Acarajé Hideout

Lucid blocks is weird. If you're coming expecting a Minecraft clone, you can basically guess some of how the game operates, but in the end you will just be frustrated. I sure was when I played it for the first time. Nothing made any sense, and I got so overwhelmed by how you're just thrown in a totally absurd world without context, that I just closed the game after half a hour.

But that itch came and I opened it again the next day. I decided to scrap all my "understanding" of how the game should work, and instead just walked. Picked a direction and explored. And that's when this game hooked me. The first and most important thing that makes this game shine is the biomes. It works just like Minecraft, except the biomes are usually concepts, not real natural biomes. Plastic plains, endless white corridors with pools, patterns of blocks that stretches for miles, and more.

The game has a experience mechanic that goes up by killing mobs, or discovering new blocks and items. This heavely encourages exploration, breaking every block you come across to see what it even is. Most of the mobs don't attack you, until they decide they'll do, and that puts the player on a almost constant fight or flight scenario until you get used to your surroundings. Playing this game feels just like exploring a new world where you don't have any parameters or know any of its rules, making it a very unique experience.

That, for me, was the most fun part, but when you level up you get your real story progression: a pendant that leads you somewhere. When you get there, you can interact with a block that will either unlock you a cutscene, or teleport you to a challenge to complete. After that you're granted a bead for a rosary that you carry with you, and getting it complete unlocks your end game. The challenges are fun but for the most part I found them to be too easy, specially if you have a hook, skipping almost all of the parkour parts.

The last major mechanic of the game is the crafting system, at first glance a totally random crafting with random outcomes. But I can describe it as being mostly "vibe" based, and not trying to be a logical crafting system. For the most part blocks and items don't even have a real life counterpart, so you're encouraged to just combine things together to see what happens. It sounds frustrating, but the game gives you one cool way of recording your crafts: a notebook where you can draw the recipes you find useful. I found it to be a really creative way to solve this problem.

Overall it is a very complete and fun game, tackling the "Minecraft clone" in a very unique way. With cool traversal items and your very own personal "world" that you can carry in your inventory, you can see how it is mostly designed for exploration. The procedural generation not only being horizontal, but also vertical is a very astounding programming feat coming from just one developer, with so much content. It is definetely a must play!

Voices Of The Void is a indie horror (astronomer simulator?) game, made by what seems a single developer, Mr Dr Nose, and an artist, Monique Sanctifier. It is set in a research lab deep into the nature of Switzerland. You play as Dr. Kel, a young scientist which was sent to scan the sky for any potential signals and bodies of interest on the deep space, processing them and sending to other scientists, getting points and spending it for lots of things.

You start the game expecting a horror experience, the kind that makes you scared for monsters, but really the scariest part of the game is the anticipation, as everything is quiet and seems normal, until it suddenly doesn't. It is really a slow burner, so you need to have some patience for it to really hit. The game likes to play mind games with the player, and makes you feel paranoid, looking over your shoulders.

This makes for a very compelling and different experience on the horror genre, tackling many supernatural and extraterrestrial fears. The fear of the unknown is what permeates the experience. But that is it's weakest feature also, because after you've gone through the main events of the story, the unknown is suddenly not that scary anymore, and the game loses most of its charm.

But that doesn't mean this is the only feature of the game. Although the game is still in pre-alpha, it has so much content I feel bad for it being free. If you're not in the mood to scan the deep space, you can do such things as: fishing, mining, building, assembling Kerfur-Omega (which is a fun challenge), exploring a big map full of secrets, even going after beehives and farming. Really the amount of side mechanics you can learn are astounding for a pre-alpha, the only caveat is that they aren't explained at all, which can be a fun time, or a really stressful one.

I know I said after beating the main events, the game loses its horror features. But, the game has also lots of side events that occur by random, which can greatly increase replayability. Being a game in pre-alpha, I don't feel like criticizing most of its features, because they are incomplete, as most of them feel that way. The ATV which you use to drive around the map is pretty inconsistent, and I wish to have interactions and change my relationship with the other alien races apart from the Arirals, but I will not enter in too many details because it will spoil the experience for others. So go play that game, it's free! And please, play version 0.8.2. As of now, there is a version 0.9 but is not stable and has LOTS of bugs lol

Crow Country is a indie survival horror game developed by SFB Games and released in 2024. It gets the classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill gameplay and PS1 graphics, nailing the atmosphere of this genre. The game is set on a abandoned amusement park, which sets a particular dark and fun tone that I loved.

You play as Mara Forest, an agent sent to investigate the disappearance of Edward Crow, the owner of the park. It is a nice story with a good twist at the end, though I wish the game had more than one ending, definetely it had room for that. This makes the game very linear, which kills some replayability, but what it lacks in player choice it tries to make up giving you a score system at the end, with bonus items and unlocking a new challenge, finding 42 glass birds throughout the game.

The gameplay gets the classic aiming system of Resident Evil first games, without its clunkiness, with some very thought out puzzles and packed with secrets to go after. One heads up I feel is that sometimes the game gives the player all of the pieces in a very "in your face" way, which killed for me some of the fun of solving some puzzles.

Overall the game is amazing, with a lot to give for a indie title, and it very much is making me want to get all the achievments, which is a hard thing for me to want in most games. With a smooth gameplay and a good investigation story, this game is so good for those who love this genre.