I spend my days reading, writing, parsing. But even now, I still fumble through interactions with my family at holidays. I can only be myself, but the friction of year’s end wears at the edges. Second-guessing every text, worrying about logistics. There’s no easy solution, but maybe this winter’s Manygame Collection can guide me toward a different approach: where I acknowledge my limits, where I say what I can.
Previously on Manygame Collection: People are the point.
This season’s selections use text to propel the player onward. Some titles revel in words through cascading text boxes and choices. Others purposely hold specifics back, enough space between each sentence for mysteries to bubble underneath.
Angeline Era
After weaving my way through the forest, one of Angeline Era‘s unnamed creatures gives a dire warning: “FRIEND ALWAYS ATTACKS SNAKES. OF COURSE, NOW HE IS DEAD.” I laugh, but that text box haunts me for days. Not quite a tutorial, not quite an aside. But somehow it fits just right.
Angeline Era is filled with this sort of strange alchemy. Bumpslash combat collides with environmental puzzles, and both please me. There’s still nothing like bumping into an enemy at full speed, waiting for the telltale “ping!” of my weapon making contact.
Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka use their tools deliberately: fixed camera angles, blocky geometry, the strict bounds of a text box. But where other titles wear the trappings of early console days, Angeline Era fully flourishes inside those constraints.
Angeline Era is a treat to play and think about. I need to stop writing and pack, but I still have so many questions. “What’s behind the scruffy patch on the map? Why does the man in town watch me sleep?” RIP, friend who always attacks snakes. I’ll be thinking of you too.
Demonschool
I was wary of Demonschool for unfair reasons of my own. I already struggled to catch up with the famously verbose Trails series, so murmurs of a “Western Persona” gave me pause. Frankly, that label fits Demonschool like a threadbare Christmas sweater: tacky and full of holes.
Demonschool gets right to the point. Each screen is carefully packed with details, aided by the fixed isometric perspective. Character expressions pop. And every bit of text is sharpened to a gleam. Both the Switch 2 and Steam versions ran with no visual bugs or hiccups, and the generous text size options never left me squinting at the screen.
The Gang’s All Here
Demonschool is a rare college story in a sea of high school jaunts. Protagonist Faye is delightfully bloodthirsty, hyperfixated on beating demons into the ground. Type-A classmate Namako is reluctantly dragged along for the ride, her anguished expression never failing to make me laugh.
And perhaps the best gift of all: in-game menus clearly tell you when there’s something to investigate. For the first in-game week of Demonschool, I meticulously combed each screen, flashbacks of hidden quests in Persona games dancing in my head. But Demonschool trusts you to put in as much or as little effort as you please.
Combat is turn-based on an isometric grid, a shared pool of action points split between your party members. Encounters are deliberately placed, eliminating the standard level grind. Instead, each fight feels like an Into the Breach style pop quiz. Do you know your movement abilities? Are you confident enough to move enemies around? Can you avoid this next high-damage strike?
Demonschool balances goofy hijinks with uncompromising fights, a zippy adventure that never feels like a chore. I wish all games had this approach to text boxes and jump cuts. Demonschool is never afraid to trim scenes down to their essentials, and my tired, over-30s brain thanks the team for it.
Q-UP
Q-UP takes the live games industry to satirical extremes. Carefully focus grouped character archetypes. In-game currencies tucked inside fine print. A seemingly all-knowing probability algorithm that snaps in half when it makes contact with real players. And crucially, coin-flipping team matches that are maddeningly, compulsively fun.
Matches are simple at the core: you are either on team Q (heads) or team UP (tails). The coin on the screen flips itself, activating any traits, perks, or equipment you have on. Each character has their own skillset: the Medic’s heal counter goes up with each consecutive loss, often wrenching us away from a devastating loss. Gather enough Q points, and you’ll rank up, unlocking new abilities and skill points.
I’m prone to bouncing off live-service games, but Q-UP showed me a tongue-in-cheek reflection of the team arena heyday. I was bemused to run into a Mastodon friend, even when they nearly killed my medic. And yes, matches are live: I messaged them afterwards to apologize.
“Why should a coin-flipping game with little direct input have live matches?” I hear you say. Simple: it’s really funny. I faced bots and unpublishable Steam handles in equal measure, cackling each time. And despite the razor-sharp parody, I found myself and some of my friends list sinking into real Q-UP investment.
Tingus Goose
An expectant parent with a swollen belly smiles as a goose’s head erupts upward from their stomach. The goose coughs a baby out. And most improbably, the baby makes you money as it giggles and tumbles. More money? More goose, which means more additions to your wretched waterfowl.
Tingus Goose‘s cheery style masks a goofy approach to body horror that speaks louder than words. Even when said words dull the effect of the idle gameplay itself. A David Attenborough styled guidebook is helpful but a bit too wordy. Unfilled checkboxes and tabs litter the right half of the screen.
User interface clutter creeps in at the bottom of the screen as well. What should be the simple pleasures of growing a many-headed goose abomination morphs into routine. Tingus Goose’s mobile roots inch further into the baby-speckled soil, dimming my interest.
Despite these setbacks, Tingus Goose’s uh, singular style carries me from level to level, growing new adorable horrors on my feathery, pulsing money machine. It’s certainly an experience I won’t forget.
Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered International
What better way to delve deeper into PlayStation 2 era JRPGs than a remaster? Despite my history with role-playing oddballs (Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, Star Ocean, Xenosaga) Square Enix’s SaGa series eluded me. It always looked a tad too crunchy, an ounce too opaque for the used games shelves of my youth.
Age and hindsight helped soften those sharp edges, teaching me a crucial lesson: the SaGa games move to their own rhythms. Each character is a thread in a larger story, not the whole tapestry. You weave through the narrative as you weave through life; the game tracks what you learn and how you react. Obtain new abilities by using what you have, but probability can and will strike at the worst moment. Pursue a story thread, but know it will close off another in its wake.
Pleasantly blocky models and knowingly baroque character voices remain intact. Not every part of the past needs a full overhaul or a sweeping modern-day adaptation. Even older offshoots have plenty to teach us. As development and hardware costs artificially balloon, it’s worth looking back and reassessing what came before. This industry’s memory is fickle, fleeting.
That’s all for 2025! See you next year with more Manygame Collections. 2026 will shake things up for me, but I hope next year is a little kinder to all of us. Stay safe over the holidays, and stay tuned to Press SPACE to Jump!
