Mitchell Demorest

Ann Arbor

Freelance videogame writer, semi-unretired cook. Bylines @indiegameweb @NME_Games @PCGamesN @Slant_Magazine @UppercutCrit

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Articles

An Addictively Strategic Tower Defense Game

3 days ago | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

Adriaan de Jongh’s addictively strategic Rift Riff is a tower defense game whose main point of distinction is its relatively open-level layouts. Instead of traveling along clearly defined tracks, there’s usually some ambiguity to the path each group of enemies will take, and not every enemy type in a given wave is guaranteed to behave the same.
A Very Funny Immersive Sim

1 week ago | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

Much of the charm of many immersive sims comes from the fact that, despite the genre’s tendency toward self-serious trappings, these games have the capacity to generate surprisingly funny moments as players outwit their totally outmatched (and often not-too-bright) CPU opponents. So it’s both refreshing and appropriate that Skin Deep, from developer Blendo Games, brands itself an out-and-out comedy game.
The Monsters Are the Thing

2 months ago | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds is a major achievement in many regards, but its story-heavy campaign—what the game categorizes as its Low Rank section—puts an unfortunate damper on things. The narrative here is pretty soggy, in that it doesn’t have the structural integrity to support the weight of its seemingly endless dialogue.
A Winningly Unflashy First-Person RPG

Feb 13, 2025 | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed is incredibly likeable for its unflashyness. This first-person RPG, which is set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, boasts neither overwhelming graphical fidelity nor the promise that you can go anywhere and do anything. It doesn’t get bogged down chasing the illusion of boundlessness—or, worse, endlessness—settling for something contained yet distilled, and it’s more potent as a result. This focus comes through most obviously in the game’s world.
Starward Vector' Review: The Man-Machine

Jan 30, 2025 | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

If Jump Over the Age’s Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector had just offered more Citizen Sleeper, it would have been enough, but a sense of expansion is startlingly on display here. Partially, this comes down to a significant increase in the series’s scale: Where the first game took place on a single space station, Starward Vector sees you hopping between various hub areas, trying to stay one step ahead of your would-be captor, a gang leader named Laine.
Brothership' Review: Sibling Blues

Nov 17, 2024 | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

There are some real bright spots in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, which is the first game in the Mario & Luigi series to be developed by Acquire. The combat, which requires timed button presses to land attacks or dodges, is a nice continuation of what the series has done before. The main innovation are the combos, which involve using both Mario and Luigi (each bound to different face buttons) to deal maximum damage, as the brother plumbers jump and flip and toss each other into the air.
Parenting at the End of the World

Oct 28, 2024 | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

The main hook of Neva—and the thing that sets it apart from Nomada Studio’s debut outing, Gris—is the game’s namesake, a white wolf with antlers who’s your constant companion throughout. Neva is in many ways more of a main character than the human swordfighter Alba, who you control. After an opening cutscene, in which a larger wolf (presumably Neva’s parent) dies, the young Neva follows you around in need of protection. There are smart details in Neva’s behavior to this effect.
Whatever Happened to Leo Dormer?

Oct 7, 2024 | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

Calligram Studio’s Phoenix Springs is a point-and-click adventure game with a slight mechanical twist. Rather than have you scrounge your way through an inventory filled with physical clues and tools, the game presents you with something more like a mental map filled with various ideas.
An Abundance of Old-School Riches

Sep 16, 2024 | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

Some of the NES-era recreations that appear on Mossmouth’s UFO 50 are hampered by old-school conventions, like limited lives, or by the simple fact that they don’t really have tutorials. But that’s by design, and even a badge of honor, as they’re framed as the creations of a fictional company, UFOSoft, that developed games in the 1980s. The main unifying element here is the concept of the titular fictional console, which means many games are sequels or spinoffs.
A Role-Puzzling Adventure' Review: Breaking Boundaries

Sep 1, 2024 | slantmagazine.com | Mitchell Demorest

Among the indie devs behind Arranger: A Role-Playing Puzzle Game are Braid artist David Hellman, Carto writer Nick Suttner, and Ethereal designer Nicolás Recabarren. It will come as no surprise, then, that the game is overflowing in personality. Arranger looks fantastic—colorful, with bold brushstroke outlines. There’s also a patchwork effect achieved by the use of more sketch-like illustrations on the margins of its puzzle grids.