Recent reviews by Age

(I Fell In Love With) The Majesty of Colors Remastered is, well, a remaster of (I Fell In Love With) The Majesty of Colors! It's a very short game and this review might spoil it, so don't read too much before playing!

tl;dr: This is an (imo) beautiful art game that made a big impression on me and many others back in 2008, and having what was initially a flash game now available in a remastered state is actually really important! If you like art games, narrative experiences, or big tentacle monsters, I heavily recommend this. If you don't like very short games, this is probably not for you.

The Majesty of Colors was originally a short and sweet art game made in Flash, released on Kongregate in 2008. In it you have just woken up as an eldritch tentacle monster under the ocean, and in a world that is now unfamiliar to your tentacle monster mind you reach out your appendage to make sense of what's around you. What I personally think is really cool about the game is the opening and ending quotes of the game, as well as how human (or nonhuman?) the monster's personality becomes depending on your actions. Though the themes of TMoC is something that has been explored more since the game's released, it was not very familiar ground back in 2008, and I think it aged well.

Right now Flash is dying, and in a few years it's very possible that you will no longer be able to play any of the great Flash games from the Flash game era. Adobe has announced that they will no longer update or distribute Flash, many browsers have Flash either disabled or blocked by default, and Flash has been mostly unavailable on mobiles for years. Without a remaster, this game would most likely just vanish one day, unable to be played anymore. This is why remasters like this are important, because it means the game no longer has a death sentence. Now anyone with a computer and a little bit of money can play it and find it.

I can see why paying for what was once a free Flash game might seem weird on the surface, but this is not, like, just some Flash file uploaded to Steam. This is a full remaster made in Unity intended to catch the feeling and look of the original game while subtly tweaking issues and quirks from the original. Making games takes time and money, but the original The Majesty of Colors had a sponsorship, and I don't believe the Remaster has had similar funding.

As someone who played the original when I was like 12 and replayed the original right before buying this, I'm really happy about the remaster and its tweaks. As someone who likes playing tiny art games every now and then, I'm really happy about the experience that this game gives you in general. And as someone who's really worried about the death of Flash games, I'm relieved to see The Majesty of Colors on Steam. That's why I recommend this game!

This game is definitely a game where you make your own fun. You take the role of a character and you really pretend you are that character. Then you can work together or take advantage of the people around you. If you don't put in an effort and instead expect the game to be fun on its own, then you're probably not going to have a good time. This is not like most games.

You can't join a game and expect there to be an experience, and since this game's community has a problem with people joining only to be afk, which in this game is a seriously annoying problem, sometimes you'll have to play an entire 30 minute round with only a few people, which really ruins the entire round.

There are also a lot of small issues. Controls are a bit clunky, which is mostly fine, but still annoying. If you're playing the free version, you are limited to one scenario, which means you're missing out on a third of the game. I'm not sure if paying the subscription fee is worth it, unless you're really dedicated. I think they said they're going to rethink this, but I'm honestly not sure.

This is going to be a really strange comparison, but I'm going to compare the game a bit to DayZ. Most of the fun is from your experiences with the players. The world and tools alone aren't all that interesting, and if you just buy DayZ without having any idea what it's about, explore the world a bit, ignore everyone else, and die, then you're going to have a pretty miserable experience. Where games like DayZ shine is the golden moments like, I dunno, staying alive wounded in a cabin with your friend, desperately hoping that you won't get hurt and the stranger outside the window isn't there to kill you. Few games give you that experience.

The issue with Velvet Sundown is that experiences like that don't happen as often. My first round was destroyed because there was only two other players actually playing. There were three people afk, making playing the actual game impossible.
My second round went better, but afk players still meant that the round didn't play out properly. My third game was amazing, where I played a doublecrossing thief who made money off of working together with an alliance, then backstabbing them in favour of a second alliance. It was a great experience, but I'm not sure if that was worth one and a half hour of waiting and hoping that the afk players would come back to life. I have 2 hours of gameplay in this game, and I've only played these three games.

I'm not recommending this game, because the average person browsing this page because they saw Cr1tikal or Giant Bomb or whatever playing this game is NOT going to enjoy this game. It's free, but I don't think this is worth it for you. You really need to put a bit of yourself into it to make a good experience, and that's not something people are used to.

Out of my 150 hours on record, 50 of them were spent in a loading screen.
Not because SFM takes a long time to load, but because it crashes every five minutes.

Welcome to a singleplayer turnbased world where every single in-game person is that jerk who shoots you on sight in DayZ.

You're going to die a lot.

I used a cat as a silencer, then I peed on a bunch of people.

If that sounds fun, buy it now. The developers are pretty cool.
If that disgusts you, then... I don't think this is the game for you.

I just hit myself in the head with a rock because I accidentally threw a bomb.
I threw the bomb into a shop.

I'm dead now.

If you like games for their stories, this is probably not the game for you. There is not much of a story, the emphasis is on the gameplay and presentation.
If you dislike the music that this guy makes, or these genres in general, then this game probably isn't for you. The game is basically built around this guy's music, and the music is probably part of the appeal to the people that really enjoy this game.
If don't like "retraux" games where you die a lot and the controls are simple, this game probably isn't for you either. You may die a lot, you may not like the controls, you may not like the gimmicks.
If you're looking for the game of the year, don't buy it. This is a short fun game, nothing deep or super substantial that you'll think about days after you've played it.

But if you want a short, fun game with inspiration from arcade games where it's all about having fun for a short while until you insert another quarter, buy it. It's two dollars at most, and it'll most likely be worth it.

It also helps if you don't find the music too obnoxious. I honestly like it, and the fact that you can switch soundtracks whenever you want was nice. I also drooled a bit over the pixel art, the main character and enemies aren't those crappy "retro" 8-bit platformer characters that are just square stickmen that you see in some games nowadays. This is real Metal-Slug-like pixel art, though they've taken some liberties.

But the gameplay is most important. You will get a new power that changes the way you play slightly every five minutes, on average, for half an hour. After that it's basically the same thing, but by the time that happens you'll have two difficulty levels, one mode that changes the graphics slightly, and you'll have unlocked two additional game modes that I haven't really explored yet.

To me, it was definitely worth it. I recommend it. If you watch the trailer and find that this isn't your game, don't buy it.

Buy it buy it buy it buy it buy it.
This game looks great, everything reminds you of the era it's set in, in this weird Drive-like way. The blood and gore is pixelly and stylistic enough for it to fit in, but it's still all done so well that I still flinch at some of the character portraits.

Don't like the graphics?
Don't worry, the gameplay more than makes up for it. This is the best game I've ever felt that year, the controls are amazing, chaining a long combo and smashing the skulls of ten enemies in a row makes you feel like a god. The permadeath and constant retrying works great, it's like Super Meat Boy meets GTA.

Don't like the gameplay?
Don't worry, there's probably something wrong with your controller. Besides, the music is amazing too. Everything in this game sounds amazing. It is amazing. Next time you smash someone's head in you'll be thinking about how it doesn't sound as right as when you do it in this game. You'll be thinking "dang, i wish this sounded more like hotline miami" right before you get arrested.

Don't like any of that?
This game is not for you. Too bad. You should buy it anyway.