Recent reviews by ContagiouS

This game probably cured my arachnophobia within the 8 hours I played.

Factory Town is all about creating a town that revolves on progression and automation. This game offers many kinds of ways to transport your goods from A to B all while managing a growing town.

This game offers several fun campaigns, a fully customisable starter map for freeplay, and a sandbox gamemode. I would recommend new players to play the first campaign to get acquainted with the basic gameplay and mechanics, before moving into a freeplay map.

When it comes to the actual game there is one thing that needs to be clear: the villagers themselves do not have any needs, meaning the villagers don't die at all no matter what you do. They exist just to work for you. Personally, this is a blessing due to the nature of this game, as I'd rather concentrate on progressing and automating rather than solving the next villager's needs.

Looking at how to progress, you need to make goods. These goods you sell to your own villagers, which not only earns you money but also gives the houses you build experience. By leveling up your houses, the maximum capacity of villagers increases and you can hire more villagers to work for you. The more diversified your products, the more they buy and the faster they level up. Additionally, the more complex the product is to make = more money for you and more experience for the houses.

The variety of goods transportation is also quite big (noting that this game just had it's 1.0 release, so more may come!), from the villagers themselves, to carts in varying sizes, to trains and boats, and conveyor belts in varying speeds. All these are key to automation and as you can mix and match all the different types of transportation you can design your factory town quite flexibly.

In addition to conveyors, there are also many logic mechanics. I have only used the basic ones such as the grabber, splitter, and merger. I have not touched the other ones yet, but someone that has and is able to work with them may have already made an amazing automated town.

As many other reviewers have already said, this game is comparable to Factorio, just a bit more calmer. While the idea itself is nothing new, the content itself makes up for it. Also, content-wise I would like to see another tutorial that goes more into detail about the logic mechanics and maybe how different types of transportation modes can (or can't) be combined and perhaps where they can be used most efficiently.

Graphics are a soothing and honestly cute, and the music is quite relaxing and if I remember correctly there is also an option to switch between several soundtracks. When it comes to bugs and glitches, I've only had 1 or 2 instances where items were just floating around after removing a conveyor, so overall only minor things that do not break the game.

Factory Town is definitely a recommendable game with a lot of potential, especially during the sale.
8/10
+ Fun gameplay
+ Large variety of products and ways to move them
+ Relaxing low poly graphics and music
+ A promising game at the beginning of it's lifetime
+ Invested developer that listens to the community
o Very minor bugs, nothing game breaking
o No option to change GUI size?
o Missing a way to edit hotbar (unless I missed something)
- Admittedly, overall idea not original

CardLife is about survival in a word made out of entirely (coloured) cardboard. From my 25 minutes on this game I've seen a quest and crafting system, a basic survival game and several drawing boards that allow you to shape whatever you are and make into whatever you want.

While the idea behind this game is quite special and unique, I thought it would be fun to actually get it and see it for myself. And that's the only positive point about it, the idea. I spent my first 10 minutes trying to load up a singleplayer offline game which did not work as I couldn't "connect to local", which in my years of gaming I never thought to see when it comes to offline games (probably something I don't understand, but why even make an option when most if not all survival games have singleplayer that I am able to load in).

That was already the first red flag, as I try to reload the game it somehow manages to forget all of the settings I put in, which wasn't too much of an issue but still an inconvenience. So I finally get into the game, create my character and load in, the first few minutes were the same as all survival games, get wood, a few other resources, food and a shelter.

Second red flag I encountered within the other 15 minutes I was able to allow myself to play and I encountered it multiple times: Visual bugs, I was able to look through the world into the void. Cutting down certain trees did not give me the falling tree animation, instead the tree just disappears and I receive nothing. After trying a few more times I decided it just wasn't worth it, closed, deleted and refunded the game.

I will actually not go into detail when it comes to what is offered content-wise, as it should be obvious with 15 minutes spent in actual game time, you may or may not see much. Trees, few plants, sand, grass and stone are what you can expect (from any other survival game too).

Graphics here are, nice. You can't expect absolute realism, as it is a cardboard world but for what it is it's good. All I can remember when it comes to music was mediocre, same goes for sound effects.

Furthermore, the last update was 2 years ago. If that doesn't say anything especially after seeing a few of these bugs, then I don't know what will. I remember watching gameplay on this and it looked really fun, but to me it's just a disappointment. For around 4€ more you can get a survival game that has way more content, more updates, dedicated devs and in general is actually worth the full price, instead of this that still isn't even worth it with a 50% off tag.

Overall I give CardLife a lacking:
2/10
+ Unique idea, could've been a hit, if only... if only...
o Basic click-once and receive item crafting
o Quest system that acts like a tutorial that rewards (rewards given I find very weird, though)
o "Drawing board" could use a few tools to help with designing, as this was one of the special features that really did not feel special
o Graphics doing their job well enough for what the game is
o Mediocre music and sounds
- Call the exterminator for this one, because bugs sure aren't lacking here
- Confusing menu
-- I sense no dedication, not even an update on the developers talking about what's going to happen even after 2 years

Stronghold: Warlords is a very interesting twist on the past Stronghold games. While many of the well known elements return (which should be expected) a few new ones show up. This Stronghold game was something I have anticipated for since the announcement. I have been a Stronghold fan ever since my father introduced me to the franchise with Stronghold 2 and I still am years later and for years to come.

The main element of this game and what it's basically named after are the Warlords. Similar to the estates in other Stronghold games they can be captured by force or they can be captured diplomatically, this is not done by honour, but with diplomacy points (kind of the same thing just a different name, but there is more to it). It also is not a simple "click once, done", but depending on the warlord you are trying to capture it can take a few or a lot of your points, not to mention that other lords can do the same and take away using both methods too.

I have noticed that with this particular game, it is very heavy on economy. With other Stronghold games I usually build a few buildings and that's all I need, but here you need to really watch space and resources. Wood (or bamboo) is not as plentiful or even existant on a few maps, which definitely will be a bind several times.

Looking at the units in the game, we can definitely see the typical ones such as bow and crossbow men, catapults, trebuchets, mantlets, horse arches and a few more. There are also many new ones, very interesting are those with explosive capabilities. I won't list them here, but a quick YouTube video will show you everything you need to know.

When it comes to the content itself, depending on how you play you should be good for at least 10 hours if not even 20 for the entire campaign, both military and economic. I usually go for building a very strong economy, then castle and only then do I start planning attacks. As they have announced their roadmap, we can expect a entirely new campaign route and campaign trials to appear. Content and updates are looking good and there are always improvements and additions being made.

The game runs well on highest graphics options, there are a few visual bugs some of them aren't gamebreaking, few are though. As of now there are some kinds of trees that are missing their textures entirely and in one instance the ground was entirely black. Currently the game is not optimised for 4 (3 AI, 1 Player) skirmishes and will easily lag, especially when everyone starts attacking. Imagine that with 7 AI and 1 player, you won't get anywhere close to 1 FPS, you'd be lucky to even have frames every 1 second.

Regardless of the bugs and similarities to the other games, Stronghold: Warlords is definitely worth picking up, sale or not. Yes it is not your typical medieval castle builder, but so isn't all Stronghold: Crusader. Both Crusader and Warlords are well done "expeditions" into another culture and I definitely enjoyed them.

Overall I give Stronghold: Warlords a very good:
9/10
+ New and interesting twist on estates and management
+ Complicated / difficult but fun to manage economy
+ New and fun units
o Few bugs, which hopefully are fixed for the next patches
o AI are predictable, as all the other Stronghold games, but allow for interesting wall designs
o/- Towers sadly can't be stuffed with 300 bowmen anymore and have a set limit
o/- Most likely intentional feature: Units have collision now and can't run through crowds / each other without being slowed down massively
- Units can't be "fired" -> with weird troop limits gameplay can become difficult without sacrificing units to the enemy

(Oh yeah and multiplayer also works, long gone are the days of multiplayer not being available. Thanks for being available on Steam!!)

Horizon Zero Dawn is an interesting twist when it comes to what you are fighting in an open-world singleplayer explorer game. At first I was confused in what kind of age I was playing in, after a while I it seems to me as if it were a kind of post-apocalyptic "machine rules the world" kind of setting.
Do note that I currently have around 5 hours of playtime, meaning I have barely scratched the surface and am giving my first impressions, thanks.

This game has your typical upgradeable skill trees, a crafting system and during your adventures you collect resources with which you can craft more ammo to use for weapons with a wide variety of purposes. At the same time you can use these resources to further expand your own inventory, which you definitely will need to do especially early on.

You will come across many side missions and interesting things to do, so even you go for the main storyline there is still something to do afterwards. It's always a mix of parcour, puzzles, scavenging and googling for the locations of certain items because you just can't find them even though you search the entire area.

When it comes to the enemies you will be fighting there are normal animals, animal-like futuristic machines and humans. This game also allows you to "override" these machines which you can then use as mounts that can help you with fighting.

Now, coming to the general look and how the game runs, which will definitely vary depending on your hardware: All my settings are on the highest possible setting and I have to say that Horizon Zero Dawn is absolutely gorgeous. Even if whatever is going on in game is not realistic, the way it looks sure is.
I experience absolutely no lag and loading times during saving, quick save, loading into a section, anything else you need to load is fast.
The only drawback I had (which almost made me refund the game, because it was very annoying) was when I began the game and during my first day of playing the game, the voice audio was horrendous, every other sound was fine, it was just the voices that just didn't work. Sometimes the voices are there, most of the time not especially during cutscenes. They either were way to loud or quiet and it generally wasn't realistic nor did they sound "in the right spot".
Luckily this issue somehow resolved itself on the next day of my playthrough and I'm hoping it stays this way.

I give Horizon Zero Dawn a good:
8/10
+ Amazing graphics, sounds and nice music
+ Story-wise I'm liking it already
+ Content- (and action-)packed
+ Crafting of ammo and modification of weapons on the go
+ Weapon wheel allows for several different kinds of weapons to be quick switched to
o Generic skill tree, but simple interface
o No way to compare equipment*
o Mount riding system a bit weird to handle, but you will get used to it after a while
- Audio bug, which really went on my nerves

* Do view the following Reddit post, as one of the users gave a nice answer to this point: https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/5wvv12/how_to_compare_weapons/

After 7 years and 3000 hours I think it is time to say that this game is indeed...

enjoyably playable and anytime replayable.

Beware of addiction, loss of sense of time, acute nostalgia and entirely pure fun.
Unless this kind of game isn't yours, then I can't help any further.

:)