From developers Maschinen-Mensch comes a puzzle platformer, Mother Machine.

You are a gremlin like creature, filled with cuteness and determination, printed by Mother, who needs her satellites back online.

Using the force of burps and explosive farts you control your creature through the varying labyrinths of caverns and caves which are procedurally generated and multi tierred, powering up cables that activate satellites and more.

You can climb to reach those tricky areas, but your climbing is timed, so don’t try and climb to the heavens.

Swing, run and power up your abilities gaining some serious gas to help you through as you gain the ability to’ heal fart’, ‘power puke’, fire spikes from your body and more.

There are two vitals you need keep up, your stomach and health.

You will find berries to eat, or throw as a projectile. If your stomach is empty you won’t be able to use your additional abilities.

Health can drop surprisingly fast too. You’re not the only living critter in these caves, so there are moments of short combat bursts. Also if you’re climbing and the timer runs out prepare for some serious pain as you fall.

Mother Machine is a puzzle platforms done well.

While gameplay can get a little repetitive the puzzle element keeps you hooked as you develop a serious  determination to finish off the objective for the cave that you are in.

Mother Machine can be played solo, but it is best played with others as you both help eachother out, heal eachother and solve the satellite activations together.

Your creature can be customized to your liking, but this will cost you energy and you’ll need to find a machine on your adventure to actually apply those custom looks.

Mother Machine is a cute game with a tricky and complex play through.

Eat, burp, climb, swing and power fart your way through with friends or go it alone in this sophisticated yet simple game that’s as much fun as it sounds.

The post Mother Machine (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

An original release for Nintendo’s Wii console all the way back in 2010, Disney’s Epic Mickey took the interactive Wii wands and turned them in to paint brushes.

Fast forward to 2024 (yep 14 years!) Epic Mickey is back, Rebrushed with a new coat of paint.

Narrated by the Sorcerer Yen Sid, Mickey finds himself in a cartoon wasteland.

It’s desolate, sad place for forgotten things, and as Mickey explores this world with a magic paintbrush he brings colour, light and substance for all.

But it’s not just a platformer where you go about and paint stuff, there is a bad guy. The Blot prefers things as they are and likes to reign with terror.

Each level, environment is a mix of puzzle and platform.

You play as Mickey, and you’ll have the ability to splash colour on otherwise ‘invisible’ areas, or erase, as you need.

Painting over areas either reveals the way forward, opens additional paths and even secrets.

It’s fair to say that this game, the original release was gold on Nintendo Wii, as you could wave the Wand controller about to play.

Now remastered and released on every platform, it has taken that virtual interactive control and placed it in to a standard gamepad or keyboard – which actually works well.

Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a substantial play for kids, or big kids.

Family friendly but also tricky enough to add longevity to gameplay.

Built with remastered visuals, Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is an interactive work of art in its own right.

The post Epic Mickey: Rebrushed (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Despite Super Monkey Ball having been around for a very long time, it’s a series I have never touched.

I know many have had a love for this series so I did want to check it out. Well with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania it seems like as good of a place to start as any.

Jumping into the game I started, as many do, with the story mode.

This has some, well to be honest, bland cut scenes.  Our hero AiAi has his banana stolen by another monkey called Palette. Palette is looking for her dad, and she reckons she will find him by finding the “Legendary Banana”.

I know this story isn’t designed with adults in mind, but I was skipping cutscenes far too early on this one.

Fortunately the reason I was skipping them was I just wanted to play the puzzles, which for the most part are fun. If, like me, you are new to Super Monkey Ball, I will explain this for you.

Basically you roll around a level in a ball, trying to collect Bananas and getting to the end. There is a weird quirk which is when you move the whole stage tilts. Initially I thought that the ball would be moved by the stage tilting, but the movement seemed to be based on how I was moving, so honestly it just seemed like an aesthetic quirk.

Either way, it’s pretty fun to play.

The levels start out nice and chill with you getting through most without any major issues. Thanks to there being an award for beating within a certain time, and the levels being nice and short, I found myself making the easy levels harder than they needed to be. But that is a me problem.

About half way through the massive number of levels, the difficulty ramps up like crazy.

Moving platforms, the whole ground moving, all kinds of shenanigans start taking place. For the most part I was really enjoying it as the levels are short so the frustration doesn’t lead to feeling like they aren’t achievable. Instead it just hangs the carrot, or banana as it were, in front of you making replaying levels super addictive.

On top of this, there are heaps of extra modes with a lot allowing couch co-op. You can get stuck into the adventure levels with a friend, or get stuck into different levels and mini games. Mini games include a shockingly well designed racing game, and then there is a strange golf game and football. It’s kind of bonkers how much fun these modes can be.

From the style it’s a surprisingly nice game.

The simple but cartoony art style looks great with the bright colours they use, and that just makes it that much more chill which is needed when you get stuck on a harder level. Other characters can be unlocked including our iconic friend Sonic. Best of all, if you play as Sonic it switches the bananas for rings. Now that is some seriously awesome care and attention for the crossover.

On the whole, I am really enjoying Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania. Sure the story itself sucks, but my kids may enjoy that. Me, well I am just enjoying the fun gameplay that is on offer here.

It may not be my next favourite game, but it’s a great way to spend a weekend or two.

The post Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania (Switch) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Forty three years ago Mario and Donkey Kong went to head for the first time.

This iconic arcade game put Donkey Kong on the map, and Mario, who was known as Jumpman, was an icon soon after. twenty three years later on the GameBoy Advance they went head to head again in Mario vs. Donkey Kong.  And now twenty years later, you can check out this interesting puzzle game again with the remake Mario vs. Donkey Kong on Switch.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong has a pretty light plot.

Donkey Kong is watching an ad on TV that shows a Mario toy. He gets down to the store as quickly as he can to get one to find they are sold out. Dismayed he looks across the road and sees the factory that makes the toys. He jumps in there, fills his sack with Mario toys, and does a runner. Fortunately, Mario was walking past at the time and runs after him.

And that’s it. It’s dumb and silly, but honestly I didn’t need a giant plot to enjoy this puzzle game.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong is first and foremost a puzzle game.

Each stage gives you two sections, the first of which requires you to get a key to get through a door. The next section has you trying to get the Mario toy that was left behind. The puzzles involve having to climb ladders, swing over gaps, ducking through gaps, and more. They are never overly complex, but they are just cleverly built enough to get you feeling smart when you nail it.  Even if you nail a pretty substantial number of them on the first try.

After six of these types of levels you get hit with an interesting puzzles where you need to lead the toys to collect a bunch of letters, and then get them to a box for Mario to return them to the store. After this you have a boss fight where Donkey Kong throws stuff around, some of the things you use to throw back at him. Again none of these are too complicated, but they are just creative enough to make you feel clever.

One of the weirdest parts, especially as you start, is the controls.

Mario doesn’t move anywhere near as fluently or quickly as he does in platforming games. It’s got a weird sluggishness that feels like Mario is walking on glue. That’s not a major problem, because while it was annoying at first, it didn’t take too long to get the hang of. This is more of a puzzle game that has platforming in it, as opposed to a platformer.

The overhaul has brought a bunch of new levels.

As a new player I haven’t seen the old version so have no idea which levels are new. But treating it as a new game in 2024 they all felt like they could have been created now. Added to this is the graphical overhaul, which again looks like a game that was released in 2024. It’s gorgeous.

On the whole, I have to say I really enjoyed my time with Mario vs. Donkey Kong. It’s not overly difficult, but it’s fun. Once you get past the slow platforming, it’s a damn entertaining and simple way to chill out.

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Konami’s latest addition to an already extensive catalogue brings a fresh and lively feel to arcade gaming while also maintaining all the nostalgic charm of it’s predecessors.

This much was instantly apparent upon launching into the brightly-coloured and vibrant world of Super Crazy Rhythm Castle.

Ruled by the wicked King Ferdinand, your most important objective is to focus on the rhythm while he does everything he can to distract and derail you along your way using an assortment of traps, tests and tricks.

With a choice between four quirky characters: Trinity, B. Box, Jingle and Mike – you have the option of embarking on your adventure solo or with up to three friends. Though it may seem like a simple family-friendly game, do not be fooled! Give it a few goes and you will soon see Super Crazy Rhythm Castle is a lot trickier than your first impressions might have you prepared for.

Bursting with hidden puzzles and challenges at every turn, this one is perfect for anyone already fond of games like Crash Bandicoot and /or Guitar Hero.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if the two had been chopped up and put through a blender – Super Crazy Rhythm Castle would be the delightful end result.

I could see the game just as much fitting in as an icebreaker for earlybirds at a party or as an after-dinner favourite among housemates; packed full of colour, punch and with plenty of catchy original numbers guaranteed to hang around even after you’ve called it a night.

Be prepared to put your money where your mouth is though because Super Crazy Rhythm Castle leaves no room for error, miss a beat and you’ll find yourself falling behind faster than you can catch a breath!

The post Super Crazy Rhythm Castle (PlayStation 5) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

2014’s The Talos Principle was a surprise hit for Croteam, a developer more famous for the mindless, tongue-in-cheek shooter, Serious Sam, than philosophy and esoteric puzzles.

It’s time to delve into The Talos Principle 2 and ponder, once again, the concept of free will, and what it is to be human, whilst solving puzzles in a world where mankind is but a distant memory.

If The Talos Principle was an indie movie that did very well for itself The Talos Principle 2 is the big-budget Hollywood sequel. The game expands on the original in its more accessible plot and open-world gameplay. Whereas the first game kept its cards to its chest, this one is a little more revealing.

After a “calibration” sequence that looks a lot like the first game, The Talos Principle 2 drops the player into the android body of 1K.  1K is the last of a race of new “humans”, androids who consider themselves to be the descendants of the long-gone human race. 1K completes a preordained “Goal”: to populate the city of New Jerusalem with 1000 androids.

At a ceremony to mark the achievement of “the Goal” a strange giant hologram appears above the city seemingly an invite, mysteriously interrupted. A group of androids, that includes 1K, sets out to find the origin.

After the introduction, the main game starts by allowing the player to explore the massive city of New Jerusalem. This huge open-world design is replicated throughout the game. The Talos Principle 2 is one of the first games off the starting block to embrace Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. The result is quite an astounding and breathtakingly beautiful game.

From the vast vistas to the ray-traced reflection and ambient occlusion, it’s a great showcase for what we can expect from the new game engine. The lighting and textures are incredibly realistic. I played the game on a powerful gaming desktop with an RTX 4090 as well as a humble laptop with an RTX 4060 GPU. Both ran the game superbly. The implementation of both AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS means that even gamers with more humble machines will get great performance and visuals from the game.

After wandering about the city for a bit, petting cats (that have, as you’d expect, outlived humans), and reading amusingly incorrect “facts” associated with old human relics, it was time for me to get going. All is not perfect in New Jerusalem, suggesting that more than a little human DNA is tied into the androids’ programming.

We flew to a new island where vast and architecturally amazing megastructures are surrounded by woodlands hiding ruins and abandoned gardens. The serene landscape was peppered with beautiful water features and mysterious structures.

The game location is made up of a series of hub areas, each with a series of puzzles that need to be solved to move on to the next. An ancient transport network connects the areas. Completing the main puzzles at each location provides your companions with the data needed to access new stations on the transit system. Completing each area also triggers the massive network of devices required to access the pyramid structure at the centre of the island.

This sequel still retains the same sort of puzzle elements from the first one, with a few new mechanics thrown in for good measure. The game does a good job of introducing each puzzle mechanic rather than throwing you in at the deep end. You never once feel like you are being punished, the logic of the game being fair, if sometimes challenging.

For the most part, the puzzles involve opening forcefields using light receivers to get access to switches, which in turn trigger other locks. To progress players are given access to tripod-mounted tools that can manipulate light and physically affect the environment. There are also blocks that can be used to press floorplates, or used as a platform for elevating tools via fans.

The genius of the puzzles is that they are not really that complicated. They can be crafty and testing, but most are deceptively simple. I often found myself rolling my eyes when I solved them, reflecting on how over-complicated I’d seen the challenge.

Away from the obvious puzzles, there’s lots to explore and discover. The backstory offers another layer to the game. Hidden laboratories contain prototypes of the various tools that the game slowly reveals to the player. Other, seemingly incomplete puzzles offer additional bonuses. Strange ethereal holographic projections, video logs, and messages invite players to dip into the philosophical ponderings that underwrite the game’s plot.

The story is intriguing, but not essential if you are just into puzzles. I found the game’s mystery intriguing, especially the almost Portal-like behind-the-scenes elements, but I wouldn’t fault anyone for just solving the puzzles.

The Talos Principle 2, like its predecessor, is a phenomenal game that shouldn’t be overlooked. The plot may seem a bit highbrow at times, but you can just focus on the spectacle of it all and the gorgeous visuals. The puzzles are sublime in both their cunning design and their crafty simplicity.

This is a game that’s easy to recommend, especially if you are after something a little different.

The post The Talos Principle 2 (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The trio of heroes is back in a beautifully crafted visual feast of a game with complex puzzle play, from Frozenbyte.

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy sees our heroes; Amadeus the wizard, Pontius the Knight and Soya the Thief return and joining forces once again after having gone their separate ways from the events of Trine 4.

They have all be summoned to a Hero Awards ceremony in their honour by Lady Sunshine Crawford.

Of course – the Awards ceremony doesn’t go as the trio thought it would and there’s a bit more to Lady Sunny than you’d expect…

As with the previous games, Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy requires you to cycle between all three characters within one single Level.

Each character has a specific skill set. Soya can use rope with arrows, Amadeus is able to conjure boxes and planks and Pontius has girth, weight a shield that can aide in puzzles by way of deflecting or changing the flow and a sword for brutal melee combat.

Their individual skills can be levelled up too via a skill tree where you’re specified character will learn new abilities.

Difficulty and puzzle solving to get through each Level is very dynamic. You may feel brain sweats very early on in the game, whereas later on you’ll find yourself thinking, ‘ah that one was easy’.

The environments and obstacles within (and ones that you will conjure) are all real-world physics based. This of course can add to the complexity of finding the solution to the said physics and environmental puzzle.

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy also has multiplayer.

Classic sees you having the three characters only where other players can jump in and join you to get through the game. This is limited to one instance of the three playables.

A new mode called Unlimited sees you having up to 4 players in one go and not limited to specific characters. No need for you and your friends to argue about who plays as which character, you can, for example, have four Soya’s on screen.

The multiplayers aspect is either co-op offline or online.

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy is a short game in theory. Around 20 Levels, however, do not expect that you’ll whiz through it. The puzzles you’ll encounter will see you sapping countless hours, day even, in to various Levels.

A stunning platformer, Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy will test your logical thinking, frustrate you at times and reward you with satisfaction once you’ve got through those really tricky bits.

Myself a fan of the series was more than pleased to see that a fifth one was in the making. And for likeminded Trine players, be assured that it has retained all of the goodness from the previous games and then some.

The post Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy (PlayStation 5) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

I am a blue haired pixel animated land shark in the form of a cute girl with a drill the size of my own entire body and a magpie’s desire for shiny objects.

It’s not a phase mum.

Pepper Grinder, the latest from Devolver Digital, is a 2D side scroller platformer with emphasis on momentum, timing and puzzle solving.

We are introduced to Pepper as she is washed up from a shipwreck and being robbed by a mysterious masked woman and her entourage of cackling horned Narlings.

From there on in it’s up to us to don Grinder, our massive hand drill, and dive, jump and collect our way to vengeance and riches.

Other characters so far include an innocent badger whose house and turnips we ransack and eat respectively; and a fifty story tall blue cyclopean giant marching by in the background of the first level.

It is a mysterious world we inhabit, presented to us with no dialogue and little more than implied reasons for who we are and why we are here.

But for a pixel art side scroller, a certain degree of minimalism is not only expected, it is almost demanded.

Games of this type are a play on nostalgia, a throwback to the days of Metroid and Castlevania when the most that could be determined from the look of a pixelated sprite was if that guy had long hair or not.

Let’s take a closer look.

Difficulty wise, the term ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ comes to mind, but I don’t believe that applies here when there are a grand total of six buttons to press and five of them are movement related.

More aptly I would say Pepper Grinder is a skateboard that seems simple enough to ride right until someone wishes you luck and pushes you off a cliff.

Then it’s time to sink or swim.

So you go from diving and leaping through the environment with the grace of a dolphin, occasionally reminding some little narwhal demon looking fella who the boss is down here, to screaming through a gauntlet laden with bombs, deadly thorns and death defying leaps.

Your movement through the ground is controlled in the same way you control a rampaging elephant and for all the simplicity of the controls, it’s easy to find yourself flying into another bottomless pit… especially if you are aiming to collect everything.

For you see, difficulty in Pepper Grinder comes in two levels.

If your only care is to get to the end of the level, you are going to have little problem; your path of progression is fairly obvious and the puzzles are fairly straightforward.

If, like me, you have an obsessive need to collect everything that shines between yourself and the exit gate, then welcome to hell.

You have condemned yourself to dying over and over, returning to the last checkpoint to hunt down that one little gem you missed on that last almost perfect run.

To get the perfect run though, you will need to examine the walls very closely. For no game like this is complete without its secret areas and the designers of Pepper Grinder understood this well.

Slight changes in texture mark the hidden points where you can drill the walls for hidden coins and there are several to find in each level.

I’m sure you’ve heard this one before.

Sound wise Pepper Grinder excels.

The menu greeted me with the aggressive revving of a chainsaw followed immediately by the fast beats of a techno track that had my feet tapping without me even really noticing.

This drops you into the flowing waves of the starter area with a lonely western background instrumental establishing the mood for the beginning of your journey.

Finding success in simplicity as with much of the game, sound design is careful and deliberate. The impish cackling of your enemies, the huffs of exertion whenever Pepper does something particularly impressive, the industrial drone of the drill that is your only tool and weapon in a hostile landscape.

Pepper Grinder isn’t setting out to be the next big thing, it knows what it is and sticks to it, staying well within its lane. That can rapidly get old for some people now used to expecting a game to include a constant dopamine feed of progression, but if all you are looking for is a quick and fun way to spend a few hours of your time, here’s your stop.

In that sense, Pepper Grinder is like your favourite chair. It does its job very well and you will be comfortable and satisfied while sitting in it.

You won’t be thinking of it after getting up and moving on to the next thing, but that’s OK. It will still be there waiting for you when you get back.

The post Pepper Grinder (PC) Preview appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Indie developer studio, Pontoco is thrilled to announce that their peaceful sci-fi adventure, The Last Clockwinder is out now for PlayStation VR2.

The award-winning title offers boundless mysteries to uncover wrapped within an evocative story on PS VR2 launch day.

Awards for The Last Clockwinder include Meta Quest store’s Best Game of 2022, Hardcore Gamer’s Best VR Game of 2022, Upload VR PCVR Game of the Year 2022 and being a finalist at the DICE Awards in both VR categories.

The Last Clockwinder is a puzzle automation game about making synchronized contraptions out of your own clones. Players take on the role of Jules, a young woman determined to repair an ancient clocktower shrouded in mystery. Upon discovering a unique pair of gloves, you are bestowed with the power to create clones that can be directed to achieve various tasks that automate. Orchestrate a humming, intricate network of robotic clones to help with things like growing plants, harvesting resources and synthesizing new seeds, all of which lead to the eventual reinstatement of the Clocktower.

Working with your newly-created assistants to save the Clocktower, discover voice memos from childhood to piece together your complex past and protect your home.

Will you take on the great responsibility of restoring the Clocktower and uncovering the boundless mysteries within?

The post The Last Clockwinder is Now on PS VR2 appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The Monkey Island series is one of the most seminal franchises in all of video game history.

It’s a truly foundational series, not only for the point and click genre, but also for PC gaming in particular. Particularly those written by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, the series defined how an entire genre would work, how comedy could be successfully integrated with video games, and they pushed graphics (for the time) in a way that still looks great over 30 years later. And while the series has been made and remade, a true successor from the original developers has been missing in action for ever a decade.

But now, finally, Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman have returned to bring us a true successor to those original games, one that both moves the genre forward and reflects back on the legacy of a defining gaming franchise, and the relationship creators have with their legacy.

Return to Monkey Island starts not with Guybrush Threepwood, but with his son, exploring a park before listening to his father narrating a story. It’s indicative of the tone of this game, with a strong focus on what has come and how we explain that to ourselves and those around us. Guybrush, and the developers, are not the young whippersnapper heroes they were, but have moved on to the next stage in their life in a substantial way.

In short, our older Guybrush learns that his old nemesis LeChuck has a map to the exact spot of the Secret of Monkey Island, his erstwhile prize. He returns to Mêlée Island to put together a crew to beat LeChuck to the treasure, however upon his return he finds the island changed from before. His task significantly harder, this is where our story begins.

Mechanically, Return of Monkey Island is a more streamlined, simplified affair compared to its predecessors. Most significantly, the verb system is gone (touch that, speak to this person etc). Instead, when you hover over a selectable item, it will tell you exactly what will happen; usually the left click has Guybrush talk about the item and the right click is the main interaction. I found this system to be far less frustrating than traditional point and clicks and a welcome improvement to the genre. Other elements such as combining items still remain however. You can also hold down a button to highlight all the selectable items in the current room, which massively cuts down on annoying pixel hunting.

For the puzzles, Return to Monkey Island offers two settings, a casual mode and a harder, more complex mode. All puzzles, however, are far less obtuse than many other point and click games, especially some of the more illogical and bizarre combinations from previous Monkey Island titles. While this does take away some of the surprise of putting together a combination that is completely unexpected, it again cuts down on frustration, to the ultimate benefit of the player experience. It is never too easy, but doesn’t get in your way with combinations that only make sense in the creator’s heads.

I felt the puzzles and main narrative were only one part of the story that Return to Monkey Island was telling however. Throughout the game, Guybrush acts as a kind of proxy for the creators Gilbert and Grossman reflecting on the world and characters they have created. Each location visited and revisited is treated with a maturity and consideration that comes with age. Guybrush now lives in a world where the glories of his previous adventures have come and now gone. In a pointed moment, Guybrush isn’t recognised even at a museum solely dedicated to his adventures. His impact on Mêlée Island and its inhabitants are now part of history and making his way in this world is more difficult, with a whole new set of pirate leaders and a new governor mirroring the changed video game industry that Return to Monkey Island finds itself in.

In many ways Return to Monkey Island is not about the Secret of Monkey Island itself, but of how once-famous, relevant heroes make their way in a changed world. Once revealed, the ultimate form of the Secret reflects these concerns. But (spoilers ahead), just as Guybrush is happy to see his son take up the mantle of adventurer, and his wife Elaine carry on the work in a different way, so too do you get the sense that Gilbert and Grossman have now made their peace with themselves and their place within the industry.

It’s a caring, thoughtful game, one that while embracing all the silliness and gameplay pillars of previous Monkey Island games, shows a concern that goes beyond its immediate self. It’s new art style too, is fantastic, and I can’t understand the concern that some have expressed with how it looks. It’s like a more sophisticated take on the art in Guacamelee, another game I absolutely loved.

A refined, streamlined, humorous and brain-tickling game, Return to Monkey Island shows that the original creators are still absolutely top talent. There is almost nothing I would change about this delightful game, itself a real treasure as good as any Secret that Threepwood himself might find.

The post Return to Monkey Island (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.