LogFAQs > #968486207

And now for two that didn't go over as well.

4. 9 Years of Shadows

Genre: Metroidvania

I've seen a ton of previews for this from indie watchlist channels, so I was definitely eager to check this one out. Unfortunately, the game wouldn't display correctly on my ultra-wide monitor. I probably could have changed the resolution of my display to force it to appear correctly, but with other games, I didn't wait around to find out.

.

5. DoubleShake

Genre: 2.5-D Adventure-Platformer, I guess?

This isn't my usual fare, but I scrolled way to the bottom of the demo list, and this one looked lonely and forgotten, so I decided to give it a shot.

DoubleShake is going for a certain aesthetic, and they lean into it completely. The description says it's inspired by Mischief Makers, Klonoa, and Tomba, none of which I've played (outside of a few minutes of MM,) but the art is chalking up early PS1 and the gameplay largely follows suit. I got stuck on a button prompt in the opening two minutes until I switched to KB just for that moment, and then realized what they really wanted me to do.

DoubleShake will appeal to a certain kind of gamer, but I am not that person. It had the undertones of having quest-based adventures as I ran around a small town looking for items, but I felt like I could never quite tell what was ahead of me due to the camera distancing and the fact that -- although the action is 2-D -- the view was constantly twisting and rotating in a somewhat 3-D space. There's even moments where you can rotate the camera and start moving perpendicular to your old direction, reminding me a little of Paper Mario.

But the game, while very whimsical, felt like it was intentionally rough around the edges to feed into its charm. And while it has that, I ultimately concluded it was not for me and moved on.