Gamers with Glasses

Deck builders are meant to elicit a sense of snowballing strength. What if one used its mechanics instead to explore loss and grief?

@walshbr.bsky.social's debut on @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social is a banger.

F — Around, Find Out (Complimentary) Last year, I felt bewildered watching a post go around on bluesky where someone credulously asked people to “name 50 indie games” in the…

hi! find some games, play some games.

I wrote for @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social on Death Howl, frustrating mechanics, and narratives of loss.

Frustrating Mechanics Tell a Story in Death Howl — Gamers with Glasses As much an interactive fable as it is a game, Death Howl pushes players to build and rebuild again and again. The main character, Ro, confronts grief, sorrow, and loss. We could all use the practice...

Welcome new contributor @walshbr.bsky.social! Check out his thoughts on Death Howl and how its rules and development build up its story.

Help CD keep the lights on! Their work is so important; if they hadn't graciously started featuring our work I genuinely don't know how we, and other small sites like us, would have ever found readers.

Angeline Era Trusts You — Gamers with Glasses Angeline Era trusts your intelligence, your patience, and your willingness to be overwhelmed. In an industry that can seem equally terrified of challenging players and expressing genuine emotion, Anal...

We loved @angelineera.bsky.social, a detailed, lovingly crafted world that trusts you to handle a story about trauma and identity without constant reassurance that it's all just a game. Review by @mayorhere.bsky.social
www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/ange...

“Whether they are involved through donating their game or purchasing the bundle, they are making a difference”: jesthehuman’s No ICE In Minnesota Charity Bundle Goes Live With Over 1,300 Games Include... Charity content creator Jes Wade wants to support Minnesotans and is asking gamers to help.

@jesthehuman.itch.io's No ICE In Minnesota charity bundle has gone live with over 1300 games available priced at $10 min. All proceeds benefit the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Jes also shared a few words with Exalclaw about the bundle and their goal for it:

exalclaw.com/2026/02/09/w...

I also like Caroline's description of it as an "open world of text." While it's not a text game, considering the art, audio, interfaces, etc., it looks like it has a cool way of incorporating that approach.

That's right! And, thinking of the works that @aetataureate.bsky.social compares it to, I (Don) am going to take it as a personal recommendation to play this game.

TR-49 is a Database Thriller with Creeping Dread — Gamers with Glasses TR-49 puts players in a situation to dig into and sleuth through notes, data, and language. Caroline Delbert likens it to an open world of text in the service of a thriller. The deeper into the semio...

i reviewed "TR-49" for @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social!

"It's a strong entry in the 'database thriller' category, with creeping horror that I didn't understand until later in the game's events."

I also like Caroline's description of it as an "open world of text." While it's not a text game, considering the art, audio, interfaces, etc., it looks like it has a cool way of incorporating that approach.

That's right! And, thinking of the works that @aetataureate.bsky.social compares it to, I (Don) am going to take it as a personal recommendation to play this game.

Liberation through Limitation in Cairn — Gamers with Glasses If you've ever wondered what would happen if a climbing game actually tried to simulate climbing instead of just letting you hold a button and magically ascend any surface, Cairn has a genuinely tac...

"Cairn compellingly explores themes of personal limitation and transcendence through its challenging mechanics...by focusing on perhaps the most internal form of freedom—the liberation that comes from overcoming personal limitations." @mayorhere.bsky.social
www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

Check it out and find something new! Also, this piece features updates on full games for which we previously reviewed the demo, including Labyrinth of the Demon King, Metro Gravity, and Look Outside.

Noteworthy Indies of 2025 — Gamers with Glasses Giant studios may be engaging in mass layoffs, nasty union busting tactics, and unwanted-but-somehow-perfunctory generative AI shenanigans, but indie games remain as strong as ever. Sophie Atkinson, o...

So, obviously 2025 saw the release of so many incredible indie games that we'd never be able to keep track of them all...but we did keep track of a few! Here are some of our favorites from last year, hand-picked by @skycherry.bsky.social.
www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwg-recommen...

If you happen to see a headline about Halloween that's still on our homepage right now just, you know, don't worry about it, it's probably fine

Because nobody makes money off this, we have a tendency to take the occasional unofficial hiatus - the motto at the top of our editorial workspace is "there's always no rush." But we're back at it again, and we have a bunch of great year-in-review stuff in the queue!

As our annual tradition goes, this is not a list of games that were (necessarily) released in 2025. We love the new stuff, but we're also not going to pretend that we spent 2025 only playing games that were released in 2025. Imagine going a whole year without Wario Land II!

Games Worth (Re)Playing in 2025 and Beyond — Gamers with Glasses Welcome in! Please make yourselves at home as we begin the tour. Along our route, we’ll see Wario and the River King walk hand in hand with Sid Meier. Over here, you’ll see that we’ve found a better C...

Can the Game Boy Camera be your game of the year? 2026 started about six months ago, but we're finally ready to look back on 2025 and ponder, starting with @aeneas-nin.bsky.social.
www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwg-recommen...

Nitro Gen Omega and the Mech of Theseus — Gamers with Glasses If I eventually replace all the original nuts, bolts, and crew of my mech, is it still the same mech? Is it possible to play something that’s both a game and a cartoon? What does it feel like to get...

Also for one reason or another this was a big year for Theseus over at GwG - not too bad for a guy who doesn't even have a ship anymore (or DOES HE?). Thinking about this great review from @exalclaw.bsky.social earlier this year.
www.gamerswithglasses.com/impressions/...

"Legends: Z-A is not a typical Pokémon game, but its differences have grown naturally from decades of minute changes...These changes call into question the defining features of a Pokémon game–and of other game franchises that also span across decades."

The Ship of Xerneas — Gamers with Glasses After years and years of iterations, how can we tell if Pokémon still Pokémon? What is the relationship between franchise and genre? By some definitions, is Super Smash Bros . technically a Pokémon...

What does it mean to embrace the evolution of a franchise? Especially when that franchise is something like Pokémon, which basically defined a genre and then...changed a lot? @srtrzinski.bsky.social explores the big questions, just in time for the New Year!
www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/shi...

Spooky Express' Halloween Logic — Gamers with Glasses Spooky Express is an admirably coherent puzzle game that fits neatly into the groove made by its predecessors. Its designers smoothly translated its Halloween theme into puzzle mechanics. But it coul...

It's December 29th in California, and that means that @optional.bsky.social is thinking about... Halloween. It's time to talk about @draknek.bsky.social's Spooky Express.

"The act of choosing allows players to perform a character: to inhabit the space between the score/script, and the performance of it. When choosing becomes an act of performance, we...are producing a shared space of pretend: a suspended disbelief explored by (inter)play of option and selection."

Performing Peter: South of the Circle and Fuzzy Choice — Gamers with Glasses How do game designers make player choices feel meaningful? Hannah Nicklin, author of Writing for Games: Theory and Practice , describes here how the act of choosing allows players to perform a charac...

We're just over the moon to be sharing this with you: the one and only @hannahnicklin.bsky.social on South of the Circle and how developers use in-game choices to give players space in which to perform the story.
www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/per...

Also, we're trying out the inclusion of a brief response from the piece's editor at the end; this time around, that's @aguaspoints.bsky.social: "Though Battle Suit Aces is a card game per say, it is really a novel approach at cards as pieces/characters that has a long and storied history in games."

Battle Suit Aces Dares You to Love in Frenzied Times — Gamers with Glasses Loving another human when so much can, and will, go wrong is terrifying. Why give yourself another thing for the world to take? In this review, Wallace Truesdale describes how Battle Suit Aces may h...

What was the last game you played that made you say, "I love this crew"? For @exalclaw.bsky.social, that game is Battle Suit Aces by @team.trinketstudios.com, showcasing "a future where people can love without being driven by fear of the known and unknown."
www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/batt...

Next Fest: From Hell to the Megastructure — Gamers with Glasses Next Fest correspondent Sophie Atkinson returns with a cornucopia of demos and recommendations, including a deck-building roguelike with the flavor of Vampire Survivors that’s set in the world of Da...

To all who've been wondering what demos to try: we've got you covered. Next Fest correspondent @skycherry.bsky.social returns with four handpicked recommendations, featuring @astralshiftpro.com, @regularstudio.bsky.social, RageForDragons, and Crimson Dusk.
www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwg-recommen...

Wearing Authority in Hitman — Gamers with Glasses The Hitman series famously has its protagonist change outfits in order to gain access to new areas and finish the mission - but what does this tell us about sociology, psychology, and the power of c...

@mayorhere.bsky.social asks: are the Hitman games really about stealth, or are they more about the social cues that we use to make decisions about authority and compliance?
"Nobody questioned why I was there. The uniform answered that question for them."
www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/hit...

(This state of affairs, we regretfully report, is because of Day Jobs. If that's not a Halloween story, I don't know what is.)