Ysbryd Games
World of Horror Review (PC)
How can a horror game with a graphical look pulled straight from a black-and-white 1980s Apple IIe manage to instill fear and dread? In a world of high-fidelity jump scares and graphic violence that would make ‘80s slasher movie makers say “That might be a little over the top”, can a tiny indie horror game blending Lovecraftian and Japanese horror elements bring something new to this blood-saturat...[Read More]
Hands-On With N1RV ANN-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
When Sukeban Games launched their retro-styled bartending/visual novel VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action in 2016, it became an indie and critical darling. The retro graphics style, good writing, and cyberpunk setting all combined to a make something special. Now Sukeban aims to catch lightning in a bottle for a second time with the 2020 launch of N1RV ANN-A.
World of Horror – A PAX Hands-On Redux
Astute readers may recall last year’s PAX South hands-on with World of Horror, a black-and-white horror game that harkens back to much earlier days of computer gaming. At the time, the game was expected to be released sometime in 2019, however, that schedule slipped into 2020. For PAX South this year, that meant that World of Horror was back at the Ysbryd booth, showcasing both the school story fr...[Read More]
Masquerada Songs and Shadows (Switch) Review
Role-playing games are some of the most beloved games of the medium. When looking at lists of must play games or an all-time ranking, there’s almost always a spread of RPGs at the top. This is why for developers, an RPG has to be a fairly daunting task, especially when trying to make something large in scope that will stand the test of the time. Masquerada: Songs and Shadows has all the elements o...[Read More]
World of Horror – PAX South Hands-On
The Ysbryd booth at PAX South this year featured two games: YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG, and World of Horror. Obviously I didn’t need to see the YIIK demo, since I was playing through my review copy at the time, but World of Horror looked like nothing else on the show floor. “How scary can a black and white game be, especially one with an old-school point and click style UI?” The PR rep just smiled at...[Read More]
The ’90s Were Weird – YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG Review (PC)
1999 was a weird year. Boy bands and Brittney Spears ruled the airwaves, the dot.com bubble was at peak inflation, the New England Patriots weren’t an unstoppable NFL juggernaut, and by the time the year was half over, people were getting seriously worried that January 1, 2000 would herald the end of the world thanks to a massive computer bug. Against this backdrop of global paranoi comes YIIK: A ...[Read More]
YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG Impressions from PAX East
Y2K. For a time in 1999, these three characters could strike dread into the hearts of millions, possibly billions of people. Banking computers would forget their data. Air traffic control would go dark. Electric grids would fail! It was a doomsday scenario that everyone was going to live through, because the one that can never, ever be stopped is the inexorable march of time. Now Ysbryd Games is b...[Read More]