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Riverbond

Riverbond from Cococucumber

A simple hack and slash dungeon crawler.

The game has a system called “Rally Points” that will save you time when you respawn as you will respawn at the rally point instead of at the beginning of the level. They are respawn points only and not checkpoints.The game does not save your progress until you fully complete all of the levels in a world. The final level is always a boss fight. The good news is, when you die and respawn the enemies health does not reset and any enemies you already eliminated do not respawn. This is helpful for younger players or people who don’t want to grind kills. 
The controls are pretty simple as you only need a few buttons; press 1 button to attack, hold the same button for a stronger attack, another button to do a special attack, a third button to interact with items, and the fourth to jump, and one more to roll around the levels.
The soundtrack is clean and simple which fits the colorful voxel based art style.
It has 8 different worlds that you play through, each with its own look and feel, challenges, and enemies. Each of the worlds has 4 or 5 levels. 
You can recover health by picking up red potions that are dropped by killing enemies, destroying the environment (boxes, trees, and so on), or unwrapping presents.
While playing you will find chests that give you weapons and skins for your character. The weapons are an interesting variety from swords to lollipop’s to bear claws and rainbow umbrellas. The weapon classes are swords, spears, clubs, slap weapons, dual wield, and guns. 
When starting a new world you start with a sword and a gun. The weapons you unlocked from the previous worlds do not carry over. Every new world resets you to basic equipment. 
There are a lot of character skins in the game in the shape of food or animals. They even have some skins from other games like Bastion, Guacamelee, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, and Enter the Gungeon just to name a few.
The little amount of story is uncovered by speaking with characters around the levels.
Sadly, the game is pretty short and can be completed in under 5 hours. It is couch only co-op and has little to no replayability.

A 3D voxel hack and slash dungeon crawler. Has convenient respawn system, simple controls, tons of skins, lots of crazy weapons, couch only co-op, and very little “story”.

Riverbond is available on Xbox, PS4 and Steam

The Tower Of Beatrice

The Tower Of Beatrice from Sometimes You

A single screen point and click puzzle game 

The game starts out with a few pretty simple puzzles that are easy to figure out but becomes more complicated and difficult with each proceeding level as expected. After a few levels the puzzles start to require you to complete a puzzle to get an item that you will need to complete another puzzle.
You will need to locate ingredients while searching around the levels for a Potion. Each of the levels requires a different potion to solve one of the puzzles before being able to complete the level.
The controls are simple as you move your cursor around the screen clicking on items to interact with them. You can zoom in on items, interact with an item by using or moving it, or pick up an item to add it to your inventory. Even though the controls are simple, they are a little finicky as they don’t always respond in the way you intended. 
Most of the puzzles are pretty easy to figure out and you can get hints by pressing the appropriate button on your controller. When you do, a “?” pops up on screen next to the items that have hints available. When you click on the “?” it will give you a hint with how you should interact with it. As you progress through the puzzle new hints become available. All that said some of the puzzles just seem to be a lucky guess. We ran into issues with one puzzle in particular that once entered could not be exited without successfully solving it but no clue was ever given for what the solution was. 
Like most point and click games you are able to solve some of the puzzles simply by trying every item in your inventory on another item until it is solved. 
There doesn’t really seem to be much of a story. You go into a tower to recover a book and becoming trapped, then solve puzzles to make your way back out of the tower.
The art style and audio are both simple and clean. It’s reminiscent of the old flash games with objects on a background that move in specific, limited ways.
The game is a little short as there are only 6 rooms. Depending on how quickly you are able to figure out the puzzles you could complete the game in under 4 hours.
A short Single Screen point and click puzzle game with simple controls and weird puzzles.

The Tower Of Beatrice is available on Xbox, PS4, PS Vita and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.

OVIVO

OVIVO From IzHard

A simple momentum and gravity based platformer that mixes art and gameplay. 

You play as OVO, a color changing ball with an antenna. Your objective is to reach a spot in the middle of the map. To do this you make your way around the level by moving between colors, using momentum, sliding down slopes, altering gravity, avoiding spikes, or falling off a cliff. After reaching the objective the screen zooms out to display the full map revealing the piece of art that it is.
The gameplay and controls are very simple as the game only has 2 colors in it (Black and White) and uses 1 thumb stick and a single button to switch colors and move between the Black and White areas.
The music is simple, clean, and relaxing which keeps you calm during the later more challenging stages. 
Most of the levels are pretty simple and have more than one route to get to the end. It makes traveling around the levels easy and fun during the earlier levels. The levels start becoming more complicated and challenging when new mechanics and obstacles are introduced. Some of the new additions are moving platforms, floating flowers, and color changing spheres. There’s a small learning curve at the start and it returns with a significant difficulty spike on the later stages. It is not always clear what to do or where you need to go and there are many chances to die by falling off objects into spikes or sharp edges. The check point system is pretty good which only has you backtracking for a few seconds which helps to offset the difficulty spike by minimizing the penalty for sudden deaths.
Sadly the game has no story; no spoken or written words at all. It is more of a short experience as it can be completed in about 3 hours.  

A simple black and white momentum and gravity based platformer that mixes art and gameplay with a relaxing soundtrack.

OVIVO is available on Xbox, PlayStation 4, Steam and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.