Lucas White
Game industry critic and reviewer
Writing For
ShackNews 
TheGamer 
Playstation Lifestyle Latest Reviews
Too Kyo Games and its partners have been pumping games out at an impressive clip, with new stories from Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka taking that original over the top, “death game” framework and finding new ways to apply that energy. Earlier this year, Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- made waves with its ambitious sense of scale. Shuten Order is almost the opposite, using an anthological approach to tell several smaller stories that unfold into something bigger.
It’s kind of weird how infrequent it feels to see a big, 3D platformer, especially ones not made by Nintendo. In the same year as Donkey Kong Bananza, you’d think the runway would stay as clear as usual. But that’s not the case, as The Knightling has appeared from developer Twirlbound. Despite being a “smaller” game (whatever that really means), Knightling is big and full of color, charm, and adventure. It’s a little rough around the edges in terms of combat and mechanical polish, but younger gamers with a budding interest in more complex action in games may have a new entry point to the more hardcore stuff out there.
Before anything else, it feels like a miracle to simply download and play a new Super Robot Wars on my PlayStation 5. No importing, no additional accounts, no region-locked DLC. It’s a wonderful thing.
Being able to revisit history in such a profound way as I did this past week is beyond rare. As a teenager in the mid-2000s, I was the perfect age to be online and embedded in gaming during ground zero of what we consider “indie” games. Games like Cave Story and Yume Nikki were life-changing, foundational experiences that changed the landscape, and you could play those games for free. Off was another prime example, coming a few years later but being such a unique, affecting experience it inspired the likes of Undertale. Games like Off showed what accessible tools like RPG Maker could be capable of in the right hands, and Fangamer rolling out the red carpet for it in 2025 gives a foundational work its flowers in long overdue fashion.
Video games being self-referential is about as special as grocery store sushi, but Shadow Labyrinth is like how Kroger started dusting its spicy California rolls with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos crumbs. The team behind this monstrosity basically asked: “Pac-Man’s 45th birthday is here; what if instead of the usual stuff we made everything as weird and gross as possible?” And folks, these people succeeded. Shadow Labyrinth is a massive, complicated, stressful Metroidvania that is full of self-referential material presented in supremely unhinged (but shockingly narratively cohesive) fashion.
When I first saw Date Everything, I was suspicious. There’s a trend in Western visual novels with a heavy lean toward parody or irony often flavored with a hubris or disrespect that borders on, at best, otherism. Games like Doki Doki Literature Club or the constant barrage of April Fools joke games in which you date a yoked up fast food mascot or whatever use a genre with historical significance and genuine longevity as a cudgel to look down on its games and people who make and play them, and it sucks! Date Everything, a visual novel that has you exploring an apartment to go on dates with personified household appliances, has “smarmy hater” written all over it.
Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo makes an absurdly powerful first impression. As the game loads, a 3D-modeled, handheld gaming console descends from the heavens, artificial light reflecting from the smudged plastic coating on its screen. The console twirls as a cartridge falls into the slot, then spins back to face the audience as the game boots. Pipistrello doesn’t just transition to a normal, fullscreen video game at this point, like you may expect. It just runs in this fictional handheld, taking up more than half the display. The game hasn’t even started, and we’ve dived headfirst into the pungent depths of sicko territory. Playing this game means shouting into the abyss, and the abyss responds with the Game Boy Advance boot jingle.
MercurySteam and I don’t tend to get along. I found its Castlevania series interesting at first, but ultimately a whiff. And its take on Metroid is perhaps the most impressive effort in Missing The Point I've ever seen in a video game. But there’s no denying this studio has a history of big ideas and big swings. An original story without any IP baggage is the perfect space for that kind of energy, and that’s exactly what Blades of Fire feels like. A nuclear testing ground for doing things a little differently.
A pumping soundtrack. The sounds of endless bullets. Naughty words that start with “eff” and rhyme with “pluck.” Yep, it’s time for a Devolver Digital-ass Devolver Digital review. Hopefully this one’s better than Anger Foot.
Before Skin Deep came across my desk, I had never even heard of it. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong, but that I went in completely blind. What is this game? Who knows, let’s just boot this bad boy up and see what happens. That’s probably for the best, because “immersive sims” don’t do a lot for me, and that’s exactly what Skin Deep is when you boil it down. However it’s also weird, scaled-down, relatively simple and fast-paced, and also, weird. It’s almost like someone took Deathloop and tossed it into a blender with a bunch of YouTube cat video compilations.