Mitchell Demorest

Slant Magazine • 13th June 2023

'Dordogne' Review: A Beautiful Watercolor Adventure

For a self-described “narrative game,” Dordogne’s narrative isn’t all that compelling. Luckily, in games as in most mediums, narrative rarely has to do all the heavy lifting. And while it scarcely offers much in the way of mechanical flair, Dordogne does at least have a trick up its sleeve in the form of its lush, unmatched watercolor visuals.

The story follows a young woman named Mimi as she investigates the home of her recently deceased grandmother, and against the explicit demands of her fat

Slant Magazine • 8th May 2023

'Darkest Dungeon II' Review: On the Highway Through Hell

Despite all the talk of punishing difficulty and realistic trauma simulation, something about Red Hook Studios’s Darkest Dungeon always felt a bit like comfort food—tried-and-true dungeon crawling with an almost sentimental attachment to a grimdark aesthetic, perfect for luxuriating in on a rainy weekend or a long road trip. How appropriate, then, that after seven years the follow-up arrives as a cross-country trek, albeit in a horse-drawn carriage traveling through more treacherous environments

NME • 12th April 2023

'Wartales' review: an RPG that lets you blaze your own trail, if only the trail was more exciting

They don’t make many games like Wartales anymore. The rambling RPG sandbox from French developer Shiro Games is situated firmly in the lineage of certified classics like Divinity: Original Sin, Baldur’s Gate, Mount and Blade, and, ultimately, Dungeons and Dragons—a family of games most RPG aficionados would label CRPGs. But as storied as this particular tradition is, these complicated and often arcane games have nearly disappeared in favor of games that are faster, more direct, or more easily ap

Slant Magazine • 23rd March 2023

'Dredge' Review: Stuck in the Shallow End

With its opening shot of a tiny boat dwarfed by an unnatural tangle of inky black clouds, Dredge makes its intentions clear. This is a fishing game, sure, but it comes with a dark twist. While most of your time will be spent doing normal fishing stuff—sailing around catching fish before returning to port to sell them for a tidy profit—you’ll soon be pulled into ever darker waters filled with secrets too terrifying to behold. Or, at least, some weird fish.

In part because Dredge is the debut tit

Gamepur • 20th December 2022

Gamepur’s Best of 2022: The five best mobile games of 2022

This story is part of Gamepur’s Best of 2022 round-up.

If you’re primarily in the market for the biggest blockbuster releases, 2022 may have seemed like a slow year for games. The real story, though, is one of variety. The range of different games that left an impact on us this year is as wide as ever in both scale and style. This also holds true for the year’s best mobile games, which saw everything from well-known franchise spinoffs to splashy indie surprises to good new-fashioned word games.

Gamepur • 8th August 2022

Digimon Survive tells a refreshingly mature story, if you're willing to wait – Review

With long-running franchises, especially those with a devoted fanbase and a specific and established style, it’s important to set clear expectations. This is especially true for Digimon Survive, which in more ways than one, isn’t the usual kind of Digimon game. First, it eschews its usual RPG format in favor of a visual novel with a side of tactical, turn-based combat. Second, it operates on a vastly different emotional wavelength than the rest of the series. It’s darker by a wide margin, functi

Medium • 24th July 2021

A Small Review of A Short Hike

Inspired by trips to national parks both Canadian and American, and conceived in part during game jams in a cabin in the woods, A Short Hike is the solo project of Adam Robinson-Yu. In need of a break from the development of a bigger game (an RPG in Thousand Year Door territory,) Robinson-Yu set out to make something that he wouldn’t feel so much pressure…

The Indie Game Website • 13th October 2021

Mobilising The Cult of Blaseball

Video games and sports always had a complicated relationship. Year after year, franchises like FIFA and Madden are among the best-selling titles on the market, but they are regularly written off as niche offerings, or worse: cash grabs. There are many reasons for this, one of which is almost certainly the redundancy of releasing what amounts to nearly the same game every year. Regardless of the reasons, it’s still rare to find a title with the ability to draw in players who aren’t already fans o

Gamepur • 23rd March 2022

Salt and Sacrifice is on the hunt for its own identity – Preview

Way back in 2016, Salt and Sanctuary was, for better and worse, essentially 2D Dark Souls. At the time (about a week before the North American release of Dark Souls 3) this was a real novelty. A subset of the gaming world had become enthralled by From Software’s newly forged formula. The fidelity with which Ska Studios (a.k.a. James Silva, with help from artist Michelle Silva) was able to recreate Dark Souls the RPG, with its impactful leveling and wide array of viable builds and playstyles, was

Uppercut • 24th August 2021

The Wistful Optimism of Hollow Knight’s Last Stag

The world of Hollow Knight has seen better days. Hallownest, the self-proclaimed “last and only civilization,” is in ruin. Its capital, The City of Tears, is drenched in never-ending rainfall. Nearly everything that moves is a zombified corpse, shambling aimlessly only until it attacks the living. Corrupt lesions bubble spontaneously from the walls, threatening to burst. A sea of living shadow, writhing and thrashing at anyone who dares approach, lies deep below its surface. The massive scale of