Welcome back! Here are the last set of games I’ve played so far in 2026 to catch you all up to present day. We’ve got survival horror, bullet hell shooters, cinematic platformers and many other genres to match my eclectic taste.
CONSCRIPT: Director’s Cut
I’m surprised I haven’t seen more online discourse about CONSCRIPT since its original release in 2024. I purchased CONSCRIPT after it received its major ‘Director’s Cut’ update in 2025 so I can’t speak for the quality of the game prior to the update but what is on sale now is an incredible piece of work, made even more impressive by the fact that it was all at the hands of solo developer Jordan Mochi. An unfathomable amount of work has gone into capturing the unrelenting, chaotic and catastrophic horrors of World War I in CONSCRIPT, which portrays the conflict as a top-down survival horror adventure. It is an ode to the classic survival horror games of old, notably Resident Evil, with obvious nods to the series such as inventory management, burning corpses and a shopkeeper that manages to turn up at every store to ask “whaddya buyin’”.
CONSCRIPT isn’t simply a cheap imitation though; it has ideas of its own and stands apart from the Resident Evil games whilst still clearly being inspired by them. CONSCRIPT could have so easily introduced supernatural elements (i.e. zombies) but restrained itself and, in doing so, further differentiates itself from its muse and provides as best a portrayal of the Great War I’ve seen in video games next to the likes of Valiant Hearts.
I played through CONSCRIPT on a lower difficulty because whilst I do enjoy the frantic combat, ammo conservation and min/max-ing with multiple saves that are representative of the survival horror genre, I slightly prefer the puzzles, inventory management and, yes, even the backtracking. Also, in a game as insanely detailed as CONSCRIPT, I was grateful for the less intense pace so I could really take in the amazing pixel art that excellently illustrates the muddy labyrinthine trenches, razed city streets and buildings reduced to rubble of 1916 Verdun.
CONSCRIPT: Director’s Cut was a blast to play and my Steam Deck was glued to my mitts from the moment I pressed start. CONSCRIPT absolutely sits alongside some of the best examples in the recent resurgence of old-school survival horror games such as SIGNALIS and Crow Country and is definitely worthy of your time.
Roto Force
Twin-stick bullet hell shooters are a dime a dozen on Steam and finding a good one sometimes requires word of mouth or trial and error. Roto Force on the other hand only requires a quick glance at its screenshots to get an idea of its bright and colourful nature, which is in stark contrast to a lot of other shooters that simply have geometric shapes floating around on a black background. Don’t get me wrong, there are several arcade shooters that have that aesthetic and are brilliant, like the recent Sektori, but it is refreshing to see a game like Roto Force that has more of a distinctive art style and personality with tonnes of different colour palettes, enemy sprites and weapons meaning you rarely see the same thing twice across its nine main stages.
What also separates Roto Force from others is that instead of having free roam of the virtual space, you can only navigate your little worm character around the edges of the screen. You can catapult the creature from one edge to another but only the enemy characters are able to move freely within the borders of each stage. It creates a different kind of gameplay and strategy whilst also maintaining that satisfying but hectic feeling of claustrophobia emblematic of bullet hell shooters.
Roto Force is another example where I’m grateful for developer Accidentally Awesome including various modifiers and accessibility settings that allowed me to slow down the gameplay and turn up the damage multiplier on the fly. These settings allowed me to continue having fun instead of bashing my head against a wall and rage quitting upon the game’s harder sections. This way I was able to see the game through to its conclusion, having a great time in the process.
Boxes: Lost Fragments
This was free on the Epic Games Store and whilst it is extremely derivative of The Room series, Fireproof Games haven’t released a new, non-VR entry into the series in some time so Boxes: Lost Fragments is a decent substitute. Boxes: Lost Fragments doesn’t have the same level of thought-provoking puzzles as The Room; in fact it’s very much on the easier side, but it still has that satisfying tactility of manipulating objects and revealing the nested layers of intricate puzzle boxes. Rotating gears, twisting keys, raising levers, unscrewing bolts, that kind of thing. Whilst its mostly an ersatz version of The Room, isn’t revolutionary in its gameplay or ideas, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a puzzle that stumps you for more than a few seconds, taken on its own merits, Boxes: Lost Fragments was a comfortable distraction to keep my brain occupied during its four-hour runtime.
Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf
If you enjoyed Planet of Lana in 2023 then you’ll enjoy Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf because it is pretty much more of the same. I don’t mean this in a disparaging way as Planet of Lana was a stunning cinematic platformer with satisfying puzzles that I very much enjoyed. So ‘more of the same’ was all I really wanted from its sequel. Planet of Lana II is a continuation of the story and gameplay of its predecessor, just with a greater air of confidence as it has the conviction to spend more time developing its narrative and to introduce players to trickier puzzles right off the bat; both of which were a comparatively slow burn in the previous game. There is a considerable step up in Planet of Lana II’s visuals, which is quite a feat given the first game’s striking art. The greatest compliment I can pay to Planet of Lana II is that it looks like Star Wars and Spirited Away had a baby. The animation is smoother and the environments are more diverse with a sweeping orchestral score that accompanies beautiful landscapes that look like Hoth and Endor. No sophomore slump to be had here. I’m looking forward to seeing what the third game (that is quite obviously teased at the end of Planet of Lana II) serves up in a few years. Again, I hope it’s just more of same.
Spilled!
I bought and finished Spilled! yesterday so this one is hot of the press! It’s a relaxing one-hour experience that sees you pilot a little ship that goes around cleaning up ocean waste. The more oil spillages you clean the more coins you are awarded that allow you to upgrade the speed of the ship, its capacity to hold oil and the width of its loader bucket that can sweep up objects like oil drums into its path. Given its short runtime there’s not much to Spilled! outside of this small gameplay loop other than a couple of other elements such as a crane to collect submerged drums and a hose to put out fires and restore ice sheets. It’s a rather rudimentary game and whilst I was probably more enamoured by the developer’s personal story of making the game whilst living on an actual house boat, I was still happy to indulge in Spilled!’s colourful pixel art, PowerWash Simulator-like cleanup satisfaction and hopeful outlook on climate change intervention.
And that’s it for this three-part series now we’re all caught up to present day. Stay tuned and I’ll hopefully have more in the following weeks where I hope to finish the likes of REANIMAL, Mind Over Magnet, CARIMARA, The Boba Teashop and more from the backlog.
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