Return.

I probably wouldn't give such a game a try these days, but since it was already in my backlog, I had to play it, and since I already played it, I have to talk about it. It's Return., and it's a free 30 minute platformer about returning an antropomorhic axolotl to life, or something.
It's really basic, with just movement and a tiny little hop you can repeat 3 times. Why they opted for 3 hops instead of a single larger jump, I'm unsure. It was quite unintuitive how to get enough air time at the start, but apparently I just had to mash jump really fast. The game looks like it could have some clever little secret with the progress bar stopping at 2/3 of the way to the finish, but apparently that's just a bug. There's no secrets. You just finish the game, and that's it.

There isn't really anything here to talk about. It's a free game that lasts half an hour. Less if you're good at it. Not that it's particularly challenging. There's no secrets, no branching, no particular story, and no reason to replay it. There's nothing bad about the game per se, but the platforming is just underwhelming enough that it's not even worth checking out, not even for free.

Quantum Protocol

Quantum Protocol is a PvE card game where you choose one of a few existing decks, and then expand that deck over the duration of a level by acquiring new cards as you defeat enemies. It's quite unique in terms of gameplay, and features multiple novel mechanics.
For starters, the game is asymmetrical. While both you and your enemy have a 5x2 board, your enemy's cards come in waves, each appearing after the last one is defeated. Each enemy card has a timer, indicating how many turns are left until it does an action. Meanwhile, you usually play cards from your hand, move cards around on the board, and choose which ones to activate. Each of these actions normally costs a turn, bringing you closer to the enemy's attacks. Each card can only be activated once, except after 5 turns, you can spend a turn to draw a card and refresh your board, allowing you to activate each card again. The actual loop generally relies on clearing your board often and building it up again, as you can choose to activate all your cards (even already activated ones) in a single row in just 1 turn if you discard them after. Many cards then return discarded cards back to your deck.

There are a lot more mechanics, definitely more than I care to list, but I feel that's the gist of it. While novel, these mechanics aren't necessarily good. I can't quite pinpoint my frustrations, which I suppose goes to show that they weren't that severe, but I never felt like there was a pleasant flow to the battle, despite the game advertising "it's always your turn". The general favorable emotion I get from deckbuilders is building a sort of machine that spirals to become better and better. Meanwhile here, I felt I was throwing a lot of trash onto the board, and instead of building up momentum, I was losing it the more the board got full. Sure, cleaning it up and starting fresh is a central game mechanic, but it's the opposite feeling from what I wanted. Add to that that your decks only last for the duration of a level, despite it possibly being half an hour long, and I really didn't feel I was getting anywhere in the game, short- nor long-term.
Oh, and if you were wondering about the visual novel aspect of the game, don't bother. There is a story, but it's very shallow, and only exists to provide context to the gameplay. That's fine, but don't expect to find a good read here.

Overall, Qunatum Protocol might be a fine game for you if you're a fan of card games, thinking, and prefer novelty to tried-and-true gameplay. The levels can be quite long, you can lose and have to reset to the beginning of the level, and you will probably be spending a lot of time reading and thinking, not playing. These aren't necessarily bad things though, just not something I enjoyed. As such, no recommendation from me, but I don't want to discourage you from trying, if the description seemed interesting.

Yume Nikki

It's been well over a decade since I first saw Yume Nikki. It was a Let's Play from a YouTuber I used to watch. I don't think they ever finished it or even got close, but the game definitely seemed intersting from what I could remember, so when I saw it appear on Steam at the start of 2018 for free, I added it to my library. 6 years laters, I finally got around to playing it.

Uhmmm... I don't have a lot to say about it. The game is incredibly cryptic and gives no hints on how to progress. Though I did not intially know this, your goal is to gather all the "effects", which are like little accessories for your character that grant you powers to do things and get to places you couldn't before. I found 4 out of the 24, and found a use for none of them. I spent about an hour wandering around aimlessly in creepy, desolate worlds, listening to the unsettling, and somewhat irritating, background music. There's 12 worlds, I think? They kind of connect to other worlds too and feature sort of unique scenery. None of this tells you anything though. What do you do in the worlds? What's the goal? Where do I go next? Is this a dead end because there's nothing here, or is it a dead end because I don't have the right effect equipped? You'll never know, and the game won't so much as hint to it.

Listen, after an hour, I was emotionally tired. I had kind of given up after 30 minutes, which doesn't sound like a lot, but if you asked me to recount what I saw in that hour, I couldn't tell you. The game is so devoid of any meaning, and it doesn't make it easy to explore it either, with the worlds being large, the field of view being small, the things you want to find being hidden, your walking pace being a crawl, and the music eating away at your sanity. It's definitely an experience, but it's not an experience I would recommend having.

Neoverse

Neoverse is yet another Roguelike deckbuilding game. I really should get around to Slay the Spire in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of the genre, but until then, you're getting comparison-free reviews. For what it's worth, my judgement of Neoverse mostly did not come down to how good it was in its genre.
Neoverse has a selection of 3 characters, each with their own decks and playstyles. You start with a few cards in your starter deck and proceed through a series of fights. The default mode has a total of 24 encounters, and up to 4 enemies per encounter. You are given 5 cards, each with some effect, but most importantly, a mana cost. Many deckbuilders give you a limited number of cards per turn, making card draw very valuable, but here you are instead trying to optimize your mana usage, because you always draw a new card upon spending one, unless you mill your entire deck in a single turn. Each encounter gives you a mission that can be completed even after the encounter, with a reward upon completing it. You may choose a tougher encounter for a better mission, more gold, skill points, and better cards at the end of the encounter. Gold can be spent on 1-time consumables, new cards, and skill points. Skill points can be spent on passive upgrades to your character.
There's even more to it, but I can't explain everything, and the point is that there are plenty of mechanics to make for an interesting game. The cards are made well enough to have good synergies that aren't entirely trivial to achieve, and do reward thinking and good planning. There are also different game modes which shift around difficulties and make some changes into how you power up, but the core game is the same.

Based on just the above description, you might think the game is great, but there are a lot of problems. As far as gameplay is concerned, it's too easy. It's simple to get the deck you want, so there isn't a lot of randomness to the game, which also limits replayability. On top of that, the amount of content is still somewhat limited.
Beyond gameplay, the game just lacks polish. The translation is poor and limits understanding of certain game mechanics. Some tooltips are missing, leaving you guessing what some effects do. The graphics may seem like they have high fidelity, but as I understand, most of the game is made with pre-existing assets. This explains the visual dissonance and the clunky animations. There's also plenty of weird bugs, like scrolling a menu too fast makes the music temporarily stop. It's just shoddy work, and I think a big draw of the game for many people who did decide to buy it were the hot anime girls in revealing outfits.

Overall, I had my fun for the first run or two, despite everything. It's an entirely playable game, but I know how popular the rougelike deckbuilder scene is these days, and I'm certain there are many better games than this. I think it's more fair to see Neoverse as a rushed, yet oddly solid, attempt at a quick cash grab from the popularity of the genre, instead of something well-made. I would rather advise to stay away and find something else.

MO:Astray

I picked up MO:Astray because of its positive reviews, because it seemed there had been a lot of effort put into crafting the levels, with the pixel art being both beautiful and quite varied, and the environments looking like they were telling some interesting story. Also because I recognized the publisher as having published some of my favorite mobile games. Even though those were rhythm games, and I don't play many mobile games in general. While those assumptions were correct, there were some caveats. But first, let me explain the game.

MO:Astray is an action and puzzle platformer, with a strong emphasis on the story. You play as a little blob who can jump in any direction, stick onto any surface, and latch onto the heads of enemies to control them and read their thoughts. The thought reading is just for the purpose of storytelling, and is the main method of explaining the lore, allowing you to skip it if you so desire. You will also get some other abilities later on, such as briefly stopping in mid-air and doing another omnidirectional jump from there. I would say that there is a lot of inspiration taken from Ori, both in terms of how some of the story is told, as well as much of the platforming. The biggest difference would be that this is not a metroidvania, and there's no real combat to speak of. Personally, I actually prefer this pure focus on platforming and puzzles, and I would say MO:Astray can definitely stand up to Ori, even if they feel very similar.

I'm a big fan of storytelling in games that is not in your face and not forcing you to pay attention to it. I think the story, or perhaps rather the lore, of MO:Astray can be quite interesting to follow along and discover, but wasn't quite enough to grip me. For people who care more about storytelling though, it's probably worth experiencing. Similarly, the art and many of the backgrounds are very beautifully drawn, even if I feel the animations could be a bit better.
Finally, the platforming, my only complaint is the focus on mobile screens and controllers. I think it would have taken but an hour or two of development time to add a better control scheme for the mouse, but as it stands, you're forced to drag your mouse every time you wish to make a jump, whereas a single click while showing the cursor would have been much more natural. Other than that, the platforming was quite fluid and had a reasonable amount of skill expression without being frustrating for someone like me, who's only average at this.

Ultimately, would I recommend MO:Astray? Kind of. If you are a fan of either Ori game, or enjoy other non-combat-focused platformers, then MO:Astray is definitely one of the better ones. The problem for me is that I've never enjoyed those kinds of games, and I know that's just a personal problem. So therefore, I would have to give this a partial recommendation, because while I can appreciate and recognize this as being a good game, I still didn't quite like it myself.