A while back, the minds behind the beloved Suikoden RPG series set up a Kickstarter to fund Eiyuden Chronicle, a classically styled JRPG currently set for a 2023 release. However, one of the stretch goals was for a "companion game," meant to help introduce players to the world and its characters while the flagship title was being developed. Enter Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, a 2.5D, side-scrolling, exploration-action game with light RPG and town-building elements. While it might not be the big game that fans and Kickstarter backers are eagerly anticipating, there's enough to Rising to make it worth a look.

RiffTrax is the successful version of your favorite pastime: hanging out with your friends and making fun of bad movies. Combining that with the party-game genre, which has largely been dominated primarily by Jackbox Games, makes sense. RiffTrax: The Game allows players to write their own comedic lines to accompany clips from bad movies. Are you and your friends witty or do you rely primarily on the fallback of making a robot voice say "f***" and "shit" to get your laughs?

RiffTrax: The Game is essentially a spiritual successor to developer Wide Right Interactive's What The Dub but with the added voiceover work and witty writing of the RiffTrax crew: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. You may also know these voices from the '90s TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 as Mike Nelson, the second Tom Servo, and the second Crow, respectively. The multiplayer party game features over 250 movie clips, many of which come from RiffTrax classics fans will be familiar with like Plan 9 From Outer Space, and allows for 1-6 players to participate, in addition to audience members who can watch and vote for their favorite jokes.

Much like RiffTrax and MST3K, the goal of this game is to make jokes while clips from bad movies play. Much like the various Jackbox games, this is a game to play at parties, and participating only requires a phone, tablet, or even a desktop, so it's available to everyone with an internet browser. While the overall goal of getting the biggest laughs remains the same, there are two modes of play for RiffTrax: The Game: Pick a Riff, where you choose from a small list of pre-written lines, read by the RiffTrax team, and Write A Riff, where you create your own funny lines. Points are tabulated throughout the game, and the winner at the end is the person with the highest score. If you've ever played one of the many Jackbox games, you're familiar with this format.

The one thing that immediately stands out about Trek to Yomi is its striking visual style. Set during Japan's Edo Period, Trek to Yomi captures feudal Japan with a grainy black and white filter reminiscent of classic samurai cinema--particularly the movies of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Almost every single frame in Trek to Yomi could be a painting; such is the beauty of its immaculate composition. For all of its gravitas, however, the side-scrolling action game underneath it all continually underwhelms. When two heavy, steel katanas clash against each other with a subdued and weightless whimper, it becomes clear that Trek to Yomi lacks the substance to match its fantastic style.

Most of your time in Trek to Yomi is spent cutting down enemies with protagonist Hiroki's deadly katana. Combat adopts a familiar structure as you utilize light and heavy attacks, parries, dodge-rolls, and ammo-limited ranged weapons like a bow and shurikens to carve through each enemy encounter. Stamina governs how often you can block and attack before becoming winded and leaving yourself open to attack, but both health and stamina can be upgraded by exploring and finding pickups off the beaten path. You'll also unlock new combos as you progress, including one that lets you swing backwards--useful for dealing with enemies who emerge from behind--and another that leads with a heavy attack before transitioning into a combination of lightning-fast strikes.

You feel appropriately deadly, able to cut through most enemies with a couple of sword swings, but this does mean combat is a cakewalk for the most part. Armored enemies aren't quite as easy to kill, since they're able to sustain more damage and generally have more elaborate combos, and enemy types like those wielding spears force you to close the distance before you can strike a killing blow. The problem with Trek to Yomi's combat is that dispatching these foes rarely ever feels satisfying. There's a lack of fluidity when transitioning between different actions, and the animations are stuttery and stilted, lending everything a sense of weightlessness that's at odds with the game's cinematography. Parries are decidedly underwhelming, too, and enemies tend to attack one at a time--even when they have you surrounded--eliminating much need in even using the mechanic. It all results in combat taking on a formulaic rhythm as you simply parry, attack, and then repeat, regardless of which enemy type you're confronted with.

Retro-throwback is a popular aesthetic these days. Turns out, detailed 2D pixel art, jammin' chiptune soundtracks, and pick-up-and-playability are timeless. One under-the-radar series that's been rocking the retro aesthetic is Gotta Protectors, a multiplayer overhead action/tower defense/real-time strategy fusion that's earned fervent fans. Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness is the series' latest entry, and it's a frenetically fun and strategic adventure alone or with up to three companions.

The world of Gotta Protectors is one of those video game fantasy universes where hordes of monsters are always attacking, placing the kingdom in peril. Fortunately, the kingdom has Princess Lola and her magical banner that can heal and protect all of her subjects… except for herself. That's a pretty fatal flaw, but fortunately, she's got a guardian army: the Gotta Protectors, a motley gang of warriors and weirdos whose purpose is to keep Lola from harm (and quench her thirst for monster blood by proxy). And Lola needs to be kept safe from all harm, because there's one other power she wields: a shriek of frustration that can destroy everything.

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Everything the light touches in Teardown is primed for you to destroy. Whether it's heavily plastered brick walls or fragile wooden sheds, Teardown gives you a variety of tools to make blowing up each little pixel a delight as you tear your way through its handful of carefully crafted playgrounds. It's a game filled with inventive ideas and a satisfyingly simple premise--even if it is hampered down by a campaign that suffers from poor pacing. Its premise, thankfully has enough depth to it that makes Teardown a destructive sandbox toy that is enticing to return to frequently.

Acting as a highly sought-after demolitions expert, your journey through Teardown's campaign takes you across the game's nine maps and peppers them with a variety of objects that drive its mayhem. You're mostly going to carry out intricate heists, although the criteria for success does change from mission to mission. One might challenge you to steal several computers that are all hooked up to an alarm system, while another revolves around destroying a variety of expensive cars by finding ways to dump them in water. Mostly, however, the objectives supplement a familiar pattern of play: Create a route through the map using your destructive tools so that you can carry out the heist before the alarms that you will trigger summon security to your position. Your limited movement speed and the labyrinthine maps ensure that you can't just brute force your way to a solution without carefully thinking about the route you're making between objectives, while the tools at your disposal methodically limit your options to create engaging environmental puzzles to solve.

Your ability to destroy each stage is limited by the tools you have. You start with just a sledgehammer and fire extinguisher, making it easy to break through wooden doors and put out fires but limiting your ability to charge through brick walls. As you progress, you unlock more powerful tools and weapons, including explosives, rocket launchers, shotguns, and pipe bombs. Each one has a limited number of uses, forcing you to carefully consider how you're utilizing each one in the context of your objective. It's consistently entertaining to just blow holes through walls with a shotgun or bring down a small office a few floors with well-placed explosives or map-specific construction vehicles, with Teardown's superb physics letting you carry out your delicate planning with consistent and repeatable results.