Kingdom: New Lands

One of the older games still left on my backlog this time. (Fun fact, there's apparently also a Flash version, not that those are easily accessible anymore as of this year.) I've had my eye on Kingdom: Classic (which kind of acts like a free demo these days) since it came out in 2015. But before I got to play it, Kingdom: New Lands was already out, so I opted for that instead. I seemed to have missed Kingdom: Two Crowns for some reason, which came out in late 2018.
So, I only played New Lands, but from what I read, the core gameplay is basically the same for all of them. Each next installation just adds a bit more content. So keep in mind that what I say probably applies to all of them.

Kingdom is an extremely minimalist strategy game. You play as a ruler, who gallops left and right on their steed, and the only thing they can do aside from this movement is to collect money and choose where to allocate this money. You can hire workers, get them tools to build/hunt/farm, fund farms, defenses, and some other stuff like shrines. After a few days, you'll be sieged by monsters each night. Survive long enough to build a big boat, and you win.

To start from the good bits - I find this minimalistic gameplay quite well executed. It's intuitive, and you can really do quite much with effectively only one interaction button. The art is really nice, and the music is fitting and beautiful.
Now, as for the problems - they mainly come down to pacing, unit AI, and general lack of content. The map is pretty long horizontally, and your movement isn't that fast. You have no overview of what is going on outside of your immediate view, so you're going to have to move around a lot, spending most of the game just getting from one place to another. It's slow, and it's not fun.
Secondly, the AI is really not up to par with a game this hands-off. If I can not micromanage my units, they must be capable of managing themselves. These fools will happily wander outside at night, getting beaten up by monsters and losing all my hard earned money. Builders prioritising important or nearby buildings? More like random things, sometimes even aborting an ongoing project to go elsewhere. And archers just... don't know where to go. They have no idea where to find enemies or animals to hunt. All in all, it makes for a frustrating experience, seeing such incompetence unfold.
Other problems are just the lack of building, unit, and enemy types, as well as sometimes lacking clarity of what some things do.

To conclude, Kingdom isn't a bad game or a bad idea, but it needs better AI, and a faster way to get around. Most of all though, it needs more content. In that regard, I would have almost certainly been better off trying the newest version, and you definitely should skip straight to that if you want to play Kingdom, but I understand it's still not a significant improvement. As such, I would have to give the overall series a "no". There's probably plenty of strategy games out there that would rather suit your fancy. This one doesn't respect your time, and even if you invest in it, you'll never reach satisfying gameplay. A bearable way to pass the time, at best.

Wolf & Rabbit

The thing with RPG Maker adventure games is that they're either going to be really good, or a waste of time. Wolf & Rabbit seems to fall more into the latter category.

There isn't much to say about adventure games in general. As they don't tend to be gameplay-based, the "game" is not a point of discussion. The story, however, obviously can't be talked about without spoiling it, leaving little to say. Wolf & Rabbit is about 2-3 hours long, depending on how stuck you get.
Maybe I'm just dumb, but I feel the game is very non-straightforward, forcing you to backtrack and re-search a lot of places you've been to before, because those places inexplicably gain new items you "did not see before".
The game kills you for stupid reasons, forcing you to go to the last save point and through the dialogue boxes with forced wait time that can't be skipped, being a major annoyance.
And the grand finish is that this game is translated from Chinese by someone who's not exactly an expert in English, making it a painful read most of the time.

In the end, I was probably mostly through the game, but the story didn't grip me enough to even care to see it through to the end. It's supposed to be a horror game, and does have some slightly eerie moments, but nothing truly scary either. The writing isn't very good, even if you don't account for the bad translation, and... what's left, really? The nice art and melodies playing in the background? Not enough for me to give it a recommendation. There's better adventure games out there, horror or not, RPG Maker or otherwise.

Ruiner

Ruiner is an action shooter / hack-and-slash. It's got some story and takes about 6-ish hours to complete. You run around some levels, whack enemies with your melee weapon, or pick up some guns to shoot at them, while using some abilities to help.
Truth be told, I didn't get very far in the game as I was immediately put off by one glaring flaw. The game is in this top-down, almost isometric view, and you control your character with the WASD keys. But... pressing down actually moves you down and slightly to the left. Likewise, all other directional controls are slightly angled. In a game where precision and fast action taking is important, this movement scheme is unacceptable. I can not play a game when the character is not moving where I am telling them to move. This in and of itself is more than enough to not recommend this game, but wait, there's more.

Honestly, the game just feels a bit boring, and has some unnecessary elements. It presents a variety of guns, but with their limited ammo, the mobility of your character, and the damage of your trusty handheld pipe, there's just no reason to not go up to everyone and whack them instead. Likewise, from the selection of abilities, not all are equally useful. The game's too short, repetitive, and running around dodging and whacking people is a snoozefest, so I just really see no reason to recommend it.

Trackmania

Already been quite a while since I first tried the "2020" Trackmania. One of the earlier Trackmania games actually stands as one of the first "real" video games I played (not an indie Flash game or Minesweeper or sth.), so this series has always had a special place in my heart. Not that I'd ever been a particularly active player, but I feel it's at least something I can always return to.

Trackmania is a simple game. It's a racing game, which tend to be simple in and of themselves, but Trackmania eliminates any possible lingering complexity surrounding the driving. Everybody gets the same car, no upgrades, no abilities, no interaction with other people aside from seeing their incorporeal cars race alongside you. You only have your gas, your brakes, and your steering, and this allows you to focus on the important bit - driving.
You see, Trackmania is probably the only speedrunning game I have enjoyed so far, and that's because it makes it so accessible. Completing a level and getting a Bronze time is easy. A Silver might take a few tries. But as you approach a Gold (or the extra hard "Author time"), you really have to start embracing the speedrunning mindset, where a single mistake like bumping a wall or braking at the wrong time ruins the run and warrants an instant restart. On some maps, that's where the difficulty comes from, on others, you also have to watch how you take curves, manage your speed, etc. They're not difficult concepts, but everything has to be executed near perfectly and refined over dozens of runs.
While usually speedrunning would have you go look up tricks from the community, here you can always fetch some replays from the game's servers of people who are just a bit better than you, showing you areas you could improve in. So while it's possible to be stuck for a while as you struggle on the perfect execution, you will never have a problem that you don't know where you can improve.
All that's not to mention any user-created tracks, which often go crazy with jumps, loops, wall-driving, and other shenanigans.

I still have mixed feelings about some new track elements they put into the game. I enjoy the new ground types, which have more variety than older games, like the drift-oriented gravel, or slippery snow. However, I have not yet come to terms with ice tracks, which basically rob you of your steering ability. Nor do I like the track effect which literally robs you of your steering ability until the next checkpoint, and the "reactor boost up/down" effects are unintuitive as well. I think these elements increase the skill floor needed to enjoy the game, and that's not something I wish for this game, even if it's not a problem for the seasoned player.

Overall, while I'm not super excited about Trackmania, I do see myself playing it from time to time, completing a few tracks, seeing my leaderboard ranking increse and medals rack up. I would definitely recommend trying it, since it's the first and only racing and speedrunning game I care about, and I feel it's got to be special to do that. It's also free, so nothing lost if you don't like it.

Risk of Rain 2

Pretending as usual that my 2.5 month absence is not noteworthy - here's a game I first played in a free weekend in Early Access, and only just now deemed ready to review - it's Risk of Rain 2. It is a 3D remake of Risk of Rain, which I also loved. I really didn't have faith that this formula would succeed in three dimensions, but boy am I glad to have been proven wrong.

For those that haven't played either, Risk of Rain is an incremental shooter. You start off with one of a few character classes which you can unlock through achievements, and proceed to kill enemies while collecting equipment to make yourself ever stronger. I would call the game incremental, since the power difference between starting and ending a run is absolutely insane, and the endgame chaos is insanely fun. A single run consists of a few (or as many as you can handle, if you want) stages, each culminating with a boss fight. There is a lot of variety depending on what kind of enemies you encounter and which maps you go through, but most importantly, what kind of items you get. There's just over 100 items of different rarities, with the highest rarity items being impactful enough to actually influence effective strategies, diversifying the runs.
Risk of Rain 2 also added a secondary currency, some item conversion mechanics, hidden maps, more characters, etc., and is, as of about the midpoint of last year, past the content amount of the original, not to mention having more polish and production value in the first place. Because of the success of the game, it doesn't seem like they're done either, and there's more to come.

Personally, what can I say? Risk of Rain is one of the games that instilled me with the belief that we need more incremental mechanics inserted into other game genres. The power levels have to be executed well to prevent either the player or the enemy growing out of control, and need to be more than just numbers going up equally. (Because who cares if you do 1 dmg to a 100 hp opponent, or 1k dmg to a 100k hp opponent.) It's insanely fun if done well, and really creates a sense of progression looking at how far you've come. Risk of Rain executes this incredibly well.
A problem with Risk of Rain 2 being 3D is that it's sometimes hard to see who's shooting at you. But that's not the game's fault, it's inherent in FPS games, and I'd say the added dimension, as well as the ability to see and shoot really far, more than makes up for it. I also feel like multiplayer could do with some improvement, maybe in terms of shared equipment of sorts. There is always some arguing over who gets what or how someone has too much equipment, making it really hard for the players who don't.

Regardless of any negatives, Risk of Rain 2 earns its spot as one of my favorite shooters. It is mostly a copy of the original, but greatly improves and continues to improve on it, and I would absolutely recommend giving it a try. Although maybe you'll have a better time playing alone than with friends, at least at first.

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".