Level-5 is a legendary outfit that just drops bar after bar and has for a quarter century. My initial plan was to be, like, "Here are the games they have made which ended up being super meaningful to me," but when I looked at the list there were way too many - but Ni no Kuni and Professor Layton oughta be a decent start.

They really like to experiment with novel RPG forms; this new Fantasy Life - specifically, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is like a hardcore Animal Crossing, with minigames and crafting suspended like fruit cocktail throughout its enticing frame.  It has co-op too, but like with many of these novel games it's not the kind of co-op I want. When I go into a co-op game, I want to play the game that I already liked, just together. This is one of those situations like Dragon Quest Builders where playing co-op is just playing some weird, gelded version of the experience. I.e., you don't really get to progress or do quests in the ordinary way. That is… I don't know what that is. I'd play this in co-op, but I'm not playing it solo. This kind of game just makes me feel lonely eventually and if it's just gonna be me in there I'm too busy with other stuff. I'd rather grab Monster Train II, and in the time between writing the first part of the sentence and finding the link to insert, I did just that.

Monster Train II was in the Devolver booth at PAX; I loved the first one, and I think there's a case to be made that it saved my life. I wanted to talk to some of the people at the booth but I didn't think I would be able to be cool about shit so I lurked over by the Ysbyd Gamez booth across the aisle and checked out the incredible Love Eternal as well as the longed for Demonschool.

I really liked Shiny Shoe's follow-up to Monster Train, an ill-fated co-op tactics roguelite thing called Inkbound that made me worried we might not get anything else from this team. I prefer Monster Train to Slay The Spire, which is the most effusive praise imaginable if you spend time on this genre. What they add into the mix is a spatial, effortless form of tactics and card crating you can use to break the game over your knee. I have a bunch of writing to do today, but my pointer keeps straying e'er closer to the taskbar and its manifold treasures.

(CW)TB out.