5.0
Terrace Nine
A vertical city builder about keeping ninety thousand people warm on nine stacked terraces. The most legible simulation we have played in years, and the most demanding.
Game reviews
Every review below was written after the reviewer had logged at least 25 hours in the game — the exact figure sits on each card. Nothing here is a launch-day impression dressed up as a verdict.
How to read a rating
Each review scores four pillars out of ten, and the star rating is calculated from them rather than chosen first. If a game is beautiful and shallow, that shows up as a high Atmosphere and a low Staying Power instead of being averaged into a bland seven out of ten. Read the pillar that matches what you want from a game and the number will mean something to you.
Structure
Pacing, shape, and whether the length is justified.
Systems
Depth, legibility, and whether decisions carry weight.
Atmosphere
Art, sound, and whether a place feels like somewhere.
Staying Power
What is left once the opening spectacle wears off.
9 reviews in the archive
5.0
4.5
Stillwater Line
A rail journey across a drowned continent, told one carriage at a time. The finest sense of place in any game this year, carried by writing that trusts silence.
4.0
The Hollow Ward
A horror game set in one building over one night, built on architecture rather than jump scares. It understands that a floor plan can be frightening.
4.5
Cinderfall
A hundred-hour RPG built around a city that rebuilds itself between acts. Slow to start, enormous once it opens, and unusually willing to remember what you did.
4.5
Paper Districts
A hand-illustrated puzzle game about folding a paper city into new shapes. Small, precise, and smarter than almost anything at four times the price.
3.5
Overgrowth Protocol
A strategy game about reclaiming an overgrown megastructure, with excellent long-range planning and an interface that fights you the whole way.
4.0
Night Market Run
A lean, gorgeous action game set across one night market. Nine hours long, no filler in any of them, and the best movement feel of the year.
4.0
Frostline Transit
A survival game about running a supply route through a prairie winter. Tense, methodical, and far kinder to your time than the genre usually manages.
3.0
Atlas Unwritten
An enormous open-world RPG with a beautiful map and very little underneath it. Ambition is not the problem here; conviction is.
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What we are still playing
Three games are in the hours right now and none of them is ready to be scored: a co-operative bridge-repair roguelike from the Prairie Indie Showcase, a survey game set on a single mountain, and the autumn slate from Meridian North. We will publish when the hours are in and not before.
If you are a developer with something you would like the desk to look at, send it through the contact page rather than to an individual reviewer — everything gets logged and read, and we reply either way.
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