Author: A.K.H.

How do you decide whether you like a game? For me, it comes down to whether or not I want to spend some more time in the world presented to me by the game. Some other element might have been the reason for me to try that game, such as an interesting gameplay loop, or a unique art style, but the only thing that will keep me playing the game for a long time is whether or not I feel connected to the game’s world. 

At that point, everything else – the gameplay, story, characters, music and so on become secondary. And I’m willing to ignore whatever shortcomings those other departments might have, just because I’m having a good time in the game’s world.

And that sums up how I feel about Avowed. By now, the internet is full of reviews and opinions from critics and fans alike, about how it is an excellent game, but falls short of being truly great. And yes, it appears highly unlikely that Avowed will get the same overwhelmingly positive reception that Baldur’s Gate 3 did, but I still feel it is a good game that is worth a try if you are a game pass subscriber. 

The Storyteller’s Festival is a third-party event curated by Two and a Half Studios, which is an indie outlet from Australia. They make their own visual novels, and also host this event each year, which aims to highlight games that place an emphasis on storytelling.

There are games across a wide variety of genres. Some of these games do focus entirely on storytelling, while others use a mix of story and gameplay elements to keep the game moving. 

Either way, it’s nice to have an event focused entirely on the narrative aspect of games, because with the live-service culture that is dominant in the industry right now, it can be tough for smaller studios that are making narrative games to find a large audience.

The event features more than 400 titles, and that includes games that have already been out for a while, as well as upcoming games.  In this video, I have handpicked five upcoming games that I found to be quite interesting, and which all have demos available that you can try right now. Please note that the event runs until February 25, 2025, so depending on when you’re watching this video, the demos for these games may or may not be available. That decision is usually taken by the developers.

Now, in alphabetical order, here are five upcoming games to check out in the storyteller’s festival:

1. Abashed – https://store.steampowered.com/app/3116230/Abashed/
2. Anomalistic Revolution – https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168120/Anomalistic_Revolution/
3. Cairn – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1588550/Cairn/
4. Fishbowl – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638070/Fishbowl/
5. Misgiven – https://store.steampowered.com/app/2475620/Misgiven/

This video almost didn’t exist, because I almost didn’t finish playing the demo for Winds of Arcana: Ruination and was about to rage quit. Some 10-15 minutes into the demo, I came across this fight that seemed simple at first, with an enemy I had already faced earlier, but the twist was that there were two of these enemies at the same time, and the fight area was sealed, giving the player very little room to move around. And then for the next forty minutes, I kept trying again and again to clear the fight, but kept dying, again, and again, and again.

Usually the point of such fights is for the player to learn from their mistakes and try again. But here, even though I knew what I was doing wrong, it came down to how fast you could react to the enemies’ speed, and clearly my reflexes weren’t fast enough. At this point I had two options: either give up and admit that I didn’t have the skill to beat this fight, or seek help from the internet. I wasn’t exactly in the best of moods right then. 

After stepping away for a few minutes to calm down, I hopped into the game’s discord server, and asked for help. One of the devs replied that the fight was frustrating even for some of their own team members. This cheered me up a little bit, making me feel that maybe I wasn’t the worst player in the world. The dev then offered a helpful hint to get past the fight, and sure enough, I cleared it within a few more attempts.

Palm Sugar: A Village Story, also known by its alternate title Palletooru, is the upcoming debut game from Mono Tusk Studios. The demo for this game actually came out a few months back, but I was caught up with covering other games for the channel, and I wasn’t able to play it for a while.

Better late than never, so here’s a brief look at Palm Sugar: A Village Story. The title is pretty descriptive of what you can expect from this game, it is a story set in a village. That village is called Bellampakam, and it is located in South India, more particularly in one of the Telugu states. This is necessary to mention, because the game’s USP is that it offers a glimpse at life in a Telugu village, which I believe hasn’t been explored in a video game till now.

The village certainly takes centerstage throughout the demo. The moment you step out of your house, you are greeted with this colourful and vibrant image of Bellampakam that immediately makes you want to forget the story for a bit and just walk around, see what this place has to offer.

Since this is a demo, we are of course limited as to where we can go and what we can do, but it still felt like we got a pretty decent look at the village, and what to expect from the art style and ambience of the game.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard came out on October 31, 2024, and received pretty good reviews from critics. However, it was kind of a mixed reception. That explains why the scores didn’t cross 85 on either of the two major review aggregator sites, which is usually considered to be the bare minimum for a game to be considered great. 

As for players, well, it was the same response. The game currently has a mostly positive rating on steam, with 70% of the more than 34,000 reviews being positive. But that is more or less the same as having a 7 out of 10 score, which is usually reserved for games which are good, but not exceptional.

Anyway, why am I talking about this game nearly four months after its launch? 

Abashed is a psychological adventure game that narrates the story of Isaac, who not only has to deal with the reality of his missing partner, but also has to constantly question reality itself.

I stumbled onto this game while making a list of Indian indie games coming out in 2025, and later the developer reached out and kindly offered me early access to the demo, which you can play right now on Steam.

The gamedev scene in India has come a long way since the days of making movie based tie-ins. These days, thanks to the wider availability of powerful game engines and other tools required to build high-quality games, there is a thriving indie game community in the country.

In this video, we will take a look at six upcoming indie games that are being made by Indian developers. The games in this list were chosen based on the release date currently displayed on their steam pages. Also, we can certainly expect a whole lot of other interesting games to come out from Indian studios later this year; it’s just that they haven’t finalised their release schedule yet. 

To keep track of these and other games being developed by Indian studios, I highly recommend that you follow the list curated by Gamedev.in on Steam.

The steam pages for the games featured in this video can be found below.

1. Abashed – https://store.steampowered.com/app/3116230/Abashed/
2. Bao Bao’s Cozy Laundromat – https://store.steampowered.com/app/3194550/Bao_Baos_Cozy_Laundromat/
3. Detective Dotson – https://store.steampowered.com/app/2450840/Detective_Dotson/
4. Frontier Paladin – https://store.steampowered.com/app/2804970/Frontier_Paladin/
5. Spook-A-Boo – https://store.steampowered.com/app/3154150/SpookABoo/
6. The Last King – https://store.steampowered.com/app/2307400/The_Last_King/

Bao Bao’s Cozy Laundromat is the third game developed by the one-person studio Destroyer Doggo. It is the latest in a series of desktop-focused idle games that were inspired by the success of Rusty’s Retirement. This isn’t just a 1:1 copy though. The developer has taken the core concept and come up with his own interpretation of it. And it involves pandas.

Before we proceed, I need to put in a disclaimer for something important. I have been playtesting this game since its early days of development, and am even listed in the credits as a tester, for which I am quite thankful to Prateek, the developer of the game. 

This means that my opinion about the game might be a bit biased, but if you have seen some of my older reviews, you might know that I always try my best to provide a balanced opinion, highlighting both the positives and negatives of a game. And that’s what I’ll try to do here as well. I will put up a review once the full game is out, and in this video I will mostly be showcasing gameplay from the demo version, which you can try out for yourself right now.

2024 is on its way out. It wasn’t as big a year for gamers as 2023 was, and it was certainly a much more scarier year for developers, as the industry continued to remain unstable and layoffs continued to happen. Still, 2024 managed to produce some noteworthy games, and a lot of stuff happened that will no doubt affect the next year in gaming. 

In this recap video, let us take a look at some notable games, as well as some notable events that shaped the year.