Recent reviews by dirt

(Rewritten and changed to Not Recommended as of December 12th 2023)
Zapling Bygone is a game I have a lot of history with and has been with me for over 2 years now, with me originally playing a build of the old itch.io demo in March 2021, being part of the Discord since May 2021, backing it on Kickstarter and gaining the status of Beta Tester. You can find my username (DesperateDirt) in the credits and I have influenced some design choices, like the Skull dialogue in Grimtown and a platform in Grimtown outskirts to prevent a gamelock if you don't have Double Jump.

That being said I am unfortunately unable to recommend this game even if I like it, as upon retrospect it is very flat and uninteresting. I do understand this is because it was made with a solo developer, who I respect wanting to remain independent by turning down a large sum of money for a publishing deal, but does not alleviate the game's issues.

Zapling Bygone presents itself as a captivating world full of history to discover, but in reality the world is small and the story is contrived, confusing and full of very isolated parts. I am fine with short games, but there is such a length as too short.

The main standout feature it has are the various Skulls you can get by killing opponents, who you can then talk to to learn about the world and characters. This is held up, but many Skulls provide very little in the way of gameplay and dialogue. Beyond the Skull of the Rat King having a flavor detail of making Rats friendly, they all behave identically outside of Mutation slots.
Mutations themselves are generally bland with an overfilled pool, with several optimal ones you have little reason to swap for others. Additionally, Mutations themselves look mostly identical besides shape and color corresponding to slots. This makes them very difficult to tell apart and I still cannot tell them apart despite how much I have played this game.

Gameplay itself is basic but serviceable, if not a bit easy. You have very standard movement, a melee attack and a charged heal after collecting enough of what the game calls "Power" (red circles below health) by hitting enemies. As you progress you get additional basic abilities such as a wall climb, double jump and dash (with i-frames). Most interestingly you also unlock a beam attack and ground pound that use Power, and a swing used for specific areas.
Some of these are altered, enhanced or improved with Mutations, with the beam getting the most changes.

Boss fights and general progression are also just fine. You are initially required to clear the first area, then can clear the next three in any order before then having to go to two more in order. Unfortunately things are generally far too easy for my liking, with the hardest progression aspects such as the Grimtown Trio having been nerfed heavily in updates.


I think that's most of my bases covered. Generally it is a game I like but cannot recommend because of its many shortcomings, alongside just how much content has been left out.


(Original review from August 5th, 2022, Recommended with 17 helpfuls)
A sharp Metroidvania that absolutely delivered. While it's fairly short (I only have so much time due to beta testing) I would consider it a worthwhile experience regardless. Dev put a lot into the game, don't skip it.

Despite how important this series is to me and how much I appreciate media preservation, I cannot give this a positive review.

The system where you have to get coins to buy the next game in the collection is stupid. What makes it even worse is that you don't even get the actual game, just a "Simple" version with far less content, and having to buy the "Classic" version separately after purchasing the Simple version. Should and could have just unlocked the next one after progression, with the redundant Simple versions removed and Remixes unlocked after beating every game.
Oh yeah, the Remix versions of the games that you can purchase. They range from what's essentially just a longer version of it to the hellish creations known as the Puppy and Fishy Remixes, which were already tough.

Also up for sale are other playable Robots and gameplay Mutators. The other Robots have such minor benefits for their drawbacks that I never want to play as them. Not to mention that one slot is occupied by a reskin and another is just the default Robot but with more coin drops for grinding out the terrible currency system.
As for Mutators, beyond bringing Ice Cream's Madcap mode to every game they just feel redundant. The other challenge ones are too boring or frustrating to consider using, and the non-challenge ones make me question their inclusion. You can also buy Cheats I guess if you want, that just removes the point of the game in my opinion.
And as if the currency system wasn't enough of a pain to get through, the game will subtract currency from you for dying too much or taking too long. In a game where in most cases you have 1-2 health and dying increases the timer. It doesn't affect your quest to buy everything very much, but it's insulting.

So with the treatment of the old content and the horrors of the shop out of the way, is the new game included, Robot Wants Justice, any good? I think it's okay. I like the music and the upgrades feel unique, but it's full of VERY frustrating enemies that make the whole experience sour. Also a special shoutout to the extremely unsubtle political message about how the orange man is bad. I could care less about what the creator thinks about Doland Drumpft, but I don't want someones caricature of a political figure as the main antagonist of a video game in a series that has never tried to push any messages or say anything about our world. Something much more interesting could have been done with an overarching antagonist for Robot Wants since Kitty's departure, but it seems that politics were on the brain during Justice's development.

Only buy if you want to play Robot Wants Justice and are willing to put up with the grindy nature of the currency system, the other games are playable for free in Flash emulators.

A lazy, half-assed expansion that makes every run braindead. The 5 Booster updates were an improvement but still make it really lackluster. Should have just been a free update to Afterbirth, only get this if it's part of the Repentance bundle. If you want to play with mods go here[moddingofisaac.com].

Haha boobs booba tits boobies bazookas boobz boob boobs ballistics tiddies boobs sex-e witch! Please give me Steam Points I said boobies! Please oh god give them to me so I can buy animated backgrounds of catgirls with bouncing tits!

There, you got your low effort joke review fuel out, now read the actual one.
Dead Estate is a fantastic rougelike with a lot of heart put into it.
It looks and feels great to play, the music is amazing and every character, weapon, and item (besides the handful of joke ones) are good and usable, which isn't seen often in these kinds of games.
The developers are also willing and able to continue updating the game with free content, which I have to commend them for considering the amount of extra work that involves.

There are some bugs and jank, but they are few and mostly minor, and I can excuse some level of bugginess because the game only has one programmer working his ass off to make it all function.
Go buy this game and the soundtrack to support the developers, it has definitely come a long way from the Newgrounds game I played back in 2020.

Gun Runner's Arsenal is "that" product you have to review on Steam, the one you wish you could give a middle thumb because you don't really know how you should rate it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this DLC and it's not bad. It adds a nice late-game money sink, a ton of fun new weapons (Including a homage to a fan series that was being made around this time) and improved old ones, and even some challenges to try and complete, but it's just boring.

It's boring, barren, devoid of anything interesting about it. While the other DLCs have their own story to experience, characters to meet, a conflict to solve and world to explore, GRA is just new weapons and ammo being added to the vendors, alongside a single perk for more Grenade and Mine recipes. Nothing wrong with just adding some new stuff to buy and make, but all of the other DLCs manage to integrate them into a world instead of just dumping them onto vendors. The most egregious example however, is the implementation of the new Unique Weapons.

Unique Weapons have stories to tell, often with the restriction of just the environment. They incentive the player to explore every location they can in hopes of finding them, and they add to the world because of it. Meanwhile in GRA you just hand someone a wad of caps and you have the gun, and out of all of the weapons added, only 5 have a sense of history to them, which is just a real shame compared to the designs of most of the other Uniques. These weapons are certainly not lacking gameplay wise, and many feature very unique deviation from their base counterparts, but I honestly don't think it's a good idea to add Unique Weapons if they can't be justified from a story perspective, even something as simple as a fancy Lead Pipe found in the Sewers by some Scavengers.

I will still give GRA a positive review because it's a good DLC, but for the reasons described it's a very mediocre addition to New Vegas. As Nexus Modder phoenix0113 [www.nexusmods.com] put it, it feels like what Fallout 4 does, where most of the "Unique" Weapons are just purchased from merchants.

Inscryption is fantastic, but it's actually impossible for me to tell you why without ruining it.

Don't read anything, don't look at anything, don't watch anything. Just play this game.

(Rewritten as of October 2th 2022)

Don't Starve Together is the opposite of fun. I've tried everything I can to enjoy this game. I've played with friends, I've used mods, I've even played the original game, not one moment of it was positive.

Every time I play DST I just feel empty. I never feel like I'm making progress and stuff just kinda happens in the world without my involvement. I never know what I'm supposed to do either. I've played a lot of "check the wiki" kinds of games but in DSTs case I've had to watch and read dozens of guides and look stuff up constantly to even understand what's going on, and I still don't really get it.

I want to like this game. It has a great art style and an interesting story, and the adverts they do are actually good, but there's just nothing in the game itself that makes me want to play it. I've even given it a generous 100+ hours of playtime instead of refunding it immediately, just trying to find the same enjoyment hundreds of thousands of people have, but there is none.

If you enjoy DST, good on you I suppose. I haven't found a single reason to play it and would rather just look at the artwork and watch the ads/character shorts.

If there's one thing I can give this game credit for, it's how good it can be for a gag gift. Gave it to one of my friends and it was just funny how horrible it all was.

That said, can't give it a positive review for obvious reasons. It's just not a good game at all, but you can still find enjoyment even in bad things.

A well made tower defense. Visuals are nice, sounds effects are enjoyable and the dialogue is funny.
The tactic wheel is probably the most unique mechanic I've seen in a game like this and it's something I hope to see in some way in the future, it has a lot of potential.

As many have pointed out before, the Dark Mage is a bit weak compared to just putting down more Skeletons, and the lack of insta kills besides the Iron Maiden can make things a bit unmanageable if your defense falls, but these aren't enough to make the game bad or anything.

It's a nice short experience and I would recommend it to anyone who likes tower defense games, or at least liked PvZ.

I usually don't review things until a long time after I've finished them, but I just have to say this.

Don't listen to the negative reviews.

The reason so many people got angry about the rebalances is because Afterbirth+ was an unbalanced mess you could steamroll through on most runs with minimum effort. This conditioned you to be bad at the game because you're used to just being able to melt bosses in <5 seconds. Repentance removes a lot of your ability to have these kinds of runs, with nerfing of overpowered items like Maw of the Void, Brimstone, 20/20, Tech X etc.

While you can argue that Edmund ruined your fun, I honestly found steamrolls in ab+ to be incredibly boring to the point where I got mods like pibers rebalance pack (which appears to have influenced the devs quite a bit) just to make the game feel harder.

Along with all the nerfs, a lot of the worse items got buffed or reworked as well. I've been relatively satisfied with the items I've found instead of scoffing at anything average. Some argue this makes all items feel the same, but powerful items are still powerful and they even added a bunch of new ones like Psy Fly. The only difference now is that while they're still strong, it's not an automatic 'I win' button.

There's also of course, nearly all Antibirth content being added alongside a lot of completely original stuff. New bosses, new items, new characters, new paths to completion. It almost feels like a sequel and despite getting my ass kicked by the new hard mode, I'm still having fun. I'm finding new items, new synergies, and by far some of the most unique ways to play the game I never thought would be possible. Hell, even KEEPER of all things is fun to play now. Yeah, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ KEEPER is enjoyable now and feels like a balanced and unique character instead of just a hard character for the sake of being hard and nothing else.

There are drawbacks of course. Balancing concerns are still an issue for some of the newer content. Greedier mode still sucks. Hard mode shops are randomly de-leveled which while adjusted in a patch, is still incredibly frustrating because of the money you had to put into the machine. And of course, some of the new characters are frustrating to play because of their unique mechanics.

But frankly, the good strongly outweighs the bad. Repentance makes Isaac fresh feel again, I feel like there's so much to discover in this one dlc, it's exciting, it's fun.

So if you were on the fence like I was, buy Repentance. It is well worth it.