Recent reviews by Arsonistic

The game does a lot of things right, but for me the bad things overshadow the good.
The only real issue with combat is the evasion/dodge system, which makes combat unnecessarily inconsistent and bogs down an otherwise great combat system.
Inconsistency is the main problem with this game. There are random events that have X% chance to f**k you over. And they are extremely common. For a game so focused on taking chances in events it sure is unforgiving for those that actually do. You just lost 3 of your 7 crew-members and most of your hull because you got invaded by 6 Mantis, while being attacked by a strong ship? (actual event, 4 Mantis through random event, 2 more teleporting in from enemy ship) Tough luck. START OVER.
The game turns into this gigantic grind of trying to succeed in RNG event after RNG event, until you finally succeed in enough of them to win.
Don't like grinding or getting f**cked over by RNG? Look elsewhere.

I've had runs where I didn't get more than a single weapon through 3 floors, because all the ones I found were the same type as the one I started with. I even found 3 of the exact same weapon! Some clever coding could have fixed this issue.

Randomizing character progression to the point of only getting a choice between two bonuses at level-up means incredibly inconsisent performance. Got a couple of sets of bad ones? Tough ♥♥♥♥, start over. Either manually or through death due to lack of good stuff.
This is also compounded by the fact that some of the bonuses are really bad.
I know this problem is a staple in permadeath games, but that does not make it okay.

Awful, AWFUL AI. For a game so centered around sneaking bad AI can really damage the experience.
And the accuracy system is absolutely archaic, making the shooting experience (the other large part of the game) slow and boring.
I'm sure the story is wonderful, but when the central game mechanics are absolutely horrible I can't find the motivation to keep going.

The idea of adding player-made ships to other players' games is genius.
Some ship parts are quite interesting, but many are ultimately kind of poorly designed and/or poorly balanced. Having one "race" that literally just generates resources is just stupid.

What the game ultimately falls down from is the lategame. There's just nothing to do outside of building stuff. And that's a problem when the building system isn't that stellar.
If you want something where you can build stuff I think games like Space Engineers and Robocraft are better to look at. If you want an upgrading, space-venturing RPG-ish game then SPAZ is something I'd recommend.

An aging gem of a mod.
Level and skirmish design is where this mod truly shines. Many instances of clever design overshadow many of the game's shortcomings.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I never thought that the weapons in HL2 were all that great, especially the ones that transfer over into MINERVA. The SMG lacks kick. The pistol is a pea-shooter. The revolver is kind of nice and so is the shotgun, but revolver ammo is scarce and about half the game is played without the shotgun.
Having grenades and melee weapons as holdable weapons is just poor design. These should be instant activation buttons, not items you switch to, then activate.

The story is a bit on the pretentious side. It's delivered mostly through text, but still manages to be decent enough. It's set in the world of Half Life around the time of HL2, it seems. It's a side story that meshes well with the existing story.

The way the pacing ramps up toward the end is stellar. There are some truly great skirmishes happening at the end.
I recommend giving this one a play. Great level design and skirmishes never truly get old, even if many other things do.

I love challenging games, a la' Dark Souls and Super Meat Boy, but this game goes beyond that. This game is so challenging, so picky in what it wants you to do that it actually becomes detrimental to the experience in my opinion. The platforming oftentimes requires pixel-perfect precision, resulting in tens of deaths per jumping puzzle.

The game is remarkably arbitrarily difficult for a game that takes pride in removing said difficulty.
There are off-screen enemies or traps that leave you with very little room to react. This is partially a result of the character being too big in relation to the environment. This adds unnecessary trial and error difficulty.

Movement is nice and fluid and the flutter mechanic is quite clever, but character hitboxes are poorly defined.
Flutter and slide are bound to one button and the flutter is affected by physics, meaning it doesn't always respond the same way.
The attack is controlled with the same directional pad/stick as the movement. This issue is exacerbated a little ways into the game when you gain a ranged attack, making moving and attacking really clunky and unintuitive. It also automatically switches between ranged and melee depending on the distance to your enemies. Let's just say that this doesn't work flawlessly.

New abilities are introduced at a nice pace and obstacles are scaled up with every new ability you gain.
But the difficulty curve is really inconsistent, sometimes throwing in one or two jumping puzzles that take as much time as the rest of the level combined.

Some bosses are nicely designed with clear attack patterns and clever variations on previous attacks when enraged (loved the Dark Annihilator), but others simply do a one-time set of attacks when enraged, adding extra trial and error that feels rather cheap.
Some also have wonky angular shooting patterns, which becomes a problem when paired with a large ill-defined character hitbox.

The pixel art is a mixed bag. Some things look great, others look plain bad.
Distinction between foreground and background can be questionable at times and there are occasionally foreground objects that obstruct the view, which is a clear case of putting form above function.

The music is great. It's varied and unique, although occasionally unfitting for the scenes presented.
Story is barebones and of little interest.


I really wanted to like this game, but with all these flaws I just can't recommend it.
If you want a good, challenging platformer I would recommend looking at Super Meat Boy, Electronic Super Joy, Cave Story+ or Megaman X4 instead.

The level design is varied and clever, the mechanics are simple, yet it is no simple task to to beat most levels.
The single biggest problems with this game is that it has a random "boss" fight. Chance should have minimal involvement in games focused on skill.

This is an utterly fantastic platformer with an amazing soundtrack. I would recommend this in a heartbeat to anybody with even a slight interest in platforming games.

As for Groove City: not at all as hearty a recommendation. It over-uses rockets like crazy. It's pretty decent, but nowhere near the level of excellence of the standard game.

Fantastic murder mystery game.
Very unique in style from anything else I've seen. There are lots of minor puzzles in the game, which all can be skipped if you wish so and the game never seems to waste the player's time, which is something I appreciate. (although I didn't really skip anything)
Some of the cases are a little too simple. The main offenders being case 4 and 6, which both had pretty obvious conclusions. But case 2 and 3 were fantastic.
This is a game well worth playing if you're into murder mysteries with interesting stories, or just interesting stories in general.

The game is full of cleverly designed puzzles and a great hint system, with very few puzzles feeling like they were unnecessary.

The game is a little short, but at this pricepoint it does achieve a respectable 3-4 hours on average the first time, but obviously in less time if you don't do the treasure puzzles. It also has a good amount of replay value. Loads of puzzles can be solved in several ways and there are plenty of shortcuts that require some serious thinking to get through. You can buy the 3 main items in whatever order you want (buying the Ice Wand - the most expensive item - first makes the game significantly harder), you can even reach and beat the last boss without all the items and there are even achievements for doing so; there are 4 separate last boss fights depending on which items you have.

Then there's also speed-running functionality built into the game. You can apparently finish the game in 15minutes somehow... I could barely do it under an hour when I tried (without memorizing all the puzzles tho).

And let's not forget the lovely graphics and funny dialogue. The "wobble" graphics are very unique, quite unlike anything I've ever seen. Kind of like a comic-book game in movement? That's probably the best way I can describe it.

The game does have one pretty poor part though: the combat. It's just clunky and kind of serves more as a way to add variation between puzzles. I can't say I've enjoyed the combat in any isometric 4-directional movement game though, so it might not be something everyone is bothered by. The boss fights are better than the other fights as they kind of involve puzzles in the fight.


It's a great puzzle game well worth playing. If you're even remotely interested in puzzle games I would recommend giving this one a try.

Pretty good TBS game. The biggest flaw is probably the reliance on chance in main game mechanics. An incredibly large amount of the game's mechanics are very random and will annoy you greatly when you push up the difficulty level.