NoirMouse | Vtuber & Game Journalist

Crawling Angels - @itsthetalia.bsky.social / @2leftthumbs.bsky.social
Imago Season - @lunarfinch.bsky.social / @hauntedps.boo
Bone Fire Effigy - @vladimerelhore.bsky.social
Blast Cats - @blastcats.bsky.social
Cursed Words - Buried Things/Forklift Interactive

Alright, gonna be going live with some Steam Next Fest indie games over on Twitch! List of planned games in the replied post! See you there :D

#twitchstreamer #vtuber #vsky

www.twitch.tv/noirmouse

My new game is Encroacher: Snakes

It's a snake-tossing cryptic adventure coming 2026!

The demo for Imago Season is OUT NOW!

Explore a slice of the City, meet some of its mutant inhabitants and make choices that will shape their future!

store.steampowered.com/app/4207140/...

#gamedev #indiedev #GodotEngine #RPG#SteamNextFest

NoirMouse - Twitch I am a Twitch streamer, vtuber, and game journalist - a trifecta of not being able to be taken seriously.

Tonight I will be returning with a first time playthrough of Hades II - feel free to watch!

#vtuber #vsky #indiegame

www.twitch.tv/noirmouse

Sorry for being quiet in terms of streaming. Just been busy as of late. When we return we'll be taking a look at some recently released-ish games like Angeline Era and Eclipsium :)

I played music to soothe the savage beast.

I think you've had a pretty successful stream when you have to stop streaming the game you're playing because too many people wandering in are interested in the game you're playing and you don't want them to get spoiled

NoirMouse - Twitch I am a Twitch streamer, vtuber, and game journalist - a trifecta of not being able to be taken seriously.

Gonna be streaming today to try and get back into the habit of doing so featuring Brutal Orchestra, a game made by the wondeful @itsthetalia.bsky.social, and its new content update True Zeal! Might also play other games - consider this a "fuck it, we ball" day come hang out!

www.twitch.tv/noirmouse

I mentioned yesterday that I’d be filling this space with micro-reviews, mostly focused on indie games I think are worth checking out. Consider this a creative distraction from Current Events™

So, here’s a thread of recent reviews I’ve been posting on Backloggd and Steam

backloggd.com/u/NoirMouse/

Just to be clear, the rest of Kitty Horrorshow's catalog is free and I had bought Anatomy 6+ years agp so it quietly slipped right past me. My mistake!

I kind of quietly forgot that Anatomy is NOT free ($2.99 USD) when I reviewed it, whoops.

Making the new PRICE score a 10/10 ($3 for a roughly hour-long art house experience is quite a steal), Anatomy's score becomes 9.1429/10.

ENJOYMENT: 8/10 ART/GRAPHICS: 8/10 STORY: 10/10 ACCESSIBILITY: 7/10 FUNCTIONALITY: 8/10 PRICE: 8/10 TOTAL: 8.33/10 Brutal Orchestra is essentially what happens when you combine The Binding of Isaac with LISA: The Painful – and that statement sums up the game experience while not explaining nearly everything. Filled with surreal nightmare imagery, a dose of bitterly sarcastic humor, and a mid-game story twist, this indie title has a lot going for it. The gameplay does hit a bit of a wall after completing its great story, however. There is a lot of variety in its gameplay, party members, and enemies/bosses, but the reward for it begins and ends with “beat the game as X character,” which is exhausting when there are gimmick or joke characters who struggle even surviving the first few areas. But the presentation, the bittersweet story, and moment-to-moment gameplay save this game. Summary: Hits a wall with post-story content and reliance on repetition, but the story and variety make up for the shortcomings.

BRUTAL ORCHESTRA

"Hits a wall with post-story content and reliance on repetition, but the story and variety make up for the shortcomings."

Developer: @itsthetalia.bsky.social, Hellbent Games

Link: store.steampowered.com/app/1734320/...

ENJOYMENT: 10/10 ART/GRAPHICS: 8/10 STORY: 8/10 ACCESSIBILITY: 7/10 FUNCTIONALITY: 9/10 PRICE: 8/10 TOTAL: 8.33/10 Risk of Rain 2 is one of the most tightly-designed cooperative games ever made – period. The variety of its playable survivors, item builds, and artifacts makes it an all-timer for any group that wants to load up a game and see if they can break it. The only issue is that some items and character builds (particularly Plasma Shrimp and CHEF’s endless builds) make a lot of audio sensory-overload, but it doesn’t take away from the core satisfying gameplay itself. If this conversation ended with just Monsoon difficulty, it would probably be closer to a 9/10. However, Eclipse needs to be mentioned. Eclipse, on paper, is an escalating modifier game mode where your mistakes matter more – but this is not equal. The game is split between characters who are too broken to be even meaningfully affected by the modifiers, ones who relatively stay the same, and REX, who is actively punished for existing because the game makes damage permanent to the character who self-damages to function. The fact that the “mastery” mode literally invalidates at least one character is a core gameplay design failure. Summary: Risk of Rain 2 is one of the most addictive games of all time as both a cooperative game and a roguelike, but some of the difficulty is not fair or neutral, and it makes balancing a headache.

RISK OF RAIN 2

"Risk of Rain 2 is one of the most addictive games of all time as both a cooperative game and a roguelike, but some of the difficulty is not fair or neutral, and it makes balancing a headache."

Developer: Hopoo Games, Gearbox Publishing

Link: store.steampowered.com/app/632360/R...

Anatomy ENJOYMENT: 9/10 ART/GRAPHICS: 10/10 STORY: 10/10 ACCESSIBILITY: 6/10 FUNCTIONALITY: 10/10 PRICE: N/A (free - not factored into total) TOTAL: 9/10 Anatomy is considered to be one of the utmost cult classics of the itch.io side of indie horror games – and there is no disagreement here. The atmosphere is unrivaled in its level of commitment. The game uses liminal space and overall lack of lighting to its full advantage, making the player uneasy even though they’ve already accepted that there is no danger, no monsters ready to chase them. Just you, the house, and the tapes you collect. The tapes themselves? Written masterfully. The poetic, yet vaguely threatening tone does a great job in making the player never feel safe. Because there are no in-game subtitles, the game forces the player to lean in close to the tape recorder to even listen, turning their back on the rest of the environment as the tapes continue to personify it. That lack of subtitling is also the game’s biggest flaw for obvious reasons – Anatomy, by design, effectively excludes deaf and hard-of-hearing players. Summary: One of the masterpieces in indie horror history that earned its reputation – unsettling, poetic, and exclusive in a way that both serves its purpose but unfortunately limits its reach. Interestingly, it likely has a wider audience today thanks to renewed interest in House of Leaves–inspired liminal horror, seen recently in works like MyHouse.WAD and Skinamarink.

ANATOMY

"One of the masterpieces in indie horror history that earned its reputation – unsettling, poetic, and exclusive in a way that both serves its purpose but unfortunately limits its reach."

Developer: Kitty Horrorshow
Link: kittyhorrorshow.itch.io/anatomy

ENJOYMENT: 6/10 ART/GRAPHICS: 7/10 STORY: N/A (not factored into total) ACCESSIBILITY: 8/10 FUNCTIONALITY: 7/10 PRICE: 9/10 TOTAL: 7.4/10 Based on the DOOM II mod of the same name, Unloved is a procedurally-generated FPS. The game has a unique system called “heat,” where the more items you take, the more at risk you are from enemies spawning, creating a risk-reward system. It’s similar to Left 4 Dead’s director AI, but focuses on punishing player greed – though the game itself doesn’t explain this very well. Still, a mechanic that makes you reconsider whether grabbing lesser ammo or armor is worth it for the moment or to come back later deserves mention for how unique and effective it is without relying on artificial survival horror item scarcity. What hurts Unloved for me is how the game falls under the same loop: find key items to unlock doors, collect items that reward a trinket, trade a minimal amount of life to refill blood machines to power up the elevator you spawn in, and return to the beginning. The core gameplay loop is too formulaic, and your only real reward is earning enough points and rubies to buy and upgrade equipment, so by the mid-game, you’re mainly just replaying until you are nigh-unstoppable. There are modifiers and a hidden extreme difficulty to keep some interest. However, it’s still a commitment to reach that point – and Abyss difficulty “rewards” you with 2-3 upgraded enemies that can actually eat through your health if you’re not paying attention in between the mooks it throws at you. Summary: Unloved is a decent procedurally-generated horror FPS with a clever greed-punishing system (think L4D's AI Director). Worth trying for co-op fans seeking alternatives, but the formulaic loop wears thin fast – and with no story to carry you through, mid-game becomes a slog toward god mode.

UNLOVED

"Worth trying for co-op fans seeking alternatives, but the formulaic loop wears thin fast – and with no story to carry you through, mid-game becomes a slog toward god mode."

Developer: Paul Schneider/BlueEagle Productions

Link: store.steampowered.com/app/321270/U...

ENJOYMENT: 10/10 ART/GRAPHICS: 10/10 STORY: 10/10 ACCESSIBILITY: 8/10 FUNCTIONALITY: 9/10 PRICE: 10/10 TOTAL: 9.5/10 I was very late to the party when it comes to OneShot – not because I thought it wouldn’t be up my alley, but the internet had long since spoiled me on the infamous choice towards the end in its original release. So I put off playing the game for a while, quite unfairly, but in August 2025, I finally gave it a shot. I played this at the best possible time, having just watched my four-year-old niece at a town fair two days earlier, so as soon as I realized what the game was asking of me when it explained that I would be watching over Niko, I was already locked in to be their guide through a dying world. Speaking of Niko, the game’s writing is very character-driven. The dying world feels lived-in, with Niko probably being the best child character protagonist written since Clementine of TellTale’s The Walking Dead. In fact, this actually made the choice even harder than it probably should have been! A few points are knocked off in fairness to the fact that the RPGMaker engine shows some of its limits, and I think the game, in hindsight, could use some extra content warnings since it does have heavy subjects such as suicide. There is also a minor critique of the Solstice update, which feels like it favored one of the choices over the other. Still, it otherwise tells an interesting but adjacent plot about accountability that I really enjoyed. Summary: Despite the gut-punch ending having been spoiled for me for about a decade, this game still managed to rip my heart to shreds. Months later, I’m still thinking about it. OneShot earns its indie cult classic status.

ONESHOT

"Despite the gut-punch ending having been spoiled for me for about a decade, this game still managed to rip my heart to shreds. Months later, I’m still thinking about it."

Developer: @futurecatgames.bsky.social @nightmargin.bsky.social

Link: store.steampowered.com/app/420530/O...

ENJOYMENT: 9/10 ART/GRAPHICS: 8/10 STORY: 10/10 ACCESSIBILITY: 10/10 FUNCTIONALITY: 9/10 PRICE: 9/10 TOTAL: 9.167/10 An Outcry is a game about being a marginalized demographic in the face of contemporary authoritative politics that (un)fortunately gets more relevant each passing year after its original release in 2022. The game has you play as a nonbinary character that doesn’t sanitize the lived-in experience of having neighbors at varying levels of acceptance, while also making the Unnamed’s situation applicable even if you don’t personally relate to the trans-narrative specifics. That’s hard to pull off, and An Outcry strikes that balance perfectly. The game has a bleak yet subtly comedic tone that focuses on the pathos of a world hostile to the player character, while avoiding nihilism and hopelessness. The bird villains are caricatures for alt-right rhetoric, but are lovable in a “love to hate” way. The game has moments of witty levity that don’t take away from the message or tone. Despite being offloaded with some very dark and serious political themes (and the ignore route being much darker than the follow one), An Outcry manages to focus on introspection rather than dwelling on it. Summary: Underrated contemporary RPGMaker release for those who are looking for a story-first, short RPG game.

AN OUTCRY

"Underrated contemporary RPGMaker release for those who are looking for a story-first, short RPG game."

Developer: @quinnkdev.bsky.social

Link: store.steampowered.com/app/1817470/...

I mentioned yesterday that I’d be filling this space with micro-reviews, mostly focused on indie games I think are worth checking out. Consider this a creative distraction from Current Events™

So, here’s a thread of recent reviews I’ve been posting on Backloggd and Steam

backloggd.com/u/NoirMouse/

My god, that is one beautifully fluffy cat.

Also as far as games I wouldn't write a review for - a few of my favorite indie games of all time have their tenth anniversary this year so I might save them for a full-full review. Might change my mind though!

Consider it a list of microreviews from a c-list at best game journalist (lol) recommending small and large indie titles (or AAA/AA titles that deserve a spotlight or more exposure)

Honestly, I might make this a thread of short paragraph-length reviews for some games in my collection that I don't plan on writing a review article for (ie too old and too long since a last update) - how many people may be interested?

#indiegame #vsky

Isn't that the truth?

Been legit super in the dumps lately between recent political events (abolish ICE!), the snow storm, and other personal things. Sorry I haven't had the energy of, well, doing anything lately.

New game to write a game journalism article about, though! And a new update for one of my favorite games

Going live with PAPERS, PLEASE - not because I want to vent about current geopolitical states of the world or anything via satire. 🙃

Plus I have been meaning to play for literal years. So, why not strike while the skillet is freezing cold?

www.twitch.tv/noirmouse

Got a short horror game coming to Steam in a couple months. Give it a wish list!

store.steampowered.com/app/4089180/...

Happy birthday!