Horse-girl racing idol sim sounds like a joke, but Umamusume’s training loop is surprisingly sharp, races are tense, and the production value combined with attention to detail in recreating aspects of real world Japanese racehorses is weirdly elite. Gacha is generous upfront, but obviously brutal long-term. You’ll probably resent how much fun it is. A global phenomenon for a reason: addictive, unskippable, potentially shameful.

The actual gameplay is amazing; clever, frantic, elegant, demanding & creative. Unfortunately for me it was punctuated by insufferable characters and dialog (which is thankfully now skippable). Cool, but didn’t get the hype.

Really great concept and fantastic to look at, and I’m always on the side games staying succinct, but I think this one’s too short. The entire game basically feels like character creation. Make more!

Pyre is not for everyone, but the Supergiant hallmarks of amazing worldbuilding, dialog, art direction and interesting mechanics are all here. This is their most different game, but no less brilliant.