Muse Dash

While it's a known fact that I'm not big on rhythm games, I simply had to try Muse Dash as the second most popular rhythm game on Steam (and the most popular in the last decade). I'm not really sure what I expected, but I don't really see what the hype is about.

I didn't play for very long, but it seems to me that Muse Dash is a simple take on the rhythm game genre, offering only 2 buttons to press or hold. You can also choose your character, which will give you some modifier to either make the game easier, or to get a better score.
Instead, the game puts a lot more weight on the aesthetics. Everything has a very cutesy and colorful anime aesthetic, and different levels even have different designs for "notes" you have to hit.
And finally, there is quite the staggering amount of music. Must be hundreds of tracks, and even I recognized many popular ones. They're all (or at least mostly) by Asian arists.

In some sense, I understand. If you're a fan of the anime aesthetic and love upbeat tracks of that category, then there's quite a lot here. But personally, while I fit those criteria, I still don't care for the game. It's just, for a rhythm game, it's just about the most basic one I've seen. And it even has annoying button mashing segments. I'd probably listen to many of these tracks while doing something else (if I didn't already have plenty to listen to), but tapping two buttons really doesn't increase my enjoyment here.

But don't take me too seriously. Rhythm games just aren't for me, and so I can't personally recommend the game. But you'll probably know if you're the kind of person to like this kind of game, so don't let me stop you.

Soulestination

At first glance, Soulestination gives off the vibe of an experimental RPGMaker JRPG. It might really be an RPGMaker game, I can't quite tell, but it's actually from China. This can be felt from the poor English translation. Luckily, this is a game-game, so not much reading is needed. Evidently, it's a "magic tower" game, which is a genre I had never heard of, but which should be much more popular in China. Imagine, if you will, those annoying mobile game ads where you have to choose which enemy to attack next, with each enemy having their power level below them. Their power level is compared against yours, and the higher one wins. Except it's a lot more complicated than that, turning what I thought was an RPG into a puzzle game. Allow me to explain.

Leaving aside special powers, each unit, including yourself, has HP, attack, and defense (you also have shields). Each turn, the attacker deals their attack in damage, reduced by the defender's defense. Units alternate their attacks until a winner is left standing. It's entirely deterministic, and for simplicity, the damage a unit would deal to you is listed as their "power". But the map contains a lot of power-ups for your attack and defense (and shields), as well as HP potions, which just stack your HP without limit. Each enemy also increases your "soul", giving you +1% attack and defense until you reach a cap, doubling the bonus for a single fight, resetting to 1, and increasing the cap. This creates a kind of cyclic power-up power-down loop.
The question the game asks you is what is the correct order to fight the monsters in order to take little enough damage to make it through everything? Do you break through difficult enemies right away to get your permanent stat upgrades stored behind them as soon as possible, or do you come back later so that they would not deal as much damage to you? Maybe you spend some consumables to bypass the fight? As someone very eloquently put it - it deconstructs an RPG with finite resources as a sequence of battles and item gathering with deterministic consequences.

Despite the poor translation and rather rough controls, basic UI, and everything else commonly associated with the lack of "budget", I was initially extremely interested in this game as a puzzle game. I tried the game on Hard difficulty, very carefully considering and calculating my path through the enemies. Did I mention you can infinitely use an undo button? I sure used that a lot. But time and again I hit a wall that I couldn't seem to get past by going back just 2, 5, or even 10 fights and trying another way. I soon grew frustrated at my inability to make progress. Sure, to an extent, this is what's called a "skill issue", but I also didn't ever have foresight into future rooms, which was a tad frustrating. Whatever the reason, it was too hard, so I lowered the difficulty to Normal. But now, another problem arose - it was too easy. Sure, I could keep meticulously planning the most optimal route through the game, but there was no longer any point.
I realized the game had an inherent snowball effect, where falling behind only made it easier to fall even further behind, and getting ahead only made it easier to get even further ahead. In the end, I was unable to find an appropriate level of challenge in the puzzle portion of the game, and sadly the rest of the gameplay or story elements were not interesting enough to keep me playing.

A bit of a shame, considering I was initially stricken with Soulestination. If there are any super-hard puzzle fans out there, then I would definitely recommend trying this game in Hard mode. I would only recommend it as a puzzle game, even on easier difficulties, not as an RPG, because that part doesn't seem nearly interesting enough. You can try the free demo and see if you manage to find an appropriate amount of difficulty. I hear the later levels get more and more creative with their level design and bossfights, assuming you're not grossly overpowered for them. Overall, this gets a partial recommendation from me.

The Riftbreaker

I was lured into playing The Riftbreaker by images and videos of massive hordes attacking a well-defended base. Mowing enemies down by the hundreds, thousands even, looks really cool, I have to admit. The same can be said for the overall art style of this game. Everything looks high-fidelity, and so it's really quite visually attractive. Sadly, behind the glossy exterior, there is little substance to be found.

Riftbreaker can be described as a base building tower defense game. Your goal is to defend your base from attacks while gathering resources, researching new technologies, and completing some objectives. While some people draw parallels with Factorio, the factory elements here are barely stronger than in your average RTS, which I would say this game more resembles. There is barely any logistics to speak of, with the exception of electricity and liquids, and production chains are nonexistant. The difficulty of the game comes from having insufficient resource income and free room. While the map has plenty of resources and room, defending your base (or multiple bases) becomes increasingly difficult as it gets larger. There's a wide variety of towers and weapons you can equip on your mech, which is your most powerful unit. Enemies can be resistant to a damage type, or can appear solo or in swarms, so different damage type, AoE, and single target weapons may all be desirable.

But as mentioned, it's pretty shallow. If you're missing a resource, you just put down another factory that makes it. No logistics means you can just put most things anywhere you have room. There is no point to using different tower compositions at the different parts of the base, so everywhere gets the same towers. How many towers? How much to expand? As much as you can. Really, if anything, the interesting part of the game is time pressure, again, like in an RTS, not strategy elements like I would expect from a base building or tower defense game, and I'm not a fan of this.

Overall, it's not exactly a bad game. The action part is well done and looks cool, which may be sufficient for fans of that. But I think that if you came looking for a good tower defense, or "Factorio with a larger emphasis on base defense", you will be sorely disappointed. Personally, I didn't like it, and I wouldn't recommend it.

Old School Musical

Old School Musical is a rhythm game from 2018, parodying retro games from, well, I'm not 100% sure, but probably before the turn of the millenium.
Gameplay-wise, the controls are simple, even for a rhythm game. There are 4 buttons, and you have to either tap or hold the buttons as the notes approach. I must say I generally prefer it when the notes approach from the same direction, not from 4 different directions like they do here, but it's a minor complaint. The screen will occasionally be occluded, adding to the difficulty of the game.
Story-wise. Well, I don't know what much to say about the overarching story, but it's a comedy of two brothers being transported between different retro game worlds and playing out a short parody segment in each world. Most of the action happens in the background as you're playing the rhythm game, which is a bit of a shame, as you don't really have time to look away from the notes. It doesn't really make the game worse, but it's just a bit sad to see the effort put into the background action go to waste.

As for what I think about it... It's okay, I guess? From a game standpoint, it doesn't do anything unique, so I can't really recommend it from that. If you're a big fan of retro games, then maybe it'll provide entertainment seeing those games represented. The action in the background is the best part of the "story", but you don't really get to look at it much.
Overall, it's not bad. If you're looking for another rhythm game to play, and like the thematic of this one, go ahead. I'm still not a fan of rhythm games, so I didn't like it myself.

Warborne Above Ashes

It's no secret I'm always on the lookout for any new MMO that isn't just a singleplayer RPG with added netcode. So much so that I'm willing to give almost anything a try. It is a bit of a sad state of affairs that Warborne Above Ashes is possibly the best such MMO to release in recent years, even though I can't in good conscience say it's even a good game.

Warborne prides itself as a 24/7 PvP MMO. Open world, dynamic battles, no story. From the way it describes itself it sounds more like Planetside, except with top-down MOBA-esque combat, but the reality isn't quite there.
There is definitely a large PvP presence in the game, and indeed you may be attacked anywhere on the map, but that's rarely actually the case. Most of the game is PvE, clearing various camps, loose enemies, bosses, or dungeons. That's not all the possibilities, and there's a ton of different content. It's actually quite amazing they have so much at launch. The reason this is most of the content is because this is the way you earn exp, levels, and most importantly, resources. While PvP can theoretically give much more of all of those, then in reality there has to be a losing and a winning side. The losers don't get much exp, and actually get some of their hard-earned equipment looted by the winners, forcing them to go back to PvE to re-earn that equipment. Not to mention you respawn at your base which is usually not next to where you died.

While slightly misleading, that's not the problem. PvE is fine. There are some questionable choices. Like your weapon deciding 3 of your skills and 1 passive, while your drifter (hero, character, whatever you call it) only deciding 1 skill and passive, which really kills the fantasy of "playing a character". Some of the mechanics are also awkward. Like the basic attack (which for some reason is your main source of damage, even on casters) stops attacking every time you move, forcing you to click it again. But these are not core gameplay issues. I think the core gameplay is fine, and would make for a great game, but there are just so many quality of life of problems. Were it just that, I could be apologetic, and say "oh, it just launched, they'll fix it", but I played the playtest half a year ago, and virtually nothing has changed. I'm not sure where they got the resources to make so much content in the first place but then not fix anything in half a year, and that makes me worried if they ever will. There is definitely potential here, and I believe every problem they have is relatively easily fixable, but if they won't do it, then it will remain a bad game.

But let's go through some of these problems and explore things you can do in the game while we're at it.

• I'm in Europe, and they enthusiastically launched 3 servers for it. This is a problem because 1 server got really full, and the remaining 2 had only a fraction of the players. Had they dynamically opened up a new server as the first filled, they would have ended up with one really full, and one reasonably full server, but now two are ghost towns while the first is...
• The first is so full that some factions don't have room anymore (more on that later), and all the content in the beginner areas worth doing is completed. Loot is shared, which is good, but that means you have 50 people swarming a small camp, 3 minutes of travel and waiting time, 15 seconds of combat, and everyone gets pennies. The day-by-day increasing level cap does help with players, who have more time, not leaving everyone else in the dust, but it locks half the map out for the first ~20% of the season.
• There is passive mining. Your income depends on where you place your base (which can be attacked). This would be a great idea of encouraging risk vs reward, but for some reason the areas don't always get more rewarding as they become more dangerous. Not just that, there just isn't enough room for everyone who wants to get a spot in those areas. This gets so bad people will grief their own team by blocking the good spots with other buildings before a base can be placed there, and it's literally a fraction of a second before you lose a spot because someone got ahead of you, and now you're stuck with worse passive income (of a very important resource) for the whole season. This is both bad map design and unnecessary inter-faction friction.
• Player numbers decide who wins and who loses. Both in small battles and the overall season. At the small scale, while groups of 10+ will show up on the minimap, allowing anyone to avoid zergs, the common friend group of 4-6 people will still get unexpectedly run over by 8-9 people cheesing the radar system. It's just generally difficult to practice PvP anyways, since losing takes such a big toll on you. So it's really unfriendly towards casual players unless you are only running around in zergs. And that's the other problem - that most people are basically not allowed agency. With such a focus on numbers, a smaller warband (guild) just can't compete with the 300-person ones claiming the whole map. You'll either be a disposable pawn to a zerg, or you'll lose out on rewards from being in a successful group. Individual performance just isn't rewarded that much. Add to that faction hopping to move to the winning side, and the end of a season is ruined too.

Honestly, I've prattled on enough. There are more problems to highlight, more stuff to talk about, but you get the picture. The combat is fine, not great. The core ideas in the game are good. But there are so many little problems that mount up to form this huge pile of garbage that it stinks up the whole game. And worst of all, they show no signs of resolving those problems. I will probably check back in a month or so to see how many people stick around for the next season, as well as if they're doing anything to clean up the game now that it's launched. I might return to play the game if they do, but as it stands now, I'm not hopeful and as such can't recommend the game, even if you like this genre.

Astroneer

I think Astroneer was the oldest game still on my wishlist, at almost 9 years old. I even had an early blog post talking about it, back when I was still making weekly posts about whatever. Well, I finally got around to it. Sort of.

I'm going to keep this "review" short. I didn't effectively play the game. I've had a very poor run, quite disliking every "open world survival craft" game I've tried with the exception of Terraria, and I can assume that's because that was more combat and less crafting oriented. So I already went in, not expecting anything.
The problem is that when you're already thinking that you might not be in it for the long haul, the worst thing they can do is make getting into it be a chore. And that's exactly what they did. The main manu was already difficult to figure out, opting for half-cryptic icons instead of text, but starting a new, default game, was easy enough. Now, I would think that I don't care much for tutorials, but Astroneer is sorely lacking one. They had some basic introductory missions telling you what to do, but not how to do it. I need a resource or an item. Where do I get it? No idea. The inventory system was trying to be immersive with things slotting into your backpack, but gosh was it difficult to understand what was where, and the amount of actions needed to pick up a single thing was far too many. Worst of all was the camera, which did not follow your mouse, but had to be explicitly positioned. For a game in this genre, where I need to build and connect things, this too was too many actions just to be able to see the areas I wanted to interact with.

After about an hour, I was thoroughly angry with how difficult it was to get anything done, so I just quit. I don't really know what most of the crafting, gathering, and exploration was going to be like, but I can't imagine it would've outweighed the terrible experience I was going to have getting through it. Many negative reviews apparently touch on this, but I'm amazed that it's not a problem for more people. So, yeah, a rough starting experience is why I don't want to play it. It's still one of the highest rated survival crafting games though, so if you like the genre, give it a try. If the UI and controls haven't put you off after an hour, it'll probably suit you just fine.

SNKRX

I don't remember why I decided to put SNKRX on my "anticipated" games list. It's a nice action roguelike... shooter. Almost like a survivors-like, now that I think about it, but since it's from before the genre got popular, it doesn't really feel like it.
It's a very simple and minimalistic game - you buy from a selection of 3 characters, they get added to your character snake, and then automatically cast their ability whenever they can. Getting duplicates makes a single character stronger, while getting different characters of the same class makes every character in the class stronger (much like in auto-battlers). You then proceed to control your snake of units on a small arena, killing spawning waves of enemies. Every several levels you also get to choose a passive upgrade.

I think the general description of it doesn't sound too exciting. On paper, it is pretty generic, and even not on paper, it's not a deep game or one with a lot of content. In fact, you will probably complete your first run in an hour or so, and by then you will have seen all the game mechanics. For some, that might be a place to stop, and I couldn't fault them for not thinking this game to be good enough in that case. From there, each next completed run makes the enemies stronger, but also increases your maximum snake size by 1. For me, I found the core game mechanics to be so good, so well polished, I spent around 18 hours on it, getting all the achievements.

Personally, I would definitely recommend it, as I even put it on my favorite games of all time list, although at not a high position. The lack of content and ambition in wanting to make a larger game is definitely the biggest factor holding this back from really being great. Still, if the idea of Snake + TFT sounds good and you like action roguelikes, give it a try. You can probably complete it and still have plenty of time for a refund if you don't feel like completing it 10 more times like I did.

Niche - a genetics survival game

I remember winning Niche as a "special" prize in a short game development contest because we made a game that involved breeding rabbits with some amount of genetics attached. It's one of the oldest games still on my backlog. I was already looking through Steam games back in 2016 when this released and had initially skipped over it, as it didn't seem like the type of game I'd enjoy. But after getting it for free, I figured I might as well try it, as the review score wasn't so bad.

Well, nearly a decade later, I did try it, and I should have stuck to my original assessment that the game wasn't for me. Niche is about controlling a pack of animals, traveling from island to island, each with its own ways of getting by, and encountering new animals along the way that you can breed with. Animals die of old age quite quickly, so not only do you have to spend time gathering food, you also have to spend time producing offspring. These offsprings inherit (about a dozen out of several dozen possible) genes from their parents, and this shapes both their apperance and capabilities. Some genes may be better for some tasks and getting by on some islands, but as you have to keep moving forward, you have to keep evolving. Also inbreeding generally kills you rather fast, but there often isn't a large selection of suitable mates.

While the genetic system is well-developed and could be used to make something interesting, the rest of the game is really boring. There are basically no animations and the whole game is just clicking on tiles to do stuff. A lot of clicking, especially as your pack gets bigger. You're never really making exciting decisions, nor making meaningful progress towards some genetic perfection. You're just getting by.
I could understand that maybe fans of this genetics-based gameplay find something here, but if you're not here for that feature alone, then I really can't recommend it.

Three Fairies' Hoppin' Flappin' Great Journey!

While the reviews for Three Fairies' Hoppin' Flappin' Great Journey! were less than good, I saw something unique in this game. At first glance, it looks just like a retro turn-based RPG. Pixel art graphics, units take turns choosing actions, choosing targets... The usual. But it's not quite turn-based. There is a timer running for each character at all times, and you can only select your action once the timer has finished. Of course, just because you're selecting your action, doesn't mean the enemies will wait for you. You'll quickly fall behind, as the enemy just manages to think instantaneously and keep attacking, while you're fidgeting around in the menus.
But that's where the automated tactics system comes in. You can use building blocks to make a decision tree on which action each character should take as their turn comes. This puts you on equal footing with enemies, who evidently do the same. Not only that, it also dramatically speeds up combat and eliminates the tedious repetition.

Honestly, this sounds great on paper, and I would probably love to play a well-made game with such a system. Sadly, this game is not well-made. It has a lot of spirit in it. A lot of innovation and rarely seen mechanics. And I love all that. But it's not well-made.
The most obvious issue is the translation. While you're not forced to read too much story, it is unskippable, and the translation is far worse than any current automated tools can manage. Half the things said are gibberish, and you can read as much from what they're saying as from their facial expressions. So following along in the story is quite arduous.
Secondly, the menu navigation. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just the menus, but the automation system also has to be built on a grid, and doing so with only arrow keys and a select and back button is an absolute nightmare. This is aggravated by not being able to just save as many tactics as you want (some options for that do come, but it's not enough and quality-of-life shouldn't be an in-game unlock, no matter how novel the idea is).
And thirdly, the automation system isn't deep enough. I know making it be straight up programming would be too daunting, but it at least needs input fields instead of 7 different options duplicated for self, enemy, and friendly HP, to name one example. Conditionals also don't offer enough freedom to optimally use your characters. Sure, this makes it a puzzle to design a good system within the working limits, but the game clearly expects you to change your tactics around regularly, and doing so with the aforementioned painful menu system is not fun.
There's other small issues as well, like missing drop tables, but they weren't integral to me dropping the game.

Overall, I had some really fun moments discovering new systems and watching my dumb team of fairies turn a losing fight around without any input from me. I would again say that I love the idea of the game, and would play something like it, but just... not it itself. So, I wouldn't recommend it myself, but if you have the patience to deal with the three problems I listed, then you have yourself a 50+ hour RPG with very unique mechanics. I certainly haven't played anything like it, so I couldn't recommend any alternatives. I hope more games like this get made.

Vagrus - The Riven Realms

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a narrative-heavy RPG about trading and surviving in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. You lead a caravan of people from city to city, encountering events along the way and managing your supplies, morale, and other indicators. There are a lot and lot of stats and knobs to turn for both your entire caravan as well as individual, more important members of it, yourself included. Death and disaster are ever-present, and there will be a lot of setbacks.

The game is focused significantly more on making decisions than fighting battles. In fact, the combat system is rather small and boring. While I definitely wouldn't call the decision-making side of the game small, I would still call it boring. Behind the large complexity of things to do, there doesn't seem to be a lot depth to it all. And this ties back to the game being heavily focused on the narrative, not the gameplay. From a story point of view, there are definitely a lot of different options to choose from, especially when it comes to the frequent and lengthy dialogue.

While reading everything is not necessary, I'm afraid it's the main virtue this game has. The worldbuilding is good, and I personally don't dislike the writing, but I can't say that at least the beginning of the overall story gripped me. Definitely not enough to keep me from leaving, but less picky people might enjoy it, especially on easy mode. But this is still a game, not a choose-your-own-adventure book, so much of the time is not spent on reading, but making these choices, which I found quite menial.

In the end, I don't like this kind of game. I'm pretty sure I could find many books in a similar setting with better writing and less forced interruptions to have to make decisions I don't care for. If you take out all the story, all the decisions you might make for roleplaying purposes, and just leave cold hard strategy, there isn't much to this game. A lot of boring decisions, leading to boring events. I think that even among games that try to blend worldbuilding, storytelling, and RPG / management elements, there are better options out there, so I can not recommend playing Vagrus.

ElecHead

ElecHead is a nice little puzzle platformer with one core game mechanic, and a lot of creativity around that core mechanic to build many interesting puzzles.
The rule is simple - anything connected to your head is supplied with electricity. This includes conditional platforms, elevators, traps, and even yourself, as you can throw your head to power things otherwise out of reach, or make sure you can cross certain areas without activating them.

There isn't really much to say. The game uses its one mechanic very well and manages to create new scenarios over and over again, letting you use old knowledge as well as figure out new ways to solve the puzzles given to you. The caveat is that it's short, at maybe only 3 hours, depending on how many collectibles you want to get. It's rather linear, but not entirely so, so missing a map is a bit of a bummer. Other than that, I have nothing bad to say about the game. It does what it set out to do incredibly well, even if what it set out to do isn't very ambitious. It reminds me a bit of VVVVVV, but not quite as good or long.

Overall, I think it's a worthwhile game for any puzzle platformer fans, even if it's a bit short. I'm not one of those people, so I can't personally recommend it, but I have to acknowledge that objectively speaking, it's pretty good.

Druidstone

Druidstone is another game that probably wouldn't live up to my wishlist standards today, but it did in 2019, and so here I am suffering for my past decisions.

I joke. It's not that bad. It advertises itself as a turn-based RPG or strategy game. It's not entirely wrong but I'm quite sure that most RPG or strategy enjoyers would not enjoy this game for those aspects. You control a small party and go through a series of missions, each requiring you to fulfill some objective and probably kill some enemies in the process.
The best part is that the levels are very handcrafted, and designed less like one would design an RPG, and more like one would design a puzzle game. You are expected to spend a lot time contemplating how to make your move, how the enemies are going to move, and how to beat the turn limit that most missions are on while also fulfilling as many bonus objectives as possible. There is a bit of power scaling through upgrading your abilities and passives, but at the core of it, none of your characters really change. This is important to keep the challenge of the puzzles, but this would also put off any RPG enjoyers.

While I was kind of expecting an RPG, I wouldn't even mind if this was a well-crafted strategy puzzle game, but it falls short. I find a lot of the character abilities bland, but even worse, I can't predict what enemies are doing. For an RPG, this would be fine, but for a puzzle game, I need to know ahead of time what the enemy can do against me, so I could plan for it. As it stands now, I have to complete each mission at least twice. Once to know what all the enemies do and what all the timed events and spawns are, and the other time to actually plan around them (if I still remember them accurately). This really does not fulfill the fantasy of being a brilliant strategist.

Overall, between low production values, boring combat options, and somehow managing to disappoint both RPG and puzzle game fans with their combat design, I don't really see any reason to recommend this. Whether you're looking for a turn-based tactics game or an RPG, there are many better options out there.

Dark Devotion

I'm gonna be brutal, it's been a while since I've played something as bad as Dark Devotion. The "Mostly Positive" reviews should have been a giveaway, but I decided to give it a try regardless.
I'm gonna be honest, I got less than 15 minutes into the game. And you may ask how I dare review the game based on such a short time, but I can confidently say that this is enough, based on how bad just about every aspect I experienced was.

So what are the problems I experienced during those 15 minutes? I can't rebind my controls, and the default ones are questionable at times. (R to pick things up? Why?) You can't really move backwards most of the time, just from one room to the next, which makes it a terribly linear experience. Might be fine, but not what I expected. Apparently there are platforming elements in the game, but there is no jump button? Even if there wasn't any focus on platforming, not letting me jump is a sin in a 2D sidescroller. The animations I encountered were kind of basic. I didn't even understand two of the times that an enemy had attacked me, but I had lost life. I had to crouch every time I wanted to pick something up. My bow could not be aimed. Stepping on/off a platform caused my character to rapidly jerk up and down.
It's just... everything gave off vibes that this was like a student project with cut corners and thoroughly amateur design and implementations.

I've already spent more time writing this than playing the game, so it's time to stop. There are so many more Souls-likes (if this qualifies for that title), and even 2D sidescrolling Souls-likes, that are available and better than this, that there is no reason to experience this. "Mostly Positive" isn't a high rating, but honestly, I feel even that might be generous given the review count and how bad it is.

Core Keeper

Core Keeper is a newer game I picked up because it got pretty decently popular at launch and in general received good feedback about being like 50% Terraria with a bunch of ideas from other great games mixed in, and because I finally figured out a way for my friends to get to play it.

As mentioned, Core Keeper definitely takes the most inspiration from Terraria, but is top-down instead of side-scrolling. It is a sort of survival crafting game, where you find higher and higher tiers of resources in the world and use them to craft better and better equipment and tools that let you tackle harder and harder challenges. It looks great, the combat is pretty fun, and there's a lot of content with several tiers of bosses and optional minibosses. Progression happens both through getting better gear, as well as leveling up your skills by using them and further specializing through a mini skill tree for each skill. About half the skills are for different combat styles, and the others are for mining, fishing, farming, cooking, etc. It starts off great, and on paper it is great, but the more I play it, the more I find things that annoy me.

I think the first thing that stuck out to me was how little this game cares for the environment and what you've built. To a degree, this is also true in Terraria, with end-game tools prioritizing reckless mining, leaving huge holes everywhere, it's much worse here. Many enemies and your attacks may destroy terrain. While this is immersive in terms of combat and seeing enemies tunneling along, it really sucks when enemies find their way into your base and destroy everything you've built and all your neatly organized chests, and also leaves the world rather ugly elsewhere with there just being progressively fewer and fewer walls to be found anywhere.
Secondly, I think this commits the same sin as many other survival games that want to have decoration options. It lets you find those decorations out in the world instead of letting you craft them. It's fine for rare decorations, but my inventory instantly gets full with all this junk as I explore. If I want to enjoy exploration, I have to delete all of it, leaving me with nothing to decorate my base with. If I bring it all with me, I also have to have tens and tens of chests just for these decorations. Aside from decorations, far too many other items are also found through drops, and in general inventory space and managing where everything goes is not thought through and a terrible experience.
And finally, just in general, Core Keeper tries to do too much. It picks these little mechanics from different games but fails to incorporate them properly into the core gameplay. There is automated mining and conveyor belts, but not enough tools to actually automate doing anything else. Farming works for plants, but there isn't much to do with them, because the other half of the food or potions you can make with them requires too much work from random fish drops or seeking out certain enemies. NPC housing is terribly undercooked, with no indication on how it even works, and you can just chuck them all into a single room with 10 beds in it. And there's many more cases like it.

I just think Core Keeper bit off more than it could chew and released without polishing all of its mechanics and how they influence each other. And I don't think it will ever get around to polishing everything. If you just want another Terraria that's pretty much worse in every single aspect, Core Keeper is still a fine game, because even at being only a fraction of what Terraria is, Terraria is just so good. I'll give it a partial recommendation, because fun can still be had with it, but honestly, I know I'm going to enjoy replaying Terraria for the 6th time more than I enjoyed playing this.

Blood Card 2

If I had to guess why I decided to give Blood Card 2 a try, then it's because I still like the idea of roguelike deckbuilders, and back in early 2021 when this was released, there weren't yet that many good ones. I don't think I'd pick something like this up these days, but I decided to honor my past decision by playing this regardless.

So, you pick a class, you pick a difficulty, and your goal is to work through a number of floors, each with a few columns of enemies. Defeating an enemy causes the column to shift down. At the end of one of the columns is a boss. Beat all enemies to win. Each turn you have energy, you have cards with energy cost, damage, and various effects, and you play them until you're out of energy or cards. Then the enemies attack you, and you lose health. Pretty standard stuff, with the exception that you don't explicitly have health. Instead, enemies steal cards from you and you lose when you run out of cards.
I played two full runs at the first difficulty (which was far too easy, but I couldn't play the harder one until I beat it, and even then I could only do so with the character I beat it with, which was a shame) and both classes had a strong synergy with this card stealing mechanic. One generated cheap cards that allowed him to pad his health pool but not clutter his hand while the other got strong buffs from enemies holding onto specific cards of hers. I would assume the rest of the classes were similarly designed around this mechanic, which I quite enjoyed.

Overall, the game design and balance were surpisingly good, given that this game has a very basic UI, and just about zero animations. I'm not very up-to-date with what this genre in general has to offer, but still, this felt a bit weak to me. If you care about graphics at all, then this definitely isn't a game for you. The gameplay wasn't bad enough to really point out something terrible, but I just didn't get a feeling of excitement while playing it. I think everything was just kind of made to be passable and good enough, and it kind of is. If you're just looking for another roguelike deckbuilder to play, this should have a good amount of content time-wise, but nothing about it really sticks out to me, and I wouldn't generally recommend it.

Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-

I played a game today that has a name that's a bit too long to write out. Let's just call it Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. It's from the Record of Lodoss War franchise, the origins of which I find too interesting to not share. Apparently it started in the 1980s as a series of "replay" novels of D&D games, which are basically just transcripts that have been edited and illustrated to be more appealing to read. So you'd just be reading about how some guys played a D&D campaign. Apparently it became popular enough that the author of these novels started a regular novel series. Several manga, anime, and games were also made based off of it. Most of all of this was before the turn of the century, but every now and then another something gets made. Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is one such work, focusing on the most popular character - Deedlit.

But enough about the backstory. The game is a rather linear metroidvania with some focus on action platforming. It's quite a basic implementation of the metroidvania genre, with little to set it apart. The 7 hour runtime doesn't leave for too many different abilities to be unlocked. You get better forms of jumping, which also help in combat, but most of the map unlocks through finding keys for locked doors (and the ability to breathe underwater, which was only used to access two areas). There is no stat or skill point allocation. You just get stronger with levels, and also get stronger weapons, which have only slightly different attack patterns and don't really change how you play. The main thing setting it apart is the spirit system, where you can switch between two elements. You are immune to attacks of the same element (and in fact gain energy for ranged attacks and spells from them). But enemies may also be immune to some elements, forcing you to make yourself vulnerable to land an attack. This forces certain fighting patterns, and is easily the best feature they have.

Sadly, it's about the only good non-standard feature they have. There's a whole system about how you gain spirit levels in the element you're not using when fighting, and lose them along with your HP when getting hit. At max spirit level, you passively regenerate HP, and quite quickly, while in that element. Well, it turns out that a super-aggressive playstyle allows you to deplete enemy HP fast enough and gain levels fast enough, that most bosses (and of course regular enemies) can be brute forced by just attacking them until your other spirit is full, switching to it, shooting ranged attacks at them until you're full health, and then going in again. I won multiple fights that I had no right to, because I outhealed getting hit by most hits the boss threw at me.
But perhaps it was necessary, as aside from not getting hit (which was quite difficult for not just many bosses, but also many standard enemies), there were few mechanics for counterplay. Most enemies did not use one of the two elements you could switch into. There were no i-frames, no blocking, no parrying. This made for a very tedious game of just beating each other until one of us ran out health.

Overall, while the game is pretty in terms of art, animation, and music, the gameplay, balance, and enemy design are lacking. Sadly, the latter are the more important parts of a game. At places, it feels unfinished, or some mechanics underutilized, but I would not have wished it to be longer. It didn't overstay its welcome due to being so short, even though it didn't have much interesting to do. The story, while present, was kind of cryptic and luckily not very prominent. Maybe it would have made more sense if I knew anything about the franchise.
I wouldn't say it's really a bad game, but I also wouldn't recommend it unless you're a big fan of metroidvanias, and don't mind that Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is short and doesn't have anything novel to offer in the genre.

HighFleet

HighFleet is visually a very interesting game. I was immediately drawn in by the very detailed UI, which tries to look like a real-life cockpit or control station, depending on what you're doing at the moment. In fact, the whole art style is great, fitting together well and giving the game a distinct look. It's overwhelming with tens of different knobs and buttons, but almost none are cosmetic - each serves a purpose.
But what is the game about? Well, there's a lot here, as HighFleet is actually kind of composed of multiple games. It tries to offer a pretty comprehensive simulation of all your activities as the commander of a fleet in a war. Navigating on a map, tracking enemy fleets, avoiding being tracked by enemy fleets, a bit of diplomacy, ship building, fleet management, and finally a sort of helicopteresque dogfighting simulator.

Now, what I said may already ring some warning bells, and if it does, you'd be right. The game tries to do a lot, and that doesn't work well. While everything looks good visually, each separate element of the game hasn't gotten enough attention to really make it deep enough to be enjoyable. For better or worse, the systems are complex enough, which fits well with the game's style, but this additional complexity doesn't translate well to extra depth. It doesn't help that the different types of gameplay are not from adjacent genres, but often quite distinct ones.

I sadly failed to enjoy any aspect of the game. None of it was terrible, but there was clearly a focus on presentation, not gameplay. I think I would have loved to see this level of detail focused into a single one of the multiple games offered. There are definitely good and unique ideas here, but ultimately the game tries to be too vast and ends up too shallow, and for that I can't recommend it.

Train Valley 2

I've always been a fan of trains, so making many little train networks in Train Valley 2 seemed right up my alley. I thought it would be like many other train games, about making a neat system that allows trains to efficiently run back-and-forth. Something like a simulation or automation kind of game. But oh boy, I was so wrong and disappointed.

Train Valley is instead a sort of action puzzle game, which is a combination of words I still never want to hear. You start with a limited amount of money, and your goal is to lay enough track with that money to get your trains running. There are different stations, each producing something, and most also consuming something, meaning resources need to be delivered there before they can produce anything. You gain extra money for each desired shipment delivered, and then use that to connect more places with trains, or buy more or better trains. You're graded on how fast you can satisfy all requirements, and how much money you have left over (plus some bonus tasks each level).
It sounds reasonable so far, but these train systems are terrible. Each station has a single point of entry, meaning only one train can come or go at a time. Further, with budget limitations as they are, and room being tight, there shall be no tracks which are traversed in only one direction. You are limited on trains and each is individually tracked, but they can freely teleport between stations. This really removed the illusion of any sort of travel being simulated.
Trains have no mind of their own, happily heading towards wrong stations and collisions. In fact, most of the game is not about what I described, but rather about the action part, which is managing these trains en-route. You have to keep an eye on every moving train as they approach each junction, and make sure the rails are going in the correct direction. The challenge is not solving a logistics puzzle, it's not being too slow at sending out trains while keeping an eye on all of them.

Needless to say, I hate it. I can't fault it for not being a simulation game, because that's my own oversight. But it's really bad for a puzzle game. The puzzle aspects are far too easy, and all the difficulty is concentrated in micromanaging trains. You can't even queue up actions, but sometimes have to intensely watch as a train reaches a station or crosses a junction to then send a new train or toggle the junction as soon as possible. I don't believe puzzle and action mix, and I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone.

Disco Elysium

Oh Disco Elysium, where do I begin with you. It won many awards and was even deemed game of the year by some places. I think it was in the top 100 of Steam's games for a while, before the drama between the owners and makers of the game happened. And it's by far the most well known game made by people in my country (well, the core team, at least). This is definitely one of the games I wanted to like before I even got into it, but none of the screenshots and nothing I'd heard about it had really gripped me.

Disco Elysium is a narrative-driven adventure game with quite a lot of player freedom. You could even call it a point-and-click game, with how much walking around, interacting with things, and trying every dialogue or interaction option there is. But there are also RPG elements, with skill points and equipment to enhance various skills, as well as a random element that determines many successes or failures. It is often through these skills that you are forced to take certain paths through the story, as others are locked by your inabilities. This adds quite a bit of replay value to what is already a 30+ hour game.
I'm not good at history, but the game seems to take place in the second half of the 20th century. There's a big focus on politics, and on the lives of people who are not doing so well for one reason or another. It also focuses on you, and trying to regain your memories after drinking far too much one night, all the while trying to solve a murder.

I have only good things to say about how this game is made. The atmosphere is excellent. The voice acting is great. The art is unique. The music is fitting. The writing really manages to portray different characters distinctly, and the voices in your head add a lovely touch of comedy. I can really understand why this game is so highly praised, and indeed, I can think of no other story-based game that does a better job as far as the game elements are concerned. And what I mean by that is that there are many story-based games which have gameplay between story segments, but that generally only detracts from the story. Here, all the gameplay is part of the story, and only serves to enhance it. And it does a stellar job.

Despite all that, I just don't care for the subject matter, and that is very sad for me. Maybe it was too slow? Too many side quests? But I'm not confident in those claims, as this is just my retrospective analysis. I think I ultimately dropped it a bit less than halfway through.
As it goes, I can't give a full recommendation for a game I myself didn't enjoy, but I will give it a partial one. I would recommend it for fans of interactive stories, if the historical and political themes are not a turnoff, and the slower pacing is not an issue.

Tails of Iron

Tails of Iron looks like it would be a bit like a side-scrolling Souls-like. But, really, it's more of a Metroidvania. Or perhaps not even that, and it's just a side-scrolling action RPG.
There is clearly some inspiration taken from these genres, with the game having a weight system, dodge rolling, blocking and parrying, and a slower, more calculated pace of combat. But I would say this is more general action RPG stuff, and it doesn't really have the core Souls-like features. The map is a series of interconnected rooms, but you don't really have that much platforming, or unlock that many new abilities and ways to progress to call it a Metroidvania. In fact, many systems are heavily simplified. There's no stamina, no level up system, fewer stats, differences in equipment are rather minor, and a few other such things.

At first, the game really looks great. The characters and environments fit very well stylistically. The narrator feels good to listen to. (Apparently it's Geralt from The Witcher, but I've never played it.) Combat does not devolve into spamming, but the lack of stamina is actually a welcome surprise. As a tradeoff, your dodge roll no longer makes you invincible, and enemies in general have 3 different types of attacks with different ways to not take damage from them. Yellow attacks can't be dodged through, as they will just hit you if you dodge into them, forcing you to either block or parry them. Red attacks can't be blocked (or parried), forcing you to dodge away from them. And other attacks don't have a color indicator, making them less telegraphed, but they can be both blocked or dodged. This sounded a lot worse to me at first, but it felt really good once I got into it. Infinite stamina meant I was never frustrated by it, and every time I got hit, I really felt like it was my immediate fault that could have been avoided with better reflexes or not spamming my own attacks.

But I feel like the biggest problem came with the bossfights. You see, they got a fourth type of attack, which was just "don't be near the place where I attack". It couldn't be blocked, and it wasn't as simple as just dodging through it. It required you to really know the bossfight, and where it was going to attack, which wasn't indicated. You just had to know. This made the fights really annoying, as the first several deaths no longer felt like your fault.
I would say that was the main reason I dropped the game, but looking back at it, it also just didn't have as much to offer as many similar games. It was pretty linear, there was little sense of progression, much less customization or specialization, and apparently the whole game was only about 8 hours, which is on the shorter side for games like this.

To sum it up, if you're looking for a simpler sort of side-scrolling action RPG, Tails of Iron might not be a bad choice. There are some fresh ideas here, it's rather polished and well-made, and I think that if re-doing bosses several times isn't going to be a problem for you, then the rest of the game is quite nice. There are no deep mechanics or character customization here, but it's a nice short RPG. Personally, I dropped it a bit too fast to feel comfortable recommending it, but it's far from bad.