Roland Ingram

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Apr 26, 2023

Critic70/100

Agreement—

With charm and polish and great respect for the player's time and ability, Desta: The Memories Between manages to land a clever and touching concept. The story and voice acting keep the levels ticking by and elevate what could have been a very rote affair. The dodgeball gameplay does let the story do the heavy lifting after about halfway, becoming rather repetitive, but it also provides a realistic touch of conflict and aggression whenever the dialogue leans into super-niceness, and the roguelike strategy plays smoothly enough to be a pleasant delivery mechanism for the tale of Desta unpacking and coming to terms with their emotional conflicts.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Mar 30, 2023

Critic70/100

Agreement—

The Last Worker is an ambitious project and it sticks the landing when it comes to graphics, performance, and voice acting. However, its central box-shipping game is fiddly and the game's pacing doesn't let you get into the flow. Tricky sections requiring repeated checkpoint loads break the immersion and clash with the long, dawdling sections of exploring the Jüngle facility. It's likeable and well-packaged with plenty of character, but it doesn't always deliver.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Mar 24, 2023

Critic80/100

Agreement—

With its encyclopaedia of over 125 fish, Dredge's bounty is a boundless as the sea, its action RPG upgrade compulsion loop as deep. That said, you get out what you put in – during the first couple of hours, anyway. Once you achieve the sweet spot of an upgraded boat, manageable difficulty and a story in full flow, it's magical. The excellent presentation of a terrifying ocean really hits home. The need to stretch the limits of safety to reach your next catch leads to edge-of-the-seat moments, while the slapping rain and eerie creaks of the sound design hardly help you to peace out. Interspersed with confidence-building angling in the sunshine and the fun of slotting oddly shaped creatures into your tight inventory, there's just enough encouragement to keep enjoying the horrors. A wonderful first effort from Black Salt, Dredge is absolutely the kind of game you mount over the mantelpiece rather than throw back into the water.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Mar 16, 2023

Critic80/100

Agreement—

Backbeat stands out among puzzle games for its attractive graphics and constantly pulsing, funky soundscape, but most of all for its impressive depth of mechanics. Juggling phrase lengths, bar markers, alignment, stagger, solos, and special moves – all in interactive levels full of moving parts – is like having a wah-wah pedal hooked up to your brain. Apart from a sometimes-fiddly interface and limited replayability, Ichigoichie has hit all the right notes.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Mar 1, 2023

Critic70/100

Agreement—

Brok the Investigator is a true original. It's a hodge-podge of point-and-click, side-scrolling beat-'em-up, visual novel, and find-the-object. Most of the time, these disparate ideas sit slightly awkwardly alongside one another, but despite a slow start we did eventually feel a little spark and the whole thing became more than the sum of its parts. It's all the more impressive given that it's just the second game from a one-person studio. Graphic adventure fans should absolutely consider thoughtfully pointing and clicking it onto their wishlist – or just drop-kicking the heck out of the buy button.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Feb 9, 2023

Critic40/100

Agreement—

Like its own mysterious underground complex, Colossal Cave is obscure and unfriendly, trickily hiding some scarce but valuable treasure. If it wasn't for the fascinating source material, it would be jaw-droppingly bad. However, the source material is fascinating, and this remake is one way to engage with it. If, for that reason, you are willing to overlook both the outdated design elements you would expect and the bad design decisions and sloppy implementation you wouldn't, there could be something here to enjoy. We certainly wouldn't judge anyone who discovered an egg-sized emerald of fun in Colossal Cave, but neither can we seriously recommend it.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Feb 5, 2023

Critic70/100

Agreement—

The Pathless does one thing extremely well, which is to create a sense of racing – almost dancing – through its huge open world. The player's journey is mainly one of getting to know that sensation and learning to harness it to traverse epic environments. However, the protagonist's journey has little to do with that feeling, which is perhaps why the story doesn't land. The game sounds exceptional and looks great in this impressive port. However, the puzzles rarely stimulate the imagination and are fussy to play, while boss encounters are overlong and repetitive. Although it has its significant successes, The Pathless unfortunately doesn't manage to become more than the sum of its parts.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Jan 30, 2023

Critic60/100

Agreement—

At just a handful of hours, Trek to Yomi sadly still manages to outstay its welcome. It asks its visuals to carry the gameplay, but their novelty wears off before the final act. This is particularly true on Switch, where dropped resolution and simplified scenery steal some of the magic and ugly character close-ups blemish the overall aesthetic. As imaginatively as Yomi is realised, the game still feels like a trek.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Jan 25, 2023

Critic80/100

Agreement—

At its best, The Excavation of Hob's Barrow feels like the halcyon point-and-click days of LucasArts. Some of its puzzle chains are compelling, immersive, and pitched just right difficulty-wise. It gets a bit messy in the third act, but not enough to undo the excellent scene-setting and plot-thickening that precedes it. Hob's Barrow could have been hobbled by its muted setting; instead it brings a barrowload of supernatural chills.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Dec 11, 2022

Critic70/100

Agreement—

Papetura is a million miles away from being a blockbuster movie, yet it shares the same sense of intense energy and craft, which it distils into each second of its game time. Every crease and scrunch of its scenery and characters is shining with Ostafin’s passion. Its rudimentary and vague story, very brief running time, and control niggles do hold it back slightly, but nothing can completely overshadow its captivating presentation.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Dec 5, 2022

Critic80/100

Agreement—

It's hard to talk about the specifics of Inscryption without diluting some of its magic. However, its ingenuity is mind-boggling, its mood is devilishly haunting and its presentation is first-rate. As a deck builder, it's stretched about as far as it can go, and by jumping around between concepts it sometimes asks for a lot of from the player. The pay-off, however, is one of the most impressive feats of video game storytelling there is. If you're new to Daniel Mullins Games then you're in for even more of a treat, but existing fans, too, shouldn't think they have the measure of what awaits on Inscryption's dusty old floppy disk.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Dec 3, 2022

Critic60/100

Agreement—

Our experience of Super Kiwi 64 comes down to this: we were having a good time, but couldn't always tell if it was despite the game or because of it. Either we've found a gold coin in a muddy field or we've found the face of Elvis in our porridge. If you're giving this a go, be sure to bring your imagination along with your £2.69.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Dec 1, 2022

Critic80/100

Agreement—

However, there’s no resisting the charm of Railbound’s chirpy cel-shaded models and, although they belie some fiendish challenges, the difficulty curve is as smooth as it is steep. Perfect for handheld play, Afterburn has laid down a great addition to Switch's library of puzzlers.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Nov 15, 2022

Critic80/100

Agreement—

When it all clicks, A Little to the Left provides an experience that is a weird mingling of the semi-passive and viscerally intrusive. It is only the occasions when tiny touch targets cry out for a mouse pointer that the magic falls away. Once that happens, the plainer, less surprising puzzles aren’t able to carry the show on their own. As a piece, it can’t always sustain its best rhythm, but when it does, it's stimulating, quiet, and memorable.

Nintendo Life

Roland Ingram·Nov 13, 2022

Critic90/100

Agreement—

Presenting itself modestly as "a simple and short experience", Lunistice has masses to offer. A first run is maybe a handful of hours, but the thirst to retry is so strong it's almost hard to move on to each new stage. Add the challenge of finding all the cranes and hidden items, avoiding resets, and setting faster times, plus unlockable characters with different moves, and it's a full and generous package. Launching at $4.99 or your regional equivalent, weighing in at a lean 600MB, and having a demo on the eShop, Lunistice is simply a must-try game.