We loaded up our gaming plate with some fun titles this November. We jammed out with demons in Devil Jam, changed body parts in Swapmeat, took on the underworld in Neon Inferno, and more! Read our reviews of all the action-packed titles we played in the Gamebox 2.0!
Swapmeat – Early Access – (Chris): After refining meaty chunks together in play testing, One More Game has released an early access build of Swapmeat. This action-packed 3rd-person shooter drops players into hostile alien planets to analyze and collect limbs to construct powerful organic weapons. But harvesting parts from aliens won’t be easy; aliens will swarm and attack to rip the players apart. So to survive and harvest another day, players will have to constantly rebuild themselves from whatever limbs, torsos, and heads they can scavenge. This is not a simple looter shooter where you collect trinkets for later; swapping out body parts instantly gains new abilities and changes how you traverse and fight in this deadly harvest.
The core of Swapmeat’s design is Experimentation. Built around a roguelite gameplay, with individual roguelite body parts, there’s no ‘perfect’ combination that dominates every round. Every body part you attach comes with its own strengths and drawbacks, pushing the player to constantly adapt to encounters rather than chase a single overpowered build for the whole run. Certain terrain gaps can only be crossed with the specific legs that let the player hover a bit, or swapped for wheels to move like a tank or race car. Particular heads are needed to interact with alien structures, and even some bosses are weaker to attacks from certain weapons. This ecosystem of limbs keeps the run fresh, and with teaming up with other players, the overall experience is very dynamic. Even when a teammate pulls a Leeroy Jenkins, and you scramble to find a head.
The visuals and presentation are bright, cartoonish, and chaotic, turning every battle into a colorful spectacle of explosions and flying body parts. The levels are large and offer multiple angles of approach, though you’ll mostly be doing run-and-gun combat since cover is scarce. Enemy types are delightfully varied, showcasing some truly wild and grotesque body-horror designs, which adds another layer of fun as you experiment with new ways to fight back. The game keeps you moving constantly, dodging projectiles, chasing foes, and figuring out how best to slot in the right meat for the moment.
The overall game loop is wonderfully frantic. The game embraces its weird, chunky charm, turning each new limb or head into part of a chaotic yet oddly satisfying arsenal. When you manage to find the piece of meat or weapon for the moment, the gameplay feels clever and incredibly rewarding until the next challenge. The plot is intentionally silly (you’re basically meat in a suit, upgrading yourself with ever stranger body parts), but that’s secondary to the action-packed gameplay. If you are a fan of the intense shooters like Helldivers 2 and the silly imagery of the Earth Defense Force series, then Swapmeat is something worth checking out in this meaty form with a few friends. Swapmeat Early Access was released on October 21st for Steam.
Devil Jam (Zach): Hell is a recording contract in Devil Jam, the new rougelite survivors game from Rogueside. After signing a cursed contract with the Devil himself, you need to rock out and survive the depths of Hell, getting help from the personification of sins like Wrath, Envy, and Lust. The game definitely takes some cues from Hades with the character designs and the different characters granting you different boots and attacks. It doesn’t have quite the same level of storytelling, so it doesn’t have the same motivation to keep going like in Hades, where, after each run, you get more story beats and more insight into the characters. The game is a Survivors-like, so you will be taking on hordes of enemies, autoattacking, and moving around to dodge and kite the enemies, and collecting gems that build up your level. When you hit each level threshold, one of the characters will provide you with three power-ups, which can be attacks, passive abilities, or boosts. Devil Jam has a unique setup: you place power-ups on a 12-slot grid, and a beat moves across each row, setting off everything in that column. Some power-ups have a pattern associated with them, and where you place them can grant the other abilities boosts if they fall within that pattern. When you first start, it’s easy to find an optimal placement for some of those pattern-based abilities, but as you progress, you need to decide whether to upgrade your existing skills or find a spot on your grid for another ability.
You have a dash ability to get out of tight spaces, and you can find special locations on the map to gain temporary boosts. There are also gold pickups and different vials you can see and collect, which let you buy permanent upgrades after each run from the vendors in the staging area. Your main goal is to complete different challenges, which range from surviving a certain amount of time to destroying a certain number of objects to leveling up specific abilities. As you complete these quests, new characters, power-ups, and skills are unlocked. If you can survive long enough in each stage, you’ll eventually face off against some fearsome bosses, including the ultimate threat, Death, the greatest metal singer in Hell. The music does a great job of adding to the rock atmosphere, and there’s a good variety to the enemies you’ll face, which ramp up in difficulty the longer your run goes on. The gameplay feels fast and responsive, and you can really weave in and out of the waves of enemies and attack or evade as needed. If you’re a Survivors-like fan, definitely check out Devil Jam, as it gives you the gameplay you’re used to with some cool new twists that set it apart. It’s out now on Steam.
Demonschool (Chris): College is already overwhelming enough when you’re trying to figure out who you are and what you want from life. Now imagine piling occult mysteries, gangsters, fishing, and motivating your buddies to seal demons; all while trying to stay on top of your midterm project. That’s the struggle awaiting fresh-faced demon hunter Faye and her friends in NecrosoftGames and Ysbryd Games’ Demonschool. Inspired by the Shin Megami Tensei series and a dash of Italian horror cinema, Demonschool is a stylish tactical RPG packed with eccentric characters, supernatural skirmishes, and a delightfully strange campus life that players are dropped straight into. The game follows Faye, a new arrival at a peculiar academy on Hemsk Island. Its foreboding mountain skyline and unsettling shoreline may scare off any ordinary student. Still, for those willing to face the unknown, the island is alive with demonic battles and sinister forces lurking beneath the surface. Faye is drawn to the island to fulfill a family prophecy to save the world, and she’ll need to gather all the allies she can convince to help. Together, they’ll have to navigate both campus life and the island’s supernatural dangers for a strange semester no one will forget.
Like the PS1 era Persona games, Demonschool focuses on the chemistry of its misfit cast as they uncover the truth behind the island’s strange events. Faye drags along Namako, a shy honor student; Knute, an excitable nerd always ready for trouble; and Destin, an overly confident, but lovable jock. Their dynamic becomes the core of the story, but many others join them. Faye can meet and recruit 10 additional characters for her adventure. Choosing how to approach and maintain relationships with them is an intriguing balancing act that affects the game’s endings.
Faye may be an eager demon hunter who prefers to solve problems with her kicks, but Demonschool turns those instincts into structured, grid-based “sessions” where every fight plays out like a tactical lesson. Demonschool isn’t about grinding to let every character become tanks; it’s all about players carefully planning out the best strategies to quickly take out opponents with as few turns as possible. Combat is broken up into two phases: the Planning phase and the Action phase. In the planning phase, the players carefully spend action points to move and set up attacks for Faye’s party. There is a shared pool of action points for the party, so focusing on just one character to do most of the work is not ideal.
For newcomers to the genre, it only takes a few battles to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different character classes. Faye is an all-around brawler whose primary role is to deal damage up close. Namako is a defensive mage who stuns and weakens enemies, Knute is a healer and boosts offensive attacks to the team, and Destin is a fire-based fighter. Most tactics will involve setting up the defensive-focused characters first, then having the attacking characters finish them off. When done correctly, a flashy, manga-like art style introduces your coordinated moves, with visual flourishes that make each combo feel earned.
The game pushes players to use every party member to maximize their unique abilities and create combination attacks. But actions can be undone with a press of a button during the planning phase, which is really helpful for resetting a chain of actions that don’t go exactly where you need them to. Once all actions have been locked in, the combat turns to the Action phase, where all the choices play out in order. Battle performances are graded based on factors such as the number of turns taken and the number of party members left standing, and then give out points to help you research new abilities for your characters.
The presentation of the Demonschool explodes with vibrant visuals that mash up anime and western quirks, giving each character a fun look and personality. It’s not hard to find characters to root for and to remember what it’s like to meet people from high school, college, and a few nerdy conventions. The soundtrack switches between bright, playful tunes, eerie gothic melodies, and moody undertones. During combat, funky and jazzy beats keep the pace lively, while bursts of hard rock lock into focus as you plan your next move for a bigger fight. It’s a colorful, chaotic world that matches the game’s offbeat supernatural charm.
Overall, Demonschool is a highly approachable tactical RPG that strikes a good balance between accessibility and challenge. It’s stuffed with hours of gameplay, mini-games, and multiple endings, but the battles never feel like a slow slog of overcomplicated planning. Mistakes have clear consequences, yet the game rewards players who adapt on the fly. Careful planning and risky gambits both make each victory feel earned and satisfying. Whether you’re a newcomer to tactical RPGs or a seasoned strategist, Demonschool offers a fun and engaging experience from the first day of class till the last. Demonschool was released on November 19th and is now available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Lumines Arise (Zach): A classic on the PSP, Lumines is back as Lumines Arise on PS5 and PC. Coming from Enhance, the same developer behind Tetris Effect: Connected, Lumines Arise gives Lumines the same treatment that Tetris received. Keeping the core gameplay intact, the game now features stunning backgrounds you progress through, meant to evoke different emotional responses and help you enter a flow state where you become one with the music and the falling blocks. If you’re not familiar with Lumines, you manipulate 2×2 blocks composed of 2 different colors or patterns. Your goal is to create squares that will be destroyed when the “Timeline” flows through to the beat of the music. You obviously want to set up combos and develop chains of squares to rack up a higher score. If you fill up the playfield with unmatched blocks, your game is over. The game is extremely forgiving in the single player mode, allowing you to restart at the beginning of the last song you were on and not forcing you to start all over again.
The visuals, as mentioned, are absolutely stunning and vary wildly in style and feel. Some are extremely minimalist or impressionistic, while others are jam-packed with background animations and a lot happening around the periphery. Some of the styles work better to distinguish between the two gem types than others, and it can be a bit disorienting when you progress to the next stage. Everything changes dramatically, as you have to quickly reorient yourself to what the gems are now and not lose track of what you were doing. The music, one of the most critical aspects of the game, is also almost universally excellent and, just like the backgrounds and graphical design, can vary wildly from downbeat and chill to energetic and frantic depending on the stage. The speed of the music actually plays a key role in the gameplay, because a faster track will see the Timeline move more quickly across the screen, meaning you want to work more rapidly to create matches and get them cleared. The game has a new Burst mechanic that lets you freeze any matches from being removed by the Timeline, so you can add more matches and get a massive score boost. There are 35 single-player levels to work through, and there is a challenge mode to play through as well. You can make your own playlists of stages if you want to play through your favorite songs. You can also challenge other players online in Burst Battle mode. Lumines has been considered one of the greats of the puzzle genre, and just like Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise takes what was already excellent and elevates it to another level with an exceptional level of presentation that offers a complete audio/visual spectacle on top of amazing gameplay. Lumines Arise is out now on PS5 and Steam, and can also be played in VR on those platforms.
Neon Inferno (Chris): In the year 2055, New York City has become a battleground for the powerful and corrupt. Mafias, gangs, and crooked police officers vie for control of the city that never sleeps. Amid the chaos, two assassins—Angelo Morano and Mariana Vitti—serve as the deadliest enforcers for Don Venatori, settling feuds and collecting debts, one ordered bullet at a time. Though bound by duty to their crime lord, both long to escape this life of violence. In Neon Inferno, every mission is a tense, high-stakes gamble where one wrong move can be fatal. Developed by Zenovia Interactive and published by Retroware, it’s a stylized 2D side-scrolling shooter that pays homage to classic run-and-gun games like Contra, Metal Slugs, and Wild Guns.
While Neon Inferno captures the fast-paced thrill of classic shooters, it also reintroduces inventive defensive mechanics that keep gameplay fresh. Both Angelo and Mariana are equipped with energy swords, which can be used for close-range attacks and, more importantly, to deflect certain enemy projectiles. A well-timed tap of the sword button deflects projectiles, but holding it lets players enter a “bullet time” to aim the deflected shots in a controlled direction. These special deflections hit enemies harder than regular attacks. Projectiles fly from the foreground and background, so carefully watching projectile distances is essential. It’s easy to roll right into a background project creeping into frame if you don’t expect it.
The pixel art in Neon Inferno is stunning, packed with details and animations that feel modern while paying homage to the retro games that inspired it. Dynamic backgrounds, fluid character movements, and explosive effects bring the chaotic cyberpunk city to life. There are small and big nods to anime and video games in the character designs, all mashed up in a neon-soaked chaos. The synthwave soundtrack perfectly complements the gameplay, enhancing the adrenaline-fueled combat without ever becoming a distraction when every bright bullet demands your attention.
Neon Inferno’s plot is straightforward, and seasoned narrative-focused players may find the story predictable. Even so, the cutscenes and dialogue keep you engaged in Angelo and Mariana’s struggle for freedom, offering just enough downtime between bursts of intense action. The game itself delivers a satisfying run-and-gun challenge on its default settings, while remaining approachable for newcomers thanks to unlimited continues. For players who want to push their skills further, Classic Mode raises the stakes with limited lives and tighter demands on timing and precision. Neon Inferno strikes a strong balance between retro and modern design, offering a fast-paced experience that rewards mastery without requiring endless replays. It’s a fun, arcade-style shooter that’s easy to jump back into whenever you want to warp to 2055—and walk away clean. Neon Inferno was released on November 20th for the Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, and Switch. Physical copies are now available from Limited Run Games for the PS5 and Nintendo Switch.
Keys of Fury (Zach): Sharpen up your typing skills with Keys of Fury, the new beat ’em up that is exclusively played on a keyboard. Developed by Elecom, you play as martial arts expert Tai Ping, who faces off against robots, ninjas, and jacked-up vegetable vendors on her journey. Everything in the game, including the menus, is done via typing out the words and phrases on the keyboard. If you played games like Typing of the Dead, this should feel pretty familiar. Accuracy is more important than speed, because each mistake costs Tai Ping a hit from the bad guys. If you can type the words and phrases without errors, you’ll gain perfect bonuses and chain together combos, which will boost your score and help get you multipliers at the end of the stage. You can build up a Fury Mode that, when full, will trigger on a mistake, allowing you to unleash a powerful attack and blow through the rest of the phrase you were typing. You also earn coins that you can use to buy upgrades and power-ups between stages.
The game definitely looks inspired by Karateka, with pixel art and highly fluid animation. There are tons of awesome martial arts action that pops off when you start typing, but you may be too focused on the phrases to see them fully. The phrases offer up some challenging, uncommon words to keep you on your toes, and they are also thematically related to the stage you are on. In the level where you are fighting ninjas, for instance, you’ll see words like shinobi, kunoichi, ronin, etc. Most of the time, an enemy will appear with a phrase, and you’ll have to type it out to defeat them, but there are some fun spins on that, like a boss who throws fruits and vegetables at you, and you need to type out the various items as they fly toward you. In addition to the story mode, there’s an arcade mode where you can fight through some outlandish scenarios, like a dinosaur stampede, and you can buy upgrades between those stages just like in story mode. If you’re not the strongest typer, this might not be the game for you, as you really need to be accurate and fast to progress. You can easily make five mistakes in one phrase, be defeated in a few seconds, and have to restart from the last checkpoint. If your typing skills are up to snuff, though, this is a fun and stylish game that offers a unique spin on the beat-’em-up genre and is definitely more engaging and interesting than other applications that test your typing abilities (sorry, Mavis Beacon). Keys of Fury is out on Steam, and there’s a demo if you want to try it before buying.
