While exploring the Town of the Exiled I encountered another one of those random bosses - Jade the Knowledgeable (who is oddly purple). His attacks are crazy fast and his range is insane. He also throws mines. You can either spam him with magic or do a 50/50 by jumping as you approach him to land an aerial attack or to be hit by his rising slash. Thankfully he doesn't have too much health so I beat him and got the Purple Jade dual blades. In the middle of the town I found a merchant named Stanley who protected himself with a magic circle. He sells unique items and you can see all the equipment you've found in magic spheres in his shop. A book I bought off him with the title Words of Shenlong jogged my memory of the sleeping fairy I found in another area. I went back to her and she awoke. Her name is Se and she only deals in special coins, some of which I've found on my journey. Apparently Se is quite powerful because Ifree is afraid of her. One thing to mention about the Town of the Exiled is that on the lower levels there is a horrid purple mist and you can barely see where you are going - it's really painful on the eyes and I don't know how you get rid of it.

At one point Renee met Ethan the mage. He was looking for the Town of Exiled and he is looking to purge those spirits who whe sees as an affront to the Goddess. Then I reached the manta ray and used the whistle to communicate with it. This allows you to ride it and you are presented with an overview of a map where you can use the manta ray to travel to different shores and thus reach new areas. In one of those Renee met Nicole again who was next to a giant teapot and cups. This presents a puzzle where you have to play a melody, but the tones of the cups sounded weirdly samey, so I couldn't solve it.

In a desert area I found Emily - a cook who is seeking ingredients for her specific meals.

Penny's Big Breakaway is a 3D platformer from the people who created the highly acclaimed Sonic Mania, so I had high expectations. You play as Penny - a girl with a living yo-yo who is a performer. One day she went to a Gala and performed in front of Emperor Eddie, but her living yo-yo attacked the monarch, stripped him to his undies and embarrassed him. Now Penny must run from the law enforced by Eddie's penguin army. The story is pretty basic, but it gets the job done.

The controls shocked me. I expected a normal 3D platformer where you use your yo-yo for combat, but you also use it for most basic maneuvers. The actions are pretty basic - you have a jump button, an attack button and a ride button. The ride button creates a vehicle from the yo-yo, which allows you to scale vertical walls if you have the right momentum. The attack button serves multiple purposes. Pressing it once launches it in the direction you are facing damaging enemies. Pressing it 2 times quickly pulls Penny forward in something of a dash. Pressing and holing the button in mid-air creates a pivot for the yo-yo and lets you swing. I have a question - why? Why put all these moves on a single button when there are other unused buttons on the controller? While fighting you have to wait for the attack to hit an enemy before pressing the button again, otherwise you may dash. When being in the air you have to time your presses carefully because one of 3 moves can come out between a hit in the air, swing and a dash. The controls are one of the key elements for enjoying a platformer and here you are fighting against them.

In terms of level design, each stage has 3 extra missions and 3 secret coins to discover. The missions usually involved collecting a number of items in a specific part of the level or bringing something to an NPC. The emperor's penguins will swarm you and if 5 of them attach themselves to you, you have to restart from the last checkpoint. The way to shake them off is to perform a dash or a swing. I found it more useful to spin the right stick which creates a spin attack not letting them touch you in the first place. Plus this way you are not risking flying off the stage by performing a move you didn't want. The end of the level is called a Busker Stage. It is made of 3 concentrated circles and the closer to the centre you land, the more moves you get to perform in a final QTE minigame earning you more points in the level. If you get above a certain score you earn a gallery image. The QTEs are not that hard, but actually landing in the centre can be tricky depending on where the Busker Stage is positioned.

In one stage you are chased around by a giant ball of penguins and despite the shoddy controls I had fun. The special coins unlock challenge stages, which can earn you more pictures if you manage to get the required score. Those are quite tricky though. You can spend the regular gold coins at a shop, but it only offers items giving Penny boosts just for the next played stage.

In our quest to purge the heretic I've found a new weapon - the Heavy Bolter, which act like a machine gun with no reloads. It is the most powerful gun in my arsenal and quite effective against taking down tougher enemies like Chaos Space Marines and the new flying demons. One cool new secret I discovered was the Assault Doctrine Melee Smash giving you a rage mode state for 30 seconds where your chainsword does massive damage. The next stage introduces a new type of foe - the Aspiring Champion. This traitor will charge at you and when you kill him he'll resurrect, so you have to reduce his body to mush to be certain he's dead.

The run didn't start great since I never got decent 3-star champs until the second world, when I obtained Tomoe, whose special move is a forward going combo attack. In the 3rd world I bought a Resurrection Doll from one of the stores, which was great, as well as the Plucky Herb Pot, giving you an extra herb when you clear a room with less than 50% HP. I had to buy Halvor, whose 3-hit alternating combo is a pretty good special move.

After all that I finally reached the Command Centre Core where Greigh was waiting for our heroine. He babbles on about destiny and then reveals that he was actually a champ created by Noah's father. He teleports a lot and throws a ton of different projectiles. One of his more annoying moves is a body slam after a teleport, which is pretty fast and difficult to avoid. When you deal some damage to him he'll summon other champs to fight for him and they are the shadow versions, who deal a lot of damage, so one has to be careful when facing them. Thankfully they drop a herb when you defeat them, so you can recover some of the hits you take. When you defeat him, Greigh gets into a giant robot and you must fight him again. He will mostly attack with the robot's arms and they deal a lot of damage, but after a couple of repetitions you can learn the patterns. After taking some damage he will start using lasers - first a spinning cross one and then ones which cover the screen, so you need to quickly find a safe spot. The bastard actually managed to kill me once, so I was glad to have a Resurrection Doll, so I finished him off. Gregh is then defeated and started to disappear since he used his Mana to control the machine. Noah showed concern for him and he revealed that her father is actually alive - Greigh just drained his Mana, but didn't kill him. The misguided champ then faded away. Zipper then decides to remain in the ruins as their guardian and has a touching goodbye with Noah. Zipper gives Noah a rainbow as a present as she continues her journey to find her father. A great feel-good ending.

When I finished the game I saw that I still had an extra Resurrection Doll which was reassuring. This unlocks Hell mode - an ultra-hard difficulty where Noah dies from a single hit - I'm definitely not playing that. Another more reasonable difficulty is Very Hard where the enemies are tougher. There are also the Witch's Trials which are a truly rogue-like challenge modes where your upgrades don't apply. Zipper is also added as a playable character - his health is lower and he can't use potions, but he can start the game with better spirits. I bought the final damage boost with the Mana I acquired.

Stage 6 is filled with traps and you fight some weird golems. At times it also has annoying foreground objects obscuring your vision - this is never good design in any game. At the end a statue of a warrior comes to life and you have to fight him For a guy with a shield and sword he has a surprising number of projectiles, including summoning a dragon. When you defeat him the story decides to go off the rails. His name is Beowulf and he's apparently the first human Contra. That's right - Contra is now some chosen hero title based on DNA rather than the name of the organisation. This is a prime example of how over-explaining can become stupid. The Lemeris artefact is supposedly sent by an alien race called Sol to influence human evolution and create these warriors. It also creates a shield around Earth so that the evil empire of Zagard can't create wormholes near the planet and conquer it. It ALSO has a record of Sol's history and civilisation. Come on. Varanis then appears to steal the artefact since he was disguised as Stanley. He is of course a Zagard commander. The end boss of the level is a terminator-like robot shooting lasers - it's not too difficult if you cling to the walls and avoid them. The best weapon here are the missiles while overloading the rest of the arsenal to keep yourself alive.

Stage 7 becomes more flesh-like. The mid-level boss is a flying monster spitting acid, which is a pain to avoid. The boss is a scorpion-like creature, which grows a face on its ass, which spits lasers. Turns out the flamethrower shield isn't effective against that, making it even more useless. With the money I gathered I purchased more lives. Stage 8 is rather short until you meet Varanis again. He has a variety of energy weapons, so you have to be constantly on your guard, but they are not too fast to react. When you defeat him, he destabilises the Lemeris, basically turning it into a bomb. To make things worse for our heroes a giant alien eats them, so they have to fight their way out of its belly and then fight the giant monster. It's basically a huge xenomorph. You have to target its eyes while avoiding all the garbage it throws at you. It's surprisingly not too difficult. It explodes and our heroes are saved on a helicopter. Lucia then activates a portal with the Lemeris so that the explosion is teleported elsewhere. She sacrifices herself heroically, but I don't care about her. The destruction of the artefact however meant that Earth is no longer protected and the Zagard empire invades - you get a shitty cliffhanger ending, so despite all your efforts you basically lose. Bummer. Oh, and in an after credits scene you see Brad turning into a werewolf and he was supposedly genetically modified to hunt Bill and Lance. This is what some unknown chick is telling you at least, but at this point I don't care.

Operation Galuga is a mixed bag. While the gameplay is solid and I like the upgrade system (which can be a bit on the grindy side), the visuals are all over the place, sometimes making it hard to see enemy projectiles. This could be a fun co-op experience. The game has challenges and an arcade mode, which skips the awful story. The narrative is mindbogglingly idiotic. Imagine you get a sequel to Predator where Arnold's character turns out to be genetically engineered by a different alien race - it completely ruins his achievement and badassery. Like all Wayforward games this one is way too expensive for what it is. I don't recommend it until you find it at a deep sale.

While walking around I just encountered a boss called Loss, The Galefeather. It's some sort of a winged monster, which attacks you with its spear. From time to time it will charge at you and throw 2 types of projectiles, but overall it's a pretty easy fight. The whip is still the best weapon since it gives you enough distance to dodge on time. Just after the fight you find the Feather of the Windwalker afterimage giving you the ability to double jump. I also met Martin - a blacksmith, who was scared by the giant bird and informed you he'd now return to Resting Town. Later on I saw that you can buy and sell equipment from him, but he can't upgrade what you have. You also get the ability to downkick those fuzzy flying creatures giving you a bounce. Maybe you always had that ability, but it was never explicitly stated.

Next I reached an area filled with water-based monsters. There I decided to try out the great sword weapon type, which has a nice arc to hit enemies above you, plus it does decent damage. At one point I found a room full of treasure with a sleeping fairy in it, but there was no way for me to wake her up.

Later on I found a haunted town filled with ghosts and zombies. In a building here I encountered a female ghost named Madeline who was looking for her husband. I also ran into a boss fight against a blob monster called Twisted Legion - you fight smaller varieties of that in the level. It will summon short pillars of poison from the ground and spew some orbs from time to time. The best move is to use the whip in the air - this way you deal damage while you are safe from its ground attacks.

Leaving the haunted town I ran into another boss fight against a Crystallised Wolf. Its attacks are pretty easy to avoid, since they have a slow startup, but at one point it will spam projectiles at you. When you defeat it you reach a big manta ray, but you can't communicate with it. Then I went south through a room with some really tough enemies which had a glowing sphere in the centre of it. This has got to be important, but I couldn't interact with it at all.

The Field of Pyro is filled with fire-based enemies as the name suggests. When you meet Karsa here he warns Renee that the monsters are pretty fierce and Ifree also confirms that the Goliath of Pyro is the strongest one, meaning that his is more of an endgame area. I went back to the Town of the Exiled and on top of it I encountered Auss The Lunatic Mastermage. This was a challenging boss battle. She floats in the air, so all your ground attacks are ineffective and the same goes for the spells. I had to change to the earth column magic to reach her. Auss shoot a variety of different projectiles and some of them are even homing. She will summon energy beams from the ground, but you usually have enough time to run to a safe spot. Near the end of the battle she will start casting a massive spell - you do minuscule damage with your physical attacks, so I decided to use the areal whip move, which is by far the best one it the game to do multiple hits. Then on a whim I activated an Geo column, which finished her off. She dropped the Clammy Whistle which had a manta ray picture on it, so I'll have to go back to see what the fish does. I also obtained a Key To the Room of Ritual, and I have no idea what this opens. After the battle we met a female ghost called Rosalia. She reveals that Mastermage Auss wanted to perform a ritual on the town folk to separate their souls from their bodies, but it went wrong and everybody became evil spirits. Rosalia apparently has an inn and is another merchant in this world. I found a Divine Seed and I have no idea what it does.

The time came to tackle the last circle of Hell - Heresy. Early on I got Guy Fawkes, who applies 5 Decay to the enemy at the start of the battle giving you essentially 15 free damage when you attack. In fact I managed to upgrade him at the Anvil of Souls making him apply 10 Decay instead (55 extra damage in total). One of the tougher fights was against Chernobog (a miniboss), who hit really hard - each of his damage cards was about 30+ points, so shields were essential. I finished him by imploding the Stigma on him, dealing massive damage. While struggling to use the Anvil of Souls due to the frankly broken UI, I just realised that you can only equip 2 Damned at a time unless you upgrade your character.

Eventually I reached the boss of this circle - Lucifer The Morning Star. His attacks start normal, but a lot of them have massive Boosts on them, meaning the longer you play the more dangerous he becomes. Lucifer's redraw ability damages you and it also has 3 Boost, so you can't really redraw until you have the best cards to avoid damage from his regular cards. From what I can tell it's best to finish him as quickly as possible and I did that by Imploding the Stigma on him. Disappointingly there is no ending for Jeanne - just some text how she's the ruler of Hell now that Lucifer is defeated. Back at Nadir I unlocked Cortes as a playable character and some more card packs for Vlad. Honestly though, I have no motivation to replay the game with these 2 characters (who should've been unlocked from the start).

Nadir is an interesting deck builder game. The system is simple, but there is a lot of strategy involved on which enemy cards you'd want to activate. I really love the grim-dark aesthetic and creature designs. The game definitely has some UI issues here and there and the Anvil of Souls is downright broken and nearly unusable. Even with all that I would still recommend the game. It doesn't have much replay incentives once you complete it, but you can have a lot of fun trying the other characters and fighting against new enemies. I really recommend giving this game a try if you like the genre.

Cynthia's journey leads to a cave. There was a pretty cool labyrinth puzzle here where you have to figure out which door to use in each subsequent room based on the number of light signals you get when you enter. The trick is to number the doors from the left to the right and go through the value of the count. They she has to escape from a spiked wall going towards her. It's pretty easy, but still a fun and unexpected sequence. Cynthia then finds the second part of the Moonshadow artefact. It also turns out that the figure of light was Alisa - the Moonshadow goddess who wants to help our heroine.

In the next area you have to go through a swamp, where there are places where you'd notice bubbles - avoid those or you will be instantly killed. I also noticed that after I got the part of the artefact I obtained a new arrow type. The red arrows were described as having the ability to distract 2 people at once which was very misleading - I tried to shoot next to an enemy, but nothing happened. When you directly hit a foe he becomes confused and he'll kill one of his comrades before dying himself - nasty, but you don't have many resources to craft those arrows. Plus you don't get much of a chance to use them, because the next level is the final battle against Isidor. You are located in some sort of a space temple and he starts summoning his soldiers. I assumed that you have to avoid them and go towards him, but there's a barrier preventing you from going closer. It tuns out you actually have to shoot his minions with your bow, which is stupid because up until this point they were unaffected by arrows. This game has the same problem a lot of stealth games do - final boss battles often clash with the mechanics of the entire game. In any case, once you defeat them all minions you can approach Isidor. He tries to destroy Cynthia, but Alisa appears and sends him to another dimension. Then you get a happy ending of Cynthia's family and beloved returning to normal.

Cynthia Hidden In the Moonshadow is a pretty relaxing stealth game. It can be clunky at times, but you can feel that the game is made with love and passion. Once you complete it, there's little reason to replay the levels unless you try to get the achievements. I was wondering what the statues with the blessings actually do, but it's possible that I got a good ending because I collected them all. The different costumes are fun and so is the photo mode - I appreciate the anime-like chibi stickers. Overall this was an easy fun game and although it's not perfect, it's worth a try, especially for kids.

EmyLiveShow Hentai Puzzle Game is another one of those image construction titles. Functionally it's fine and the artwork is nice, but I honestly found the voice acting and dialogue cringey. I don't know if this is a commercial for some V-Thot, but she was trying way too hard to sound sultry as some rather specific fetishes like a catgirl vampire maid. Also no toplessness in this one. Overall this game is mediocre and not really worth a purchase.

Warhammer 40K Boltgun is a Doom-like first person shooter complete with pixel art and 2D sprites as enemies. Like the name suggests it takes place in the Warhammer 40K universe and you play as a Space Marine (Ultramarine to be more precise). The story is pretty basic - you are sent to a planet to locate a potential artefact used by heretics as a power source. Needless to say you must show these misguided souls the Emperor's mercy. You start the game with a chain sword which digs into enemies until they are dead or you stop pressing the button. You also have limited grenades and a rechargeable dash move. Eventually you find the signature Boltgun and it feels amazing - it's a mix between a pistol and a heavy machine gun and you witness the piercing power of its bullets on your enemies. Another neat detail is that the armour you collect in the game is called Contempt, which is a fantastic reference. Some doors you need to find a key for to proceed. You can overload your health and contempt to 250 each and there are various secrets in each level. One such secret is the Emperor's laurel, giving you 300 contempt - nice. Another is the Aura of Doom vastly increasing your damage for 30 seconds. The Kraken Boltgun Magazine gives you 100 special bullets which deal a lot of damage.

Most enemies fall pretty easily, but you eventually encounter Chaos Space Marines and they are rather tough. Utilising grenades and the chainsword against them is a decent strategy. In the 3rd level you find your first new firearm - the shotgun. It functions as you'd expect - dealing massive damage at shorter range, but it is surprisingly effective against distant enemies. Here I also found a new secret - the Machine Spirit, which upgrades the damage of one of your weapons for the duration of the level. In a rather challenging arena you find your next weapon to purge the heretics - the plasma gun. It shoots a single orb and it's somewhat slow, but does devastating damage. I found it pretty effective against tougher enemies like the Flamers and the Chaos Space Marines. I like how there's a good mix of the forces of Chaos - some of Nurgle's plague toads are also jumping around including a tough fat version.

One important feature that deserves a mention is the taunt button. Your Astartes will declare his loyalty to the Emperor and hatred of the heretics when prompted.

The new Lilliput cauldron at the beginning of the adventure gives you a powerful minion from the get go. Ace turns out to be pretty useful - his regular attack is a sequence of slashes with decent range and his special is slamming a giant sword to the ground covering 60% of the screen. Unfortunately the latter is a bit slow leaving you open to attacks, so you have to time it right. Another servant I picked up was the fire-based Halvor. His special is delivering 3 methodical hits in different directions. The activation is still pretty slow, but I found out you can cancel out of the idle animation with a dash. The Queen mini-boss gave me much trouble. Then I died without much glory in the Path of Gales stage of the Winding Caverns. In my defence it was a really small room filled with exploding bears and witches who shot giant tracking energy balls. I couldn't land on solid ground long enough to use a potion. I decided to save my Mana for the Revival upgrade, so I didn't get anything.

The second try was a bit more successful. Early on I found my favourite Amelie with her wonderful special move. I found another copy of her and realised you can have her in the combo lineup and as a special. The same thing happened with Bramwell, whose projectile attacks are useful in both positions. Eventually I got my entire lineup filled with 3-star champs. Unfortunately I did the same stupid mistake and entered a challenge room in the 3rd world where I got stunned and then finished off with a hit which took 167 damage. The risk for these is honesty not worth the reward. At least I finally managed to buy the Revival upgrade, as well as 2 new pedestals to put extra passive boost statues on. I chose skill cooldown and damage reduction. My next run should be much better.

After trying the demo for the game, I obtained the full version. You get some bonus credits at the start since the demo is slightly different than the first level of the game, which ends with a fight against a gun wall. Next things change a bit since you get on a hover bike. The way enemies show up from two sides takes a bit of getting used to and some weapons here are better than in the regular levels - for example the laser is more efficient than the spreader for enemies on the ground. During the level you meet a mercenary named Bradley who is trying to escape the island, but he's hit by a sniper. The Red Falcon lieutenant is the boss of the level and he attacks you in his armoured car. He will throw grenades from it and also shoot its mounted gun. Staying in one side of the screen is the way to go. Just when you think you've destroyed him, he returns as a mutated monster. He will chase you around and occasionally throw enemy hove bikes at you. The mounted cannon will shoot a large laser, which I found difficult to dodge due to the weird perspective.

In stage 3 you find Ariana fighting against Varanis - the leader of Red Falcon. He has an cyber armour and is using an energy sword to defect her bullets. The boss here is the alien from the demo, which is still a challenging fight. When you defeat him Ariana reveals that Varanis is also an alien and joins the team.

Stage 4 has a mid level boss which is a robot with a core weak spot, which switches positions from top to bottom. Staying at a safe distance from it while jumping over its flames is the best strategy here. The boss is a partially cloned alien monster. You have to aim at its heart while avoiding everything else on the screen. That second part is difficult since the projectiles it shoots are a bit hard to see. Lucia joins the team when you defeat it. I bought an equippable perk increasing my health by 1 point. Global upgrades like the number of lives seem to be a better investment, but this also helps.

Stage 5 is on a train trying to help the tech suit guy named Stanley. It starts like normal, but then transitions into another hover bike battle. Here you meet Bradley again, who is hit by a sniper again. Not really sure what his role is here. If this is for comic relief, it's not very funny. In any case the mid-level boss here is a running robot, which charges at you and throws some saw blades to limit your movement - this is fought in a changed perspective and you have to carefully position yourself on either side of the screen so that you can jump over it. The boss is an alien centipede which runs under the rails. It will attack with its legs and spew acid from time to time. I found the flamethrower, which is otherwise the worst weapon, to do a great job here, since you are already close enough to the monster. The team reaches a temple gate and apparently only chosen warriors can pass through it, so naturally our heroes do.

While exploring the Field of Geo I encountered a boss fight against a Warrior Fungus. It's quite fast and it leaves a poisonous cloud when it does a slam from the air. It also has a combo punch attack and a charge, which is nearly unreactable. Defeating it earns you the Venom Spore afterimage which creates a poisonous cloud when you are hit.

Further ahead Renee meets Roke - a cat-like creature called meowling. He tells a tale how his captain opened the Gate of Geo and a black mist corrupted most of his kin. He asked Renee to return them to the Sea of Souls - basically kill them all. Behind him I found a crystal called Geo, the Legacy of Ancestors. No idea what it does. This is one of the main issues I have with the game - it throws so many items at you and you don't know what's useful and where to use it. There are healing items, meals, which increase a certain stat, random items with lore about the game and monster parts which are just to sale to merchants. This is fine in an RPG, but it's a bit overwhelming in a Metroidvania. Speaking of, I completed the quest where the odd mushroom wanted his spore. I had no idea which one of the many spores I collected was the necessary one. This turns the mushroom into a jumping pad - basically a shortcut to where you are heading.

Eventually I got back where I met Roke and it turns out that what was behind him wasn't a wall, but a foreground object. This lead immediately into a boss battle with his corrupted captain Hill. He jumps around and throws a lot of bombs, but he isn't too difficult. One of the items he drops is the Book of Geo, which is an equipable spell summoning a stone column underneath one of your enemies. It's fast, tracking and does decent damage, so can be pretty useful. Roke then gives you an Odd Badge as thanks, which turns out to be a pretty good artefact, giving you HP regeneration.

I found the Book of Hydro from a random chest. It gives you a water projectile spell, but it does less damage than the fireball, so it's practically useless. While exploring I started marking on the map places which I currently don't have the power to access because there are no indicators there by default. This is bad game design since it just creates busywork for the player.

My second attempt at the Lust circle of Hell was going pretty well until I faced the mini-boss Lilith. She applied a lot of Decay and then I stupidly activated a card which imploded it, because I thought it was going to be 1 damage per point, but it turns out it was 10, so I was killed in a single hit.

On my next attempt I got to the new Anvil of Souls node, which allows you to upgrade the Damned you currently have and sell ones you are not using. The UI here is very clunky to the point where it's difficult to do those simple actions. You can't really see what you are selecting, so you have to guess - it's that bad. I consider it a bug.

The fight against the boss Asmodeus was still a pain. He applies tons of Bleeding and as far as I can tell there is no way to protect yourself against it with shields or armour. Since I didn't have cleanse cards, my only option was to heal myself while dealing as much damage as possible. I was somewhat lucky, but I did manage to barely kill him by building up enough Rage to have a devastating 42 damage card. With his defeat I could finally build the Halls of Heresy at Nadir and check out the last circle of Hell.

Hentai Anime Girls Succubus is a puzzle game with a really misleading title. There's no hentai since the images are all tame and there are no succubi anywhere in the game. I guess there are anime girls generated with AI art, but that's about it. The game has 3 modes - Puzzle, Logic and Mosaic. The first is a jigsaw puzzle and arguably the most annoying. The pieces are scattered in the middle of the screen and you have to put the match the centre of the piece with the centre of the place it belongs to, so it fits - this makes the controls feel slippery. At least you get to select your difficulty, which just means the number of pieces the image is cut into. Eventually I got tired and switched to easy, to unlock the other modes.

Logic is again a jigsaw puzzle, but you get one piece at a time and you have to fit it against a greyed out image. This one felt a little better since it goes faster and you don't have to look through a pile of pieces. Unfortunately the images you unlock are the same.

Mosaic mode is the more standard sliding puzzle where you have to move the pieces around to reconstruct the right picture. This one felt OK, but you are still unlocking the same images.

The game itself is functional, but absolutely mediocre. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't on the pricer side for this type of title - around 10 dollars. The art is OK, but nothing special or too sexy - no nudity in this one. I'd advise getting this one on a deep sale and playing it in short bursts.

Cynthia's next mission is to heal the bird she freed in the previous level. After collecting the necessary herbs you restore the avian and gain a new ability. It can distract a single enemy for some time and it's recharable. Next Cynthia has to move 3 guards from their posts by ringing 3 bells. It's a bit repetitive, but at least I enjoyed the puzzles here. Then I decided to replay Chapter 2 since I was missing a Goddess Statue. I performed worse than the first time around by being discovered a bunch, but at least I found it in the end. When you select a chapter like that you start with fewer resources, but at least the newly collected items are registered in your main playthrough. Finally I messed around a bit with the Photo Mode, which has some decent features.

Antonblast is one of the games which left an impression from the recent Nintendo Direct, so I decided to give it a try. You play as Anton - an angry red man and that's all I can say about the lore. There is a devil who says snarky remarks at the beginning of each stage, so I assume he's the antagonist. The art style really reminds me of old Cartoon Network shows like Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel. The devil in particular seems very much inspired by the Red Guy, but at least he's wearing pants.

The controls are simple - you get a jump, an attack button which makes Anton charge forward destroying crates, but bouncing off of indestructable objects or once he kills an enemy. There's also a slide button, but you have to use the momentum of running to activate it. When you press the attack button in the air Anton will start spinning and if he hits the ground he'll bounce off at a higher elevation. If you don't want to bounce you can press the slide button in the air and he'll perform an Anton Bomb diving head-first into the floor. If you press the attack button twice Anton will start running, but you have to press it again to actually hit something.

The levels themselves have a lot of gimmicks. This includes transporting Anton into the background, unbreakable boxes for which you have to find a detonator for and doors teleporting you to different places in the stage. There is a bit of exploration, but it can get confusing since there is no map and no clear indicator of where to go. When you reach the end of a stage a timer is activated and you have to go all the way back to the start. I normally don't like time trials, but the game is fast paced, so it fits.

Then I tried Cinnemon Springs - a tougher level, which showed some of the issues with the game. Due to his speed Anton is difficult to control and some sections require precision platforming on disappearing/moving platforms and even bouncing off of enemy projectiles. The checkpoints can be sparse and make you replay a lot of annoying parts. Overall this game looks like it will be fun, but frustrating experience.

Now that I was fully equipped with extra damage, speed and an additional health bar I was ready to tackle the Ultimate Cup Z in the Coliseum. The Morpho Sword make short work of most of the Phantom bosses. Morpho Knight was a challenge since I haven't fought him in a while, but he didn't manage to take away a full health bar. Chaos Elfilis was all that different from his regular final boss version, apart from generating a huge shadow clone of himself which attacks with large sweeping attacks, which is tricky to dodge. That being said you still need to be on your toes since his attacks are varied and quick.

Then came the part which consistently stumped me every time, where Chaos Elfilis turns into a black sphere of doom. If you lose on this bit you have to fight his previous form again. The first bit is crucial - you have to immediately dodge away from it because if it sucks you in it will do massive damage. Then it will shoot some quick lasers your way. When you reduce it to half its health the sphere will turn into a fireball and will try to crush you. It will knock debris on the stage and you have to use them to gain some height in order to jump over it. Then it will shoot rapid fire projectiles at you. Then it will turn giant and slam into the ground a couple of times. After that the orbiting balls around it will start shooting lasers all over the place. Getting close seemed dangerous, so I used the homing projectiles of the Morpho sword to deal damage. Then the sphere will start teleporting all over the place at which point I killed it. That was quite a fight and a worthy secret final boss. You are treated to a cutscene where the energy from the monster is returned to Elfilin making him complete. You are rewarded with 2 extra figurines - Chaos Elfilis and Commentator Waddle Dee.

At this point you unlock more pictures in Kirby's house (I currently have 9/10) and a special Waddle Dee which will trade figurines you don't yet have for Rare Stones. I'll eventually spend all the gold I have there, but grinding for Rare Stones at the Coliseum again sounds like a pain. To unlock the last picture I presume I have to get all fragments of Leon's soul in the Isolated Isles area. Some of the fragments are really well hidden, but I managed to collect them in Forgo Plains.

Had a pretty good run with some useful Lilliputs including my favourite Goddess Amelie (for her awesome special move). I reached the Depths, but got stunlocked by a nasty combination of projectiles and miasma on the floor. Come to think of it this is how I died last time. The possibility of you getting stunned and killed in 4-5 hits is very dangerous and a bit imbalanced.

Like always all was not for naught since I got a lot of Mana to upgrade for future runs. Two interesting artefacts I unlocked were the Dashing Scarf giving you invincibility while dashing and the Resurrection Doll, which revives you 1 time. The latter can prevent nasty situations like my death in the run. I also bought a Lilliput Cauldron, which is placed at the beginning of the game. It's not a major advantage, but the next upgrade starts you with a Resurrection Doll and I need that one. For the remaining Mana I reduced the damage Noah takes from Ice since I was still salty about failing the run due to being frozen. I also learned that you can disable any upgrade you purchased making your game as difficult as you want, which is a fantastic feature. The quality of life tools in this game are some of the best I've ever seen.

I started another run and this time I had Megumin wear the School Invidia dress. She was acting like a jealous child, which isn't too far from her actual personality. After that I figured I couldn't bear seeing Kazuma simp for her more than in the Legend of Crimson movie and I decided I was done with the game.

If you are a fan of the show there's plenty to enjoy here, mainly the wonderful cast of voice actors. I generally detest visual novels, but it being fully voiced made things enjoyable. There are plenty of funny moments and fan service outfits to unlock. The main issues I have with this game are in the design department. Creating the dresses and gathering resources is a cool mechanic, but the paths you have to take are pretty much pre-determined since you have to build the outfit every time you need to unlock a specific job giving you the needed resource. So for example if you want to make Wiz's swimsuit you need to first build one of Darkness' and Aqua's outfits. It would've been much better if the jobs were available on subsequent runs after you already unlocked them once. This would allow you to go for different girls at the same time rather than grinding the same outfits every time. I wasn't a huge fan of the main story. It's basically an excuse to have the magic slab creating personality altering clothes, but towards the end it becomes convoluted and confusing out of nowhere with no decent resolution having to explain the backstory of the villain in the last chapter. There's also the issue with the endings. I have no idea how to get different endings. I got a special one with Darkness, presumably because I was over certain affection, but I couldn't even get the normal one for Aqua. The side characters like Yunyun, Chris and Wiz don't seem to have a special ending - just a side mission which is completed before the main story. If everything is based around affection I guess you have to do all the events with the main character and give the correct outfit answers every time. The former can be a problem since there are events which don't indicate they are present. The only way I can figure to do this is create a giant spreadsheet and experiment over different runs. That or just look it up online, but if I have to do that there is a design problem.

Overall if you are a Konosuba fan there's a lot to enjoy here, but the gameplay structure may be a problem for some.

Renee meets another mysterious woman who is spouting a lot of nonsense about our heroine being an Essential. She then attacks. The fight against her is a pain. She constantly uses portals to teleport and attack with her sword from many different places. She also has several projectiles, which are too fast to react to. It's almost frustrating how many moves she has while Renee is limited to the same 2 weapons and some dodging. Somehow I managed to defeat her, but then she pulls the cliche "Well, actually you are too weak" and disappears. She dropped the Secret Art: Full Moon scroll which gives you access to a specific node on the Skill Tree. Speaking of it, the way you navigate the Skill Tree is a mess. Even if you have enough points for an upgrade, you have no idea what you can purchase, since you can spend points on already unlocked nodes.

Then I reached Resting Town, where I found the Flower of Confluence Afterimage, which is somewhat of a passive ability allowing you to fast travel between Main Streams (the big trees). Here Renee meets Alice - a cook who requires ingredients for a recipe - and Nicole, a witch-in-training who needs ingredients to create a magic potion. Thankfully I had Nicole's ingredients on hand and she have me the Book of Pyro, which enables you to cast fireballs as long as you have mana. You have to actually equip the tome in your inventory to do that.

The next person you meet is and adventurer named Karsa and his companion - a penguin-like creature called Brenda. They are looking for an artefact from an ancient hero known as the Hermit. Further on Renee went into a room where she had to face several giant knights. Upon defeating them you get the slide Afterimage unlocking new paths through tight spaces. Taking an elevator to a waterfall area you find Mastermage Ripe, who knew Renee's master Aros. He also speculated that the woman with the triangular emblem could be a part of a mysterious organisation called the Reincarnates, who are based in the far-East area - the Misty Waters.

In the Field of Geo Renee encounters a mushroom creature who whats its spore back and a merchant called Tark who sells various items and equipment. After I bought a bunch of stuff from him I realised that you can currently only equip one accessory and the other 2 slots are locked. Great...

The next circle of Hell I ventured into was Lust. In general the enemies here apply a lot of debuffs like Decay and Bleeding and some of them do Devouring Damage, meaning they heal the equivalent amount of every health point you lose, so having decent armour is advisable. The miniboss I faced here - Minos - was a pain in the ass. He had a Survivalist buff giving him armour every time a hard is played and he gets more of it if you redraw. This is a really tricky fight, because Minos deals a ton of damage with his cards, so you have to carefully activate the ones which apply Profanity and Desecrate - which disable the effect of his Red and Blue cards respectively. In addition to that I had to be careful with his Piercing damage effects because my health was reduced to very dangerous levels. So basically I had to be really picky which cards I played. In the meantime Minos accumulated way too much armour, so I could only damage him with my Piercing attacks. Eventually I defeated him, but it took awhile.

The boss of this circle was Asmodeus and he was a nightmare. His card apply tons of Bleeding, which is by far one of the most the dangerous debuffs - 10 points of bleeding can reduce your health completely unless you have shields, heals or cleanse. Unfortunately I didn't have many of those cards, so I died. At least I got some resources and unlocked the Soul Cages, making the Anvil of Souls node available, but I'm not 100% sure what that does. Predictably I couldn't buy the next circle of Hell until I defeat the boss of the previous one, but at least I got more cards for Jeanne.

Cynthia Hidden In the Moonshadow is a 3D stealth game, where you play as, well, Cynthia - a huntress who returns to her village after being abroad for training only to discover that it was attacked by some evil wizards. You can sneak around and hide in tall grass. You can also use the magical arrows in your bow to distract enemies by hitting certain objects, but you cannot kill them with it. If they find you they can quickly turn you to stone. In some places you can drop crates on them, but that's about it when it comes to eliminating the wizards. The arrows you have are limited and you can craft new ones by gathering materials, but there's more than enough if you explore the environment. Things were going pretty smoothly since this is not a difficult game, but I got stuck on a lever puzzle in the second chapter. In my defence the field of view is pretty limited, so initially I didn't see an extra lever that I needed to activate and also this was the first time the game requires you to do some light platforming. Eventually Cynthia meets her uncle Diego, who gives her a new type of arrow before being turned to stone by the wizards. With it, you can temporarily freeze an enemy and run pass him. They require slightly different materials to build. At the end of the second chapter Cynthia is confronted by Isidor - the head wizard - who somehow has her beloved Hector hostage and demands Cynthia find the Moonshadow Artefact for him.

Continued clearing the remaining missions. The Gathering of The Beast Council stage had one where you had to beat Clawrorine without getting hit, but this time around it was actually easier since she had much less health than her regular boss version. You still need to watch out and dodge when she's first throwing knives. Another mission was defeating Forgo Dedede without taking damage. This wasn't too difficult with the Morpho Sword and all the boosts you get from sleeping - damage, speed and double health bar. During his first phase he's pretty easy, but you have to be on the run when the fire tornadoes appear since they are semi-homing. When he becomes wild it's hard to hit him when he's running around you, so I used the block charge projectiles which are homing. After Dedede charges 3 times you'll have enough time for a big attack which does tons of damage and briefly upgrades the Morpho Sword to a giant size. Upon defeating him you still have to go through Leongar, Fecto Forgo and Fecto Elfilis before returning to town.

Rescuing every Waddle Dee creates special statues of Kirby and Elfillin in the town plaza. Then I bought and used a ton of items to up my double damage, speed and double health in preparation to enter the Coliseum once more.