We are back with an indie double bill! Summer is usually relatively slow for big game releases, and it gives me a little breathing room to catch up on everything. I’m currently deep into Expedition 33, and the end of Act 2 took my breath away. I will take some time to explore Act 3 before I complete the game, but I will be shocked if Expedition 33 does not make my Game of the Year.
I have two games I’m featuring today, and they could not be more different. While Snacko is a cozy sandbox sim featuring cute kitties, Kaiserpunk is a brutal city builder where every decision counts. I have yet to play a brutal game featuring cats, and I’m happy to keep things that way.
Snacko
Snacko is the first of today’s double bill, and it is a game I have had my eye on for some time. First released in Early Access a couple of years ago, it finally reached its big 1.0 milestone earlier this year, and the lovely developers at Pressengine offered a review code. Thank you, and I apologize for the delay. Snacko starts innocently when two kitties get shipwrecked on a big island full of wonders, and while that sounds rather depressing for our feline friends, things take on a wholesome note quickly.
Snacko is one of those relaxing sandbox farming games built from the same clay that formed the bones of Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Fields of Mistria, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, and so on. It is a significant genre among the indies, and over the past several years, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to it. Hell on Sassygamers alone, I have covered dozens of them. Snacko is pretty solid as far as they come in my impressions of the game so far, and the unique top-down 2D models give Snacko a lovely asthetic. The only other farming game with that was Cornucopia, a game that is still sadly unavailable in the UK for purchase for reasons unknown.
The usual gameplay loop is here in force, and the kitties have to slowly rebuild the island and bring all the cats back to help the cheerful old cat who took them in after the shipwreck. Sadly, Snacko is cursed with my biggest irrational pet peeve with farming games in that the save system is limited to going to sleep, which can only happen in nighttime. While I still find that annoyance an archaic issue in 2025’s video games, I do understand why the mechanic exists. It’s a minor gripe in the full picture, anyway, as I enjoy Snacko immensely; I just wish you could save more reliably. Farming, mining and exploration are Snacko’s bread and butter, and while the writing is what I would call average, the sum of Snacko’s parts still put it in the broadly positive end of the farming scale.
It also plays rather well on the Steam Deck. Full controller support is in and working with this game, and while it requires a fair amount of power to play at 60FPS, I’m enjoying myself a lot on a handheld. Overall, that is my impression of Snacko, and it fits the name! It’s a tasty, wholesome little meal with some playful mechanics, and no game is made worse by cats.
Kaiserpunk
Kaiserpunk was an interesting case. While the game launched a few months ago in Early Access, I had a lot of trouble getting the game to function. I encountered constant frame drops and stuttering, with the game crashing every few minutes. Not the best first impression, but I waited a while to see if the devs could fix things up. A couple of big patches later, and Kaiserpunk is in a much better place now. I can finally run the game on my RTX 3060 laptop without too many hiccups, although I warn that if you’re playing on a laptop, this game will make the machine feel like you’re gaming on top of a volcano. That is just the course with gaming laptops, however.
I love Kaiserpunk’s setting, and the game’s visuals are impressive for a citybuilder. Set in an alternate 20th century Europe with world domination in mind, you have full control over the Kaiser’s budding empire. It is rare for a city builder to have such a strong focus on grand strategy.
Usually, with these strategy games, they favor one factor over the other, but Kaiserpunk feels like someone convinced Farthest Frontier and Civilization to have a child. That kid might blunder around a lot and break things, but Kaiserpunk is brimming with potential. I’m enjoying myself so far, and I’m a fan of the tutorial. It is both extensive and intuitive which helps a lot, because Kaiserpunk’s learning curve is quite steep.
You can tell the amount of heart the developers have put into their game, although I do wish it launched in Early Access. Even with the improved performance patches, I found the game still lacks a bit of polish. I prefer the city-building parts of the game, and the logistics are probably the best part of my experience so far. However, I am finding the combat a little undercooked.
To conclude, Kaiserpunk is an ambitious game with plenty of promise. The city-building aspect is great, but the grand strategy side could use a bit more depth in the war part of the game. What is in the game isn’t bad by any means and gets the job done, though, but it does hold Kaiserpunk back from being something grander. I need to play it more, though!
