When you think of cosy fantasy, you think of Travis Baldree – or more precisely, his novel Legends and Lattes, which introduced so many readers to the genre. His latest work Brigands and Breadknives continues this sweet trend, but with a little twist. It keeps the comforting vibes going, but with an added dash of…
Yes, this game is indeed named with a reference. Tongue-in-cheek and packed with charm, Dark Scrolls is a cheeky and fast-paced sidescrolling fantasy adventure – complete with multiple routes, secrets, and a pile of selectable characters. Plus screens filled with enjoyably stressful enemies. Unfortunately, the game’s lack of polish and quality-of-life features drags it down,…
As the winner of the Tasmanian Literary Awards 2025, I was expecting something rare and raw from Johanna Bell’s latest novel. And that was exactly what I found with Department of the Vanishing. Strange and sad, it is a tale of this time of extinction, broken yet beautiful. Our protagonist, Ava, is surrounded by the…
It is a surprise that I Remember Everything is WA writer and researcher Fiona Wilkes’ debut novel – it is, after all, a tale told with so much skill, passion, and delicacy. Shortlisted for the 2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award, it is a bittersweet story of love and loss, religion and forgiveness. It is…
Written by Masateru Konishi and translated by Louise Heal Kawai, My Grandfather The Master Detective is a novel which seems to say it all with its title. It’s about a young woman, and her grandfather, and solving mysteries. Simple. But while that title is true, it’s also a little deceptive – this novel is about…
It’s clear that disabled author Olivia Muscat knows just how frustrating and inaccurate some portrayals of disability (and especially blindness) can be. Equally as clear is her passion for telling a more accurate narrative, with all the real-life frustrations and unexpected aspects that can come with it. It’s that own-voices approach that makes her new…
You’ve probably killed minotaurs in a whole bunch of games. Pretty standard enemy, right? Well, the team at Artificer are switching that little fact up with this new release. Now, instead of you hunting a terrible monster through its den, you’re the monster doing the hunting. And there are a lot of unprepared adventurers for…
If you’re anything like me, adding a new device to your drawing set-up is a big decision: any new tech has to not just look and act right, but feel right. It needs to be easy to use. Efficient. Ergonomic. Maybe even fun. If I want my work to be great, what I do that…
Skate Story is, as you might imagine, a game about skateboarding. Specifically, a game about skateboarding as a glass demon. And yes, it’s just as awesome as you might imagine. Created by developer Sam Eng (featuring music by band Blood Cultures and published by the iconic Devolver Digital), this one has spent a while in development….
If you want to know why you should play this game, just look at how gorgeous that header image above is. Possessor(s), the latest game from studio Heart Machine (best known for their savage action-adventure RPG Hyper Light Drifter), is striking in every sense of the word. Its art is vibrant, its gameplay moves at…
As a great song once said, get your star, because another game in the weirdly wonderful series, Katamari Damacy, has just dropped. This new entry, titled Once Upon a Katamari, introduces a night sky of inventive new levels while still having the original’s solid gameplay at its core. Just as bold and brilliant as the…
Over the night of Thursday, September 4th (or over the early hours of Friday, 5th for most Aussies), massive online game retailer Steam went down. So did the Nintendo eShop. And the PlayStation Store. And it all had something to do with the release of a little Australian-made game called Hollow Knight: Silksong. You might…
1000 Deaths is one of those games where it only takes one glance to know if it’s your thing or not, something you’ve probably already worked out from the header on this article. Bright, bold, weird and proud of it, it is a game that is everything it sets out to be. And just…
Two Point Museum, a game in which you do exactly what you would imagine, has just received its first DLC. Your museum has already got bones, fish, space devices, normal devices, and ghosts, so this new expansion adds the obvious area the base game was missing: some fantasy nonsense. You heard that correctly; in the…
Atmospheric in a strange, almost empty way, The Sun Was Electric Light is the debut novel from Australian author Rachel Morton. As the winner of the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, it may come as no surprise to hear that this one is something truly special, meditative and evocative – or that this uniqueness comes at…
If you’re a fan of sci fi/fantasy novels that are more on the cosy end of the scale, you’ve probably heard of TJ Klune – or at least heard of his novel The House in the Cerulean Sea and its highly anticipated sequel. But you probably haven’t heard of The Bones Beneath My Skin, which…
When Age of Mythology: Retold first came out, featuring some of the best hits of the series, there was one notable absence from the classic games, one nation that had been left out. Now, finally, the excluded Chinese pantheon has returned in the Immortal Pillars DLC – and it looks better than ever. Rather than…
Bold, brilliant, and a little bizarre, Mother Tongue is a story about motherhood, womanhood, and the desire to be true to yourself – no matter who that ‘self’ is. Mother Tongue is the second novel from producer and writer Naima Brown, and it’s one that cements her status as a writer of incredible and profoundly…
The knives (and forks) are out in Victoria Brownlee’s new novel Eat Your Heart Out, which blends romance, comedy, and a hearty splash of mystery to create one delicious dish. Drawing from her own career as an international food writer and critic, she’s cooked up some fascinating characters, gorgeous environments and an engaging tale. Though…
Two Point Studios are back after the success of their comedic management simulators Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus – and you’ll never guess what you do in this new entry to their series. Yes, that’s right, after letting you kill (or cure) hospital patients and ignore (or teach) students, Two Point Studios are…
Before she became (and while she was becoming) known for The Scholomance trilogy and the Temeraire series, Naomi Novik wrote an impressive number of short stories published across anthologies and magazines – and now, readers can enjoy these stories anew or for the first time. Spanning some familiar worlds and other completely new ones, Buried…
Every Australian knows something of the colonisation of Australia; of the ships that were sent and the convicts that arrived. But, there are some parts that are left out of the wider narrative, unnoticed or undiscussed in conversations about Australia’s history. It’s one such element that Santilla Chingaipe delves into in her latest book Black…
It’s hard to summarise Western Australian author John Kinsella’s latest book – Beam of Light: Stories, save for describing the way it feels: a little uncanny, a little haunting. An anthology of short stories – most of which are extremely short, even for the genre – its atmosphere and thoughtfulness makes for a fascinating read,…
If you’ve been an Australian for more than about five minutes, you know some of the wild things we can get up to – legal and illegal. It’s the latter that Australia’s Most Bizarre Crimes author Dr Peter Coleman takes a deep-dive into – the weirdest and wackiest crimes that Aussies have committed over the…
Cosy fantasy is in the midst of a bit of a boom right now, and Rebecca Thorne’s new novel Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is an intriguing entry into the genre. Originally self-published in 2022, it follows the blossoming relationship – and the struggles of – two young women living in a fantasy world filled…
If you’re even the tiniest bit interested in strategy games, you’ve almost certainly heard of Age of Mythology, or one of its many sequels, or just the franchise it spun from, Age of Empires. Even I played it for a bit when I was a kid, and the original title and I are close to…
This Is Where You Have To Go – that is what Dunghutti woman Lynda Holden was told when she became pregnant. Directed to stay at a Catholic home for unmarried mothers, her child was taken from her and put up for adoption without her consent. Many years later, those same words have become the title…
I have to admit, I mostly picked this one up for two reasons – the title, and because I chuckled at the premise. The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt, the debut novel from Mark Muposta-Russell, promised to be everything I love in a book – funny and quirky, but still full of enough heart…
A portrait of two people, of their grief and regrets and relationships, Depth of Field is author and photographer Kirsty Iltners’ emotionally charged and deeply effective debut novel. It was the winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award, and it’s a beautiful novel well deserving of its accolades. Told through simple yet evocative prose, Depth…
Following his well-regarded first novel The Whitewash, Siang Lu returns to long form fiction with his latest novel Ghost Cities, an unusual tale filled with imaginative twists and turns, philosophical discussions and sparks of dry humour. Ghost Cities is a novel told in two parts. The first in the modern day, follows a young man…
