They Are Billions

I remember this next one being quite popular right when it came out, and I, too, liked the premise. There are lots of zombie survival games that make you run around, avoid the zombies, maybe kill some here and there, but They Are Billions actually goes and lets you face the hordes. Literally thousands and tens of thousands of zombies at once, and you take the assault head on. Truly a fantastic idea. There is of course the usual disclaimer that I'm an idiot for yet again playing an RTS when I don't really like the genre, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

Looking at the campaign side of things, They Are Billions is composed of a series of levels, each with an objective mainly consisting of killing zombies and staying alive. Often there is also a population requirement and/or a time limit. For what grander purpose, I can not tell, as you need population anyways to get workers for the resource collection buildings (food, wood, stone, iron), soldiers, and well, why not let people take their time playing if they so desire and are not otherwise overrun by the hordes that spawn every so often and charge your base? The gameplay is roughly split between the combat and the colony management aspects, as a lot of effort goes into making sure you have all the necessary production set up to build units and defenses. In the end, probably only 5-10% of your buildings will be military-related.
The campaign also includes a technology tree which allows you to unlock more impressive units and stronger buildings as you progress. And then there's another mission type entirely, where you control a single unit, clearing out smaller levels, without the building mechanics.

Honestly, for the first few missions and hours, I really liked this game. But the more I played, the more I noticed problems started to crop up, both big and small. The game was kind of slow, partially owing that to how it wasn't entirely focused on the best bit - combat, instead forcing you to build up your economy first. Once you got that going, the progression speed was more related to how fast you could build (unless you ran out of uninfected room). They could have reduced the number of houses and food gathering places needed, as well as removed the energy distribution grid idea entirely. Further, building was a mess, as there were many requirements about what could be built where, and which buildings could be built how close to each other. The restrictions were entirely unintuitive, and neither were there any visual indicators where stuff could be built, leading to trial and error, which was also a big time sink if designing an effective base.
All this detracts from the sweet experience of killing buttloads of zombies, but worst of all, and what was the final straw... Once you've finished all the boring setting up and can use your military to finally start more agressively fighting the zombies, your chance of failure starts rapidly increasing. If you make a slip up and get your defenses breached, it's game over, and you have to start from the beginning, doing the tedious setup yet again.
As briefly mentioned, there were some other weird choices made by the developers, such as having odd population and time limits on missions, or the whole concept of "hero missions", which are just a slog through a building, playing pixel hunt with indiscernible pickups that you desperately need to advance your tech tree. Lots of other quality of life things were missing as well, like more sophisticated commands for units, such as formations.

Overall, I believe They Are Billions is a great idea, trying to fulfill the fantasy of slaughtering an insane number of enemies, but numerous questionable design decisions and lack of quality of life functionality are a dealbreaker. I can't force myself to go through the lengthy boring bits again and again, just to get to the good ones, and unless you got a lot of tolerance for repeating non-challenging tasks and a lot of time on your hands, I can't really recommend this RTS to you. As an alternative, maybe try one of the Creeper World games.

Genshin Impact

The real main reason I haven't been doing much else or trying out many other games lately is because I've been on the Genshin Impact treadmill. While part of me feels disappointed in playing so much of a new and popular game yet again while my backlog just sits there and grows ever larger, I've been having fun, and how can I possibly regret that.

First concerns first. "Torn! This is a mobile game, what are you doing? Worse still, it is a gacha game. And their bloody adverts won't leave me alone. What in the world are you spending your time on and calling fun!?!" I know, I know. I had this exact problem as well. A game from a franchise that has been mobile exclusive is a red flag, and widespread advertisement seems to have some sort of correlation with low quality games, which is another red flag. It actually took me almost a month from release, trying to ignore all the people talking about it, before I noticed a suspicious amount of people saying somewhat or very positive things about it, that were not paid advertisements. I still didn't believe it, but as it was free, I downloaded the game and gave it a try, expecting to quit in like 10 hours tops. But... I didn't. And the more I played, the better it got, until the point where I now feel confident giving my thoughts about it, knowing that whatever comes next, this game has given me plenty of hours of quality entertainment.

It is actually somewhat difficult to describe what makes Genshin different. If you've played (action) JRPGs, it will feel immediately familiar. You have your squad of characters who you can equip with weapons and artifacts to boost their stats. Each character has one of five weapon classes, which each play differently, as well as their own unique abilities, which further make playing each of them a distinct experience. Combined with that, every character has one of six elements, which they can inflict onto enemies, potentially combining with other elements or the enemies' innate features to provide a reaction for an extra effect. All of this is enhanced by being able to rapidly switch between characters to get their abilities and elements in for devastating combinations. Topping it all off, there's the nice detail of cancelling your own attacks into invulnerability frame dodges, for very precisely avoiding enemy attacks. Aside from combat, there's also a big open world with enough little collectables and puzzles that you will find a new one every 5 minutes of exploring, yet probably literally never find them all.
It also falls into many of the same pitfalls that I hate about JRPGs, such as starting off with (and seemingly providing with each new event) a load of story you probably don't care about and too many (more than 0) "fetch" quests, where you just run from point A to point B to deliver something or talk to someone. It also frontloads you with a ton of information about everything you can do, from game mechanics to character and equipment upgrades, and more. However, there is a silver lining. Genshin still cleverly spaces these things out, allowing for plenty of time to explore the world on your own between story quests, as well as giving time to try out the existing mechanics you've learned before even allowing you to try new ones. Still, if you want to speedrun through all the story, and unlock all content, you may do so at your own capability.

There are two very common and incredibly large problems, that I was really surprised to not find in Genshin.
One, that none of the game systems are redundant - you should and almost must use each aspect of the game, and it all ties very well into the overall gameplay. I'm not personally fond of the food system, but I can't say it's useless. I've just never personally liked consumables, but I admit that to be my own problem. There is also a small "but" regarding characters and weapons. From an individual perspective, you will stick to your party of 4 characters and 4 weapons for long periods of time, only changing when you find someone or something better. It feels a shame to waste all the other characters, but there really is no use in playing everyone. From a grander perspective though, I'm sure everyone will find their own favorites. Some characters might be more popular, but none are downright useless, so I can't hold it against the game too much.
Two, that it actually manages to keep its difficulty. Games without difficulty settings rarely offer a challenge to me, and even with difficulty settings, it often just feels like the enemies' numbers have been turned too high. Genshin, however, feels genuinely challenging, but I think this is unique to how I play it. It is at this point I must admit that either the developers got really lucky, or they know precisely what they are doing. See, I am a solo F2P player. If you play with friends, it's easier, as there are now more of you to gang up on the enemies. Likewise, if you pay money, you get better characters and weapons, making the game easier. And it is my guess that it is precisely the people who have come to fool around with friends, or who are used to tossing money at games to solve their problems, that are less experienced in games, and thus need an easier experience. I want to, at this point, also alleviate your concerns for this being a gacha game. You do not have to pay for anything. You will not get all the best characters and weapons if you don't (not impossible, just takes impossibly long), but you don't need to. In fact, I wouldn't even want them. If this game was easier, I wouldn't like it as much.

"All that rambling, but I still don't see what's so special about this game, Torn?" Well... there isn't. I don't like it because it has some really cool or interesting new idea that sets it apart. I like it because everything it does, it does so well. It is the most polished and perfect JRPG experience I've had, and that's what keeps me hooked. So, to wrap this long review up, Genshin definitely makes it into my list of favorite RPGs, and I would invite you to look past the mobile franchise and gacha game stigma, and play it as just a game. I would definitely recommend it. If you like action RPGs or JRPGs, you'll probably like this, and even if you don't think so highly of them, maybe Genshin Impact will be a bit better.

while True: learn()

Maybe I'm not best suited for playing programmer games as a programmer, or maybe the opposite is true, but I want to try them anyways. So today I played while True: learn(), which sells itself as a programming puzzle game that teaches you machine learning. Haven't had one of those yet - sounds wonderful.

The problems arise quite early on, as you realize this is not a programming game, nor are you actually learning anything about machine learning. (Unless you click on one of the external links explaining these topics in actual technical detail, but these aren't part of the game and can't be attributed to it.) While True: learn() is more of an automated distribution or load balancing game. You get up to 3 shapes and/or colors that go in, a few very rudimental nodes that act as glorified if-else statements or something similar, and outputs with required quantities and accuracies of these colored shapes you must fulfill. There are other parts of the game, which aren't really related to the main gameplay for some reason, like a small stock-market-like game, cosmetics, and worst of all, upgrades for your computer that allow you to just get a better score when you go back to replay previous levels without actually changing anything.

My initial hope of comparing this to a Zachtronics game would be a terrible insult, as this isn't even worthy of being called a programming game. It does nothing to familiarize people with neither programming concepts nor machine learning concepts, instead acting like a system of belts and splitters from Factorio. The puzzles are either too simple, or can be most efficiently solved through trial-and-error, not thinking.
As an actual example from the game, you're given triangles, circles, and squares, all mixed from the input stream, and have to split them into the corresponding 3 streams. A chilishly simple task, right? 2 if-else statements and you're good. One of the promotional pictures for the game on the store page has managed to convolute this into a mess of 9 nodes, which don't actually solve the problem. And that's most of the game - terrible, complicated, and incorrect solutions for simple problems.
It's not entirely a pile of garbage, but best I could do is lump it in with "casual puzzle games". It thus saddens me that this has probably sold more copies than any single Zachtronics game, which are by and far superior.

So, would I recommend while True: learn()? No, definitely not. It pretty much lies about the type of game it is, and doesn't do a particularly good job at anything. Want to do load-balancing? Go design Factorio belt systems. Want to play a real programming game? Play one from Zachtronics. But don't try this affront to the programming game genre.

The Gardens Between

The Gardens Between is a short (~3 hours) atompsheric puzzle game. Each level acts like a short animated movie, as you can't directly control the characters, but instead you forward and rewind time. Some elements of the level are not affected by the flow of time however, and through understanding how to properly manipulate these elements, you can complete the level.

Being an atmospheric game, the emphasis of The Gardens Between was on art, animation, and sounds. That appeals to some people as evidenced by positive feedback on the game. For me, the turnoff was the lack of gameplay. Admittedly, this was more of a casual puzzle game, where the puzzles don't require that much thinking, but rather you figure them out in your stride as you watch the game unfold. Therefore, all of my time playing this game was spent of effectively watching the animations and story. It was kind of unique, but it wasn't interesting nor entertaining, and it definitely wasn't challenging either, leaving me with no enjoyment to be gathered from it.

So, personally, a strong "not recommended" for this one. You can probably find a movie or something that is better than this, or even some better story game, if you definitely want some hand in playing back a fixed story.

Among Us

So I caved to playing another fad game, this time it being Among Us. It's always a bit pointless giving my opinion on these games, because everybody is already playing it, or decided they really don't want to, but what can I do. I play it - I talk about it, those are the rules.

So, Among Us is a social game for up to 10 people, 1-3 of whom are impostors and must work together to kill the remaining players without being found out. Meanwhile the crewmates (non-impostors) win if they either figure and vote out the impostors, or complete all their tasks. The latter being more of a time-constraint for the impostors.
There is little to do as a crewmate, other than your tasks and keeping an eye on what others are doing. There are a few helpful appliances like cameras that monitor a select few small areas, or vitals, which show the alive-state of everyone. The crew can not actively fight back. The impostor however has a cooldown on his kill, leaves behind very obvious bodies, can use vents which connect parts of the map to teleport, and cause malfunctions like doors to close, or lights to go out. If a body is found or someone manually calls a meeting, everyone is allowed to communicate for that period of time, and potentially vote somebody out.

The very first thing I noticed as I entered the game was how low quality it was. The level of art and especially UI quality was something out of a game jam game. It baffled me that such a thing amassed so much popularity, and has been around for two years. But, okay, it's never about the art, but the gameplay, right. That said, I can't give its gameplay a much higher rating. The game is shallow. It requires very little learning and you'll see everything you can do in just a couple of games on each map. It doesn't require much mechanical skill (basically none as a crewmate, while the impostor has to juggle more things), so aside from getting better at tricking people, you can't really get good at the game. And it has strategies from the crewmate side that can most probably guarantee a win, so you just got to agree not to use them. It's less about playing the game, more about screaming at and laughing with your friends.
Mind you, this is all from the perspective of playing with a group of trustable people over Discord. I can not imagine playing with randoms. It is so easy to cheat or abuse the game. It takes just one person to mess up the game for others. I also wouldn't want to be typing into chat, as the game has no built-in voice either. Playing with random people would just be a terrible experience.

Would I recommend it? Well, the answer would be clear were I not still regularly playing it. I want to very clearly state that I don't think it's a good game. It's pretty bad on most fronts. However, they hit that sweet spot for a game that friend groups can play together, and, like for pretty much all games that got popular fast, people swayed their friends to join them to play it. Missing a player for today's session? Ask all the players to ask all their friends. And instantly, just because somebody leaves, like 20 more get notified on it. So as a final verdict, if your friend group wants you to join them playing this, and you like just hanging out with them... Sure, go play some Among Us. But try not to be the one looking for a game. If you're lucky enough to not have friends playing this, join them in their other activities instead, or if you're alone anyways, play something else.

Space / Mech / Pilot

What do you mean it's been 1.5 months, and all we get is a review of some free incremental game by the name of Space / Mech / Pilot? It's not even a good incremental game, and all it has going for it is the big-eyed cat-eared person you occasionally get to hear a few lines of dialogue from?

So, excuses upfront, I've been playing other, bigger games lately (will write about those later), and haven't had the time to continue with my usual list of games. However, I saw this short and free incremental game on Steam the other day and figured it was a nice distraction to let it idle in the background while I was doing other stuff.
There's really nothing special to say about the game. As far as incremental games go, this one's pretty subpar by today's standards. They dragged me (and seemingly many other people) in with images of the cute cat person you get to talk to. I figured it would be more of a narrative-based incremenetal game (always looking forward to people combining the incremental genre with other genres, I really think there's good things to be found there), but our friend Kato shows up so rarely that I'm not sure if I even got 10 minutes of dialogue in all. On top of that, the story was pretty meh, and I got the odd feeling it was trying to push some real-world agenda in a roundabout way. Regardless, I didn't like it.

So yeah, a quick review of a quick free game I completed by letting it idle in the background for a day. The art is cute, but that's about where the positives end. It dilutes the "this character is real" trope, and doesn't even have music outside of the short dialogue scenes. The gameplay's even worse. So, yeah, don't play this. I'll be back with some other games in the coming weeks, but I feel there's been a lot of good stuff coming out lately, so there shouldn't be a drought of things to play.

Akane

Akane's a fun little game. You run around a little arena, about 4 times as large as your screen and swing your sword at enemies that swing their swords at you. One hit is one kill, for either party. Want to feel safe? Use a gun instead. At least until you run out of bullets and have to recharge by killing with your sword more. Kill fast enough to rack up a combo and unlock a special move or two which can take out a lot of enemies at once. And speaking of enemies, there's different types. There's the regular sword guys, the rarer gun guys, the as-rare-as-the-gun-guys tough guys who don't die in one hit, and then the boss which gets stronger every time you kill it. Complete some challenges to unlock new gear which has minor effects on gameplay, and... yeah, that's about it.

Honestly, I liked playing Akane. The combat's fluid and responsive. There's nice attention to detail like swords clanging together or deflecting bullets (which can actually hurt those they bounce to). I'm a bit against dying in one shot, as there's a big difference between playing perfectly (never getting hit) and playing near perfectly (getting hit very very rarely), which you don't want to force on people, but for such a short game, it's actually fine. The challenges are difficult, but not overly so, and the game requires real skill (even if it can be cheesed a bit).
But as mentioned, the game's real short. You'll see the gist of everything within 30 minutes (15 if you're good), and then it's maybe a couple of hours more before you feel you've exhausted the gameplay. I didn't unlock all equipment, but I didn't feel the desire to.

Overall, good game, too short. The low price point might make it worth a buy, but you're not missing out on anything if you don't. Technically I wouldn't recommend it, but I won't judge. I had fun for about an hour, and maybe that's worth a couple units of money for you.

Shadowhand

I am once again amazed by how blind I am that I managed to completely ignore that Shadowhand is a Solitaire game. I should've looked at the art and the dialogue... It basically screams "mobile-level casual game". I tricked myself into playing Solitaire, I can't believe it.
Looking it up, Solitaire refers to a wide variety of games one can play alone (most videogames, anyone?), but this one's kind of similar to the most famous one, Klondike. Arguably it's even simpler, as you don't have any free slots nor cards to stack, only the waste pile. As with most Solitaire games, Shadowhand is heavily based on luck, with very minor skill being involved, despite the added equipment and abilities. The most difficult part is predicting the course of action for the highest probability of a longer chain, but you generally just click on all the cards you can until you can't. And as I said, the art and story are horrible.

While I don't play them, I have more respect for "pure" card games. Solitaire being one of the least skill-involved, but even then it's better than this junk. If you insist on paying for something with a free equivalent available, I would suggest throwing your money at Shenzhen I/O's Solitaire, but I simply can not recommend Shadowhand.

Sky Force Reloaded

Today's game is Sky Force Reloaded. It's a shoot 'em up / bullet hell, and it's... incredibly bland.

This genre of games generally isn't anything complicated. You control a ship in top-down view (or side view, but not in this game) and shoot a lot of bullets to kill enemies who shoot a lot of bullets back. Because of the simplicity, most good examples of the genre have a lot of extra mechanics and challenges sprinkled in to keep the gameplay fresh, exciting, and challenging. Sky Force Reloaded doesn't.
To simply list out problems with the game, in no particular order:
1) All your attack patterns are very simple, with no variety. You just shoot forwards. Upgrades make your shots larger, faster, maybe give multiple columns, or a slight spread, but no fundamentally new shot patterns emerge.
2) Your hitbox is huge, encompassing your entire ship, instead of just a little piece of the center as is the accepted standard for bullet hell games. This signifincatly lowers the skill ceiling, as you're forced to always look for huge gaps in the enemy's attack pattern instead of allowing extremely precise dodging.
3) The ship variety, as far as I saw, is laughable. Wow! New ship! 10% more damage. That's all.
4) Your shots don't travel straight. Because the game is 3D with a perspective camera, and some genius decided to have it point slightly forward instead of completely top-down, your shots converge as they travel forwards, massively throwing off your aim.
5) Each level has the same nonsense challenges: "kill x% enemies", "don't get hit", "rescue people". I'm going to do these things anyways! Give me something different and exiting that might make me want to play differently. The overarching achievements are also dumb, mainly just "complete stage x".
And many more minor or slightly larger problems.

Point is, this game stands out in absolutely nothing. It filled out the minimum checklist for a shmup, and even then failed on a few points. I can in no way recommend this. There are way better examples to be played, such as one of my favorites Bullet Heaven 2. So go try that (or the first installement, or one of the games it says it's inspired by if you've already played it) instead if you want a bullet hell.

Snowflake's Chance

Snowflake's Chance is some Getting Over it with Bennet Foddy type of shit, albeit not as popular. It's an incredibly tough and unforgiving platformer which doesn't hesitate to kick you down, take away everything you've achieved, laugh at you, and then make the game even harder despite your recent failure. Upon realizing this, I quit it before it managed to drive me insane, but I don't think it's all bad. There's a reasonable game underneath the unreasonable criteria it places on the player.

In Snowflake's Chance, you play a bunny who happened to get dropped through some 20 layers of hell, and who's now trying to make their way back up, given 99 lives to do so. You have meager, near-realistic bunny-like agility. No sprinting, no dashing, no double jumping or walljumping, or anything like that (at least as far as I got). You have a weak swing to temporarily knock away small critters or break small objects, and the ability to hide in foliage. Perhaps your most impressive ability is to devour whole friendly animals to later regurgitate them as bait for the hostile fauna to make your escape.
Dying makes you lose a life, lose all your items, cause the evil ghastly version of yourself chasing you to become stronger, and get you dropped off at the last checkpoint, which is basically the only form of permanent progress you make in this game. And they take "dropped off" quite literally. A crow literally drops you near the general vincinity of your last checkpoint into the giant shaft connecting the whole underground. You probably won't actually land at the checkpoint. If you're lucky, you'll land a screen's length below it. If you're unlucky, you'll tumble down the whole shaft back to the very beginning of the game, or straight to your death. Similar options, because sometimes dying seems a better option than climbing the whole path up again.

It really is the death and the giant shaft in the middle that break this game for me. There seems to be a ton of content in this game, seemingly all handcrafted (like the hand-drawn artstyle, which is quite interesting). Most people, myself included, probably just give up before they see even a small fraction of it because of how cruel the game is, while the fans are super dedicated, pouring some 50 hours into it. I might have even kept going, but the nail in the coffin for me was how often I had the chance to drop to the beginning. A common occurance upon death, and quite possible while jumping over the gap in the middle, which was a necessity every so often. Playing the whole game over again was not fun for me. I wanted to experience what more it had to offer, not drill the beginning into my head until I had achieved complete and utter mastery of it.

In conclusion, if you like being in a relationship with a platformer that hates your guts and does everything in it's power to stop you from completing it - this is the game for you. For anyone who isn't a diehard hardcore platformer fan, it's probably best you find something else. I can't recommend this one.

Undertale

Hooo boy, Undertale. Clearly in the top 50 games on Steam. Rare we roll such a treat to play. I've heard a lot about it, mostly escaping spoilers. So, I could finally play through it, but what impression did it leave on me?

Undertale was one of the biggest games to come out in 2015 (Witcher 3 took the top spot, sorry) and so I had high hopes for it. From it's description and initial impressions, it wasn't anything special. Sort of an RPG Maker-esque game with the additional option of not fighting back. Running for about 6 hours, you get to experience a bunch of dialogue, complete some puzzles, and dodge some bullets, optionally fighting back or using other means to "best" your opponents. And I suppose most importantly, depending on your actions onto the world, the response from the world differs as well.

While the concept was somewhat novel, I must admit it left me cold. Looking at each of the aspects of the game, none really appealed to me. The puzzles - far too simple. The gameplay - challenging at times, but still not even close to being fun. There's miles better RPGs and bullet-hell games. Art was meh as well, though I really liked the music.
Now, I know, I know, "Torn, this isn't at all what Undertale is about". It's about the story, the world, and the characters. And these were the best part of the game, but I just didn't find them that stellar. It tried to be quirky, and make jokes, and satirize certain concepts in other games, but it didn't hit the mark often enough. I had a genuine laugh or chuckle every now and then, but just as often the attempted joke was annoying instead. Most of it was just bland and predictable after the tone of the game was already set. Sans was probably the best character, but I couldn't develop an attchment to them, let alone anyone else. For a game's standards, the story was good, but sadly I've come to expect stories in games to be terrible, and for a truly good story, it needs to be absolutely exceptional among games. Undertale's was only just "good".

So, yeah, I ultimately failed to see the reason for the hype around Undertale. I was expecting something a little bit more different, but I still got the standard RPG Maker experience with bad gameplay and a mediocre story. Maybe there was more potential in the game, maybe you would consider it unique enough to enjoy it, but I didn't. As is standard with these immensely popular and highly rated games, I can't truly not recommend it, because statistically speaking, you will like it, but I can't personally recommend it. Not that it matters. Everyone who's going to has already played it anyways.

DDraceNetwork

I found a curious game on Steam the other day. Completely free, apparently roughly a decade old, and open source to boot. It's called DDraceNetwork, and it's apparently a standalone mod of Teeworlds (which I have heard of briefly, but never played). At first glance, it looked like a speedrunning platformer, and while that's not entirely incorrect, it's more than that. It's really quite unlike anything I've ever played.

Being an open-source game, one can't really draw a line between what's made by the developers and what's made by the community, since everything's kind of made by the community. As such, there are better and worse maps and servers and I only tried few of them, but I feel my experiences are worthwhile nontheless.
Entering the game, you're greeted by some customization options, but mostly a server browser. Entering a server, there's probably already a map underway - you join halfway. You're given a double jump, a grappling hook, and probably some weapons. The weapons might strike you as odd in a platformer, because DDnet is not a PvP game. Quite the opposite really - most maps partially or fully require the help of at least one more player to complete them. All players have full collision with you, your weapons have various effects on them, generally shoving them in some direction to help move, and most importantly, you can grapple not only walls, but each other. There are multiple mechanics, tools, and building blocks for the world, and many many more clever ways to combine all these. So much so that much of the game is learning and perfecting using these few things you are given to their absolute limits. And some people have been doing this for almost 10 years, making them extremely good at the game.

Upon first entering the game, without reading up on what it was of course, I joined a server of about 50 people. After the initial bewilderment that my weapons were in fact not doing damage, and nobody was shooting me to stop me from completing the track, I discovered the grappling hook and was on my way. For about 3 seconds. I had fallen into a transparent black block and found myself unable to make any further actions. I was amazed that people were spending their time pulling me out time and again, and some even tried to not only complete the obstacle, but juggle me through it as well. "How kind of them towards newbies", I thought, as someone whose skills were beyond my understanding grappling hook flung me up to them before booting me over a wall with a hammer and then rushing past me. But boy, was I about to learn that this was the norm here.
The map was huge, and despite the first obstacle being completable solo, the second one obviously was not. I saw a few people ahead completing it and soon found myself doing the same with a stranger. It just worked, as I leapt into the immobilizing darkness, knowing the one on the other side would pull me across. They did, and then ran off to complete the next obstacle, as it was my turn to help the next person coming. It was a big, amazing, and admittedly quite wonky and inefficient clockwork, but it worked! Obstacle after obstacle we completed, with new and old faces alike helping each other pass, and after an hour, the map was complete.

The other maps followed suit similarly, but often requried some different tricks to get through them. Still, after a couple more, I felt tired of it. The novelty of such a tightly co-dependent co-op experience had worn off, and what was left was the platforming challenges to overcome. Admittedly, it didn't feel that rewarding to have someone pull you across an obstacle without you doing anything, but it also didn't feel very fun trying to get people across who were even less skilled than me. Combine with the much repeated fact that precision platformers aren't my cup of tea, and it's clear why I soon quit the game.
Still, I would recommend you try this free gem. At least complete one of those hour-long levels with a bunch of other people to really experience what true teamwork feels like. This isn't your Counter-Strike or League level teamwork - this is advanced, and the experience alone is worth it. If after that hour you feel like you don't like the game, that's fine, but I believe you'll be richer as a person for playing.

In Celebration of Violence

Oh, it's been a while. I've finished moving to an apartment in the city and living on my own again. Schedule's been hammered though, leaving me with little time to play new games. Totally my fault, but at least I have a great new game I want to tell you about called In Celebration of Violence. Outright, let me say that this is probably the first game I've put on my list which was made with the free version of Unity (as evidenced by the Unity logo when starting the game), as well as the first Action Roguelike I've played that is not just decent, but actually good.

In broad, In Celebration of Violence has a basic linear branching level structure with randomly generated levels, enemy placements, and item drops. You run around the levels, swing a variety of weapons at your enemies, and collect their loot to get stronger. Basic stuff, but looking at the details is where it gets good.
This game takes a lot of good ideas and mashes them together. It has permadeath, but also the tried and true practice of giving a little bit of character advancement that persists through death. In this case, it's small stat boosts, new classes to play, and most importantly - knoweldge about the game. This knowledge comes in the form of weapon stats and item descriptions, which you progressively unlock the more you use/find them. And speaking of items, it borrows this nice idea from incremental games (or more recognizably The Binding of Isaac or Risk of Rain) that some equipment can just stack forever.
The environment is almost fully destructible, allowing for increased tactics on how to engage combat encounters. There's fine details like how your movement speed and actions cause noise - slowly walking on grass will get you around most enemies, but an ongoing fight or banging a hammer against anything acts like an alarm for everyone nearby. There're also slightly more fancy status effect systems, like how getting frozen next to a campfire won't last very long, how you can douse yourself in water if you're on fire, or how you can handle more poison before taking damage if you're healthy overall, and many other small systems that add depth to the gameplay without being a nuisance.
There is an impressive variety of weapons (and spells, but I didn't really like them since they felt weak for what they cost), and they have multiple attack patterns depending on the previous attack, your current movement, and maybe more. There's a lot to explore, mainly because... Well, for better or worse, the game explains almost nothing to you. You don't understand how the world or anything works, and it's up to you to put the pieces together and make sense of it all. This forced intuitive exploration could be a deal-breaker for some people, but for someone like me, the feeling of discovery is amazing.

Truthfully, this is probably a solo project of someone's. It's absolutely amazing for that, but a bit rough around multiple edges. Mainly, the ideas upon which it was built make for a phenomenal game, but the execution could have been better. While the pixel art is decent and fitting a rougelike, it's basic and often doesn't get its function across. Music was also basically non-existant (even if the quiet ambience sometimes added to the atmosphere, which was amazing for something composed of large pixels). There are some balance issues with classes, different weapons, magic (as mentioned), and I feel it could've used more polish overall.
But I don't want to let the negatives distract from the fact that I played this game for 30 hours easily, and would probably play it just as much more. I'm only maybe 1/4 through the game in terms of discoveries, and haven't actually completed a full playthrough. I just found myself a bit pinched for time to put more into it right now, and opted to write a review for it as-is.

So in conclusion, In Celebration of Violence is a great Action Rogulike composed of an excellent combination of ideas, only somewhat suffering from the production quality. It takes patience to understand and overcome it, but if you have that, it will be a very rewarding experience. I'll admit it's not for everyone, but I would most certainly recommend playing it if what I described sounds like your cup of tea.

Tower of Time

Today's game is Tower of Time - a real-time with pause tactical RPG about descending a tower.
You control a party of up to four various characters, each with a few skills that can be upgraded in a small "tree" (if choosing between two options counts as a tree), as well as some run-on-the-mill offensive and defensive attributes and items. The levels contain equipment, small "puzzles", and gold to upgrade your characters. There are also of course combat encounters which are held in a separate arena and consist of waves of spawning enemy units. Each floor is pre-built and non-repeatable, meaning you're stuck with however well you do on that floor.

To start off with the not-gameplay, there's a story which doesn't consume too much of your time, provides some context to what your doing, but failed to pique my interest overall. Tower of Time seems to be from a small-ish development team, and for that, the art is very well done, rivalling any other game, and I've no qualms regarding the audio, level design, environmental lore, or any other aspect surrounding the game.
Sadly, the gameplay itself, the most important part of any non-story game, is lacking. For all the supposed enemy variety, there isn't too much distinction to be made in terms of how to actually fight against them. Aside from the enemy being melee or ranged, what they are may change how hard it is to fight them, but more often than not doesn't create strategic depth as there's not much to do about their differences.
However, by far the most irking is how much good micromanagement will let me play better, yet how much more time it will take. This is just my usual strong dislike for real-time with pause games, as turn-based would no doubt have served this better. The enemies and my characters are already somewhat tanky instead of squishy, making this a slow-paced game. It doesn't help that my characters tend to move faster, making kiting a very effective strategy against melee enemies, and peeking very effective against ranged, who will miss if you go back into cover after they fire their projectiles that are barely faster than your movement speed. This amounts to a staggeringly slow game pace, which is downright sleep inducing.
The combat arenas are repetitive, sometimes just floor-themed reskins. Bizarrely, pause is not instant, but rather slows time to reach pause after about a second, which is significantly irritating when trying to time certain actions. The items and level-ups don't offer much either, and perhaps only the skill points and upgrades you get increase the depth of the gameplay, but even then not by much.

Overall, a game ruined by shallow combat paced far too slow. I believe you'd find an all around better experience from some larger RPG. I'd recommend Divinity: Original Sin, as usual, but even something like Pillars of Eternity and it's successors should fare better on all fronts, if you really want pause-based combat. But Tower of Time I would not recommend.

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

Latest game I played read was Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls. If you're familiar with the Danganronpa series, then the visuals, atmosphere, and story are the same crazy, unrealistics, yet oddly fascinating ones. By far the biggest difference, however, is that this one is a shooter instead of a series of murder mysteries like the previous installments.

The game opens with a lot of story (and quality animations, instead of the 3D animated ones throughout most of the game) frontloaded onto you, perhaps in an attempt to grab your attention. However, the amount of meaningful story quickly drops off and you're left with horrendous gameplay to fill most of your time. I don't want to dwell much on just how bad the experience is, but it's safe to say the developer has not played any shooters worth their salt. Just to give some examples: The camera points to a different spot when actually firing. Enemies die in one hit if you hit them in the right spot, which isn't difficult, making the game dead easy, even on the hardest difficulty. There's an interruption every couple of minutes, be it a cutscene, some dialogue, or an animation that lasts for a few seconds. They really add up and waste your time.

From the story side, which is the only thing you should care about in this game, there isn't much. Maybe around 10% is meaningful story, and even then I'm quite sure you could skip this game and go to the next one without leaving gaps in your knowledge. Better yet, don't play this, and watch two hours worth of YouTube videos showing all cutscenes and a summary of the whole thing instead. To give a quick overview of what you're missing (minor spoilers included):
The story follows after Danganronpa 2, and has two main characters you could care about - Makoto's sister, and Toko. Some of the old characters make an appearance, but don't play a big role. Some of the characters' relatives also show up, but most of them die shortly after with no time to get attached to or learn about them. On the "evil" side, we have four children with a traumatic past you'll get to briefly learn about, but all but one of them will die too, leaving them out of the picture for the future. Aaand that's basically it.

Seriously though, don't play this. I don't recommend it. If you don't know about Danganronpa at all, there's nothing for you here. If you've gone through parts 1 and 2 and loved them, settle for watching someone else's recap instead of suffering through 20 hours of this. I found the previous parts barely passable, but once you swap out the nice murder mystery aspect the author was kind of good at, you're not left with enough to justify trudging through this awful "game".

Everspace

I haven't been having a good streak of games recently. I really hope I'm just being unlucky and getting mediocre games instead of being unable to enjoy any games for some reason. Anyways, with that spoiler of my thoughts about Everspace out of the way, let me tell you a bit more about my rather brief time with it.

Everspace is a six five-degrees-of-freedom (no roll, but I don't miss it) space shooter with permadeath. It's level-based so each level you get some enemies you have to shoot while trying to dodge their shots. You got a recharging energy bar that powers your two primary weapons you can switch between as well as your movement, and you got a secondary weapon with limited ammunition, as well as two active or passive ability slots.
Between levels, it's a bit like FTL. That is, you warp forwards in a linearly progressing map and have some resources you can use for various things with different levels offering somewhat different content. Mostly still just shooting things. If at any point you happen to die, you get to use your credits to buy your ship some upgrades before going for another round from the start.

The problem with shooters is that firing a weapon is usually very similar in nature. You aim at the enemy, and you hold down the fire button. So the combat has to be really good, because it's very difficult to make something conceptually unique in a shooter. Sadly, Everspace's combat is mediocre. It's not bad, but just being mediocre makes it unenjoyably repetitive. What doesn't help is the downtime between fights as you collect the resources scattered around the level, which is just menial labor. Warp in, shoot at stuff, fly around collecting all the things they dropped or that were already in the level, and warp out.
The upgrades between lives aren't particularly imaginative or game-changing, so I found it difficult to care about them much, and starting from the beginning does not help with the repetitivity at all.

Everspace delivers you mediocre 3D dogfighting combined with some progression of your ship throughout the run, as well as across runs. As the overall gameplay isn't very fun, I find the entire thing dull after just a short while. I don't really know of any similar games to offer as replacements, but I've heard there's some cool mecha-based 3D dogfighters out there. Regardless, I can't recommend the game beyond its graphics, as it lacks any meaningful substance.

The End Is Nigh

My thoughts on The End Is Nigh are quite similar to my thoughts on Celeste, as well as Super Meat Boy, which this seems to be a kind of worse version of. Let me elaborate on that.

The End Is Nigh is a game by Edmund McMillen, famous for The Binding of Isaac, and more relevantly, Super Meat Boy. I was somewhat surprised at the existance of this game, considering he already has a major platformer under his belt, and that this one... doesn't really add much. While I initally thought there was some story here, it really isn't in any focus worth mentioning. It's all just platforming, like Super Meat Boy, except you're less slippery, somewhat slower, can't walljump, but can grab onto ledges and little spikes.
There seems to be less stuff / variety in the world overall, as well as fewer levels and less bonus content to explore. So it's not so much that I'm surprised that he made another platformer - by all means, you should stick to what you're good at - but that this one is significantly more bare-bones than something that came out 7 years ago.

Despite a relative lack of content, the platforming is as tight as ever, the difficulty is quite right for just completing the game, and reasonably more difficult if you're getting collectables. A seemingly not-so-good decision was to make those collectibles lives later on, meaning the difficult spikes at the end if you've tried to go for a more casual playthrough. This seems unnecessarily unwelcoming.
What else... Soundtrack's great, as usual. The atmosphere and feel of the game are in line with Edmund's dark style, with much death everywhere, and you're literally collecting cancer. The gloom makes the game mostly monochrome, which, while appropriate, is sadly visually unappealing.

Overall, an all around lesser experience than Super Meat Boy (play it first if you haven't), but a very solid platformer nontheless. As I'm personally not a big fan of "vanilla platformers", and Super Meat Boy just barely made it on my list, this will not. But if you liked Super Meat Boy or like platformers, by all means play it. Despite my criticism, you must consider Meat Boy is still one of the best platformers out there, so despite not being as good, The End Is Nigh is still a great platformer. So I'd recommend it if you fit the target demographic, even though I do not.

Pit People

I just can't find a good game lately, I swear. I tried Pit People, which is supposedly a big game by a famous developer that has a lot of very positive ratings. To spoil the review, it frontloads all of its quirkyness and fun in the first 30 minutes, and then sharply falls off to absolute tedium, or maybe a silly checkbox ticker at best.

The Behemoth, developers of Pit People, are quite well known for the humor and weirdness their games extrude. I've played most, but not all, of their past games, and they're all about in the same vein. The art style is very colorful and, quite often literally, bouncy. There's a narrator telling jokes, who quickly runs out of lines as you complete the opening bit of the game, and keep in mind that the rest of the content has been passed through a 300% silly filter, examples being a number plate as a shield, a blade of grass as a sword, and paper airplanes as arrows. It's a lovely atmosphere, but sadly does nothing for the gameplay.

Pit People, specifically, is a turn-based strategy game where you control a group of fighters and can run around a medium-sized map picking fights, completing quests, levelling your characters, and earning loot. It sort of plays like other TBS games, except majorly dumbed down, where the only command you can give each fighter is where to move. They handle all the attacking and abilities on their own.
The town allows you to customize your characters, fitting each with whatever equipment you want, suddenly negating a lot of differences between characters. You do have the possibility to capture enemies as your fighters, and while there are different character types which can equip different kind of attacks and equipment, there still isn't much actual use to it. You quickly unlock all possible weapon types, and while, again, they have some variety and counterplay mechanics to them, you'd be no worse off for any practical reason if you just outfit your 6 characters identically. The strategic depth just isn't there.

There's the combat, which manages to be the worst part of the game, as you're just forced to watch your characters slowly make their animations. The enemy AI also visibly queues their character actions one-by-one for you to see before executing the move and then there's more animations to watch. It doesn't help that every single thing is a massive damage sponge and there might just be a healer in the party too. The amount of time these battles take is an insult to the player, considering there is no depth to them at all.
What's left is a staggering amount of "checkboxes to tick", as I put it. Collect all the items, collect all the characters, level stuff up, do the quests, etc. etc. But it's meaningless. These things are supposed to complement the game, not to be the game, considering how tedious they are to achieve.

Pit People tries to lure you in with an hour or two of promising a vibrant game with oh-so-many features and things to do. But just a bit beyond that time, you come to the realization that the game is shallow, repetitive, and boring. I'd recommend this to your child who is in elementary school or kindergarten, but to no fans of strategy games, RPGs, or other respectful game genres.

Legends of Runeterra (and some other card games)

I hit Master rank in Legends of Runeterra today, signalling me being in roughly the top 1000 players in the Europe region. It never crossed my mind to write about it since I don't usually do that for games with no clear end, but I'm not sure why. Anyways, as I feel reaching Master rank is sort of the "end" of my journey, being the highest rank one can achieve, I figured I might as well give my thoughts on the game, now that I'm "qualified" to do so.
This post will be a little longer, as I also wish to explore some other card games I've played.

Card games are something I played more as a child. They tend to be pretty exclusively PvP-based, and as I've gotten older, all PvP games have become inherently competitive for me. Sometimes I wish I could enjoy the games without caring about the outcome, but the mindset of improving has been ingrained too deep in me to not try to learn from losses and get better. This sadly involves a degree of beating myself up over losing as a form of discipline, increasing the frustration these games supply me with.
I started off playing Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh as those card games first came out and my brother bought the cards. He needed people to play against, I needed something to do with my life back before I had unlimited computer access. So he would always make the decks, hand me one, and we'd play, me losing like... 80% of the time, I guess, but it didn't bother me back then. I had no competitive drive, I just had fun.

I think a lot of my attitude from that point onwards towards card games can be derived from that last paragraph.
Making the decks has never been the fun part of card games for me. There's an incredible amount of cards in most card games. Even just reading them all (and you do have to read them all, lest you don't know what you're not putting in your deck) can be a daunting task, let alone thinking of all the combinations they could be used together in. Normally, I would praise that kind of complexity and depth, but there's a huge problem here. The problem is known as netdecking, and unless you're willing to spend an ungodly amount of time considering all the options available to you and have the skills to actually make the right conclusions from considering those options, you're just not going to make a better deck than somebody else has. You can play for fun and maybe feel like you've "earned" the victories by making your own decks, but that's no proof to others. Besides, where do you draw the line? Can you ask for advice? Can you look at what other people are playing and try to guess what decks they're running to imitate them? At some point, you'll gravitate towards playing what other people are playing, whether it's blatantly copying a deck online 1:1, or indirectly doing so by copying ideas and cards from the decks you play against (many of whom blatantly copied a deck online). There's nothing wrong with copying though. It's adapting, and not adapting is begging to lose, so you might as well not lie to yourself and take one of the good decks straight away. Of note are game modes like Arena (I think it was called that) in Hearthstone, or Expedition in Legends of Runeterra, where you can't just copy a deck, because you have highly limited choices what you can use. These bring back the skill of constructing a deck, but sadly have another caveat, which is the focus of the next paragraph.
That problem is luck. Games are so much based on the luck of the draw, in Expeditions the luck of the draft, and even the luck of the matchup, as the odds are heavily tilted right at the start, depending on what deck archetypes are facing up against each other. I think luck is both one of card games' greatest strengths and weaknesses. I could experience it back in the day when I was playing against my brother. I can be sure he was a far better player than I was. He also knew the decks we were both playing, since he put them together. And on top of that, I would wager he more often than not gave me the worse deck. But I still won a significant amount of games - something impossible in 1-on-1 games based on skill. I was so far behind, I should have lost every time, like I did in chess. But unlike chess, I didn't refuse to keep playing against him, probably because I had a chance to win. And I think that's the strength of card games, that luck can offset everything else and give you the perfect cards to win an otherwise doomed match. Sadly, it can also do the opposite, causing frustration at your inability to do anything.

Now, combining those two elements, what's left for you, the player? Making your deck is (mostly) not up to you. What cards you draw are not up to you. All you can do is play them. While I will admit that it's exactly this skill that differentiates great players from good ones, namely knowing the cards and thus the possible futures, how likely they are to occur, and accordingly, when you should play which cards, it's still not a large portion of what decides the outcome. I don't really feel like I've ever outplayed my opponent. Best I can feel about myself is relieved that I made the right decision in hoping they couldn't react to something I did, or that my stalling allowed me to counter their actions, instead of the other way around. But it still is mostly luck, not skills like aiming a gun in a shooter, nor psychology (or whatever their special term for this is) like predicting the enemy's next action in a fighting game.

I think a lot of card games since Hearthstone haven't been all that different. The constantly increasing mana curve has been the main difference from older card games, instead of being able to play almost whatever you got in hand. Runeterra mianly differs from Hearthstone in that the blocker can, for the most part, decide who fights whom. However, like many other card games that resemble Hearthstone, the differences are minor enough that they don't usually change the essence of what a game is. They all feel the same, looking from the outside, even if the new mechanics are a breath of fresh air to the player who has grided a single game for too long. The reason Runeterra is the first card game I've gotten so far in, is that it's the first card game that has given me the resources to build the decks I wanted. I'd argue that most other card games, while not having a technical paywall, released new cards too fast, and gave too few away for free to allow for people to be competitive while playing a reasonable amount of time.
Maybe it comes as no surprise, based on what I've already told you, that I don't really like card games. I don't like building my decks, I don't like netdecking, I don't like losing to luck (and don't care enough for winning due to it). There have been some better attempts at card games, but sadly they've died off. One I quite liked was Duelyst, which also introduced a board to the game, bringing a new aspect of non-luck-based gameplay. I think that is a massive improvement to shifting games away from being luck-based and increasing depth. They also had an amazing feature allowing to swap one card from your hand every turn, lessening the effect of the luck of the draw on the game. Why they scrapped the latter later on is beyond me. Sadly, it was also plagued by stuff costing a bit too much, especially as they started to run out of money before finally closing up.
I think the only card game I can truly say I think is good, is Prismata. It has no luck, no making of decks whatsoever, and no imbalance of matchups since you're playing the same deck. It's a game purely based on skill, yet it feels every bit as fun as the other card games I've played. (Okay, I actually really enjoyed the board mechanics in Duelyst and related board-based card games, but that's not important right now.) It also has an amazing AI, providing a challenging game to all but the very best of players, yet hitting that sweet spot of allowing you to feel good about yourself by letting you win more than 50% of the games. It's also dead. Not that it was ever alive. I don't think it ever hit even 100 simultaneous players, and is at maybe around 10 right now. And that's sad, because it also means there's no development resources to keep the game fresh and going.

So I didn't explain what Legends of Runeterra is actually about, but should I really? I think a lot of people have played at least one card game with attackers, blockers, and spells. They're all so very similar. Hearthstone mainly brought in the constant mana curve which gates playing cards, and Runeterra mainly switches it up with the blocking player deciding who fights whom, alternating turns letting both players play within the same "mana turn" with the attacker alternating between "mana turns", and maybe the 3 mana that can be left over each turn to go into a reserve for spells only. Draw a card, play your units and spells, attack, end your turn. They're all the same, and if I had to recommend one card game, I would indeed recommend Legends of Runeterra right now. It's got a big company backing it financially. It is very generous with cards, allowing anyone to be competitive, and it's still fresh right now, with promised changes bringing a lot of variety. Personally though, I don't think I'll be playing it much anymore, and I wouldn't recommend it (nor any other card game) to someone who doesn't already know they like card games. As explained, I don't like that so much is decided by just copying the best decks and being lucky. I feel the losses aggrevating because they're undeserved, and the victories meaningless, because they too are undeserved.

Slipstream

Racing games are in a weird spot for me where I really liked a few as a child, but I haven't played anything quite as good in the last... 10 years? So I'm not sure if it's nostalgia or if I really haven't found / given any good racing games a try. Well, I played some Slipstream today, and it was at least as bad as the other ones I've played recently. So that just adds to my reluctance to try them out.

Slipstream is very simple, veering more towards "realistic" racing games. You got your accelerate, break, and left and right turns, and that's all. The tracks consist of straight segments, and curving segments. You can execute a drift by a quick and simple key combination, and driving behind a car will give you an acceleration boost.
You have 3 attributes on your car - acceleration, top speed, and handling. Handling is useless since you'll need to drift on every curve anyways, and that will be enough to make every curve if you're playing well. Acceleration is only useful if you're not playing well and losing speed, at which point taking it would gimp your other stats putting you even further behind. And then finally top speed is all you need if you can just play well and not hit walls or other cars too much.
Speaking of other cars, they don't exactly follow your rules. Their speed and turning is "as is convenient". Some examples include: Everyone overtaking you at the start of a race with extreme acceleration, possibly so it would be "fun" to catch up to each of them? They can execute instantaneous turns to avoid crashes. And I could swear there was something off with how fast they went at different parts of the race. It was as if they were trying to keep a semi-constant gap with each other when you weren't there.

Overall, the cheating AI and having very few game mechanics sucked. It had some different game modes but there wasn't much of a functional difference. Cars felt the same, tracks felt the same, and oh I hate having car collisions in racing games where it's not some central game mechanic. A penalty should not be imposed on me because someone else is occupying the same space as me while the lead, who is already better, is driving further away without interruption.
To compare to the racing games mentioned at the start, I was a big fan of Trackmania. The tracks were really interesting, had realistic-seeming physics (yes, I do question being able to drive on walls, the ceiling, or flying through the air to land so very nicely again, but I never felt like I was non-physically glued to the track), and I could see other cars without bloody running into them. Another one was some flash game, the name of which eludes me, that very much had collision as a game mechanic. It had massively unique cars from formula-like cars that were super fast, but you basically lost if anyone hit you or vice versa, to a damn truck which was slow but could just ram the opponents to oblivion. It had ramps, jumping through rings, doing tricks in the air for speed boosts... It was great, and a good example of varied cars and how to incorporate car collisions into a racing game without it feeling shit.

I got rambling a bit in the end about other games, but I wanted to mention them, since I have no clue when I'll next play a racing game. I'm trying to steer clear from any aiming for realism at least, since I really don't feel like driving on a 2D track just going left, right, and forward is fun. But Slipstream, I wouldn't recommend.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

As I first saw Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, I thought I misremembered. Bloodstained had... graphics. Real graphics, not the 8-bit era graphics I was seeing here. Well, luckily I was right. Curse of the Moon is a short game made as a stretch goal reward of the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (which I will get around to eventually) Kickstarter, and I had added them both to my backlog as they came out.
Now, I can't say I have any nostalgia for the gaming of the 80s or 90s (possibly because I wasn't alive for most of that time, and was definitely not playing video games), or even that of 10 years past. I think games are becoming better and better thanks to advances in technology, mainly processsing power and tools, but also the amount of resources people put into game developent as a non-niche entertainment branch, and I'm happy to keep playing fresh games. Still, I thought, people are saying it's like an authentic Castlevania knockoff, why not experience it.

It definitely feels true to everything I know about the 8-bit era. From the graphics, to the sounds, to the controls, to how the character is obeying some very weird rules of motion which, under some observation, can be seen as very primitive and simple methods for approximating the physics of (the various parts of) jumping. I've never played (any) Castlevania, but I recognized it, somehow, so make of that what you will.

But ho boy, am I glad I'm not playing these games anymore. Mainly from the aspects of game design and system limitations, we've advanced leaps and bounds. So it's not just the hardware that has gotten better, the developers have too. (That is, if you ignore the lower-end who are producing trash because it's so easy to do these days.)
This devolved into less of a review of the game and more about how games are getting better. Honestly though, that's probably a better topic. This game's short, and has nothing new, literally. If you're getting old and want a childhood nostalgia experience, but for some reason don't want to play one of the actually old games, then, sure, I guess. For everyone else, play something new, from at least the last decade. New games are good, trust me.

Far: Lone Sails

Today's entry is on something that turned out to be a bit less of a game than I expected. I would categorize it under the "walking simulator" genre, even though it might appear to be more of a puzzle/simulation game, but I think calling it either of those would be misleading. You're not walking through the game either, strictly speaking, but Far: Lone Sails definitely has the air of a walking simulator.

The game's very short, lasting between 2-3 hours for the first playthrough, and consists of riding your wind- and engine-powered metal box on wheels through a desolate wasteland of ruins and abandoned technology. You have to manage your ship, picking up fuel, adding it to the engine, keeping the engine running, making sure the wind is in your favor when using your sails, and performing repairs on your ship.
It may sound like a simulation or a tough job, but the hardest part is the platforming you have to do in your cramped ship. There's no real possibility to fail either, so you just keep going until you eventually reach your next "stop". These stops each feature some sort of abandoned machination and a little puzzle you have to solve to progress onwards. Carry a few things, push some buttons, spray some water around - simple stuff. It's just a little something to make you not just watch the game as if it was movie, which it kind of is.

There isn't a lot to really do, and no choices. You complete your series of tasks like every other player before you, and the rest is watching the scenery unfold. Now, the unfolding scenery is nice, and I liked the atmosphere, but I just want something more out of my games than watching the world pass by. It was a bit of a snoozefest, and I'm afraid that without the chore of keeping my ship running and solving the puzzles, I would've fallen asleep listening to the serene soundtrack.

So, from a personal perspective, I can't recommend Far: Lone Sails. However, if you know yourself to be a fan of walking simulators, meditative experiences, or whatever you could classify what I described as, I don't see anything inherently wrong with it and you can give it a whirl for the couple of hours it lasts. But if you're looking for a game to play, this struggles to be categorized as one.

Roguelands

I'm on a streak of old(er) games recently and I just feel like mentioning it every time. This time the 13th oldest game left in my backlog - Roguelands. Either games don't age well, I'm on a bad streak of games right now, or I was just more lax with my picks back in the day. (Probably the latter, as there's actually plenty of great old games.)

So, Roguelands promises you a (potentially multiplayer) action roguelike experience. Tons of weapons, tons of equipment, many different areas to explore, and progression for days! It's probably not technically false, but boy does it fall flat on its face. The equipment diversity isn't really there. There's just stat upgrades for the most part. Despite being promised 15 different clases, combined with an allegiance, character types, and more, it's still just stat differences - no unique abilities or weapons. I didn't play it for too long so it was difficult to see all of what the game had to offer, but it's a huge grind to get much anything, and there's no good reason for that.
The different areas are composed of the same large rectangular blocks with the textures swapped. It's not level design, and it's an insult to procedural generation if it is that. There's some difference in enemies, but most of them are either semi-stationary mindless creatures or floaty things which jerkily move towards you, all in a very similar manner. No destructible terrain, but you can "build" your ship... as if that did anything.
And finally the combat, which is all this game really has going for it in terms of gameplay, is floaty, repetitive, and boring. Stamina? That's never going to run out, why even worry about it, just jump and dash endlessly. The game even tells you that you're not going to get anywhere by running, just dash everywhere. Why even add running in? Health though? Well, at first these guys 1-shot you, and if not you don't regen any and are doomed soon enough. But if you survive that you eventually just become basically unkillable and can regen it at will. There's no semblance of balance.

I'm somewhat upset, because this looked like a good idea a la Terraria or at least Starbound (I'd recommend the former), albeit without the mining and building. But the execution of this is just so sloppy and terrible. It's like they kept adding more and more "content" without stopping to consider if any of it was any good, and then just left it in this seemingly unfinished state, as far as polish is concerned. I hate this kind of development. Quality over quantity, every single time, that's how it should be. So no, I can't possibly recommend Roguelands.

Katamari Damacy Reroll

Straight up classic, this one. All the way from 2004. I don't usually play games this old, but it's a remake of a PS2 game that I've heard significantly much about, so I simply had to try it regardless. It's Katamari Damacy.
It's a game about rolling around a ball, running over items smaller than your ball to attach them to your ball and grow it while avoiding running into things larger than your ball, lest you break your momentum and bits of your ball chip off. There's different levels, each with a starting size, a size goal, a timer, and uh... That's it. That's the game.

I'm not going to lie, I was expecting something a little bit more, but then again, it's literally everything I heard it was. Which is what I just described. Honestly though, it's essentially a 2004 indie game, so it's not all too bad for that. For the most part it's polished and nails the rolling activity. The levels you roll around, the size progression of items, the humorous aspect of what you're doing, and oh, most definitely the soundtrack, are all great. I have to make special mention of the soundtrack because it kept me playing as I was about to leave due to the game not being quite gripping enough. I usually couldn't understand the lyrics, but it had amazing energy.
I can't conclude without mentioning a very significant downside though, which was that the control scheme for the keyboard (and mouse, except there wasn't much mouse support) was terrible. I'm afraid many people exclusively play games with a controller, so they haven't the slightest idea how to make controls for a keyboard. A mouse maps pretty well to an analog stick, but alas, no mouse look. As fluent and rapid control over the katamari was necessary, the terrible control scheme was hugely detrimental to my experience.

I think most of the positive reviews come from people who played the original on the PS2 back in the day, and that's fine. But as a first time player, there isn't much of a game here, to be honest. The shoddy KB&M support doesn't help either. It isn't a long game, and at least I can now say I've played Katamari, but I still wouldn't recommend it for first time players. If you're already familiar with the game then I don't think my opinion is important for you. Still loved the soundtrack though...

The Final Station

Oh boy, oh boy, a game all the way from 2016, from before I even started this blog. It's about the 35th oldest game in my backlog. It's The Final Station! Honestly though, 4 years doesn't seem that long ago anymore, considering how long I've been playing games. If anything, I'm glad most everything left in my backlog is from 2016 and onwards, not older. But on to the game.

The Final Station is an Adventure game, if anything. It consists of hopping onto a train, using what little food and medkits you have to make sure any of your passangers don't die of hunger or blood loss while meddling with some knobs and buttons to keep the train going. And by fiddling I really do mean just pressing a few buttons in different locations every now and then. While you're not doing any of that, you can try to squeeze in some story by listening to (reading) your co-workers on radio for a few sentences of dialogue, listening to (still reading, there's no voices of any kind in this game) your passangers talk to each other, or reading station background information.
The other half of the game is when you arrive at a station, you conveniently have to find a code to unlock your train. (Why lock it in the first place, I will never understand.) Finding this code means running around a few buildings, talking to people, or trying to scrape more lore off of them or the notes on walls. Mostly though, the world has gone to shit and you have to be shooting non-zombies and taking what few survivors there are back to your train. Manage your ammo, click boxes to get supplies, and punch the not-zombies in the guts.

Honestly, when I first started it, I was expecting some sort of a simulation game? Taking care of my passangers, making difficult choices, fixing up my train. Well, that turned out to be trivial, and the majority of time was spent outside the train instead. And no, that part wasn't any deep either. A few enemy types, and just your run-on-the-mill pistol and fist. With limited ammo, each fight was a slog as you had to charge up your fist and wait for it to cool down between punching enemies. (Excuse me, what?) No upgrade system or anything either.
So what I hoped was left was the story? The lore? The atmosphere? Well, the latter more than the former. For better or worse, there were no walls of text. You had to piece together the story from sentences of dialogue and scraps on the walls. Even then it was scarce and loosely connected, with seemingly no storyline or goal. The atmosphere, while nice, couldn't save this game, I'm afraid.

So there you have it. The Final Station is a pretty lackluster Adventure game with a little bit of running and gunning (but mostly waiting for your fists to cool down). While I couldn't point to a better game of this type, I feel like both the idea and execution are lacking. So no, no recommendation. Go find something else entirely to play, this one's no good.

Grim Nights

Grim Nights is a lovely little Managament, RTS, Tower Defense hybrid. It's not too expensive, it's not too long, and it has practically no replayability, but I enjoyed my time with it until I lost halfway through due to unforeseen enemy attack patterns.
The premise is that you have to survive 13 nights of increasingly difficult zombie (and other monster) onslaughts while also building up your town. The zombies approach from the right, your town builds up from the left - it's fairly straightforward. You got a few different resources, a few different buildings, some upgrades to those buildings... Each villager comes with their own speciality (if any), and can be assigned to a job.

There's not a lot to think about nor explore, sadly. Just assign all villagers to gather resources you need as fast as possible, everyone else to expand, while keeping enough troops to defend your base. There's a limit of about three melee warriors before they can't reach the enemy anymore since units don't stack. So basically everything should be poured into archers to mow the enemies down with a rain of arrows. (There are a few exceptions though, one of which managed to end my run, so maybe the balance isn't that off.)
At first the mine system seemed innovative, but it boiled down to just digging out rooms as fast as possible and strip mining all the resources within. Further, the ladder system was god awful due to the units lacking vertical pathfinding. I think perhaps the unit management and control was my largest gripe with the game, followed by the lack of meaningful choices.

Overall, I actually liked playing it. I considered giving it a spot on my list, but... Thinking back on it, it wasn't really that unique in any regard, lacked polish in some areas (though had plenty in others), didn't have content nor choice... How could I even recommend it, much less give it a spot? But still, a partial recommendation for Grim Nights, I guess. I think it's fun, even if not for long.

Masters of Anima

I can't fathom how I've queued up so many RTS games for myself, considering how I tend to dislike them. Feels like every 5th game is an RTS, in disguise or otherwise. Today's personal disappointment is Masters of Anima. Despite not giving it too long of a shot after I figured out it's an RTS, and not something magnificent enough to pique my interest, I can still give a more or less objective description of what it is, and what it maybe does well. The usual treatment then.

Masters of Anima tries to be many things. It's mostly an RTS, I would say, but it mixes in a good amount of ARPG, Story, and Puzzles. (And on a side note, ARPGs aside, I'm rather opposed to all of these in games. Woe is me.)
The meat of the game is summoning different units, sending them to attack different things, or do other things, such as interacting with the environment to shape it. A seasoned RTS player would be alienated and disgusted by the inefficiency of the control scheme of this game, but I don't find it so bad for the more casual type of game it is. The content of the game is nicely shaped to provide incentive to split your troops and have them perform different tasks, much like teaching you the basics of playing an RTS, especially from the viewpoint of a PC-centric player. For what it does, it seems well made at least, so I can't objectively criticize it there.
The ARPG elements come through a personal character you control via the usual WASD movement system, upgrades you can get yourself over the course of the game, and map exploration. Speaking of maps, they are rather large, but overall the game is still level-based.
The story is the usual boring unoriginal tra... I mean, not to my liking. I've a high standard for storytelling in games, and very few games (with actual gameplay) indeed have had stories I would consider passable, let alone good. So make of my opinion what you will. It's got full voice acting though.
And finally, the puzzles are the kind of casual stuff I've come to expect from "puzzle games" these days. They're a time wasting annoyance at worst, but if you consider enemy attack patterns and how to counter them a puzzle, then maybe there are redeeming puzzle aspects to this game after all.

So overall, Masters of Anima does two things wrong. More importantly, it's of a type of game I don't like. More seriously, it tries to be multiple games, the inefficiency of which I've explained many times. It's not a good RTS, it's not a good ARPG, it doesn't have a good story, and it doesn't have good puzzles. As a hybrid, I even dare say it does well, but I also dare say that most people don't care about hybrids. They want a solid experience in their selected genre, not a mediocre one in multiple ones. So that's an objective reason to not recommend it, but do keep in mind that I mainly just don't like these genres.

Dungreed

Entering Dungreed, I was told it's a worse version of Shovel Knight, which I remember playing at some point in the rather distant past. For whatever reason, it didn't stick with me, so I didn't have the highest hopes for Dungreed either, but in I went.

Dungreed is a sidescrolling room-based dungeon crawler. It features about six floors of content worth 20-30 minutes each, plus a bossfight for each floor, and then a little extra. Of course dying means going back to the beginning, so unless you're really good, the game will last longer than 3 hours until first completion. But 6 hours? 10 hours? That depends on you.
You begin each run with a basic sword. By exploring the dungeon, you can find other weapons, both melee and ranged, as well as some other equipment. And as is tradition, all of that is lost when you die. What you keep is experience, any money you didn't spend in the dungeon (up to a cap), and any equipment you unlocked or villagers you saved. The saved villagers can offer you upgrades, which break all of what I told you in small ways.

It's a solid formula, and it is evident the game has been polished and made with care. The upgrade options are varied, there's a healthy amount of RNG... The weapon variety is perhaps the strongest aspect of them all, providing a lot replayability as you experiment with different weapons.
The pixel art is solid and the soundtrack ranges from mediocre to pretty damn good on some tracks.
But it's also missing a lot. Mostly, it's just short on content and balance. The game's over fairly quickly, but even before it ends, you can probably see most of the room layouts multiple times, most enemies to the point of boredom, and a ton of useless equipment. On the balance side, overall the game is far too easy for my tastes, with no adjustable difficulty. Multiple pieces of equipment or certain strategies which I don't want to spoil allow you to just facetank or rush through everything. Despite the fun combat, it's not a challenge.

All in all, Dungreed offers a short but polished action roguelike experience, probably enjoyable by all fans of the genre, but more so by the more casual-inclined. I feel it had the potential to be something much greater had it introduced more content, more variety, and more options and challenge. As it stands now though, it was fun, I liked playing it to first completion, but I wouldn't play it again or try to 100% it. As such, a slot on my favorite games' list, albeit below the line.

Ghost of a Tale

Ghost of a Tale is a Stealth Adventure game (and very far from an Action RPG, as it sells itself for some reason) where you play as a mouse locked in a jail looking for your wife and a way out, or something. There's a lot of stuff to pick up and interact with, a lot of text to read if you care to look at items, talk to characters, and read papers you find, and a lot of running around looking for a way to progress. Except you have to be quiet so you're not detected and so you're more sneaking than running.

But what I found there wasn't a lot to do were meaningful things. I failed to find any sort of enjoyment in picking up items and running around doing whatever I needed to do. While I can't say that it was always easy and obvious what I had to do next, I never felt like I was solving a puzzle, but more like I was playing a guessing game. It wasn't challenging, it wasn't humorous, it wasn't fun. Neither was the story I read any captivating, but my lukewarm attitude towards story-based games is nothing new. What RPG elements remained in terms of equipment and stats were of no significant point either.

To conclude, a short review for a short attempt. I just couldn't bring myself to play it any longer, as there wasn't so much as a single aspect of the game I was enjoying. Combine that with the game being... not badly, but amateurishly made, and you might understand why it couldn't captivate me. I wouldn't recommend it, but maybe some people are bigger fans of mediocre stealth and story games.

Golem Gates

Sorry for being gone for a bit over two months. Feels like a whole year, to be honest. Between work and some other stuff, I haven't really found the time to be playing new games, but I did manage to squeeze in an RTS by the name of Golem Gates. It didn't take too long, because it wasn't very good.

Golem Gates tries to be original by combining deckbuilding with an RTS. Before a skirmish, you assemble your deck, which can consist of various squads of units, towers, spells, and utility cards. You draw your starting hand, optionally mulligan some, then draw another card at regular intervals as the game progresses. Cards can be played in locations you can see using energy, which recharges over time, and faster with more points controlled. The rest plays out like a typical RTS, where you move your units around and fight the enemy who is doing the same.

Now, a fair disclaimer that I still don't like RTS games (which of course brings into question why I played this in the first place), but regardless of that, I found Golem Gates to be pretty weak on the RTS side. It has basic RTS features, but lacks any kind of semi-intelligent unit AI, forcing you to micromanage all your units actions. (Or just attack move over the enemies. Wasn't any difficult as far as I got.) Now, with the maps as small and devoid of things to do as they are, the micromanagement isn't that big of a problem, but then again, the lack of things to do is. The deckbuilding aspect is weak as well, as it doesn't really tie into the gameplay, only the metagame.

Overall, Golem Gates does just the bare minimum to be called a "deckbuilding RTS", but doesn't really have any redeeming qualities, despite the graphics which are turned up to 150%. So, really, most any decent deckbuilder or RTS will beat this game fairly easily. And if you want a similar but better game, I remember EA had something with pretty much the same premise but much better execution. It was shut down, but is now a fan-run F2P game. Just, don't play Golem Gates - it's not a good game by any measure.

Aegis Defenders

I briefly tried Aegis Defenders. It describes itself as an action-platformer with tower defense combat, but in reality, it's just a side-view action tower defense game. Calling it a platformer would be doing any decent platformers a disservice.
Generally the game centers around defending a... thing from enemies that swarm you from the edges of the map. Standard tower defense stuff. The catch is that you actually control a group of characters, each of whom has their own towers or tower-like things. Run around, whack resources to gather them and then... build with them. Standard stuff, I said. Different characters also have different attacks and you can only control one at a time. Not controlling a character leaves them to do their default thing, such as repairing turrets, standing still where they were. Different characters (and their buildings) are also effective against different enemies, and there's some shop system between levels.

While the characters and platforming were probably supposed to make it unique, I actually disliked the game more than a run-on-the-mill tower defense. This kind of switching characters, fighting on my own, gathering resources... it detracted from the main experience, which was supposed to be a tower defense. Another game falling for the common blunder of trying to do too many things without even getting one of them right. Even if it was just the tower defense bit, it still wasn't very inspired or interesting.
The only moderate saving grace might have been the split-screen co-op, but I didn't have anyone to play with at the moment. More players means less time managing characters, more playing, and of course the standard "everything's better with a friend", but even then I have my doubts it would have had enough of an impact on this game. It just wasn't that good.

In brief: A rather boring tower defense further hindered by other, even less interesting, aspects of gameplay. If you got a friend in the same room to play with, then maybe it's enjoyable for a few hours, but I wouldn't recommend it alone.

Ash of Gods: Redemption

I played a little bit of Ash of Gods despite its not-so-great reviews. A lot of people described it as a worse version of The Banner Saga, which I also played some time ago, but didn't quite find to my liking. They're both these grid-and-turn-based RPGs with a rather heavy focus on story.

So apparently the Reaper has come to kill everyone, and has the power to just make people drop dead in a 10 mile radius or something. However, he doesn't kill some people for some reason and instead lets lots of criminals live and mind-controls them to kill these people for him. Didn't make much sense to me. Might be the writing quality, which is... Well, let's just say the writing feels more like a river of cobblestones than water.

From the gameplay side, things aren't looking much brighter. I found the character upgrade and item system quite terrible.
Abilities are also often borderline bad. "Do you wish to deal 250% damage to your health and 100% damage to your energy in return for 250% damage to the enemy?" "Uh, no thanks, I'll just block until the enemy kills themselves with their abilities that cost more than they deal damage."
There are also cards (single use per combat spells), which are often weaker than a character's action, but still cost a turn. Oh, and speaking of turns, someone decided that if you're outnumbered, you can act more. You can't act again with a character until you've acted with everyone in your party. So while 5 weak vs 1 strong should intuitively feel kind of fair, you'll actually get slaughtered as your units scramble to get in range, while the strong guy hammers down your units one-by-one while they can't do anything cause they already acted. Throw in the fact that less units go through rounds faster, which gives you access to stronger spells and... I'm rambling, but you can see I'm not exactly a fan.

So there's not much to say. Only positive thing is that the premise of the story seemed interesting, and the art's not bad, but the story itself, and most importantly the gameplay, are just shit. Don't play it, I don't recommend it. Go find another grid-based RPG if you wish, there's surely better ones out there.

Iconoclasts

Back with another Metroidvania by the name of Iconoclasts. It's not a secret I've a bit of a soft spot for these kinds of games but regardless, I think it held up very well.

Iconoclasts is pretty standard. You run around the world, progress the story, do some platforming, do some combat, upgrade your abilities and weapons in smaller and larger ways...
Your main tool is a wrench, which is the central unique item in this game. It can be used to operate various doors, sliding and spinning platforms, but also as a movement tool, letting you swing on hanging nuts, or ride electric lines (don't try these at home). It also acts as a melee weapon alongside the three guns you unlock as you play.
There's a nice variety of enemies, but they're nothing fancy. It's usually more of a puzzle-thing, figuring out how to beat an enemy, than one of skill. This goes double for bosses, which are, in contrast, definitely very fancy and make up a sizable portion of the game. The puzzle theme is permeating, and environment/platforming puzzles make up another sizable portion. Overall, maybe Iconoclasts is even a bit more of a puzzle platformer than a Metroidvania. While there is backtracking, a lot of it is optional or devoid of much action, and the level structure is quite linear.
Upgrades are mostly the mandatory wrench and gun upgrades you need to progress, but also some mostly inconsequential "Tweaks" you can craft from resources you find. (Oh, but do get the one that lets you spin your wrench longer, you'll thank me later.)

The bosses and puzzles were of a nice difficulty. On one hand, nothing special, on the other, I rarely got any averse feelings towards them - they were well made, and progressed at a steady pace. One of the most enjoyable things about the gameplay was how, when you went back to content you had already completed, going through it was a breeze. I could really look back on my journey and feel how it was not just my character who had progressed, but I as well.
From other aspects - music was pleasant, pixel art was really good, and the story was genuinely interesting. The ending was a bit anticlimactic, maybe rushed? It definitely left many questions in the air, but didn't really hurt the overall story.

Overall, definitely recommended and it earned a high place on my list. Superb job for a mostly solo project. Play it for the puzzles and a feeling of mastery. Play it for the lovely atmosphere, characters, and story.