Mitchell Demorest

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.