. Since it lacks official FIA licensing, Formula Legends uses "off-brand" names that will make F1 fans chuckle. You’ll be racing for teams like "Ferenzo" (Ferrari) and "Bonton" (Benetton) against legends like "Al John" (Alan Jones) and “Luis Hammerton” (Louis Hamilton). The same goes for track selection, so the names of the tracks are close to the real tracks; like “Riviera Street” (Monaco) in France; or “Golden Dunes (Abu Dabi) in the Emirates; and my favorite, “Roulette Streets” (New Orleans).

While the concept of this game is stellar, the execution is currently uneven. Many players have reported a "laggy" steering feel. The cars often suffer from heavy understeer, and there is a slight delay between controller input and the car’s reaction that takes several hours to get used to. The AI difficulty is polarized. "Easy" is often a cakewalk, while "Normal" can feel like an elite-level challenge. On certain tracks (notably the version of Monaco), the AI's speed seems supernaturally fast compared to their performance elsewhere. Currently, the game only offers solo racing. The absence of split-screen or online multiplayer is a significant miss for an arcade-style racer. Another nice addition would be the inclusion of a replay mode during or after a race.

In my opinion, Formula Legends is really good. I really like it. The versatility, the functionality, the various and plentiful settings are truly remarkable. I've been playing it for a few weeks now. It took me more than a while to get used to racing in this game. Although, I am not used to using a controller, so it did take me a long time to get used to driving with one. I used a Turtle Beach Rematch Core Wired Controller for Xbox, which is supported by Formula Legends. The driving is limited by my controller and the set turning radius of the cars. I'm sure, if you're using a wheel, turning radius might be a lot tighter and driving should be much more fluid. It's more like an arcade game than a realistic driving simulator. You have a lot of options you could choose from; I feel it's really quite remarkable.

Formula Legends is a "love letter" to Formula F1 racing without the annoying FIA licensing. It is an earnest, charming, and content-rich homage that will delight F1 history buffs. However, its wonky physics and unpolished AI means it isn't quite the "Mario Kart for F1" it appears to be on the surface, but it is getting close. 3DClouds has a very active discord server and actively interacts with players that not only find bugs, but offer up suggestions. All of this shows in the recent patch 1.3 that was just released for Formula Legends. The patch 1.3 introduced many new updates to the game, including “full steering wheel support,” with complete input remapping of controls. They added a completely rebuilt collision system showing actual car damage. Before this, when a collision happened, your car would end up hitting the wall, but no damage would be visible. The patch also updated various audio and video settings to “improve the overall racing experience.”

Bottom line, if you are a die-hard F1 fan who wants to experience the evolution of the sport in a stylish, casual setting, then this racing simulation game is definitely worth it. Formula Legends is a charming, budget-friendly "love letter" to Formula1 history that balances arcade fun with surprising strategic depth. It is very fun and worth your attention and time, once you get used to the controls and the lower level graphics, which do not detract from the fun of the racing experience that 3DClouds offers with Formula Legends.

Thank you XSEED Games for providing us with a review code!

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma begins with you selecting your character's appearance (male or female). After your character is selected and named, you’ll find them doing battle in the sky while riding a white dragon. Their opponent is the character that wasn’t selected who rides a black dragon. Unfortunately, your character loses the battle and wakes up without their memories and a friendly sheep-like monster named Woolby talking to them.

You awaken in Spring village, or at least what’s left of it. The dragon rider you were fighting against has been stealing away runes that sustain these season-themed villages. If you want to save the villages, their deities, and the world in general, you’ll have to face off against that dragon rider again. Until then, you’ll have to focus on revitalizing the towns and their deities first.

When you first arrive at these villages, their deities are so weak that they can only appear in your character’s dreams. To strengthen these gods, you’ll have to level up the villages by attracting more villagers, who in turn will worship them. Villagers will need food and housing, so you’ll have to ensure that there’s enough farmland and farmers to work the fields to produce food. Adding various buildings and decorations is also crucial to leveling up the village. Each structure you add will also boost your character’s stats, so it’s a win-win situation.

You can boost your relationship with the villagers by accepting and completing various requests they post on the request board. Outside of the villages are places to explore with many monsters to conquer or possibly tame. As you strengthen bonds with villagers and gods, they can be in your fighting party. You can have up to six party members, but can only have three active at a time. If a party member gets injured or KO’d, you can rotate them out with another.

[youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y154d6Ph5hA" autoplay="yes"]

The battles in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma are real-time. The enemies and bosses have elemental weaknesses. As your character befriends gods, they’ll give you their sacred weapons that have unique attacks and elemental affinities to exploit. To use special powers, you’ll have to spend some of your rune points. Rune points and health points can be replenished in battle by consuming various food items and elixirs. Along with save spots, you’ll often find cooking areas where you can prepare foods before a boss battle. To save time, you can quick travel between save spots.

There are multiple ways to bond with villagers and gods. You can talk to them, hang out with them, give them gifts, or add them to your battle party. Your bond level with people will increase as you do things they like. After a few levels you may be able to do relationship quests, which is a prerequisite before you can start dating them.

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma allows characters to date people of the same gender. After marriage having children with a same-sex partner is also possible. During the dating and marriage phase you can assign each other nicknames. One if the bachelors lets you assign yourself the nickname dumb*ss. I have to admit that this made me laugh.

Other language you’ll encounter in this game is the casual use of hell and d*mn. One of the villagers is a fortune teller who keeps telling you that your name is a bad omen and should be changed. When you visit beaches you’ll unlock swimsuits for the character accompanying you. Some of the swimwear is more modest than others. There is some sexual humor, but for the most part, this game is pretty tame in that regard. You can give hugs and kisses to your spouse. Taking naps together is an innocent option that sounds worse than it is.

Fighting and violence is commonplace, but there is no blood. Souls of defeated enemies are sent back to a place called the Forest of Beginnings. There is a character death in the game’s story, but I won’t be spoiling any of those details here!

Visually, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is very colorful, and all of the monsters and people are nicely detailed. This game is powered by the Unreal engine and it looks great! The boss battles have a lot of eye candy.

On the sound front, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma does not disappoint. The characters are nicely voice acted and there’s a lot of variety there. The sound effects and background music are well done too.

I spent nearly fifty hours with this game and it went by so fast. While marriage is possible before completing the main storyline, it is much easier to do so after the final boss battle. After seeing the credits roll you can still play and grow your family, bonds, and villagers. If desired, you can re-write your fate by marrying different characters. I really enjoyed the dating scenes, and I highly recommend dating multiple characters before settling down. If you are a fan of Rune Factory games, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is worth checking out!

Thank you Zen Studios for providing us with a review code for this table!

In the 80s and 90s, Elvira was a popular, seductively-dressed, vampire-themed horror hostess that would add sexualized commentary to B-horror movies and science fiction films. Two films were spawned from the series, and a comeback show came out in 2010-2011. Elvira made more appearances in 2014 and was in the 40th anniversary special that aired in 2021.

At the height of Elvira’s popularity, Williams released the pinball table Elvira and The Party Monsters in 1989. You can play the table in its original (but digitized!) design or the Zen Studios enhanced version that has various animation and special effects. Along with bats flying out of the bumpers, you’ll also be treated to a swimsuit-clad Elvira lounging in a cauldron on the lower left-hand side of the table. She’ll throw a hissy fit and slap the water whenever you lose a ball.

Losing a ball is easier to do in this table compared to other Zen Studio offerings. The physics cause the ball to go straight between the flippers right after launch. There’s nothing a player can do to avoid this fate. Not surprisingly, there are multiple negative Steam reviews about this.

[youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlZ-gEi3ywc" autoplay="yes"]

This table supports extra balls that can be obtained by getting several balls up the right ramp, which is referred to as the Party Punch Ramp. On the bottom of the table near the flippers is Elvira’s name. You can illuminate each letter of her name by sending the ball up the left ramp known as the Monster Slide. You’ll earn a million points for lighting up her name. Multiballs are also possible in this table.

Like other Pinball FX tables, you can play three different game modes. The Classic Mode gives you three balls and the ability to save your progress if needed. For an added challenge you can limit yourself to one ball, 200 flips, distance, or three hundred seconds. Arcade has all of the same options as Classic but with power-ups like score boost, slow motion, ball save, and bumper bonus. Hotseat is the local multiplayer mode that lets you swap turns between a maximum of four players. Whoever ends with the highest score wins.

Pinball FX - Williams™ Pinball: Elvira and The Party Monsters runs well on the Steam Deck. However, saving your name in the leaderboard is a little clunky with the onscreen keyboard. Since the onscreen keyboard covers the entire screen, minimize it to double check your spelling before pressing enter when submitting your name to the leaderboard! The Steam Deck’s rumble doesn’t do this game justice. I highly recommend playing with a controller that supports rumble feedback.

Pinball FX - Williams™ Pinball: Elvira and The Party Monsters has some appropriateness issues not present in other pinball tables we have reviewed. Elvira is known for showing off her cleavage, and her assets are prominently displayed here. The sound clips seem to be authentic to those in the original table from 1989, and there are some sexual innuendos here. There are references to the undead, which is not surprising given the horror-movie theme.

The asking price for this table is $9.99, which is rather expensive compared to previously released DLC. I have seen it on sale for $6.99. Even that price is more than other tables sell for individually. I would only recommend picking up this DLC if you’re an Elvira fan.

Thank you to Colorgrave for sending us this game to review!

Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils is a 2D platformer from indie dev studio Colorgrave. Colorgrave have made a name for themselves developing several well-polished, interesting games that understand the scope they can achieve and generally have some very good ideas and execution. Curse Crackers is another of their titles that fit this description. Right from the start, you’re dropped into a tale of how their world was created and the mythos behind it: a great dragon once wrestled with light to form the world, and created seven daughters from seven of its scales. These were each gifted their own talents and personalities, assigned to protect the world their mother had created, and went on to develop their own races and cultures. In time, however, they no longer saw eye-to-eye. When one of the daughters grew content with malice towards the others, the scales devolved into war until their mother returned and erased her rebelling daughter and all its children. Once the cutscene ends, you’re introduced to the game’s main character, Belle, as well as her bell-shaped assistant, Chime. The game gives you a short movement tutorial before heading out to a date with a knight named Clyde. Unfortunately, it seems an old friend from childhood, Bonnie, has decided to kidnap Belle’s boyfriend, and now you’ve got to track her down across the world to get him back.

Belle was once an acrobat in a circus, and so the game’s movement is heavily derived from that. Belle has your normal platforming standards like running, jumping, and using ladders, but the game has an extensive movement kit. By holding down before jumping, you can do an even higher jump than usual, and by pressing diagonally in a direction to slide before jumping, you can do a massive horizontal long jump. It has the same kind of jump interactivity as Cuphead, where you can bounce off objects while jumping to gain more height or keep yourself in the air. Puzzles and enemies both make use of this, requiring you to bounce on them to break targets or defeat enemies. You can also throw Chime vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, allowing you to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, or perform even more movement options. If you throw Chime below you, you can bounce off him to gain more height; and if you throw him diagonally into a corner, you can catch him as he’s bouncing back to gain a ton of momentum horizontally and vertically to span a gap. Some enemies or platforms require you to use Chime on them before you can interact or jump off them, so even when not using him for movement, you’ll frequently be using Chime to help clear a path, or make a way where there wasn’t one. Each level also has a goal at the end that you have to hit with Chime to complete.

There are a lot of collectibles to be found throughout the game based on the challenge you want to impose on yourself. Each level has three roses hidden somewhere in the stage that might require a keen eye, testing invisible walls, or pulling off hard platforming techniques to reach. You can also do break-the-target minigames in each stage to earn a token, with other tokens coming from beating a level quickly, hitting the goal from far away, or beating a level without taking any damage. By the time I’d beaten the game, I’d still only gotten 33% completion without avoiding collectibles, so it’s safe to say there’s a challenge here for those who love the game and want to 100% it.

This is heavily reflected in the level design. Earlier parts of the game are built around the basics of movement and using Chime. They, admittedly, feel a bit dull or boring due to the simplicity of the stages and the relatively simple graphics and setting. However, as you get deeper into the game, it really starts to test your knowledge of its movement system and expects you to rise to the challenge. Enemies start becoming more than “hit them and they explode”; the game expects you to understand all of the tools in your kit and how to combine them to clear gaps or heights, and the puzzles continue to increase in difficulty. The latter half of the game is where the designers of Curse Crackers really hit their stride, the movement system just clicked, and I felt compelled to keep seeing what each new stage had in store.

Previously touching upon it, the pixel art in this game starts off fairly plain in the first zone. The game is heavily inspired by Game Boy Color/Advance titles with small character sprites, a limited perspective and color palette, and crushed dialogue portraits and fonts. As you get further in, however, the sprites and color palettes really start to evolve. Backgrounds become more detailed and stand out from the foreground better, enemies have more interesting designs, and the tilesets used for platforms and objects start to shine with creativity. The final two stages of the game, especially, were incredibly captivating. Enemies change parts of their color palette based on the stage you’re in, ensuring that they always fit their surroundings while feeling fresh. Animations for characters, enemies, and objects are incredibly fluid and have a lot of personality behind them. Belle will start to stretch if you leave her idle, and pulling from her history as an acrobat, she spins in the air when jumping and bounces with joy if you pull off a high jump and land without issue.

It replicates and refines the GBA’s style so well that I actually feel like this was ideally made to be seen on smaller displays, both to and against its favor. When playing in windowed mode at a small resolution on my PC, which makes the screen-size roughly twice that of a GBA, the game looked excellent. It was incredibly sharp, details popped into view, and everything had full clarity and didn’t feel bunched together. In fullscreen with a 34” monitor, however, things become a bit less clear. Portraits and fonts that look perfect when smaller start to appear messy and are difficult to parse when stretched out to fullscreen due to the low resolution of the sprites. I wouldn’t consider this a con, per se, more a flaw of the artstyle they are emulating. Nonetheless, I wanted to bring it up for those who may struggle with reading difficult fonts or typefaces.

This emulation of style extends to both the sound effects and music, which are largely made of bitcrushed effects, classic square-wave sounds, and some nostalgic soundfonts. Bitcrushed white noise can be heard in the whooshing of Chime flying by, the puffs enemies release when defeated, and the sliding of Belle against the ground. Classic square-wave sounds common from the NES and Game Boy/GB Color are all over the sound of this game from the music, to Belle’s jumping, Chime bouncing against objects, coins being picked up, and much more. But it isn’t all bits and chirps, as soundfonts usually back up the driving chiptune music with plucky harps, sweeping strings, funky drums, and more. The actual compositions themselves are exceptional multi-layered driving melodies that do an excellent job at keeping you moving and inspired. It’s a great fusion of instruments and chiptune that I’d easily listen to even outside of the game.

Controls are possibly the most essential aspect of a platformer. Some games, like Celeste, live or die on ultra-precise, quick-to-respond controls that require you to make micro-adjustments in the span of a few seconds. Traditional platformers, like the 2D Mario titles, focus more on momentum and ensuring you don’t overcommit to a bad jump. Curse Crackers falls somewhere between the two with a mixed focus of momentum and precision movement. Some puzzles and stages expect you to master movement to keep chain bounces up so as to not fall, while others expect you to make quick adjustments in the air to avoid falling. Platformers are best played with controllers, so I tend to play them as such. Movement is done with the D-Pad or analog sticks, while jumping, throwing Chime, or using items is done with the face buttons, and you can toggle running by holding the analog triggers. Keyboard controls are a bit less refined, with movement done using either the arrow keys or WASD, while the face button controls are replaced by ZXCV, and running done by shift. It’s not a particularly comfortable setup, but fairly standard for platformers, so I can’t fault them for it.

Finally, we arrive at the moral concerns for this title. The game features a ton of lore hidden behind books that you encounter in peoples’ houses or gather from levels, and it paints a tale of conflict between the different races of the world born from the scales and their abilities, some even being discriminated against for their abilities or appearance. There are also multiple characters with partially revealing outfits showing some cleavage, with one very egregious example towards the end of the game I’d best describe as bikini-like. It’s necessary to complete the game, and they fill the whole screen as a giant. Some light language is present in the title, as well as some cartoon violence and depictions of blood. This leaves Curse Crackers in an odd spot where it feels like it wasn’t really designed for anyone in particular. The game can, at times, feel juvenile and like it was made for kids, then suddenly you’re dealing with mature emotional conflict, discrimination, multi-generational conflicts between different races, and skimpily dressed characters.

All in all, Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils is a great platformer with a lot of charm and polish. It has a strong identity in its gameplay, visuals, and sound, but it isn’t revolutionary—the team knew what they could achieve and perfected the game based on that scope. I highly recommend it even at full price, though with only around 5 hours required to beat the game, those who might be a bit tighter on funds should wait for a sale if this interests them.

- Remington

Thank you Twice Different for sending us an early access copy of this game!

Winnie's Hole is a title I am going to do my darndest to say as few times as possible in this review. It's Winnie-the-Pooh meets body horror in a deckbuilding roguelite with Darkest Dungeon visual aesthetics. You play as a virus growing inside of Winnie as he walks through the forest. As he travels, he is repeatedly attacked by both old friends and other woodland critters who are rightfully horrified by the unsettling things happening to their furry friend.

A single completion of the first run reveals that a plague doctor and his rodent sidekicks are using Winnie as some kind of viral testing host, as they can extract the virus at the end of the run and turn Winnie back to normal. The plague doctor tells Winnie this is all in pursuit of curing the virus in others; Winnie will sometimes stumble upon other woodland residents who appear to be suffering from similar mutations. If Winnie wants to save them, he needs to repeatedly go through different areas of the wood and allow the virus to mutate in different ways to help the doctor find his "cure".

I want to make it clear that I have very strong opinions on this game using one of the most wholesome cartoon icons of the last century for this dark and disturbing story and imagery. I will say, it took some work on my part to get over it enough to fully enjoy what this game has to offer. After my first run, I was just glad it was over and I could begin writing down my thoughts. Going back on the second day, though, when the shock factor had worn off and I could focus more on the actual gameplay, the more fun I had.

While it took a little getting used to, there is something interesting going on here. You pick a starting mutation for the virus that loads your deck with a series of cards that perform different actions when used in battle as well as a perk and a combat ability. From there, you alternate between bouts of combat and exploration inside Winnie's body as the virus mutates. In both gameplay segments, Winnie uses the same set of (usually) 3 polyominoes to either select cards that are laid out on his brain (what the game calls the "Brain board") to select attacks, or to traverse the inside of his body and reach resources for further mutations. During combat, you start out being able to use any of Winnie's polyominoes to select combat cards, but then cannot use it again until you have used all of them once. In his body, you can use each one once, and then the virus takes the path to whichever node is closest to the last polyomino you set down.

After each combat, the player is awarded with a Perk, a Mutation, or some other passive bonus. Perks give passive bonuses during combat, like physical attacks healing Winnie if the opponent is bleeding or physical damage being converted to a shield for Winnie. Some Perks also provide some bonus for selecting squares outside of the Brain board, so even using oddly shaped polyominoes can provide extra benefit even if they only select one or two cards. Mutations are the cards that get added to the deck, giving Winnie access to new attacks. Other passive bonuses are things like giving a single card in Winnie's deck a modifier, like triggering multiple times on use or being used automatically without having to select it.

Visually, Winnie's Hole appears to borrow a lot of its art and animation style from Darkest Dungeon. The description on Steam says the "gritty art [is] inspired by old school Nickelodeon and Brothers' Grimm fairytales." The animations are pretty simplistic, all told. Obviously, Winnie is a horrifying mess half of the time, and he's not the only one. Some creatures get very similar mutations in combat, while others, like Owl, just become raging beasts intent on stopping Winnie in his tracks.

As for sound design, the music mostly alternates between a melancholy track that plays during the exploration sections and a bass-y, muted track that plays during combat. The sound design is fine, if the sound effects from the body horror elements don't completely gross you out. In fact, putting on a headset while playing really emphasized just how...squishy...sounding some of the effects are.

Moving on to stability, I remind the reader that Winnie's Hole is currently in early access. That being said, I did notice some issues with controller support and gameplay, though they were relatively minor. Firstly, Winnie's Hole has native controller support; however, if you turn on Steam Controller input, then your input gets doubled. This was an issue for me only because I use an SNES-layout controller, so the A/B and X/Y on-screen prompts were opposite to my actual controller layout. When I attempted to turn on Steam Input so I could swap them, it basically made the game entirely unplayable. I opted to stick with keyboard and mouse after that, just to avoid confusion on my part, and because I couldn't be bothered to hook up a different controller during my first session. On my second, I went with a DualShock 4, and all of the correct icons appeared automatically throughout the game, so native Xbox and Playstation controllers seem to work just fine. Another bug was with one of the Perks, which was supposed to cause the first physical attack each combat to inflict the Bleed status; it did not work on the Uppercut and Punch Mutations, despite them being physical attacks. Finally, when pressing "Quit" from the Main Menu to close the game, a popup which confirms that you would like to exit the game appears, but clicking "Quit" in the popup doesn't actually close the game. I had to Alt+F4 my way out.

Where do I even begin on the moral elements of this game? You've got a psychopathic doctor lying to Winnie and using him as a guinea pig for his virus. Winnie doesn't really want to fight anyone, and is constantly talking with the enemies about how he'd still like to be friends with them; it doesn't even seem like Winnie has control over his extra body parts, from the way the dialog goes. Yet if there were no combat, the virus wouldn't mutate, and the doctor wouldn't get what he wants. Likewise, if the scared woodland critters would just stay out of Winnie's way instead of attacking him, there's very little chance anyone would be getting hurt. So the violence aspect here is bizarre, to say the least.

I didn't note any language during my time playing Winnie's Hole (with the exception of one Perk being called "Test Tickle"), and the virus seems to be purely "dark science" as opposed to anything occultic or supernatural. And while there is a bleed mechanic and violence, it's not clear that Winnie ever actually "kills" anyone, considering everyone is as right as rain every time he starts a new run. He knocks people off into the stratosphere when they're defeated, but a cutscene during the battle with the plague doctor's rodent assistants shows the one just knocked into the ceiling, alive, conscious, and flashing a little X as we stare up at him from his bottom. Honestly, it's kind of amazing how a game so darkly-themed could have so little besides how disturbing it is to witness in terms of moral issues.

Winnie's Hole is a Steam-exclusive at the time of writing, but it's system requirements are extremely low. The game is only $14.99 on Steam, which isn't too bad for what it offers. At the moment, there are only two main paths, and I was able to complete them both in just about 5 hours of gameplay. However, there are a lot of unique strains, only around half of which I unlocked, so there is still plenty of replay potential just in what is currently released. In terms of gameplay, it's pretty fun. Body horror isn't my personal cup of tea, and the fact that it's poor Winnie-the-Pooh being taken on this particular journey is disturbing, but I have a feeling that's what the developers were going for. I definitely wouldn't recommend this to kids, but for more mature deckbuilding roguelite enthusiasts, this game kind of grows on you.

-maestro_dana