Mandagon

Score: 8.0
2016

Mandagon is a short but lovely freeware game. It’s a platforming adventure about a little totem. There are no deaths or failures, only the story.

Plantera

Score: 8.0
2016

Plantera is a cute and cheap gardening clicker available on Steam. For a clicker game, I’d say it’s pretty awesome – but I’m neither an expert nor a fan of this genre. Then again I’ve clocked 11 hours in Plantera and all of it was actually fun. I think I’ll even go back to check the future updates.

Hayday (Android)

Score: 8.0
2012

Supercell’s huge farming hit is a good game – excellent even. I’d score it a bit higher if it weren’t for the usual free2play model where micro-payments add up to ridiculous amounts. But Hayday can be played purely without the extra payments. There are some minor annoyances which would be easy to bypass with money, but they aren’t something that I’d consider deal breakers.

Neko Atsume (Android)

Score: 8.0

The super cute kitty collector doesn’t have much gameplay but it really doesn’t matter. It has cats!

Dungeon Boss (Android)

Score: 7.5

This pokemonesque free-to-play mobile RPG is cute and fun with plenty of content but eventually I dropped my eager leveling. My enthusiasm plain died after hearing about the quite recent patch which made endgame pay-to-win.

Shelter

Score: 8.0
(10+)
2013

Shelter is a short and cute game about being a mother badger, taking care of her offspring. It’s a rather simple game but full of charm. And it can be surprisingly distressing at points. I played it with my kids and possibly ended up scarring them a bit (that age limit of 10 is not just for show, though all the violence in the game is nothing more than can be seen in nature documentaries).

The Whispered World

Score: 8.0
(12+)
2010 (SE 2014)

The Whispered World is another Daedalic adventure game. So far it’s probably the least favourite of mine, but that does not mean it’s bad at all. It’s a very charming and funny game, and definitely worth playing for any old school adventure fan. The game tells a story of Sadwick, the depressed clown who has dreams (premonitions?) about the end of the world. He has a lovely little sidekick: a caterpillar named Spot, and together they start an adventure to find more about Sadwick’s dreams.