A Little to the Left (Review)

Developer: Max Inferno
Publisher: Secret Mode
Available On: PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S
Reviewed on Xbox Series S

As someone who loves to clean and organize, I find video games that allow me to tap into my tidy nature to be extremely rewarding. I loved 2021’s indie darling Unpacking for nailing the feeling of satisfaction and creativity that comes with setting up your belongings in a new location, and 2022’s mega-hit Power Wash Simulator itched that part of my brain that craves incremental progress on a bigger task. Now, with A Little to the Left, the cozy cleaning genre gets a new game that zeroes in on small organizational chores, and it’s through this fixation on small bite-sized tasks that the game flourishes into something special.

Contrast (Review)

Developer: Compulsion Games
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Available On: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One
Xbox One version reviewed on Xbox Series S

To say I’ve had a long and complicated history with Contrast is a bit of an understatement. It was an early PlayStation Plus offering during the launch of the PlayStation 4 in 2013, but since I wasn’t able to secure that shiny new next-gen hardware when it first came out, I ended up not being able to claim the game. It wasn’t until a month or so later that I found out I could have just gone on the PlayStation website and claimed it that way, which left me feeling annoyed with myself. While I could have bought it at any point thereafter (it ended up on sale frequently) it slowly became this weird mythical game for me. This was “the game that got away” and for some reason I let it keep that status instead of just dropping the $10-15 for it. Now, a decade later, I noticed it was on Xbox Game Pass and decided to finally sit down and put this self-imposed legend to the test.

The Pedestrian (Review)

Developer: Skookum Arts LLC
Publisher: Skookum Arts LLC
Available On: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S
Reviewed on Xbox Series S

Whenever I was riding in the car as a kid, there was this game I played where I imagined a little stick figure running on telephone wires, jumping across rooftops, or bobbing and weaving through traffic. Sometimes I would even hold up my fingers to the window and move them like legs to make the fantasy feel more real. The Pedestrian doesn’t quite hit all of those notes from my childhood imagination, but it takes the concept of navigating through the environment as a stick figure and runs with it, creating one of the most charming and memorable puzzle games in recent memory.