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Wax Heads ultimately shares the same central conflict as Empire Records, in which an independent shop is at risk of being bought up by a soulless corporation, but the interactive elements of this game really emphasize just how much there is to lose beyond one’s job. Music conjures powerful, immediate emotions, but it’s the game’s masterful story about how that music brings audiences together that produces all the lingering, magical feels.

The main story’s baseline difficulty is quite measured, but each stage offers optional challenges for you to complete—say, slay a certain number of spectral samurai, or avoid every pit of spikes along the way.

Simply put, this game seems almost perversely hell-bent on gating you off from any kind of enjoyment. Ultimately, there’s too much work involved for not nearly enough reward from the world or the narrative, despite the occasional interesting twist and turn. Players are expected to care for every single weapon that Aran crafts in the course of his journey, which is a Herculean task given just how little care Blades of Fire gives to its players in return.

Maybe it’s intended as a joke that you only get the trophy for “completing the tutorial” once you’re 80% done with the game—there seem to be multiple “ending” scenes—or maybe that’s a tacit acknowledgement of the game’s refrain: “It Never Ends in Everhood.” Perhaps the base game is just the tutorial and the real game is what awaits players after they return to the main hub and are reminded of the weekly battle arena challenges and the levels that can be accessed inside the Hillbert Hotel created by other players. So for those predisposed to wanting to see everything all at once, maybe that will be transcendent enough.

Characters are even treated differently upon being discovered: Alfredo gets the fewest chances before he’s thrown back in the cell, and gun-toting soldiers will chase after Amelia rather than open fire on her like the other inmates. Thus, it can be worthwhile for Eduardo to push a block into place even if he’s going to be caught right afterwards, or for Amelia to run interference. Sometimes the most valuable progress you’ll make is simply to unlock a door for another character to use later. In an impressive feat of adapting an established format for a unique setting, The Stone of Madness is cleverly attuned to perseverance through incremental progress.

The themes here are painted with a broad brush, but their refusal to get down to specifics doesn’t mean that they don’t still ring true. The game bittersweetly fixates on parenthood, as you watch Neva herself grow and outpace Alba as the seasons pass, and on the destruction of the natural world, which in turn makes it more hostile and violent. And then there’s the connective thread between the two—that even when it feels like everything is falling apart, because sometimes it literally is, the only thing you can do is keep moving.

While the plot is occasionally predictable and the voice acting is a bit of a letdown, none of this takes away from the overall charm and mystery of Eden Genesis. Even when the final area, Node Zero, strips away all of the glamor of Eden’s districts, reducing things to a wireframe orange, it’s never anything less than exhilarating to find ways around obstacles, running along the safe underbelly of a fiery platform in order to double-jump up and slash through an enemy on the other side of it before finding another safe ceiling. If this is mental degeneration, then Disturbed had it right back in 2000: “Get up, come on get down with the sickness.”

It’s indicative of the game’s clear messaging that despite multiple car crashes, a delirious dream sequence, a high-stakes infiltration, and more, the moment that most stands out is a relatively quiet one: Trevor sitting at a piano, playing an original piece that he’s composed. For all the time spent controlling him up to that point, this is the first time where Angela, and by extension the player, can see him as an independent person, one capable of making his own decisions (in this case, his art). That glimpse of his humanity is a moving little flourish that attests to American Arcadia’s belief that we all deserve freedom from coercion and an unreal life.

It’s indicative of the game’s clear messaging that despite multiple car crashes, a delirious dream sequence, a high-stakes infiltration, and more, the moment that most stands out is a relatively quiet one: Trevor sitting at a piano, playing an original piece that he’s composed. For all the time spent controlling him up to that point, this is the first time where Angela, and by extension the player, can see him as an independent person, one capable of making his own decisions (in this case, his art). That glimpse of his humanity is a moving little flourish that attests to American Arcadia’s belief that we all deserve freedom from coercion and an unreal life.

Curse of the Sea Rats is ultimately a perfectly average game marred by some poor design choices, like instant-death chasms and repetitive forest and cave areas. The trap-filled final dungeon finds the game at its best and most inventive, and is a joy to fight through and navigate, but it also emphasizes what’s missing everywhere else. Rats!

The game’s eeriest moment is attuned to the politics of denial and unresolved emotions. The final boss, a manifestation of the existential crisis that faces the planet, is extremely hard. It’s far easier to accept The Knight Witch’s offer for Rayne to just walk away from this battle and enjoy the next few years, hoping that maybe one of her allies can stop the world from ending. But that leads to an unsatisfying ending, with Rayne haunted by the question: “Was there more that I could have done?” This narrative beat is a bleak and brutal reminder that if we all keep blithely enjoying our lives instead of fighting the toughest of battles, we may come to regret it.

rossing Souls will offer you the basic elements to solve a puzzle but not enough context for the solution to make any sense. You may scratch your head, wondering how you even solved a puzzle, only to not care much and continue trudging forward, hoping for the game to flip the script in other ways toward the end of its short campaign. But, unfortunately, it never does, as almost everything here only exists, coherently or not, to serve up empty nostalgia for its own sake.

Despite its winning concept, all the comic homages, and the solidly executed gameplay, Rise & Shine goes out on a decidedly abrupt and anticlimactic note. In a way, it seems as if the developers got up and stretched but ultimately decided to go back to sleep.

Still, even with a few chapter-reset-necessitating bugs scattered here and there (to be expected of a one-man project, really), there's nothing game-breaking in Mind. Instead, there's just an ever-surprising and scintillating series of mind-breaking visuals, from illusory architecture (in which the shadows never lie) to jagged frozen ponds, waves frozen mid-crest, and haunting hospitals that jut into the cloudy sky like an infinite middle finger. If this is what the protagonist's world looks like, no wonder he hasn't yet woken up from his coma.