Recent reviews by Clem

"I want to play Baldur's Gate 3 but the gameplay loop is just going between dungeons to dungeons like crypt at the beginning and also I can have a full party of custom characters instead of Origin Characters"

This is the game for you (me)

It has a manual.
I automatically auto recommend every game that has a manual because I want more developers to make manuals instead of in-game interactive tutorials. I mean those are fine but I prefer manuals and I think they are a more cost-effective measure for a designer.

kim im not really racist i just need to get into the harbor.

It's not very scary.

I have written code without an engine. I have used frameworks. I have used Unity and all. This is just the best toy engine for prototyping, getting your feet wet and just being creative. I don't know much about its long term viability for making commercial products for the modern market.

But holy shot, RPG Maker MV is just amazing and unlike other game engine tools, its actually really fun to use just on its own!

It almost makes making a simple RPG as easy as prepping a TTRPG session as a DM. The free assets provided are professional quality and very suitable for prototyping or small hobbyist games, and you have the rights to edit them freely. Of course, since they are included with every copy it can stand out negatively if making something commerically... but the tools are so easy that if you do want to prototype with the included assets and improve on them to something more original, you can do so really easily!

I had to use third party plugins to get enemy health bars though. I do think it is wise to explore options like Unity or GameMaker in order to expand ideas if you reach the limitations of your idea... but you might be surprise just how much you can done here with so little 'plumbing' and 'backend' work already that might not need too. The tools ease of access allow you to focus solely on content, writing, pacing and so on. The fun parts of making an RPG.

You can make full on in-game cutscenes with an event system, for god's sake! That's just amazing. Or characters have arguments with each other... or in battle dialogue stuff. That stuff requires weeks of setup (or buying existing templates anyways) in other engines.

Anyways, point is, if you're even reading reviews for RPG Maker, you probably are just newbie enough to immensely enjoy it, provided that you're into the writing part of making an RPG more than the coding or anything.

I do recommend playing Lisa: The Painful. It gives a great overview of what kind of RPG you can make out of the box here in terms of game flow, sequencing and so on. The actual Lisa: The Painful did extend the engine to allow custom UI and sidescrolling movement, as well as enchanements to the combat, but otherwise the main core of RPG Maker is still strong in its DNA and a game you can make straight away in the vanilla engine without extensions can already have 75% of the features and gameplay loop.

Anyways I am very happy to have finally given RPG Maker a try. It has been just insane fun. If you asked me if I could spend 8 hours in one weekend day working on a game project without a ton of energy drinks or an intense deadline, I'd think you're crazy. But now that just sounds like a Saturday with this toy.

Also, don't be fooled by the aesthetic, this is RPG Maker not JRPG Maker. With some creativity you can make a prototype CRPG in here, with skill checks in dialogue and party companion affinity stats and so on. It's not very flexible for tactics type gameplay though.

Still don't know if its worth 80 though. You can get it on sale for 15 at times. Ork Framework in Unity is that price and that is more capable for fully commercial stuff and different genres. Do consider doing far more research if you want to get it at the 80 price tag...

But if it's on sale for the 15 to 20 price? Just f-ing get it! It's worth it, even as a toy. It's so damn fun.

Better than Fallout: New Vegas to be honest.

I got this game as part of a giveaway from Fanantical

But man so far, cowboy western Hotline Miami is fun as hell. The tutorial is a bit slow but the level design of the first few levels is tight enough.

I love it. Discovered it from FlatRedBall and bought it to support the devs but man its genuinely a lot of fun. It reminds me a lot of Plants vs Zombies in terms of the vibe and casual accessibility (while still having some depth) but what I really love is that you can replay harder versions of earlier missions for upgrades and to research the enemy. These Silver/Gold variant of the missiosn can be genuinely hard or even legitmately impossible without the upgrades from later missions.

It creates this really fun gameplay loop for me where I wanna do the later missions to get upgrades to complete earlier missions harder variants. I love that the game doesn't stop you from attempting a harder variant of an earlier mission even if it really is impossible with your loadout. It adds that sense of discovery like 'omg can I actually do it?' and makes it feel so satisifying when I do it.

It also just runs well

(Bought for $15)

TLDR: I recommend but only if you are into more minimalist games like The Witness, Baba is You, Stephen Sausage Roll or even The Stanley Parable. It's not a 'first person puzzle platformer' like Portal but more of a 'puzzle shooter'.

I found this game as an overlooked submission for IGF 2023. I am writing this review because there aren't many here.I will update the review more after I play more of it but my first impressions are pretty strong.

One thing I will mention first off is that atmosphere at the start is dead silent, giving a lot of room for the percussion of the paintball bullets to echo in the room. Don't let it deter your first impressions though. I do like it personally, and have seen this kind of deliberation to avoid a musical backing done well in other games too (The Fantastic Game is a good example).

It can give off a first impression that the game is unfinished, as there aren't any ambient echoes. I do encourage people to just embrace that silentness as its apart of the atmosphere... in practice it does give you the space to think and I do like how it makes the abstract game world feel almost... a stasis in time. Kind of like an art museum. The game does lack a narrative hook or 'zinger' at the start to create an initial goal, but as soon as you do the first puzzle the sense of 'oh i want to solve them' is captivating enough for me.

How the game's main mechanic works is almost a mini spoiler, so I will leave it at the end but it was really rewarding once it clicked and figure it out. The gameplay loop of the puzzle reminds a little bit of The Witness of all things, but taking advantage of 3D geometry rather than a world environment. I found myself having to look around to figure out where to bounce my paint balls to solve the puzzle, and it felt like the puzzle space was both my canvas and toolbox at the same time.

[Game Mechanic which can count as a mini spoiler]
This game's concept and hook isn't super from the promotional material but once you get into it and get it, it is really captivating. You have to match colors to patterns on walls, but your paint gun can only color different shapes with the correct color after projectiles have bounced off of things. So, for example, in order to hit the sphere with red, your gun needs to have 'red' in the circle sphere part of it... but that means that your first bullet will always be some other color like green or blue. it'd only become red after it bounces off a surface. I think this is fun to work around because it makes me align shots with walls and other geometric shapes so that I can color things the way I want.

Its just so fun its an older game and not as well known but Trackmania, especially Unitied Forever, just has so much replayable content even before you count custom maps. The multiplayer is time trial ghost stuff too so lag isn't an issue at all.