Mini-Reviews: the first batch

I first got the idea for mini-reviews in summer 2025, as a way to motivate myself to play more games. At the time, I didn’t play nearly as many games as a game design student should, and I had a long list of games I wanted to play, so what better way to motivate myself to play them all than to give myself a writing outlet for analyzing them? That summer I played through the following seven games, and then posted these reviews to the Champlain College Game Studio Discord server. (I was advised to start this blog as a place to post more!)

Without further ado:

Champlain College’s own Solanis: A friend pointed out to me that “roam around a world collecting lore and piecing together what happened here” is exactly my style of game, so of course I’d get into Solanis. I ended up playing through it three times (it’s only about an hour long), getting 100%, and then tracking down the official Solanis Discord server so I could check with the devs that I’d gotten everything right. At this point, I think I know more about Solanis lore than anyone who wasn’t involved in making the game. Loved it.

Outer Wilds: Why not follow up a “fly around and figure out what happened here long ago” game with another? Outer Wilds is very much up my alley, and it executes on its concepts extremely well. I’m still not sure what to think about the ending, but everything leading up to that was really interesting. That said, you don’t need me to tell you that Outer Wilds is a good game. Please play it, if only so I have someone to talk to about all of this.

(8-months later update: Since writing the above, I watched someone else play through Outer Wilds, and I think I understand the point of the ending better now. Still won’t get into the spoilers, but I find it interesting that my opinion of a game can change for the better long after I played it myself.)

Psychonauts: I played this one because it came up all the way back in my Intro class, as a masterful example of characterization, level design, and characterization through level design. And it is that! But it’s also a game from 2005, and that shows in wonky gameplay design choices just as much as it does in the use of certain racist, ableist, or otherwise problematic story tropes. Outside of that… the aesthetic isn’t for me, but I ended up liking the characters, and I’m certainly not going to knock Black Velvetopia. Needs some content warnings, but it was worth playing.

Final Fantasy IX: Got into Final Fantasy after watching this video (anyone else follow LoadingReadyRun?) and picked IX as my first. This game is older than I am (2000 vs. 2002), and my first impression was that tutorials and UI language have changed a lot in 25 years. It took hours to figure out simple, important things like “you can scroll down in battle submenus”. ATB was difficult to adjust to, but fun once I did. All the minigames are bad, but fun bad. Story is very flawed but very good. Characters are great, especially Vivi. Freya deserved better. Beatrix deserved worse.

Champlain College’s own Triage: Very much not my usual style, but I wanted to see what 5′ had to offer. Triage definitely delivers on the atmosphere it promised. Having to go to each patient and tell them “no, there’s no medicine for you today” is a harrowing experience. Managed to save both Jermaine and Morgan on my first playthrough (I consider this the best outcome), then played a second time to see if Joanna’s dialogue would change if she lives – which it doesn’t much, presumably because of Capstone development scope. (Which is understandable, obviously… I still wish I could open those locked doors, though.)

As an interlude: after playing Triage, I was briefly inspired to start up Pathologic – yes, the first one. I played it for about two hours before realizing that I was absolutely not in the right state of mind to play Pathologic. I’m not sure when or if I will be, but there’s so much interesting stuff to experience in this game (or so I’ve heard) that I do still intend to play through it someday.

Unpacking: Ironically, I started playing this game while taking a break from organizing my room in real life. (It helped encourage me to finish!) This is a game filled with all the little touches that make a game shine – the time and effort put in is very clear. The song during the end credits made everything in the game hit so much harder, somehow. It got me thinking about my own space, and my connections to the people I’ve lived with. My current apartment, in one of Champlain’s dorms, isn’t quite a home yet. Maybe it will be soon.

Bayonetta: God this game is cool. Often I couldn’t help but laugh at how everything happening on screen was so absurdly awesome. It’s difficult (this was my first “stylish action” game) and some mechanics feel poorly communicated (I still don’t know the “right” way to beat some bosses) but that doesn’t detract from the tone. Now if only I could stop comparing the fictional character of Bayonetta to my real-life self – stop it, that’s too complex/important of a topic to fit properly into 100 words. Love playing as her regardless. Will definitely play again sometime and try for better awards.