Lucas White
Game industry critic and reviewer
Writing For
ShackNews 
TheGamer 
Playstation Lifestyle Latest Reviews
Atelier, Gust’s long-running item synthesis RPG series, reached new heights with the debut of Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout in 2019. Gust used that momentum to sincerely attempt to reinvent what Atelier is in systems and scale, leading to the massive and successful Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. At the same time the series couldn’t escape a certain albatross hovering above Japanese RPGs, and we saw Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy & the Liberator of Polar Night hit mobile and PC as a free-to-play game with a gacha system. The history here is as important as it is fun to write out all the titles!
Re-releasing a classic game isn’t as easy as you might think. People talk about preservation, but that’s largely solved. You can just download a ROM. Hell, Final Fantasy Tactics, subject of longtime fan demand, was a ROM you could pay for if you had a PlayStation device, for years. But that doesn’t count; it’s the “remaster” that folks want to show up for. But is that really preservation? When you add bells and whistles, move stuff around, make changes… is it still the same game? Case in point, Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles is here, giving one of Square Enix’s most renowned stories the red carpet treatment for the first time, since handhelds and mobile don’t count either sometimes.
As I pushed my way through Baby Steps over 11 or so of god’s own hours, I asked myself a few questions. What does it mean to feel accomplished in a game? What value is there in pushing beyond one’s own perceived limits for the sake of finishing something? Can one continuous joke still be funny eight hours later? Does the presence of a metaphor elevate a story? I’ve sat down to write this review but I don’t think I have answers to everything here yet. Such is the outcome of staring far too long at a game about a jiggling neckbeard pushing his way up a mountain like a brainrot-infused adaptation of Sisyphus.
Sometimes a game simply says what it is on the box, delivers on its premise, and gets the heck out of Dodge. That was my exact experience with LEGO Voyagers, a new co-op puzzle adventure from Annapurna Interactive and Light Brick Studio. It’s short and sweet, sticking around just as long as it needs to tell its cute, little story and give a pair of buds a nice afternoon of game time together. It’s a kind of experience not unlike taking the time to put a real LEGO set together with a friend.
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.
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.