Developer: Studio Floris Kaayk
Release Date: November 17, 2021
MSRP: $19.99

I honestly didn’t know what to expect going in to Next Space Rebels. Sure, I knew I was going to be building rockets (which – as expected – I’m not all that good at). I knew there was a social media component to it. What I didn’t realize is that I would be spending far more time answering social media messages than I would be doing … well, anything else.

Because you’ll be spending so much time networking, the game can feel like it drags, a little bit. Do you want more parts to build rockets to make rocket launch videos? Better get networking. Want some challenges to unlock the potential to build more complex rockets? Yep, those also come from messages. In Next Space Rebels, clout is the only currency. You’ll need to post more videos to gain more followers to get more comments, and find more people to talk to to get more stuff and more unlocks.

The actual rocket building is done via a – rather clumsy – 2D interface. Initially, you have only very basic rocket parts, but before long, you’ll be adding a bunch of toys and trash items, which don’t make particularly aerodynamic rockets, but they do make some for some absolutely ridiculous ones. The first couple of challenges are pretty simple, and serve mainly to acquaint you with the mechanics of building rockets, launching them, and posting videos.

For me, the gameplay element balance was tilted far too far in the direction of learning how to become a social media success story. If what you’re looking for is a social media simulator (complete with a side of commentary about how algorithms are bad, mmkay?), then this game might really work for you. If you just want to play with model rockets, you’ll likely find yourself frustrated by all the filler.

Although I didn’t get very far into the story (at least, I don’t think that I did), I can see the potential for a good – if somewhat unbalanced – game. Towards the end of my playtime, I found myself really struggling with the challenges I had, and assumed that further progression was locked behind that, but I realize now I could have also tried just making more videos, increasing my follower count, and continuing to network my way to more parts and more challenges. I’m honestly not sure how rigid the progression path is.

Although Next Space Rebels will be disappearing from XBox Game Pass for PC in a matter of days, it is available through the Humble Trove if you have an active Humble Choice subscription. I’m not sure yet if I plan to revisit it, but I found myself continuing to rethink my strategies after closing the game.

SteamDB estimates that Next Space Rebels has sold between 4,300 and 11,900 copies on Steam. Reviews have been mostly positive, with the negative reviews mostly focusing on lack of satisfying rocket building game play. It is ranked 2066 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.

Developer: Warpzone Studios
Release Date: November 16, 2021
MSRP: $24.99

There is little I find more frustrating than a game that is almost good. Mind you, I’m not talking about games that, while completely playable, lack a certain something that makes them great. No, rather, I’m talking about games where you can clearly see that the concept is good, that the bones of the thing are quite all right, but somewhere along the way, something was skipped or overlooked, and what you end up with is actually a pretty big mess.

Hammerting – at least for me – should be a good game. I love the loop of dig, explore, gather resources, craft, research, and then go right back to digging. I can’t explain why that loop is something I find satisfying, but usually when I bounce off one of these games, it is because the game just cannot seem to get out of its own way.

It feels like the developers really wanted to take this loop – which at its core is pretty damn simple – and complicate it until it resembled denser “colony builder” games. I can’t tell you if I kept failing because I’m impatient, because the game is buggy, because the game is poorly balanced, or just because the overly dense tutorial just leaves out some pretty critical steps for success. My first trio of hard working dwarves died of thirst because I didn’t realize I had to both find and produce water. Ok, that one is on me. My second trio? Also thirst. Not because I didn’t know, but because I could not find any water, and the trading post also didn’t sell any.

In fact, you won’t receive a quest to produce either food or water until you build a farm. Now, if you’re the type to follow the quest path while learning the ropes of a game, you might have the same problem, since although you can unlock farm tech fairly early, you’re never actually told to build a cave farm. Even once you can build it, it doesn’t actually seem to produce food (although weirdly enough, you can produce water even if there’s no body of water anywhere on the map) – rather, you just use it to store mushrooms you’ve harvested. Or do you? It’s not clear, but it didn’t seem to be making any new food, and once I ran out of wild mushrooms, I was well on the path to starvation again.

It’s rare that I’ve played a game where it wants to dump so much information on you, and yet, makes so little logical sense. Usually, when I start out in a more complex colony management style game, although I fail a lot, I learn from every single failure, and the next time, it goes better. Hammerting felt more like trying to learn a skill from a manual that had never been fact checked.

And it’s possible that’s exactly what happened. Hammerting was available in an Early Access state for just over a year before hitting full release in November 2021. During the Early Access period, updates came fairly regularly, but there have only been a handful of updates since then, and the general consensus is that the game is still quite unfinished, and will probably never be given the attention it needs to be more than just barely playable. Which is a shame, because in its current state, it’s nothing but a whole lot of wasted potential.

SteamDB estimates that Hammerting has sold between 42,100 and 115,900 copies on Steam. Reviews are currently sitting at Mixed, with recent reviews trending heavily negative due to the perception that the game is abandoned. It is ranked 6809 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.

Developer: 10tons Ltd
Release Date: November 16, 2021
MSRP: $19.99

If you’ve ever been playing a zombie survival game, and found yourself thinking that the game would be so much better if only there was more stuff that you needed to smash with a crowbar, well, then DYSMANTLE might just be right up your alley. Years after the fall of civilization, you emerge from your no longer so well-supplied shelter to see what the world has become, and find a zombie-infested disaster. Obviously, there’s nothing else to be done than to smash absolutely everything that seems like it might be smashable, including the aforementioned zombies.

I may sound like I’m being unnecessarily hard on the game, but I really want to make sure to convey how critical to absolutely everything else that breaking things will be. You will want to upgrade your crowbar, sure, for more damage as it’s also your primary weapon, but mainly so you can smash up stronger items of furniture to collect more and different materials. In fact, you’ll likely want to avoid zombies as much as possible early on – even the most basic enemy will take multiple hits to kill, and you have so very little health.

But death is merely a setback – you will lose any materials you were carrying (although not any crafted items or anything you’d previously stashed away in your camp storage), but if you manage to make it back to your corpse, you can just loot them again. No, the most annoying thing about dying early on is this – all the enemies you previously killed will respawn. This is also true every time you use a campfire to replenish health, upgrade gear, or craft new gear. It’s tremendously annoying, and the game realizes this. In fact, one of the first quests you get it to craft an item to make sure the undead stay dead this time.

Sounds like a plan, except you need to be level 7 in order to craft the item, and the two main methods of gaining XP are smashing zombies and, well, breaking stuff. Now, while the zombies come back, the items you’ve broken will not. Before hitting the requisite level to craft the item that makes the dead stop coming back to life, I managed to kill the first mini-boss, and move onto the next area.

At which point – over 90 minutes into the game – the opening credits started rolling. The opening credits. This has to be a new record.

I personally found the pace of DYSMANTLE ping-pong-ed between being tedious and frenetic. It took me far longer than I want to admit to start to get a handle on the attack patterns of the most basic zombies, which meant I did an awful lot of corpse runs. Material costs for upgrades and new equipment seemed almost prohibitively high, presumably to keep you moving forward through the game rather that turtling for 90 minutes in the opening tutorial-esque area. That first mini boss looked terrifying ok?

Since I’m not normally a huge fan of zombie survival, I’m not sure what intrigued me enough to purchase this in the first place. This has been in my library since February of 2021, when it was still in early access. In fact, I recall being very frustrated by it when I played it then, and I’m glad I took the time to give it another whirl – while it’s still not exactly my cup of tea, there was something about it that kept me playing, wanting to see what I was going to unlock next.

SteamDB estimates that DYSMANTLE has sold between 155,800 and 425,500 copies on Steam. It clearly has done well, both in sales and reviews, and sits at Very Positive. Clearly, it’s a hit with its target audience, and it is ranked 232 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.

Developer: Little Rock Games
Release Date: November 2, 2021
MSRP: $19.99

In the interest of full disclosure, I backed To The Rescue! on Kickstarter back in the late summer of 2019, and I played quite a bit of a demo build back in August of 2020. Obviously, I knew I was probably going to enjoy it – I tend to enjoy simulation games, especially ones with a story mode (which this game has), and I’m a sucker for a bunch of adorable dogs (which this game also has).

I am, in fact, enjoying it quite a bit so far, despite the fact that it’s a bit rough around the edges. There are a few character presets to choose from, and quite a few puppy presets from which you choose an animal companion. The story modes starts with some tutorials to introduce you to the somewhat unintuitive controls and mechanics. Before you know it, you’re working a day at the animal shelter by yourself. You’ll need to care for the dogs, which includes feeding, watering, bathing, and keeping their enclosures clean. Later in the game, you’ll add enrichment activities & medical care to that list. If that was all you needed to do every day, you’d already be pretty busy, but you’re also responsible for presenting dogs to potential adopters, as well as ordering supplies and managing your social media presence, all while balancing a budget (and trying not to run up too much overtime).

It’s a lot, but it’s also compulsively playable. Visitors will come in looking to adopt, and a lot of the time, they have preferences that they’ll tell you about. Of course, you may or may not have dogs that fit those preferences, but every dog also has an adoptability rating based on their profile. You can show five dogs at a time, and each star of adoptability (plus each star from matching customer preferences) will wear down their resistance meter. Turn that meter green, and you’ll be sending one lucky pup to their new home. Sometimes, visitors will come in looking for their lost dogs, and instead of having to put the proper pooch into the show kennel, you can just bring the correct dog directly to the visitor and send them on their way, usually with a small donation or reward in hand for your trouble.

Although adoptions are key to being able to manage your shelter, and are the most lucrative way to make money, you’ll also receive donations, and you can choose to pursue grants, which are special tasks you’ll have one week to accomplish. However, if you neglect caring for your animals too much in the pursuit of the almighty dollar, you’ll find yourself getting fines and potentially being shut down. It’s a frenetic balancing act with multiple fail states, and a lot of the time, dogs will be coming in faster than you can adopt them out.

Unfortunately, euthanasia is a reality in the animal shelter world, and it is also true here. Some dogs, for one reason or another, are just very likely to not be adopted. However, for folks who want a less realistic but more palatable experience, there is an option to turn of euthanasia in your game, giving instead the option to send a dog away. It doesn’t completely eliminate all references to this sad reality, but it does give you the option to not have to do it yourself.

Save points are only available at the end of each day, and they occur after you clock out. If you have any computer work you still need to do, you can do that off the clock, so it’s better to use the end of your day on care tasks rather than ordering supplies if you want to keep your staff budget down. I’m about two hours in, and not quite all the way through the first week, and new mechanics are still unlocking for me at the end of each day. I’m not sure where I’ll manage to find the time to do everything every day, especially considering that I’m taking in more dogs every day than I’m adopting out, but I’m looking forward to seeing where the game will take me.

SteamDB estimates that Dogs Organized Neatly has sold between 26,300 and 72,300 copies on Steam. Although the sales numbers are respectable for the developer’s first foray into video games, reviews are mixed. Most of the negative reviews focus on bugs, with a few complaints about pacing and an overly long, but not terribly effective, tutorial section. Although I encountered a few minor glitches and some non-intuitive game play elements, I didn’t experience anything game breaking like many players have. It is ranked 5709 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.

Developer: DU&I
Release Date: November 1, 2021
MSRP: $2.99

Pure puzzle games really have to walk a fairly fine line between being challenging and not being frustrating. Without any challenge, there’s nothing to keep you playing, and if it gets too hard, well, there’s not much else to convince you to power through. Dogs Organized Neatly does a fairly good job of walking that tightrope after a few introductory levels, and it’s got adorable pups as a bonus.

Every few levels, you unlock a new canine companion to puzzle with. Each dog gets a small bit of backstory, but mostly they’re going to be new shapes. Pack the dogs into the grid, and you’ve completed the level. It’s not a complicated game, there aren’t a ton of mechanics, but it’s a fun package for people looking for a good coffee-break puzzler. I managed to complete three chapters in approximately an hour of play.

Dogs can be dragged around to fit in the grid, and rotated, but not flipped. The controls are simple and intuitive, and it plays very well on the Steam Deck. The music is pleasant enough, but if you prefer to have a podcast going or listen to your own music, you won’t be missing out on anything relevant to the gameplay. It’s a simple formula done well with a coat of adorable furry paint.

If you prefer cute cats to precious pups, the developers have a similar title in Cats Organized Neatly, or if you love all animals you can buy both in a bundle with a small discount. These games aren’t going to change your life, but with 80 levels each, if you like pets & puzzles, you’ll certainly get three dollars worth out of them.

SteamDB estimates that Dogs Organized Neatly has sold between 12,000 and 33,000 copies on Steam. What you see is what you get, and what you get is well constructed, and the Overwhelmingly Positive reviews reflect this. It is ranked 103 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.

Developer: Bubby Darkstar
Release Date: October 28, 2021
MSRP: $9.99

Might as well get right to the point – Subway Midnight barely feels like a game at all. It’s like a haunted house ride at a carnival – all show and no substance. Which is not to say it’s without any merit at all – the show is reasonably good. The art is weirdly cute & creepy, and it sounds like you’re on a subway, but after spending more than 20 minutes doing little more than walking in a straight line and trying to interact with things that cannot be interacted with, I’m not really sure that the show is quite good enough in this case.

Considering that the entire game can be played through in a couple of hours, according to HowLongToBeat, that’s far too long for nothing of significance to happen. Heck, even in a longer game, I don’t want to just be soaking up atmosphere for almost half an hour. I did encounter a couple of “puzzles” (and using the word puzzle here is generous), but there didn’t even seem to be much in the way of environmental storytelling in the portion of the game I played. Sure, you’re seeing missing posters, but you can’t actually read any of them, and picking up items and putting them into electrical sockets does not compelling game play make.

Subway Midnight definitely presses the buttons of being spooky, maybe even nudging into scary territory in some spots, but I’m not sure there’s enough of anything here to make it worth two hours of the player’s time. Maybe I’m impatient and it was just about to get interesting, but my tolerance for walking in a straight line was exhausted.

SteamDB estimates that Subway Midnight has sold between 14,700 and 40,300 copies on Steam. While some reviewers found it as tedious as I did, many more were intrigued enough to play it through to completion and would recommend it for fans of walking simulators. It is ranked 1526 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.

Developer: LuGus Studio
Release Date: October 13, 2021
MSRP: $14.99

I’m honestly not sure if it’s unusual or not, but for someone who’s so very much attached to her computer (and has been for most of her life), I have never really had much interest in programming. Because of this, hacking games have never held much appeal for me – sure, it’s a cool concept in the abstract, but I always figured I’d have to know something about how to talk to computers to have it not just be a big ol’ confusing mess. While I won’t say that Midnight Protocol makes hacking simple, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as I had feared.

You play as Data, a pretty serious hacker who has just recently – and just barely – gotten away with it. A friend sets you up on a pretty basic system, and you’re ready to jump back into the game. Since your skills might have atrophied a little while you were locked up, they give you a couple of easy tasks to get you back on your sneaky cyber-feet, as it were.

The tutorial is maybe a little slow paced for people familiar with the basic concepts involved in hacking games, but it was just about perfect for me. By default the game is turn-based (although you have the option to change that to real time once you complete the tutorial for the first time), and on each turn, you get two actions. After each turn, the system makes an effort to trace you, and you are definitely going to want to accomplish your mission and get out before it does.

Each tutorial mission teaches you something else about the game, whether that be additional types of moves you can make, different nodes you might encounter while hacking, or more complex things you may run into which are trying to stop you from doing whatever it is you’re in the system to do. I can only speak for myself, but I made a lot of mistakes, even in the earliest levels, partially because I’m impatient, and also partially because I didn’t find the mechanics to be super-intuitive.

The graphics are super simple, but it really fits the aesthetic. The story is drip-fed to you, and once you complete the tutorial, you’ll find yourself doing missions to kill time between the arrival of emails which push things forward. For me, that’s where I started to lose interest; I just wasn’t invested enough in the game play to want to have to replay side missions over and over until I got them right. The missions are short enough, and it doesn’t take terribly long to reboot a mission gone wrong, but I just wasn’t jazzed enough about what I had seen to want to keep going.

I can’t say that I disliked Midnight Protocol, and it’s a game I might someday wander back to. Unfortunately I don’t have any basis for comparison to tell if it’s a “good” hacking game or not. What I can say is that it felt straightforward enough that if I get a sudden urge to play a hacking-focused game, this is one I would likely return to rather than looking for something else to scratch the itch.

SteamDB estimates that Midnight Protocol has sold between 5,800 and 16,000 copies on Steam. It’s currently got a Very Positive Steam rating, with the players who wouldn’t recommend it mostly referencing the random nature of the probability based gameplay elements and the missions that have hard turn limits as reasons they didn’t care for it. It is ranked 1131 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.