u/NinjaGuyX

I consider myself lucky — I'm one of the few people who get early access to certain games, and today that's the case with The Great Flood! After spending almost two hours with it, I've got some thoughts to share in a deep-dive first impression. Let's get into it.

The Great Flood drops in Q4 2026, developed by Ling Vision Games — who are also cooking up Daumier: Lila & Ghost. Definitely a studio to keep an eye on.

The tutorial is simple and straightforward: destroy your opponent's main tower while protecting yours. On the surface it feels like a MOBA, but here's the twist — you don't control your allies directly. You place them on the field and let them do their thing, more like an auto-battler.

There's real strategic depth here. The Lonbo is basically your MVP unit — a hulking brute whose only job is smashing towers. The second your enemy deploys one, you need a plan to stop it fast.

And that's where the rock-paper-scissors counter system shines. Cheap minions deployed in bulk are the best Lonbo-killer — fast, but squishy. Counter those with a tail character that hits AOE. Then there are flying units that ground troops can't touch — except archers. Every unit has an answer, and I've barely scratched the surface of the possible combos. Figuring out what beats what is genuinely addicting.

But if countering was always an option on demand, it'd get stale fast. That's where the deck system adds a nice wrinkle: you don't have your whole roster available at once. You only get access to about five units at a time, and the moment you place one, it's replaced with another from your pool. So sometimes you simply won't have the right counter in hand when you need it — you have to adapt on the fly instead.

Sometimes the smarter play isn't even to fight head-on — just outpace your opponent and race to wreck their side of the field. There's no single "correct" strategy, and that's what makes it click.

Deployment isn't unlimited, though. Every unit costs Ability Points, which regenerate slowly, so you have to plan your pushes. Drag the match out too long and you both hit an overdrive state where AP floods back in — total chaos ensues.

Then there are the heroes — rare, powerful units you unlock over time. My favorite is the Pathfinder, a glass-cannon mage who melts things fast. But there's also a tanky turtle that soaks up damage, and a flying dragon that dodges ground attacks entirely — plenty of playstyles to pick from.

Outside of matches, you've got a hub for progression — leveling up characters through a gacha chest system, grinding materials, and knocking out daily rewards and bonus tutorials for extra loot. And it's worth noting: you actually build your own deck going into battle. It's not a fixed roster both players are stuck with — your unit selection is part of the strategy before the match even starts.

The core loop is ranked matches, and it's addictive. Queue times are short — if no human's available, you're matched with a bot instantly, so there's basically no downtime. There's also 2v2, which ramps up the complexity since you actually have to coordinate with a teammate, but it never feels overwhelming — and the bigger map is a nice change of pace.

I even got to fight one of the developers in a session — a super friendly match, though I wouldn't be shocked if they let a few openings slide in my favor. Still, going up against a real person hits different from bot matches. The adrenaline picks up, and the strategy shifts completely once you're playing against someone actually trying to outsmart you.

Overall? I had a great time with The Great Flood. It's got that "one more match" pull to climbing the ladder, and everyone I've talked to who's played it feels the same. It's a fresh, unique mixed-reality experience, and I think this one's got real potential to build a strong player base. More open beta events are coming before launch, so jump in the developer's Discord to stay in the loop.

See you on the battlefield.

 I had the opportunity to play an early access version of The Lightkeepers on Meta Quest, and I'm taking off my headset with such a good impression!

Spectral Games is a developer I respect immensely because of their previous game, Medieval Dynasty: New Settlement — such an amazing game, and I'm not even into survival games usually.

I went in with my good friend eminus and we had a blast.

For those who don't know, The Lightkeepers is coming out on September 10, 2026, and it's one of the bigger games releasing this year. The quickest way to describe it is that it's a tower defense game, but it does so much more. Let me share my experience.

You start the game in a very well-crafted hub. There's a lot to do — fishing, shooting targets, drinking beer and socializing — plus a shop where you can buy new cosmetics as you progress. You also unlock new weapons as you go. There's plenty of space to socialize, and what's nice is that people automatically join the room, so you can just talk with whoever's in the hub. You create a lobby and search for people to join. When you're ready, you head to the back of the bar, stamp your mission, and hop on a boat with your friend.

Your mission starts in the daytime, and your job is to scavenge for materials you'll need to prepare items for nighttime. You'll craft armor for yourself, explosive barrels, bandages to recover health, and more. When you're ready, it's time for the most stressful — but most fun — part of the game.

Creatures come to try to destroy your lighthouse. You've got a melee weapon and a gun to take them out, and you just need to do everything in your power to clear the night.

The weapon handling feels really nice. Once I got the hang of things, reloading was a breeze, and I could aim at monsters at a distance no problem. The melee feels good too — most enemies go down in one hit, so it's satisfying.

The one thing I really liked during my session was the feeling of improvement. We got a few rounds in, and every time, the levels felt easier. That sense of getting better is great, and maybe I'll tackle some harder missions next time.

There are all types of enemy monsters — your regular ones, flying ones that spit green acid balls, and then these huge guys with shield arms that I definitely didn't want to get close to. There are also enemies that generate shields to block your hits, and I remember running into some kind of shaman who was the last enemy I needed to kill — he felt pretty weak, though!

You level up as you progress, and you complete achievements to unlock more things. So there's just a nice sense of "keep playing more and more."

Eminus and I are proud owners of the beta tester hat, and I'm all glammed up for my next session.

If you ask me what I want to see more of, it's different types of levels. I didn't get a chance to try many missions, so I'm hoping we get different environments to keep things fresh. And I hope the game does well so we get add-ons that give us good reasons to keep playing.

Keep in mind, what I'm showing today is early access — but honestly? Despite a few minor issues we ran into, I'm ready for the full release. If you've had any interest in The Lightkeepers, you're in for a good time. You have my word.

In here they lie. People lie so hard here. I once thought I heard the truth — nope, that was a lie too. Now, I'd be lying if I said this review is spoiler-free, because honestly, the whole game turns out to be a lie. Alright, with that out of the way, lie back and listen to my review.

Here They Lie released in 2016, exclusive to the PSVR1. That was the year VR really started booming, and this game was one of the more impressive early showcases of what the tech could do.

The story follows a man dealing with his breakup from his girlfriend, Dana. Everyone around him insists they were the perfect couple, and on the surface, it feels like you're trying to work things out while still undecided about the relationship. But underneath that surface, you're actually traversing a horrifying, surreal world full of disturbing imagery.

To be upfront: this is more of a walking simulator than anything else. You'll spend most of your time exploring for optional collectibles, but for the most part, you're moving in a straight line. That said, the illusion of a sprawling world is genuinely well done — there's a ton of attention to detail, and it's the kind of game that rewards slowing down just to take it all in.

Outside of walking, there are light stealth sections scattered throughout. They're easy to get through, but being in VR makes them tense in a way flat-screen stealth just can't replicate. If you know, you know.

The unfortunate part is that Here They Lie is short — I clocked in around two hours. But it's clear the developers poured a ton of time into it. The sheer number of animations is wild; there's so much life and detail packed into every corner. You can't help but stop and just watch what the masked NPCs are doing. The city feels genuinely alive.

There are also moments that hit you emotionally. In one, a creature starts following you, and you assume you need to escape — until it catches you and turns out to be friendly. Then you're forced to choose: kill the creature, or kill the person threatening you instead. I chose to spare the creature, and it just got scared and ran off.

In another moment, you stumble on a crowd being entertained by a string of hangings. You try to save the people being hung, but they just keep coming. When you finally leave, there's a line of people waiting, excited for their turn. Just two examples out of many — this world is dense with weird, memorable moments.

Mechanically, you carry a flashlight powered by batteries you find and swap out as needed. It lights up wherever you look, which looks great on camera, but I had to keep turning it off and on to reset its position — it seemed to lose tracking periodically.

The game does show its age given the PS4/PSVR1 hardware. The world looks amazing despite the muddy color palette, but the headset's low resolution holds it back a bit. It only supports the DualShock 4 — no motion controls, nothing fancy. Still, for its time, this was a serious visual showcase. It even has full-body tracking, something plenty of modern VR games still skip.

One more thing worth calling out: even the game-over screen is a piece of art. You wake up in an eerie red-sunrise scene, and as you move forward, a room with a door slowly takes shape. Open the door, and you're back in the game. That level of polish on something most players will barely notice deserves a shoutout.

Here They Lie is still exclusive to PS4, and I can't help but think a remaster with better resolution and motion controls would find a real audience today. It's a great experience — if you find it cheap somewhere, do yourself a favor and give it a shot.

A Chair in a Room: Greenwater comes from 2016, right when VR started exploding in popularity. I have mixed feelings about this one, so let me break it down.

First and foremost — this game felt genuinely innovative for its time. I haven't played many games from that era that actually used motion controls properly, so it was refreshing to experience VR the way it's meant to be played. That said, the movement speed was painfully slow. I appreciate that real locomotion is there, but it was clearly designed to ease in brand new VR players.

The graphics, though? Genuinely impressive. The way the flashlight reflects off surfaces and the shininess of certain objects still holds up. Some newer games could honestly take notes.

So this is a puzzle horror game. You play as a John Doe waking up in a psychiatric hospital with no memory of who you are or what you did. Over six chapters, you piece together your past — are you a killer? A fugitive? Or just... crazy? That's for you to find out.

After each chapter, you're brought back to your room, which acts as a hub. Place the right object on the board, and you're pulled into one of your memories. Simple, but effective.

You'd think the hub would double as a save point — but oddly, I jumped into my second session with only about fifteen minutes left in the final chapter. Strange. Though honestly, I'll take it, because my first time launching the game? No save at all. Now that's scary.

Speaking of scary — the jump scares sit at about three out of five on the trouser scale.

You'll still want your VR legs for this one, but make no mistake, this game leans much harder into psychological horror than cheap frights.

The puzzle sections are straightforward — nothing that'll leave you stuck for long if you're familiar with the genre. You'll mostly breeze through.

There are also some genuinely cinematic moments that feel almost artistic. It's nice to slow down and appreciate them. But then there are sections where you're just... waiting. Forever.

And at one point, out of nowhere, there's a random velociraptor in a window. No context. No explanation. It completely killed the immersion and I still have questions.

The ending, unfortunately, didn't land for me either. Everything gets spelled out at once and it feels rushed and forced. The journey to get there is fun — but the payoff falls flat.

Now, finishing the game unlocks a bonus chapter called The Missing Girl, and I actually liked that one. You've got a flashlight you have to physically shake to recharge, which keeps a nice undercurrent of tension running throughout. It was a well-crafted room. The whole thing still clocked in at under two hours though, which brings me to my biggest issue.

A Chair in a Room: Greenwater is a decent experience by today's standards — but its price point is the real problem. It's time for a serious discount. I'd rather you put that money toward something like Shattered or Ghost Town — fuller, meatier experiences, even if they're maybe just a touch less unsettling.

I keep hearing people saying prices up to $1200 while the index kit was no more than $1000.

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Skeletons, slimes, and dragons — the holy trinity of dungeon crawler enemies. Crystal Rift is one of the first VR games to explore this genre, but does this 2016 gem still hold up to today's standards? Let's find out!

I've been on a journey to revisit games that released around the time VR first exploded in popularity, and so far I've been pleasantly surprised by the gems I've uncovered. Ten years later, some of them still stand the test of time.

Enter Crystal Rift — the first game from Psytech, the developers behind Windlands and their most recent title, Titan Isles.

The concept is easy to grasp: you move square by square on a grid, and your goal is to descend a strange place called the Rift by finding staircases that lead you deeper. But it's not a leisurely stroll. Monsters and traps block your path, most levels feel like a maze, and the design actually reminds me a lot of old-school DOOM — hunting for keys, unlocking doors, and trying to figure out where the heck you're supposed to go next.

Since the game is so old, the PC version only supported a regular controller — no motion controls. Attacking is just the press of a button, which feels a little primitive by today's standards, but it gets the job done.

One thing I kept wishing for was a leveling and stats system, since that's basically a staple of the genre. You don't grow more powerful in the traditional sense. Instead, you unlock different swords with unique abilities, which does a decent job of keeping things fresh — just not in the way I was expecting.

That said, some enemies have way too much health. Once you figure out the pattern, you're just repeating the same motions over and over until they finally go down, and the same strategy works on basically every enemy in the game. It gets a little tedious.

Despite that, the six-hour campaign still manages to stay interesting throughout. I was always curious to see what the next level would bring, and there was a decent balance between challenge and accessibility.

There's also a creepy atmosphere to the game. Ghosts will appear out of nowhere, and you'll occasionally hear whispers saying some unsettling things. It's not nightmare fuel unless you scare easily — but honestly, the scariest moments for me were the ones where I was down to one heart, deep into a level, with no idea where a potion was. The stress of trying to survive, and then the sheer relief when you finally find one? That feeling is real.

You'll also come across collectibles throughout the game. I'm still not entirely sure what the skeleton heads do, but if you collect enough statues, you unlock a secret ending — which I unfortunately missed. There are also scattered letters that hint at some dark lore around the Rift and a character called the Necromancer, though I walked away from the credits still not really knowing who he is. A little more payoff there would've gone a long way.

One cool detail at the end: you actually get to vote on which rift you'd like to explore next, and Windlands was one of the options — with votes going directly to the developers. I thought that was a really neat way to let the community help shape what came next.

All in all, I had a good time with Crystal Rift. It's not a perfect game, but it's a solid experience that scratches that dungeon-crawling itch. If you're looking for a simple VR game that's easy to pick up and just lets you explore, I'd recommend giving it a shot.