End of Summer Reviews!
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 On 08/13/2025 at 08:26 PM by Cary Woodham See More From This User » |
Summer is winding down, so let’s have one big last bash with game reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com. Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
Pillsbury has some pre-cut ready to bake cookies featuring Minecraft. I found them at a grocery store near where my mom lives (Brookshire’s, a local Texas chain you see around smaller towns), and we bought them and baked them last time I was visiting her. So let’s take a look at them!
Last year I wrote about Nintendo’s alarm clock, the Alarmo. Well since then they’ve added a few new alarms you can download, so I thought I’d write about them here.
I’ve reviewed lots of “Sokoban” style puzzle games where you push blocks around to solve puzzles. But the problem is that they may have different coats of paint, they’re still mostly all the same. So it’s nice and refreshing to play one that has new ideas. In Hogtie, you play as a cowboy who must rope pigs and drag them to their pen. But you’ll have to deal with aspects like the placement of the pig, avoiding mud (pigs won’t go in their pen dirty), barrels that block your way and how you can use your rope to move them around, and much more.
Flora and Fang: Guardians of the Vampire Garden (Switch)
When game makers want to imitate a classic from the arcade, they’ll usually go with something popular and familiar, like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Tetris, etc. But I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a game try and imitate Donkey Kong 3. Probably because that game wasn’t as popular, since it was more of a shooter than a platformer. It was also the one and only appearance of Stanley the Bugman. But here comes Flora and Fang, which is very much like Donkey Kong 3. Dracula has to go away on a trip, and leaves two young vampire siblings Flora and Fang in charge of protecting his pumpkin patches from bugs.
This game is obviously trying to imitate Banjo-Kazooie. Your characters are a lizard who doesn’t talk (Mac), and a wisecracking parrot who rides on him (Regina). You travel across 3D platforming worlds collecting stuff, but instead of notes and jigsaw piece “Jiggies,” you are collecting cubes and golden “Floppies” (disks). Even the music uses the same kinds of instruments (meaning lots of bari saxophone and xylophone).
Man these games where you fit things inside a box must be pretty popular, or easy to make. Because in the past year, I’ve reviewed these types of games where you fit cats into boxes, zoo animals on a pool float, dogs on a bed, lunch in a bento box, and pastries in a breadbasket. Now we’ve got one a bit more mundane as you fit kitchen utensils into plastic drawer organizers. Hey at least there are 3D graphics in this one, called Stuff It! for Switch.
If you want a game that combines farming with fashion, then Cottonville is for you. Create a character and move into a farm where you’ll grow crops. But these crops aren’t for eating. You’ll use them to make fabric and dyes, and then sew them to make all sorts of clothes. Your house also doubles as a shop, and when you have enough, you can sell your clothes to customers to buy more seeds so you can grow crops and make more clothes, and repeat the process indefinitely.
Tiny Pixels vol. 2: Stormy Knights (PS4)
The Tiny Pixels series seems to feature simple graphics and gameplay, and I’ve already reviewed the first one, a vertically scrolling shooter. The second one is a beat ‘em up where you play as a knight out to save princesses from goblins and such, and you fight one enemy at a time until you reach a boss, and when your game is over you can use the coins you’ve earned to upgrade your skills.
This one claims to be a cooking game, but I think it’s more an exercise in visual programming using STEM skills and such. The story is that in a dystopian future, most folks can’t afford real food and just eat some kind of synthetic nutrition paste. But rich people can afford real food, so you are a chef and prepare food for the rich by arranging neon colored icons to perform actions.
And that’s all for now! Thanks for reading and posting ‘likes’ and comments on my reviews! I really appreciate it. Later! --Cary
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