Here's a fun fact about 2026 in terms of my reviews: After this article comes out, I'll have reviewed 11 titles. Of those titles, 9 of them will have been small, relatively cheap indie games. It's safe to say that these indie games are 100% ruling this roost this year...especially as I continue to put off Crimson Desert. So, here the trend continues. I have for you today a handful of indies that are all good-to-great. Let's get into it, starting with what I'd call the weakest of the bunch.
Publisher: PLAYISM
Developer: Crimson Dusk
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Price: $24.99
Let me get this out of the way right from the get-go: I don't like "moe." I'm immediately suspicious of anyone who does. Listening to any kind of subtitled anime where the voice actresses try to sound like little girls makes my skin crawl. It's like nails on a chalkboard.
Let that be a sign that Homura Hime is well worth the price of admission, because I got to feel my skin crawl pretty frequently...and I'm still recommending it.
"You took out all the enemies, Homura Hime!"
"Should we go check out the fair, Homura Hime?"
"Do you ever wonder if we actually exist, Homura Hime?"
Anyway, Homura Hime (the character, not the game itself) is an exorcist living in some kind of fictional Japanese fantasy shrine, and her job is to travel to the far corners of the world to take out archdemons. She's joined in her journey by Ann: a shrine maiden loli who is single-handedly responsible for the consistently crawling nature of my skin.
As for the specific plot points in Homura Hime, I couldn't begin to tell you what they were. I'd hear Ann begin an undoubtedly long monologue about each archdemon and their respective contexts, start squirming in my chair, and hammer the skip button as fast as I could.
In spite of this, I could understand what the overall story and its themes were, as well as why the ending was far more "hype" (as the kids might say) than it had any right to be. In addition to this, you'll think you know where exactly the story is going at a certain point. You will be wrong. I thought that was admirable for a game like this.
Think of Homura Hime as Nier: Automata with a cutesier coat of paint. It's a spectacle fighter with an auto-aiming gunfire component, but it boasts a major emphasis on parrying. I know that parrying is a factor in basically every game that comes out now, but it's far faster and more movement-focused in Homura Hime than in any game before it.
Pulling off a parry (for which the windows are mindbogglingly long) causes Homura Hime to do a little flip in the air to land a little bit out of the way. Attacks from enemies or bosses can come at you at lightning speed, and there isn't a cooldown for the parry. So in practice, you'll end up juggling yourself across an arena with something like 10 parries within 3 seconds. I defy you to tell me that isn't cool.
Like in any spectacle fighter, combat is comprised of multiple combos triggered by light and heavy attacks. A combo of light-heavy-light-light-light might, for example, cause Homure Hime to flip upside down and carve out an explosive x-shape in front of her. A combo of light-hold heavy-heavy, on the other hand, might see her juggle an enemy in the air, leap up to them, then slam them down to Earth again. I normally have a hard time doing anything but spamming the light attack in spectacle fighters, but the attacks were so cool in Homura Hime that I felt compelled to use all of them when I could.
On a kind of related note, this game manages to throw just enough enemies at you (and in interesting enough rosters) to make crowd control feel cool without directly aping from the Warriors series. Also, enemies aren't ridiculously tanky like they tend to be in other games like this.
The first problem you're bound to notice (regardless of how good your PC is) is the god-awful sound mixing. The gunfire you can do, for example, is almost completely inaudible within the chaos of battle.
There are also cutscenes every 2 seconds, which I can't help but think might be tied to loading in some way.
Framerate drops were also a frequent concern in my time with Homura Hime. Some of the larger battles drop the framerate down to 30fps, with the final battle occasionally dropping the frames down to literal slideshow levels.
Then there are little things like the English text not exactly fitting in various places. In the end-of-level summaries, for instance, certain objective names tend to run a little long and overlap with the numbered point value that's supposed to be off to the side. That alongside plenty of Japanese text with no translation speaks to a weak localization effort.
Finally, there's something that isn't exactly a technical problem, but a visual design one, I suppose. In one chapter, you go up against an army of schoolgirls in miniskirts. That alone is more than a little bit suspect, but not too offensive in and of itself. But when you hit them, they'll often fly backwards slowly. Knowing that this is an Eastern game, what do you think happens as they do this?
You guessed it: panty shots.
I just don't get why Eastern developers have to be so goddamned weird about kids. People always like to (sometimes justifiably) criticize Americans for not seeming to understand that cultures other than theirs exist. Can we hold Eastern developers to that same critical standard, please? I would argue that insisting on putting little girls in miniskirts for seemingly the express purpose of being able to model underwear (for the developers to pointedly show off) is a little bit worse than an American asking "but aren't you only 16?" when a 16 year-old European talks about going to a bar.
Too prudish a take for you?
Well, how about the part where two little girl characters combine to suddenly form a giant naked lady covered only by strategically-placed scraps of cloth?
Sorry, "difference in culture" doesn't cut it for me, and it shouldn't for you either. And if you want to cry "censorship," about it, kindly find your nearest giant cheese grater and slide down it.
Anyway, rant over.
Homura Hime, is one hell of a good time if you're able to squint past some technical failings and the all-too common weirdness that comes with anime. It sports some of the best spectacle fighter combat this side of Nier: Automata, and it features a surprisingly good story with some unexpected twists and turns. Consider your PC specs before you buy, obviously, but for its relatively low price point, I'd recommend it even with its technical flaws. Plus, if you're trying to put off Crimson Desert for a little while, it'll definitely get the job done!
Let us review:
Technical woes - 1.0
Weirdness about kids - 1.0
The final score for Homura Hime is...
8.0/10 - Great
Publisher: Dernhelm Games
Developer: Dernhelm Games
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Price: $5.99
Would you believe me if I told you I didn't intend to have more than one game where you play as an exorcist in this article? It's just a small, small world, evidently.
Anywho, Ritus Exorcismus is a game I'd never heard of until BigGaming64 put out a video about it. And like almost everything that big lovable guy plays, this one turned out to be a complete gem when I tried it for myself...that, and I was hoping to put off Crimson Desert a little bit more. Let's get into why this a gem.
Ritus Exorcismus follows an unnamed exorcist working for an abbey in some unspecified segment of old-timey Europe. As such, his job is to venture out to villages that report demonic possessions, listen to the villagers' problems, and get rid of whatever demons or curses are plaguing them. As he continues to dedicate his life to helping others, the forces of hell try to shake his faith through perhaps the most effective way of doing so: instilling a sense of futility.
An exorcist, an abbey in charge of him, and demons that try to show him some kind of unspoken truth. You think you know where that's going, but you don't. And that, I think, is the best thing about this story. Sometimes you just want to play a game where you're a guy whose job it is to help people, and you want to be praised for doing so. If you're that kind of person, this might be the game for you.
Exorcisms are essentially a collection of extra-small minigames based on the relics in your possession. You come equipped with:
-a vial of honey, which shows how close you are to losing a person's soul to a demon (think of it as your health bar)
-a crucifix
-a sacred candle
-holy water
-anointing oil
-incense, and
-salt.
Each relic has a minigame unique to it. The sacred candle, for example, sees you slowly move your cursor around the screen looking for hidden crucifixes. Salt, on the other hand, is used to trace specific patterns. Holy water, to give one more example, has you press the arrow keys in a randomly-generated sequence to toss the water in a pattern.
Included amongst these relics is your handy-dandy guidebook. This book contains a list of possession signs, as well as signs pertaining to specific demons (you know, "Lucifer," "Asmodeus," "Belphegor," etc).
With all this in mind, here's how an exorcism works.
Once you initiate the process, you'll be face to face with the possessed. Over the course of various "waves", the possessed will demonstrate certain signs. They might start foaming from the mouth, projectile vomiting, or shrieking in pain, for instance. Each of these signs is denoted in the guidebook with a description and clear instructions on which relic to use.
You'll then pick that relic and engage in the relevant minigame. Making mistakes brings a person closer to losing their soul, which is represented by further corruption in your vial of honey. After you succeed there, the victim will move on to the next "wave" and show a different sign.
After you've warded off enough possession signs, the demon inhabiting the body will make itself known with a particularly gruesome sign. These signs are denoted in the guidebook in their own chapter. Like the possession signs, each demon has a weakness to one of the relics.
But before you start the minigame, you have to demonstrate further knowledge of the demon in question. Their chapter in the book comes with a diagram of their sigil, which you must recreate through a drag-and-drop minigame. Then you use the relic. Then you recreate a holy seal from the front of the guidebook, and voila!
Exorcisms are an involved process, but they're pretty easy to do if you remain calm and pay attention. I personally never failed any of them across my playthrough, nor have I seen anybody fail. It doesn't mean it can't happen if you happen to suck at a minigame, but that can be said for just about any game out there.
Of course, there's an upgrade system available for any minigames you might suck at, but we're a little too deep in the woods already.
Some people have a serious aversion to the sight and sound of vomiting, for example. For some people, the screaming will be overly bone-chilling and uncomfortable. And I'd imagine that the signs the demons officially make themselves known with could horrify anyone (a face melting, to give only one example). You'll know what kind of stomach you have for that, so act accordingly.
From a technical standpoint, Ritus Exorcismus is flawless. The soundtrack is a mesmerizing mix of Gregorian chants and an occasional low droning befitting of the subject matter. I encountered no bugs, no framerate drops, no glitches of any kind, nothing at all. Flawless.
Ritus Exorcismus is the rare breed of game that manages to be as unique as it is simple. It tells a straightforward good vs evil story that warmed my heart in the end in spite of all the horrors along the way. That straightforward story is also filled to the brim with lore and some education about the history of penance in certain sects of early Christianity. It features a deductive reasoning gameplay loop that isn't very hard, but is still as rewarding as that kind of gameplay always is. And there aren't any technical limitations standing in the way of the fun. Plus, the graphical style is so undemanding that I can't imagine a single PC it wouldn't run well on.
If I had to really, really dig deep for one complaint, I'd say that the non-exorcism objectives in the villages are lacking...but that's mainly because I was always jonesing for the next exorcism. In reality, these objectives don't take away from the experience, and really, they add to the atmosphere and the stakes.
So, I have no further notes.
Ritus Exorcismus is 2026's first...
10/10 - Masterpiece
Publisher: THQ Nordic, Amplifier Studios
Developer: Tarsier Studios
Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, Microsoft Windows
Price: $39.99
Having never played a single entry in the Little Nightmares saga, I can't say that I felt any hype for Reanimal. It looked like just another game in that same vein...which it evidently is, but that obviously didn't fuel my anticipation much. However, after seeing some isolated screenshots floating around and knowing it had a relatively cheap $40 price tag, I felt like it might be worth a try. That and I was still trying to put off Crimson Desert as long as possible.
Reanimal, in a nutshell, is a horror game designed for co-op but still totally playable solo. If you've ever played Inside, just imagine that but not as good. Still good, just not quite at the same level.
You are one of two siblings: a little boy with a bag over his head and a little girl with a bunny mask. I'm lead to believe that which one you play as is ultimately random if you're in co-op, but I think you're always going to be the boy if you play solo.
Regardless, the children are part of a friend group that all ended up in a weird nightmarish hellscape with no memory of how they got there. At the start, it's just the aforementioned little boy and girl, and the plot revolves around finding and rescuing their friends.
If that sounds like a simple story, that's because it is. The appeal here is more in the world and its denizens than the moment-to-moment plot, but it's worth noting that certain moments in the story are going to stick with you. From what I'd say is the single most disturbing vomiting segment I've ever seen to one hell of a reveal in the late game, Reanimal takes mere seconds to transition from simply a heavy atmosphere experience to some kind of goreless New French Extremity film.
I happen to love atmosphere-heavy horror experiences like this, and the game adds something to this package that salvages what otherwise might have been a complaint. That complaint is that I normally like these experiences to feature no dialogue at all, but Reanimal does feature a small amount of it.
So how does the game salvage that?
By having that dialogue delivered in the exact same way that it's delivered in Skinamarink (a horror movie that happens to be one of my unfortunate hyperfixations). Every kid has something on their heads, which causes the dialogue to be muted, and by extension of that, timid when it otherwise wouldn't seem that way. The dialogue also, like in Skinamarink, is as to-the-point as can be.
There's no overly drawn-out "one second we were in our village, the next we were here? How did that happen?"/"I don't know, but we need to get back home."
Instead, it's restrained, muted, and whispered: "how did we get here?"/"I don't know."
You'd be surprised how effective that choice is for inspiring fear in a person.
Whatever way you slice it, the atmosphere itself is well worth the price of admission. Like Inside, excellent camera work and strategic use of color sometimes frame scenes perfectly.
Sometimes.
The puzzles aren't very hard to figure out, but I think you'll find them a little bit obtuse for one reason: poor signposting as to what is and isn't interactable. The camera is often far away enough that the little circle that denotes an object you can interact with is barely visible. Sometimes the circle won't even show up unless you're positioned a certain way. I say this without hyperbole: every single time I'd get stuck and go for a guide, it was for this reason.
Not because the puzzles were hard.
Because the framing was insufficient far too often.
Chase sequences also can be a bit obtuse for this exact reason. Oftentimes the characters will blend in with the background too much, causing you to lose track of where you're running and which character on screen is you. Even when this isn't the case, these sequences can feel more like trial and error than anything. It shouldn't take too many tries to figure it out, but I can't point to a single time where I thought it was my fault that I failed a chase.
You might expect that the boss fights in a game like this would suck...but they're actually ok. They aren't going to set the world on fire, and they don't require much thought, but they add quite a bit to the tension and they aren't too difficult.
Everything I've said is how things go if you're playing solo. If you're doing co-op, I imagine it's largely the same except you're laughing about things and completely throwing away every ounce of tension the game tries to build up. Seriously, what a brain-dead concept co-op horror is.
My qualms with gameplay are made somewhat worse because of the fact that it takes just a little bit too long to respawn after failure. The screen fades to black for a couple seconds longer than you might expect. And while it's very, very, I daresay sickeningly cute that the siblings are comforting each other when the level loads back in, I'm not a big fan of having to take a couple seconds to break out of that animation every time.
Sadly, that isn't where the technical issues end. Over the course of my playthrough, I noticed that individual assets suffered from frame drops even though the game itself never did. It would definitely be worse for the whole game to drop frames, but it isn't much better to have the various monsters do it. Those are still pretty crucial in maintaining the atmosphere.
There were also some scattered animation glitches involved with certain late-game assets. Think of what happens when you get hit by a giant in Skyrim, and you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about.
Finally, while the girl's AI is generally pretty excellent if you're flying solo, I did experience an extended period of time where she bugged out entirely. She simply wouldn't move, resulting in some camera issues. Oddly enough, this would rectify itself once I reached the next interactable thing, then start again directly afterwards. The problem eventually went away after I reloaded the save, but it's strange that such an excellently-programmed AI could fail in so specific a way.
In terms of technical positives, the big thing is obviously the atmosphere and everything that goes into it. Dense fog hangs over the water. Distant bouys send out the occasional burst of ominous red light. The low droning of the soundtrack hammers home the bleakness of the world. And the aforementioned Skinamarink dialogue mixing and delivery add an extra layer of shudder-worthy otherworldly paint to the proverbial canvas.
Folks, Reanimal is only going to be for a specific subset of players. People averse to horror in all forms are obviously going to want to give this one a wide berth (I originally wrote "live berth" by accident. Thank you for that, Reanimal), as are people looking for more survival-oriented horror. Indeed, this game is arguably only for folks like me who value atmosphere and slowly-building dread above all else. Even then, it isn't quite as effective as some of its contemporaries...but it's still a can't-miss experience for all the folks it was made for.
Let us review:
Obtuseness due to framing - 0.5
Technical woes - 1.0
The final score for Reanimal is...
8.5/10 - Near Fantastic
Publisher: Devin Santi, Monster Theater
Developer: Devin Santi
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Price: $19.99
In the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Sleepy Man is the only game in this article I haven't actually finished. That's largely because for its modest $20 entry fee, it's one of the most jam-packed games I've played this year. So eventually I decided I needed to move on to other things in the interest of not getting my backlog too piled up. But make no mistake, I'll be coming back to this one for sure.
How to describe Mr. Sleepy Man? In some ways it's an experience that defies the very concept of description or explanation. Yet it does so in ways that still feel at least somewhat coherent.
You do indeed play as a very sleepy man who is presumably in the middle of a dream. You "wake up" in a mystical land largely centered around sleep, and from there you've got something that I suppose can best be described as a mix of Mario and Untitled Goose Game.
The Mario in that equation comes from its platforming-centric gameplay loop and a kinda-sorta overarching objective revolving around finding "shiny things." I'd say some of your Mario muscle memory will rear its head, and you'll be rewarded for it.
For instance, jumping and pressing the square/X button right afterwards will see Mr. Sleepy Man do a forward dive, just like Mario would if you did the same button combination.
Where I find the platforming a little lacking, however, is in how inflexible it seems to be.
Think of Super Mario Odyssey (an obviously unfair comparison to make with a one-man project, but bear with me). In that game, Mario comes equipped with a couple tools to allow a skilled player to correct mistakes in their platforming (such as jumping off the hat or what have you).
Or for a fairer comparison, think of Demon Turf. It's the same story there: Skill expression as a way to rectify mistakes.
There's no such thing in Mr. Sleepy Man. It all feels just a little too much like you're at an insufficient physics system's mercy. If you don't reach the platform you're jumping for, your skillset is so limited that you're just going to fall all the way back down to where you came from.
This combined with the fact that Mr. Man moves ever-so-slightly too slowly can make the act of reaching places a bit of a hassle. It's only a "bit" of a hassle, but it did rub me the wrong way.
The Untitled Goose Game bit of the equation comes from the long list of to-dos you're presented with pretty much right off the bat. Like a lot of people who suddenly realize they're in a dream, our slumbering savior has a lot of mischief he wants to get up to (albeit with a relieving lack of naughty stuff...he isn't much of a looker).
These objectives can range from stealing every donut from the police station and throwing them in the river to ruining an irresponsible Papa Bear's life by framing him with an adult magazine in front of Mama Bear. Objectives can also be rescuing a dog from a treadmill where evil mice are forcing him to run (to produce cheese) or making the moon cry.
As fun as these to-do items can be, some of them are held back by frustrations. That goal to rescue the dog, for instance, requires you to steal a key from a nearby mouse fortress (basically an open-air one-room thing). The fortress is guarded by a giant mouse who will pick you up and throw you out if he catches you in there. With that in mind, you've got three steps in this goal:
1) get into the fortress undetected
2) get out of the fortress undetected
3) once you're outside, move past the guard mouse's line of sight undetected, because he'll come after you if he sees you have the key.
Figuring out how to get in is pretty straightforward: there are bouncy mushrooms on one side. There are some spores that will grow small bouncy mushrooms on the same side, so one would think those spores are the secret to getting back out...but before I moved on to other stuff, I couldn't figure out how best to use them. And I don't even want to think about step #3. Remember: you move pretty slowly. But as slowly as you move normally, you're even slower when you're carrying something. This can somewhat be rectified by jumping, but everyone else in the world handily out-speeds you even when you aren't carrying anything. So, I'm not sure how that item on the list is supposed to work.
The world itself is charming, and even when the quirkiness doesn't quite land from a humor perspective, it's usually still charming...and when it isn't, it's sometimes oddly emotional and affecting.
Here's an example: there's a substory segment where a sentient head with a couple limbs whose name is Teefy tries to look for his long-lost 2D dinosaur cereal mascot friend, Dinosaur Jones.
After reading that, did you reach for a box of tissues or roll your eyes back in your head and let out a groan to end all groans?
I'd imagine the answer is the latter.
But that segment is actually oddly powerful. Not in any Shakespearean sense, but powerful to a genuinely surprising degree, nonetheless. It speaks volumes about developer Devin Santi's writing and framing chops, but it also says exactly as much about his composition skills. See, in addition to being a clearly talented developer, he's a musician with an obvious ear for mixing quality. That's an odd aspect of music to point out, but that's how well he does it. Take this banger emo anthem he wrote for the game as an example. So yeah, the soundtrack is also worth praising.
In terms of other technical aspects, I can't say I noticed anything to take points off for. If there were any problems, they didn't leave a big enough impression for me to remember.
I firmly believe that one has to go into Mr. Sleepy Man with proper expectations to get the most out of it. I thankfully did, which is why my few qualms ultimately didn't add up to much in my head. But if you're going into this hoping for a moveset-rich platforming extravaganza, you're going to have a bad time.
So instead, go into it with the understanding that it's about the world, the characters, the possibilities for moment-to-moment chaos, and the unstoppably unpredictable nature of all of the above. I've barely scratched the surface of what goes on during a playthrough of this game, so if you give Mr. Sleepy Man a shot with your expectations in check, you're going to find an experience that'll make putting off Crimson Desert a one-of-a-kind thing.
Let us review:
Qualms with gameplay - 1.0
The final score for Mr. Sleepy Man is...
9.0/10 - Fantastic
As always, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next review...
...
...
Which will be for Crimson Desert (BA-DUM, TSS!!!)
See you next time!
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