Airships: Conquer the Skies

I'm somewhat surprised that Airships has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam. I must admit it's very well made for a small indie game, but it's far from perfectly executed.

Airships is primarily a sandbox for designing steampunk airships and pitting them against other airships. There's also landships and bases which use the same parts but different methods of movement. I spent most of my time in a conquer-the-world style scenario mode, which adds a tech tree for unlocking parts and adds bases to fight over that generate income, thus limiting your ship designs. But you really just care about the ships and the combat, and there's quite a few flaws with that part. Allow me to list off some that come to me, in no particular order:

The research is far too slow, taking tens if not hundreds of hours to finish in its entirety. Getting even a single upgrade takes a while, and sometimes gives only one new block. The research tree does not specifically tell you what each node unlocks.
Combat is neither manual nor automatic enough. You can only give rudimentary commands to your ships, being 80% movement, and 15% who to target. The movement is terrible at understanding whether something is in the way, sometimes ramming into stuff, and sometimes stopping even if it wouldn't ram into anything. There's no navigating around obstacles, chained movement commands, no option to follow a target and keep it at range, no way to target specific systems (weapons, crew, repairs, ammo, etc.) on the enemy...
The battle maps are far too small for the epic scale this game promises, and even almost enables. There is no room to manouver or position your ships most of the time, leading to piles of wreckage blocking the way. If larger maps could be combined with autonomous AI (that works better than current enemy AI, which rams into its own units and gets stuck) and larger budgets for designing ships, we could actually get a lot of entertainment value from watching massive fights - not the case right now.
The battles are about twice too fast at normal speed, and about twice too slow at the next slowest, 1/4 speed.
Aside from research not being transparent, a lot of other systems aren't either. How does armor work? How is accuracy calculated over range? How much damage am I actually doing to the enemy? Or how much are they doing to me, for that matter? If I don't know if my weapons scale better or worse over range than the enemy's, I don't get to make a decision of whether to fight up close or far. This isn't just a strategic problem, it's also unfun to not understand what is going on.
And honestly, there's more problems, most related to not enough polish, not necessarily bad ideas.

Overall, I did play Airships for nearly ten hours, definitely proving it has some appeal. But once you build a few cool ships with the parts you have, there isn't too much incentive to build even more, so that part of the game falls off. The overworld RTS game is very slow and bare-bones, so that was never exciting to start with. And finally, the combat despite offering some awe at larger-than-usual scale fights, and watching the dynamic destruction of both fleets, eers more on the frustrating than the fun side for the reasons listed above.
I'm left wondering what could have caused people to like this game so much. Perhaps there is a shortage of games that let you build your own armaments and then offer a meaningful battleground. I can't help but feel that maybe even Gratuitous Space Battles did it better. In any case, I can't recommend a game I didn't ultimately enjoy, so I can't recommend Airships.

Daemon X Machina

Mecha games always looks so cool from the screenshots. The idea of flying around at high speeds with a lot of firepower sounds cool, but that doesn't necessarily translate to reality. I guess you could say the same about Daemon X Machina, which I just played.

See, the problem with being really strong, and really maneuverable, and really fast is that... Well, there's a lot of problems. Being strong means others are weak, and that makes things easy. Being maneuverable, like a mech, not like a plane, means that you can essentially aim anywhere you want. Combine that with being airborne, and there's often nothing obscuring your view either, making it truly an excercise in clicking on targets as they come close from any direction. And being fast means everything is really damn small because they're so far. So you're going to need some sort of auto-targetting to make sure you can keep living out your power fantasy of eliminating a lot of enemies, lest you feel like a fool, missing all your shots.
These are roughly my problems with this game, which can be summed up in it being too easy and too simple. You go from scenario to scenario, suffering dialogue and story that doesn't seem to be heading anywhere for a while, then fly to targets and hold down your mouse buttons while aiming in their general direction, and then wait for more to arrive until the mission is over and you get to do it all over again.

I could talk about other bits, like how the upgrade and customization system is kind of nice with salvaging equipment from enemies, requiring specific equipment for specific upgrades, and such, but it doesn't matter. It comes down to slightly different damage or defense numbers, or a faster firing gun, but the core gameplay stays the same boring way. They got full English voice acting, but 10 missions in, I still couldn't piece together where the story was going, and they'd already introduced like 20 characters. Speaking of characters, I don't know if the lighting messed up or what, but they had really unsightly streaks of light shades moving across their faces. Ruined that bit too.
I quit after failing a mission because I got tired of the last enemy sitting outside the playable area and decided to fly after it, only to be instantly killed by the map boundary as I ran into it, failing the mission. I wasn't going to re-do one of these missions from the start, so I quit.

I feel like I'm being very harsh on a game that kind of delivered its premise. You fly around and you shoot enemies, even if there's nothing complicated or challenging about it. I'm not sure what better I expected, but as I was actually falling asleep during it, I have no personal reason to give it any sort of recommendation.

Hand of Fate 2

It's been over 5 years since I completed the original Hand of Fate. I left quite the positive review of it, and added it to my favorite games list, albeit at a rather low position, somewhat contrasting the tone in the review. I remember what the game was about, but not the details, nor anything that particularly stood out to me. In hindsight, it feels as if the game was unremarkable. Who's to say if I've simply forgotten, if my preferences have changed, or if the bar I've set for games has gotten higher over the past 5 years. This review is of course about Hand of Fate 2, but I would like to pretend I remember the first game well enough to make comparisons to it. They are, overall, very similar games.

Hand of Fate 2 is mostly a turn-based rougelike. You have your basic stats - health, food, gold. You have some equipment with attack, defense, and passive abilities. And you have a goal in the scenario which you must accomplish. What they changed is that instead of the game being one large scenario with checkpoints, it is now a more loosely connected collection of smaller scenarios without a fixed order. This feels like a slight downgrade.
Most of what happens in the game is based on decks. You step into a new "room" - it's a random card from the deck dictating the encounter. You gain a new equipment - it's random from the equipment deck. You gain a positive or negative effect - same story. You can customize the decks to a degree by adding your own cards in addition to the dealer's cards, which is a very nice idea in theory, but I would criticize the execution. There are a lot of cards, but not a lot of cards you can put in a deck. Making a good deck becomes a secondary or tertiary objective, because you want to prioritize cards which can unlock new cards, or cards which you haven't used yet, and thus have not yet identified, despite having obtained them. In the end, I'm making very few strategical decisions about my deck building, instead being half-forced to pick the cards which unlock new things. And, as another downgrade, I feel like they have reduced the amount of agency the player has over the decks as well.
I can't say I feel I have a lot of choice anyways. I go through all the rooms, I pick the usually obviously correct choices, hope the RNG doesn't fuck me over, and repeat the process until I win or lose. I definitely don't feel the exciment I felt during the first game.

The second half of the game is in fact action-based, being any combat encounter. This continues to be the worst part of the game, and I would be much harsher on it this time around. The combat is actually dead-easy if you have reasonable awareness and reaction times. Your equipment is inconsequential (making the bits about obtaining it matter less). Every encounter is just spamming attack (or shield break, or finishers) until a red or green arrow appears near you indicating to either dodge or block. Press the correct button of the two, and you're fine. Throw in a shield bash or weapon ability if those are ready. There is no strategy to the combat, no thinking.
This time sink is made worse by a tediously long transition from the game board to the battle, as well as some flexing animations at the start of combat from either side. I am adamant in my opinion this time, that they should have never added action combat to Hand of Fate. The card game aspect is far superior.

Speaking of time sinks, the dealer is ever chatty, but with the amount of text in the game, he somewhat wastes my time by forcing me to wait until he's done talking to start reading. Perhaps it's me, or perhaps the overall storytelling quality has gone down, as the dealer does not feel as enchanting as he once did.

Overall, a definite step down from the previous game, even if I factor in that I possibly have some nostalgia for the original Hand of Fate. That said, I still don't think it's a bad game. I think I got about 25% through the campaign. That's half as long as I played the original, but the campaign is now twice as long too. The first hours definitely passed very fast, as I was enjoying myself. The magic faded far faster this time around though.
I'm demoting the original Hand of Fate to a "below the line" recommendation, but I would still recommend you play that, and not this sequel. Despite it being newer, there is little innovation, and what there is, is not better.

Grimm's Hollow

I spent the evening playing through a short free game by the name of Grimm's Hollow. It takes about 3 hours to get all the endings, and it's a cute little RPG / Adventure game. I could tell you more about the gameplay, and how and why it was not balanced, was too easy, or why the real-time / turn-based hybrid system was somewhat frustrating. I won't. It's not important. You'll be playing for 3 hours, only half of that will be combat - you don't need a great system there. What was was good enough.

Grimm's Hollow is about the story. You wake up, you're dead, and you want to find your brother. It touches on things like coming to terms with your own death, the death of others, the afterlife, and other somewhat heavy topics, while also throwing in lighter moments to stop the mood from falling too far down. I don't want to spoil anything of course, so I won't go into details. It's nothing too deep, nothing incredible, but I found the story well-written and charming, and just short enough to keep me entertained throughout.

Overall, Grimm's Hollow is a short yet enjoyable Adventure RPG which I hope would not leave you indifferent. I find the quality comparable to another well-received game, Eternal Senia, and I would recommend both roughly equally. That is, they're good enough to earn a spot on my best games list, but a "below the line" spot, meaning they're not incredible or unparalleled. Still, Grimm's Hollow will only take you a few hours, and I think it's time well spent.

Lost Ember

A short review for a short game.
Lost Ember is an interactive story spanning a few hours. You kind of just run forward, listening to your mote of light companion explain the story for you, and occasionally taking control of other animals to run forward in a different way. There's also a ton of collectibles scattered around, if that's your thing.

I'll get to the point - this "game" isn't for me. The story's kinda basic and not well told, even for a game. The gameplay's nonexistent. The camera feels really weird and uncomfortable, and the graphics aren't as pretty as I would like from a game that's supposedly just about taking in the beautiful scenery. I can find no reason to recommend this to anyone.

Mothergunship

My initial impression of Mothergunship was amazing. I was actually laughing with excitement every time I built a new, stronger gun, and fired it for the first time. Sadly, that fascination died down rather fast.

Mothergunship is a fast-paced FPS. It has randomly generated levels, multi-jumps, weapon knockback propulsion, a ton of enemies, and other FPS things. I didn't find these aspects spectacularly executed, but they weren't terrible either. Perhaps my relative lack of knowledge regarding FPS games is to blame here.
What certainly sets this game apart is the ability to craft your own guns. It's not just your usual "choose 3 parts with different stats" building. You can chain connectors together to make more connections onto which you can place the actual gun and powerup bits, creating truly massive, powerful, and absolutely awesome guns. The imposed spatial limitations only add to the feeling of accomplishment when putting a new gun together.

But there's a problem. You build your awesome gun, you have fun with it, and then the level ends or you die. You effectively lose your gun. You keep the parts if you win and lose them if you die, but you can only bring around 3 parts to the next level. So just as you get to the best version of your gun, it's taken away from you, and you're back to shooting something quite average for a while. It doesn't help that crafting is such a frequent and time consuming occurance as well. I would love to spend more time experiencing this gun I made, not clearing one room and then remaking it because a new shop came around, spending a good half of the time just crafting. Making something awesome is only worth it if you get to use it too.
Further, sure, having guns in both hands is cool, but I feel bad to have to choose between the optimal deicision of making two guns of equal strength rather than making one massive gun instead. Don't put your players in this situation. Let the optimal path be the most fun path as well, if possible.
Going back to the mediocre execution of the combat, I would voice my main problem that there was just too much going on. The rooms were too small, the projectiles and explosions too large, enemies appeared out of thin air, and it all blended into one colorful lightshow, removing most tactical gameplay, and leaving just spamming projectiles towards enemies.

In conclusion, an amazing gun-building system I would love to see in some well-made game, but not here. The combat is too chaotic, and there is not enough time to enjoy the fruits of your labor, neither within the level, or across levels. Give us one gun, larger rooms, larger levels, less frequent crafting, better clarity, and I will probably love your game. But then that would be a completely different game. Mothergunship will not be getting a recommendation from me.

Moonlighter

Moonlighter is an Action RPG/roguelike where you run through dungeons, collect loot, then sell it or use it to upgrade your equipment.
I found the game very simplistic. It takes Binding of Isaac's dungeon formula where each dungeon is a series of screens. Kill everything on the screen and you can move to the next room. There's 5 different weapons with different attack patterns. They have upgrades, but it's basically just increased damage. They also have a charged attack that's almost never worth it. Similarly, armor just gives increased health. More so at the expense of movement speed, if you want. And of course there is also an invincibility dodge roll. I found some weapon types just flat out better than others, and most non-boss enemies trivial unless they swarm you from more than two directions. As far as the combat portion goes, it's very uninspired.

The enemies drop only ingredients and valuables which can have some "curses" determining where you can place them in your limited inventory. This creates a form of an inventory management minigame, but as we know, inventory management is usually a nuisance, unless done incredibly well. And, well, it's not done well here at all. On the topic of managing your inventory, the control scheme is fully optimized for a controller, with just a basic map to keyboard. The default bindings are awkward, there's no mouse support, and no shortcuts for some common actions, causing most inventory management to take too long.
Continuing with tedious things, the other "half" of this game is a shop management game, where you list your dungeon loot up for sale. Problem is, items mostly sell at a fixed price. You don't initially know this price (which makes no sense, because every villager does, but you, the professional shopkeeper, do not), but finding it out is very easy, as the game sorts items by price even if you don't know their price. Really, there is no depth on this side of the game either, and it might just have been more enjoyable if you got to dump your stock to an NPC instead of going through the trouble of running your shop. Heck, enemies just flat out dropping coins could have been a better choice, allowing focus on the marginally better combat side of the game.

Overall, I found nothing new or interesting in this game. The execution is fine, but the implemented ideas are pretty basic and boring. There's tons of better top-down action RPGs/roguelikes out there, and if you're looking for something to scratch the shopkeeping itch, Recettear did it better. (They also did basically everything else better.) But Moonlighter I just can not recommend.

Wandersong

Wandersong seems like a very well-received game. I can't say I can blame people for liking it, but after playing it for a brief while, I am rather confident that there is no big secret or unexpected element that will make your opinion of the game differ from whatever initial feeling you got from looking at the trailers / images. I think the game does a good job at being this colorful musical adventure game, with, I dare say, childlike humor and difficulty.

Wandersong should take about 10 hours to complete. These hours are filled mainly with "puzzle platforming", although neither the puzzles nor platforming are difficult, just thematical. I would guess the main focus of the game is the story, which I found neither deep nor enticing, although I did not finish the game. Aside from basic movement, the game is controlled via a singing mechanic - essentially 8 directional inputs. These are usually used for solving whichever puzzles are needed, either by replicating a pattern, or using the directions as a steering wheel of sorts. Simple stuff, really, and I didn't stop to question the solution to a puzzle even once.

Overall, I don't quite get the scale of the positive reception. Sure, the game's well made, but I'm surprised so many people liked it, considering what I felt were very simple game mechanics and plot. I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of Aquaria, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere near as deep. So, from a personal perspective, I definitely can't recommend Wandersong.

Lost Ark

Amazon sure knows how to advertise a game. They also know how to blow that hard work away by not providing enough server capacity for people to play. First New World, now Lost Ark - the login queues plagued people for the first two weeks. But I'm not here to talk about that. Queues are now a thing of the past, while the game continues forward. Lost Ark exceeded even the previous impressive nigh-one-million New World peak player count by amassing over 1.3 million players a couple days after launch, placing it at the second highest peak player count game on Steam. After nearly a month, it still pulls in daily peaks of over 800K, and has remained the highest average player count game on Steam for the whole duration.
Myself, I played it for a whole 120 hours in the first two weeks, falling off over the next two weeks leading up to this review. I think I got a very good view of the game and experienced every major activity, but in terms of raw progress, I'm not even halfway through.

At first, you may hear Lost Ark being compared to Diablo or Path of Exile, but also being called an MMO. I can't verify the comparison to Diablo, but I found that statement weird at first. After a bit into the game however, I deemed it an apt description, at least according to mainstream definitions. Lost Ark combines the top-down mouse-based-movement action RPG combat with the content and progression systems of mainstream MMOs. I of course loathe that these games, where the only multiplayer aspect is people co-existing in a multiplayer area without any incentive to play together, dare call themselves MMOs, but I can't fault people for using the term, considering how long it's been since there has been any non-indie "real" MMO.
Lost Ark has the usual storyline grind to max level (technically a soft level cap), which then opens up daily dungeons and raids you can do (generally 4 people max, but also usually doable solo), alongside with more spaced out additional storylines unlocked at various points in progress. I would wager that the main appeal of the game, however, is the vast amount of optional collectibles it features. There are hundreds of side-quests offering various little collectibles that can be turned in for minor character improvements. Of course, hundreds of minor improvements stack up to become quite powerful indeed. Aside from the mini questlines, there's over 1000 "mokoko seeds" scattered across the whole world, and a lot of NPCs have a sort of friendship level that can be increased over time. Through these side quests, there is content for well over a thousand hours if you aim to collect and complete everything.

Different things kept me in the game during different times. At first, it was mostly the combat. Throughout the levelling process, you often unlock new skills and upgrade existing ones, offering new playstyles. These skills were well-designed and felt very satisfying to use, but after hitting max level, the playstyle remained the same, never to change again. Worse still, despite the dozen-or-so different classes, there was very little diversity within a class. My Scrapper class played like every other Scrapper class, and there was nothing to make me unique.
That might have been fine, but after the fun of using my flashy and impactful skills wore off, I realized that the enemies posing no threat whatsoever for 99% of the encounters was not a levelling thing. This, dare I say, casual difficulty was here to stay until the end. And so, there was no fun left for me in the combat.
During the later levels and after hitting the level cap, the world opened up, and I started to care about the collectibles. This remained my main focus up to this point, but with a few exceptions, the quests to get these collectibles were as quests are in MMOs - 90% travelling, 5% beating stuff up, 5% clicking and waiting. It was fun to see the numbers go up, achievements roll in, and progress be made, but whenever I looked back at what I was doing, it was beyond mindless busywork. I stopped to ask myself if this was worth my time. Was I actually enjoying this?

As of right now, I have not actually made the decision to quit the game entirely, but rather to take a break. I've played more than enough of it in the past month, and I'm not sure if I could really call this game bad, after how long I played it, after how hours flew past so fast while playing... But I do look back at what I've done, and think of things to praise Lost Ark for, and I'm having trouble. It's like the game felt fun in the moment, but not in hindsight.
Should you play it? I don't think I can recommend it, in the end. It's free, so you're free to give it a try, but be warned that it will take a lot of your time if you decide to give it a serious try. It's just made to be that way. Maybe in another month or few, as people reach the real end of the game, will we see if Lost Ark has any real staying power, or if it really is just a 500 hour grind.

Ring of Pain

Ring of Pain is a fast-paced, simplistic, kind-of-like-a-roguelike game. You have a few stats (HP, attack, defense, and speed, basically), and 15 item slots for passive modifications to those stats as well as various other effects. The gameplay revolves (heh) around choosing whether to interact with the object on the left, or the object on the right (or to bypass them, moving to the next object in the circle). You either exchange blows with a monster, or pick up an item. Repeat ad nauseam.

While the game is quite heavy on RNG, and sometimes unavoidable (at least without inhuman foresight) defeats, my main gripe is with how simple it is. It feels like something I'd play on my phone while engaged in some other activity, not something that requires my full focus. I just felt I had so little agency in what was happening, that any mechanics, balance, or whatever was entirely in the background. Click, click. Left, right. Right, left. Bored, bored. Why am I playing this.

And indeed, why would I be playing this? Or why would you? I couldn't tell you, and so I couldn't recommend it to you. For what it's worth, the game's reviews are mostly fine, so there's a fair chance you'll like it nontheless, but again, you'll be hearing no praise from me.

Othercide

Othercide is a game I would really have loved to like. It's a stylish turn-based tactics game that weaves a lot of difficult decisions into every battle. Permanent sacrifices have to be made often, and if you're not willing to do them yourself, the enemy will force alternatives for you, often to a less desirable outcome.
Let's break it down, from the best bits to the worst bits.

The atmosphere is well Othercide's strongest point. The entire world is grayscale, with shades of red at places. Despite the limited color palette, there is complete clarity in visuals, and I absolutely love the style this creates. It fits well with the dreamlike, or rather, nightmarish, scenes and enemies, as well as the echocing voicelines thrown out every so often. Despite what I feel was a somewhat low amount of resources due to being an indie game, they could not have done a better job in this field.

Secondly, the idea was good. The game is designed not only to be very difficult, but to also force the player into difficult decisions. The unique mechanic is that your units are never able to recover health. This is further enhanced by many units having access to powerful abilities that can be cast in addition to your normal actions that turn, but there's a catch - they consume the caster's life, the resource they will not be getting back. You can try to play it perfectly by never using these abilities, but that decision may well turn on you, if you sustain greater losses otherwise.

Now, finally, where everything falls apart - the execution. By far the largest problem that you will notice again and again is that the game does not give you enough information. In a super-difficult game like this, the player needs to have the tools to make the most of their doomed situation. But the game fails to tell you very important information. How often can enemies act? How many actions can they perform per turn? You're never told they can not attack on the turn they spawn, unless they forego their movement. Further, ability descriptions, formulas, ranges, targetting information, etc. are either not shown or hidden under multiple menus. The UI feels somewhat unresponsive, which makes navigating these menus more time consuming and frustrating. The gameplay is good, but I have to make a choice between playing to the best of my abilities and spending, without exaggeration, 90% of the time on looking up details that a well-designed UI would have at the ready, or just winging my turns, and getting beat over and over.
Worth noting is that your units increase in offensive power very rapidly, allowing a single unit to do more work than 2-3 units combined. Of course, it is nigh impossible to never lose them, but the game undermines its own permadeath mechanic by handing out resurrection tokens every so often, and your dead units persisting through runs. (You also get other passive powerups to make your subsequent runs easier.) So, fail as much as you want, you can always resurrect your most powerful units early on in the next run, and eventually have enough of them that clearing anything becomes easy enough.

Overall, a great idea with a captivating atmosphere. The gameplay and balance are fine, but nothing amazing, but the user experience, namely the information shown, as well as navigating the game and the menus, are terrible, and ruin everything else. I am saddened that they did not put extra polish into these areas of increasing clarity, for this could have been a very good game. As it is now, I can not recommend it. It may feel great for the first hours as you explore what the game has to offer, but it will quickly lapse into tedium and frustration.

Meteorfall: Krumit's Tale

Meteorfall: Krumit's Tale is a deckbuilding game, that I guess could be called a roguelike, sort of. I believe it originates from a mobile game. I would say it's pretty good as a mobile game, but doesn't quite reach the quality standard for a good PC game.

My initial impression was a slight dislike for the overly cartoony artstyle. I would of course not judge a game for that alone, but they did feel the need to make everything jiggle and wobble around making it harder to observe, while wasting a lot of space around the edges (presumably due to the original mobile interface), so that's a slight negative.
I think there were ideas present for a good game, but there just wasn't enough ambition in the project. Building a deck, finding synergies, and adapting around the board the game dealt to you felt like a fun experience, but the lack of content and space rather ruined the experience. The balance of the game was surprisingly good, given how often I felt on the brink of defeat, only to barely recover from the situation and continue onto victory, but I feel they should have increased the board size, as well as the hand size. This would of course make the game easier, due to more choice, and more synergies, but these are almost exclusively the areas where the fun is at, so everything else should compensate for it. Make the enemies stronger, increase the length of a level, add a larger variety of items and enemies. But sadly, these things just weren't present.

As it stands, Krumit's Tale is too restrictive, as you lack much meaningful choice from your hand running out of space, or the board only having enough moves where one is obviously superior. The low amount of levels, as well as item and monster variety means that once you complete the game, you probably have little desire to go for another run. Considering all this, I can't give Krumit's Tale a recommendation.

Copy Kitty

Damn Japanese, making insane games again. I don't actually know the nationality of the indie developers of this game, and it doesn't really matter, but Copy Kitty has so many things happening at the same time it can be very difficult to comprehend, especially with the crazy visual style. It definitely stands out the moment you look at it, but the strangely coherent mess of an artstyle may correctly invoke both the feelings of this being a game by amateurish developers as well as it being something quite unique.

Copy Kitty is a stage-based action platformer with the unique gimmick that you can combine 2-3 different weapons into a new, more powerful weapon. This creates a rather insane number of combinations I'm surprised the developers bothered to implement. This combining is dynamic and ammo-based, so if one weapon runs out of ammo, your weapon downgrades until you pick up some more ammo from slain enemies.
You start the level with a single weapon or none at all, making the start of each stage much more slow and calculated. However, once you gather 3 weapons, destroying enemies ususally becomes a breeze and you just zoom through the level. While I dislike this trivialization, the alternative might be worse. With a lot of enemies on screen, you firing your particle-heavy weapons, and everything being so gosh-darn colorful, it can be nigh impossible to tell what's going on. The enemy placement and level design also doesn't tend to be that well thought through in my opinion, so being able to ingore them to a large degree actually comes out as a positive.
There is also a lot of detail put into less important things, like enemy descriptions, statistics tracking, dialogue, and probably many things I missed. The game truly feels like it has been made with a lot of passion.

Still, I failed to find satisfaction from this game. The combat and levels aren't designed well enough to interest me when I am not powerful, and once I do become powerful, most strategy and reason is thrown out the window, and the game becomes boring because it is mindless. I believe there is emphasis on playing the levels again later to obtain a better score through methods which aren't necessarily aligned with beating the levels in the most optimal way. (Some sort of style bonuses I think. I did not explore this side of the game.) Knowing me, I of course find repeating things under the same conditions boring, so this did not appeal to me at all.

Overall, I can't give it a personal recommendation, as I don't find the game to be up to my quality standards. Still, it might be interesting to fans of score attack action platformers, or for anyone looking to just experience this very unique weapon gimmick I have not seen anywhere else.

Cypher

Cypher is a puzzle game, and it's honestly barely a game. It's an increasingly difficult series of cryptographic messages that it asks you to solve, giving you but a brief introduction for each category, as well as a tangientially helpful hint for each puzzle, if you so desire.
There is really little interactivity in the game, with the only response from the game being either telling you whether your answer is correct, or giving you the hint, if prompted. As such, it really could be presented as a short book instead, with the hints and answers at the back. Setting aside the fact that it would be harder to sell this in book form, it would really suit the game, considering the fact that most of the solving process will not be done inside the game, but with a pencil and paper or the internet.

I believe my main issue with the game is that it doesn't do much to teach you, and to solve a problem you must either mostly know the solution method already, or look it up. I understand that this self-learning process is what the game would want from you, but to be fair, if I had a deeper interest in cryptography, I would have already sought these subjects out, and if I did not, then this game would not tip me over to spend my time to do so.

While I think it is of little contribution to the value of this game, considering you will not be in the game if you intend to play it, I must note my appreciation for the setting of the game. The clean white aesthetic and black text, accompanied by a spacious interior and classical music playing in the background are exactly the kind of environment I would love to solve these in. A wonderful choice, but sadly inconsequential.

Overall, I don't think I could recommend this to anyone except those who are already interested in cryptography. I find the game offers little in terms of generating interest for the subject, nor does it teach you the topic sufficiently.

Mana Spark

Mana Spark is a short rougelike game, probably taking a lot of inspiration from the likes of Binding of Isaac in that you run from room to room, collecting random powerups that alter your character and are generally not just stat upgrades. I am unsure, but I think it might even be something akin to a student project, for which the quality would be excellent. Even compared to regular "good" games, there isn't much to fault this game for. The AI and mechanics work well, the game's quite polished, and there aren't any obvious balance problems. A few bugs, mostly pertaining to physics and AI, but nothing game-breaking.
No, the real problem is that it's short. They just didn't add a lot of content. A few characters, maybe a few dozen items, twenty enemy types, three areas... I wasn't even sure if I was enjoying the game before I realized it's going to be over in just a little while.

Overall, the game's good, but nothing special. It implements the dungeon-crawling action rogulike genre well, but is light on innovative features. Regardless of that though, even if you'll start to like playing it as you collect more items and unlock more options, it will be over soon after. Thus, I don't think I could recommend it.

Eternal Return

I generally steer clear of games that are still in Early Access, but I feel like, in some regard, the prime time to play Eternal Return might have already passed, and there's some chance it won't see the light of release in a playable form at all due to the slowly dwindling playerbase. So, since I played it now, I might as well review it now, rather than never.

Eternal Return would be best classified as a Battle Royale MOBA. The game has a moderate size map with about a dozen "zones", and 18 players per match, as well as the option to play in 18 "teams" of 1, 9 teams of 2, or 6 teams of 3. The zones then start closing down as the game progresses, forcing the players into a tigher area, prompting conflict. I would love for the map to be larger and have more players, but, given the already small playerbase, that could push queue times to unacceptable levels.
Like a MOBA, the game's played from a top-down perspective, and there's a few dozen different characters. They have the usual 3 abilities + ultimate + passive, with also one extra ability determined by their weapon. You have 6 slots to equip gear in, and 10 more to put materials or whatever in. This gear is crafted from materials scattered across the map, with each zone having some specific pool of materials. It functions similarly to collecting loot in a Battle Royale, but there is an important distinction and this is a very important aspect of the game which is a bit difficult to explain.

Each piece of gear does not fit each character. Wrong weapon types are simply unequippable, but many gear items might not fit your character's playstyle. This makes looting other players a somewhat poor method of getting better gear. Also, for most of the game, gear can not be found pre-crafted on the map, making looting less about luck. Winning is less dependent on your skill in combat, but your gear, and thus how fast you can get it. Put all this together, and you realize that the game boils down to a sort of speedrunning. It has some luck, with who you run into, whether you find the resources you need, etc. but mostly it's about optimizing your pathing, optimizing your build, and not wasting any seconds.

It's not secret I don't like speedrunning nor Battle Royales. I don't like the former because I don't want to do the same thing over and over with little-to-no variance, and I dislike the latter mostly because most of the game is spent conflict-free, culminating in an often unfair and out of your control battle, which may diminish the feeling of accomplishment upon victory or worsen the feeling of defeat. Thus I must conclude that this game isn't really up my alley, and I don't enjoy playing it all that much.
But when it comes to objective complaints about the game, I can't really name any aside from the low-ish playerbase, which isn't directly the fault of the game. The characters are different from each other, there's depth and uniqueness to the game mechanics, the balance doesn't seem completely out of whack, I quite like the art and sounds, and I haven't found any bugs. I'm genuinely surprised that this game is losing players instead of gaining them. So, listen, while I don't personally like Eternal Return, I think it's a good game. There's unique dynamics and strategies to be had whether you're playing alone or with friends (though probably steer clear of teams of randoms), and I think the combat is great fun, I just wish there was more of it.
There you have it, recommending an Early Access game. Only if you like the things I described of course. Go play it before it dies, it needs more players.

New World

Oh, MMOs, where should I even begin with them. My favorite game genre, yet one of my least played ones in the last years. I've sunk about 150 hours into New World over the past 2 months, which is the reason for the drought of other posts lately. It's a huge game, and I've not had enough time to experience everything it has to offer, but I feel I'm ready to give my thoughts on it regardless.

New World was off to a massively successful start, becoming one of the most played games in the world for about a week with around a million consecutive players. It was partly due to this that I went to give it a try, as this really seemed to be the best opportunity I was going to have to play an MMO in the nearest years. I don't think I was mistaken, but it wasn't all I had hoped it to be.
New World seems to not be entirely copy-pasted from the standard themepark formula, offering choice on where to go, what to do, and not binding you to the usual quest mill to max level. You're not forced to make the annoying class selection at the start when you have no clue who you want to be playing, and thus saved from having to run through the levelling process again if you want to change who you are. You're really going to have this one character, and commit to this one character, and that's wonderful. Similarly wonderfully, the economy seemed to be doing relatively well. Crafting and resources were well thought out as to not leave any lower ranking resources useless, and encouraging returning to lower level zones at least somewhat, if only to farm the resources there. The market was lively and there was no sign of gold inflation on the horizon. Combat was also a breath of fresh air, feeling quite weighty with staggering and blocking, and only having two hotbars of three skills each - one for each weapon. The design decisions seemed to be done quite well, so I kept playing.

The more I played, the more I started to notice problems crop up. And I don't want to complain about the login queues or the initial supposed plethora of bugs. They didn't worsen my experience, and I believe they were easy enough to avoid. Not that the login queues will be a problem anymore. At this rate, 90% of the players will have left by the end of the year, and that's more than you could chalk up to just the usual post-release decay.
But as I was saying... One of the things I initially loved about the game was that even during the levelling process, the game was never too easy. It was simple to get in over your head and get yourself killed to monsters. While that difficulty theoretically never went away, there was one large oversight. As you explored the open world, the game showered you with quests and things to do. It was great, but those quests had rewards, and being the completionist I am, I wanted to complete all of them. 20 hours into the game, I was far overlevelled for all the content I was going into, and for the rest of my 130 hours, that sweet difficulty that kept me from getting bored was gone.
And yet, why was I doing them? I could skip them, go for the harder, more fun quests and areas. The rewards I was going to get from the higher level quests would overshadow whatever I was getting now anyways. I didn't stop to really ask myself this until I had maxed my level and the game goaded me towards the end-game content. ... I think I didn't want to do whatever the end-game had planned for me. The quests, despite their repetitiveness and simplicity, were more interesting. I got achievements, and got to watch the map and other progress bars slowly become more complete. The end-game was already being streamlined into the most efficient speedrun-like grinds for better equipment or gold on the PvE side, and I didn't have interest in the PvP, it being either dominated by guilds picking their favorites into the organized matches, or whichever side brought more people. Filling up those achievement bars was the most fun I was going to have, and I sat down to think if that was good enough for me.

On the other side, the game wasn't static for 2 months. It was getting updates at a brisk pace, and it had to do something to fix the issues that were cropping up the more people played. But as they fixed one problem, another cropped up, and I am not convinced that they could stop this huge bleeding of players that was happening. While they surely massively exceeded their initial popularity requirements, I'm not sure that it's going to be bringing in enough money soon, and I genuinely worry about Amazon cutting funding from it.
To return to the previously posed question, the content grind was not good enough for me. Not in this state of the game. Not when the future is so uncertain. While New World was a very refereshing MMO experience, and definitely better than most other MMOs I've tried in the past several years, it wasn't unique enough to keep my attention further. I don't regret the time I put into it, but I do wish to refrain from investing any more, until Amazon proves they can stabilize the game while continuing to provide meaningful updates. I will be returning in the future to check up on how it is doing, and perhaps even returning to play if I find things well improved. As for if I would recommend New World? Tough question, but probably so if you like MMOs, especially themeparks, and it is not dead by the time you read this.

Yuppie Psycho

My dislike of horror games grows. When I started playing Yuppie Psycho, I had apparently forgotten that it was a horror game. I just thought it was an... eccentric? adventure game. The pretty pixel art and "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews lured me in, and so I started it up. It's not even that I hate the horror aspect. There's just always been some problem linked to the horror.

The game's about a dozen hours long, and I quit an hour in, so anything beyond my complaints right now will be secondhand experience as per my research before shelving this game for good.
The game just deleted my entire one hour of progress without so much as a warning. And about 15 minutes of it on my first try playing it. See, the game nicely warns you at the start that there is no autosave function. It does not elaborate further. This is fine. Not every game needs autosaves - checkpoints or manual saves are often completely acceptable. The first time, I crashed. Well, I actually crashed about 5 times before I realized it disliked me alt-tabbing or streaming the game, but this was near the start, and wasn't too much of a hinderance.
The seconds time, I was well into the game, and just thought I had had enough for the day. I figured that, surely, the game would at least allow me to save on quitting, and then delete that save on returning. Failing that, I would be reminded that I needed to save my progress before leaving. I've already spoiled that there was no such thing. The game exited without so much as a complaint, wiping an hour of progress. That was just about all I needed to quit. I will not play a game that does not respect my time.

You see, not only does Yuppie Psycho have checkpoints you need to manually save at, it also has a currency (paper) that you need to spend for saving. If you do not have any paper, you can not save. In my hour of playing, which I will admit was mostly the introductory part, I received a grand total of one paper, and this was only through careful checking of everything in the environment. The rest of what I say will be what I read, not what I experienced.
The papers aren't actually that rare in the game, but there's no indication of this. There aren't, however, enough of them to save at every convenient opportunity, and they can also be used as another currency, making it a choice if you want to replay less of the game, or get some other benefit.
This is bullshit, and a complete waste of people's time. I don't care about the excuse of this creating suspense and reinforcing the horror aspect by making you wonder if the journey to the next save point will be manageable. This isn't that kind of game. And most importantly, I lose the ability to play in short bursts, because I need to play for as long as it would naturally take me to want to create another checkpoint.

Most everyone seems to agree that the adventure part of this game is great. The story's good. But the gameplay is a lot more polarizing, and I didn't see a single thorough review of the game not mention the save system. If you're selling me a good story, I want to experience that story in a way that is comfortable for me. "A horror game is supposed to make you uncomfortable." By being scary or unsettling, not by making me do the same stuff all over again for no good reason.
So there. I didn'y play this game. Not because it's not good, but because I don't have time for this nonsense. If you do, I hear the story's great, and you'll probably enjoy it, but I can't personally recommend this horrible design decision.

Omensight

Omensight is a hack-and-slash game, but more than that, it is an investigative story game about finding out why the world has ended. Armed with the power to repeat the last day of the world, and enough combat prowess to make your way into just about anywhere, you will slowly uncover the reason for the calamity and put an end to it.

The game was a tough sell for me at first, as I was put off by the very cartoony artstyle, the non-human cast of characters, but most importantly the subpar gameplay. Movement and attacking felt rather unusual and uncomfortable, caused mostly by the very... custom camera angles. The game took it upon itself to fully control your camera, but I daresay failed at the task. Additionally, combat was a combination of mostly button mashing for attacking, interleaved with reaction-based dodging, as enemies made very swift attacks at you oftentimes from a considerable distance. Perhaps some would enjoy it, but it was too twitchy for me. I got somewhat more used to these issues as I played further, but they never really went away.

I was going to quit after a couple hours of the rather unenjoyable gameplay, but something else had happened. I had gotten invested in the story. I think there were two main things that caused me to really enjoy the story, even as someone who nearly always hates story in games.
The first was that everything was fully voice acted, and at a pretty good quality at that. Every line of dialogue, every single character.
Secondly, I felt a sense of freedom. I'll admit that the game didn't have a branching narrative, and probably required me to go through very concrete plot points to advance, but I was never told where to go or what to do, and I felt the characters and surroundings always reacted to my actions quite naturally. I could present the evidence I had previously found to any of the major characters, and they would act accordingly. I was rewarded for exploration, and even dead ends and wrong decisions, which were the majority of the possible outcomes, played out to their conclusion. I really think what saved the game for me was that they went the extra mile to ensure a proper reaction to any action I could take.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this game. I did end up giving it at a spot in my best games list, which automatically warrants a recommendation, even if the spot was on the lower end. From a gameplay perspective, don't expect anything innovative or enjoyable, but despite there being plenty of combat and platforming in the game, I would still say the story is the main focus, and the excellent storytelling should carry Omensight to be an enjoyable experience overall. For better or worse, it's on the short side, clocking in at maybe 8-12 hours, depending on how thorough you are, and if you're going for the good ending.
Oh, and don't you dare interrupt Ratika's song.

For The King

I found this indie-looking turn-based RPG called For The King in my Steam library and thought to give it a go. After a failed campaign, I realized it might be better with friends, so I invited two along and did the next two campaigns with them. It was fun, but despite some variety, I really wouldn't go for a third campaign.

The game has about half a dozen campaigns in total. You pick one, pick three characters from a collection of around a dozen classes, which differ by passive abilities and starting stats, and then set out to complete whatever quest this particular campaign asks of you. Most of the game is just running around the map and fighting enemies, earning loot and levels to get stronger, and completing sub-quests until you get to beat the main objective. It takes about 8 hours per successful campaign playthrough if you're alone, and a bit longer if you're coordinating with friends.
The combat is a basic "your turn, choose your action, choose your target", and then you roll a bunch of d100 against your stats to determine the result, with the occasional consumable use thrown in. There's also an unlocks system to get more content - weapons, armor, events - after you've gathered in-game lore currency from campaigns, but it doesn't change the core of the game.

So the main thing I would want to talk about with this game is the illusion of all the choices it gives you. Equipment is not class-locked, but you will be highly inefficient if you use equipment not meant for your class, so it might as well be. Each of your party members gets their own turn on the overworld, so they could move separately, but with how tough enemies are, you almost always want to have a full party for each encounter, removing most of the point from splitting up the party. Similarly, everyone needs very tight cooperation in multiplayer to make things work, but since all actions are sequential, there won't be a better tactic than letting one person decide what everyone does.
At the end of they day, the game just gets repetitive. Once you get down the rhythm of combat, who to focus, how to optimally path around the map, and other small details, you just repeat it ad nauseam.
That said, it was quite fun to figure this stuff out for the first time. The first campaign, it was a mystery what various buildings did, how to approach certain enemies, and the variety in equipment actually seemed to be pretty large. I also found the difficulty to be excellently balanced, as well as the game hurrying you along at a moderate pace to stop you from going the unfun route of farming yourself too strong.

So, what do I think of the game overall? Despite the very low-quality appearance, For The King is quite well-made. It suffers mostly from sticking to a very standard turn-based RPG formula which many people are already familiar with, yet not quite providing enough depth to make it replayable for a longer amount of time without feeling like you're just doing the same thing over and over without much thought. In conclusion, it earns my recommendation and a (low) spot on my best games list, because I had fun for the first campaign or two, and could share the experience with friends.