There ain’t no Pip like an 8-bit Pip.

While a lot of games try to do a lot of things relatively well, it’s my opinion that a perfect game is a game that chooses to do only one thing but nails it. On this scale of jack-of-all-trades to master of one, Adventures of Pip sits well towards the latter end. It reminds me a lot of the early Mario games – some fun platforming where the ‘action’ part is limited to jumping on enemies’ heads. It’s a very simple but well-loved recipe that Adventures of Pip builds on with its ‘resolution’ switching mechanic, which adds a basic but fun puzzle element.

You play the game as Pip (no surprises there) a red square, or ‘pixel’, who is thrust into the jaws of adventure when his home is attacked by the evil Queen DeRezzia. In a genre-subverting twist that nobody could have seen coming, DeRezzia kidnaps the kingdom’s Princess. With complete disregard for the safety of his fragile, quadrilateral body, Pip takes it upon himself to rescue Princess Adeline and thwart Queen DeRezzia’s evil plot.

You can blame Thomas Was Alone for my pre-disposition to love any game starring an orthogonal red character; so starting as Pip, the red square, made the game immediately compelling to me. The comfort blanket of Thomas Was Alone flashbacks is quickly and cruelly taken away, however, when Adventures of Pip’s innovative resolution switching mechanic comes into play. By harnessing the power of the bitforce (by killing certain glowing blue enemies), you can upgrade to an 8-bit character and then again to a 16-bit character. You also have a button on the controller dedicated to downgrading at will, which also expels some bitforce energy to damage enemies and destroy pink blocks as if they were made of particularly fragile blancmange.

These three characters have unique abilities. 1-bit is small and light so can fit through gaps and glide as he falls to travel a greater distance. 8-bit can wall-jump to reach higher platforms and is the fastest of the three. 16-bit has a big ol’ sword for smashing brown blocks and bouncing enemies around. You’ll constantly need to switch resolution to progress through a level and the placement of chasms, wall jump sections, destructible blocks, bitforce enemies and so on provide a compelling puzzle element. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t fully capitalise on this mechanic and the ‘puzzle’ sections aren’t challenging. It would’ve been nice to see the game lean into this puzzle element more, but I respect the game for putting its platforming first and not diluting that too much with other elements.

Looping back to the ‘doing one thing well’ hypothesis, Adventures of Pip nails the feeling of its platforming. The controls feel tight and responsive. Whatever series of buttons you press, you can be confident that the corresponding actions are exactly what Pip is going to do on-screen. I often find platformers frustrating where the controls try to intuit what you ‘meant’ to do rather than following the buttons you actually pressed. Adventures of Pip has none of that and, like the nerdy kid in the back of physics class, other platformers should take notes.

The excellent platforming means you know every mistake and every death is entirely because of your own lack of skill, rather than the game being glitchy or unfair. With that in mind, I think the difficulty of Adventures of Pip is perfectly pitched. You can get through most levels without being stuck on a particular section for too long, which keeps the pace of the game moving on nicely. The checkpoint system is spot on, with around 3 per level. This leads to a nice balance. There’s still a punishment for dying, you’ll have to go back and get through the entire section perfectly before you can move on, but the spacing is just enough to avoid the game becoming frustrating due to constant reruns. Much like being told those plans that you were dreading have been cancelled, you’ll let out a heavy sigh of relief when you reach a new checkpoint.

Despite the difficulty being very well pitched in general, there are one or two difficulty spikes. Personally, I was stuck on the penultimate boss for quite a while. Fortunately, Adventures of Pip has an answer to this – money. Throughout the game, you get currency which can be used to buy upgrades, like temporary invincibility, healing, extra hearts, etc. That means that if you are stuck on a section, you can back out and buy a new upgrade to give you a boost. The game gives you currency quite generously, but you can always grind through an earlier level if you don’t quite have enough. It’s a nice system that means you always have an option to make the game easier if you really can’t progress.

Overall, Adventures of Pip is 90% formulaic but well-built platformer with 10% juicy, new, resolution-switching puzzling. It’s a good example of a pure action platformer, but there are an awful lot of games in that genre and the question remains whether the bitforce transformations are enough to make it stand out from the crowd. I enjoyed my time with Adventures of Pip and I would recommend it. It’s neither jack-of-all-trades nor master of one, it’s more like ‘proficient at one and a half’, which is good enough for me.

Some games are all about engaging the player in action, others are about immersion in the story, and a small but growing number focus much more on creating an experience based on atmosphere and unique gameplay. The Pathless, released by – Giant Squid, the team responsible for Abzu, is very much a game in the latter category, landing the player into a world of purple hues with the briefest of background stories and exploration being the first order of play. When done well, these games feel truly ground-breaking but when executed poorly, they quickly become a bore. The Pathless, true to its name, follows neither way but meanders somewhere in the middle.

A quick introduction sets the scene of a world tormented by demons with the heroes dispatched to fight them off destined to never return. Any visions of a series of intense battles against increasingly challenging bosses this conjures are quickly dissolved as your character, a kind of female ninja archer simply called ‘Hunter’, lands on the shores of an island on the edge of the world. No hordes await – just a beach and a trail to follow.

The basic controls involve standard walking and sprinting limited by an energy bar that needs to replenish before you kick on. However, as you round the corner to head inland, you encounter diamond targets that offer a speed boost when you hit them. Hit several in a row and you woosh across the land with the trees, hills, and rocks a blur around you. This works well as a way to engage the player while moving beyond simply pushing up on an analogue stick. You can also use these targets while jumping to increase your height and get to some of the more hard to reach areas.

You soon meet a fallen giant eagle, one of the gods under attack by the demons. Your first quest then unfolds – you must light up a series of towers that have been claimed by the forces of darkness. To do so, you simply have to explore – locate the towers, find a way to climb them, locate a statuette to return them to the light. This is all fairly straightforward with the only challenge to find where you need to go – no puzzles beyond some targets to hit and pressure plates to activate and no combatants to defeat.

Once this is done, you gain a companion for the rest of your journey in the shape of a more regular sized eagle. This will fly above and beside you, help you glide to difficult to reach places, drop stones onto those pressure pads, and expect a little TLC after a scary encounter. The combat that does appear as the game progresses, much like the puzzles, rarely threatens to result in a ‘game over’ screen and is simply a matter of keeping your cool and firing off those arrows.

That is where this game didn’t quite do it for me. The first hour was engaging as I explored, became familiar with the gameplay, and tried to piece together the story. However, it just failed to evolve from there. The methods I used to solve those first few puzzles were the ones I largely used throughout the entire game. The enemies encountered didn’t really feel any different or any more challenging than each other. The story was revealed so slowly that it didn’t hold my interest. This could, like Abzu, have been another atmospheric game of exploration. Alternatively, it could have been a game that combined unique visuals and controls with a series of increasingly difficult puzzles and boss fights. It could have been an interesting short-form game, or it could have been a long-term challenging game driven by a mysterious story. Ultimately, it is none of these things. In that sense, it is very much Pathless.

So it turns out the age of misinformation isn’t quite a recent as we once thought… according to Red Zero Games at least. In this turn-based strategy game, learn the REAL story behind Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Americas in 1492, taking charge of the ‘Avant Armada’ in their quest to vanquish the mythical monsters blocking your path to the new world. You’ll be sure to meet a host of wacky creatures, deadly foes… and a pirate who can only say the word ‘fish’? Be on the lookout though me hearties, this journey will be far more perilous than you might think.

Jokes and pirate-talk aside, I want to make it clear from the start that I had a great time playing ‘Here Be Dragons’. Witty dialogue, a fantastic art-style, and most importantly, captivating gameplay all combine into a game I had difficulty putting down. I’ll get into the nitty-gritty soon enough, but I think it is important to note that overall, ‘Here Be Dragons’ provides a rich and engaging experience for those fans of strategy-based games.

Particularly impressive for an indie game, ‘Here Be Dragons’ provides players with a marked degree of substance and depth in its gameplay. At its core, the ‘Dice Activation System’ introduces an essence of randomness and luck, which when done just right, creates a sense of freshness to each battle. Yes, this can be both frustrating and limiting at times, which is something I will discuss later into the review, but on the surface, this rather simple mechanic helps create variation in gameplay, especially when replaying certain levels. The wide range of ships given to players, as well as diverse enemies with equally diverse move-pools, ensures each encounter is different from the last. What stood out most to me was the sheer amount of problem-solving this game requires – having to compute so many different variables during a battle means every decision counts. Assigned the wrong dice to one of your ships? Well you may have just given the enemy the chance to wipe you out next turn. Red Zero Games has done a fantastic job of creating depth in the battle system, which frankly many more heavily-funded titles lack.

The compliments don’t stop here though. One of the most notable features of ‘Here Be Dragons’ is its minimalist, yet impressive art-style. A ‘living map’ provides the backdrop for a vast majority of the game (aside from inter-level dialogue), and it certainly is one that fantastically balances simplicity with visual depth. Despite fundamentally being a 2D game, the choice of design goes a long way in creating a sense of openness – crucial for a game that is almost solely centred around ocean-based battles. In addition, art choices for the UI and character design beautifully match the overall aesthetic, and as a result, much praise should be directed to Red Zero Games for the visual design of ‘Here Be Dragons’. Similarly, the sound design is equally impressive, which despite being somewhat limited (you’ll hear the same SFX constantly), never once begins to sound repetitive or irritating.

However, you might be asking – ‘Well, these battles sound fun, but how’s the story?’. Well don’t ya worry mateys, Red Zero Games’ got ya covered. What goes a long way in ‘Here Be Dragons’ is the cast of characters you are introduced to throughout. Although I will concede that I would have preferred a continuous experience with a familiar crew, each new protagonist provides their own dose of charm and wit. One minute you’ll be an optimistic sailor, looking for adventure, and the next, a strange old pirate talking to a dead parrot. The mix of recurrent cast members and fresh faces is certainly what drives ‘Here Be Dragons’, and the dialogue between them will be sure to have you letting out a chuckle or two along the way.

Unfortunately, this is where the game does reveal some of its flaws. The revolving cast of characters is a double-edged sword, as although providing freshness to the experience, it does ultimately draw the player out of the main narrative. To be honest, after a few hours of playing, I had forgotten what the main objective of the game was. I did enjoy playing as new characters, and seeing what role they played going forward, but these experiences were usually cut short. Consequently, players may fail to develop any real connection to the multitude of protagonists. This is a real shame, as some of these characters were excellently-written, and I feel that Red Zero Games would have been better off using one or two of these characters throughout, rather than chopping-and-changing every few levels.

This lack of cohesiveness is reflective in the gameplay as well. I mentioned before about the depth in gameplay provided by ‘Here Be Dragons’, which, to its credit, does prevent the monotonous grind many games fall victim to. However, the almost insane number of mechanics introduced during the story, some permanent, and some dependent on specific battles, means it can become far too complex at times, meaning you are frequently wiped out by your enemy with little understanding of how. Furthermore, the ‘Dice Activation System’ can become a significant hinderance in battle, as despite offering the opportunity for ‘luck of the dice’ moments (literally), when battles often require a particular strategy to win, consistently rolling unhelpful dice can become tiresome. I will admit that this may be down to personal preference though, as someone more favourable of ‘Dark Souls-esque’ games may appreciate the value in repeated attempts at the same level. Nevertheless, for many, the 10th attempt at the same battle may just be one too many. I will note that I was playing on the highest difficulty (granted, of only two options), and maybe I just suck at strategy games, but I think it is important that potential customers are aware of the (potentially) repetitive gameplay loop offered by ‘Here Be Dragons’.

Lastly, I know I previously heaped praise on the visual design of ‘Here Be Dragons’, and I do not wish to detract from that, but one notable issue in this regard was with the battle UI. Maybe this was a consequence of playing on Switch, but my screen was often bombarded with a number of different menus, crammed into very little screen-space. Especially whilst getting to grips with the game, it can become more of a challenge figuring out what button you are meant to press next, rather than how you will defeat your foe(s). This is not a glaring issue, but one that may irk players from time to time.

To conclude, I want to reiterate my enjoyment with ‘Here Be Dragons’, despite the flaws noted above. Red Zero Games should receive mountains of praise for a funny, rich and beautiful game, which for me was one I found myself repeatedly drawn to. Yes, there are minor issues that cannot be overlooked, but these may or may not be problematic depending on the player. Some polish to the gameplay design would have served ‘Here Be Dragons’ greatly, as a focus on a more streamlined story and gameplay loop likely would have provided the icing on the cake. However, I can appreciate the attempt by Red Zero Games to create a deep, and ultimately enjoyable, experience for its players. I will keep my eye out for future releases from the developers, but until then, I’ll grab me rum, and set sail again with me mateys on adventures new.