Recent reviews by Downward Concept

A mixture of several mythologies, fantasy and ultraviolence à la Hotline Miami create the unique setting for Deadbolt - a 2D stealth game where you play the reaper reclaiming the undead.
Although that's just half-true, because depending on your skill you can play with guns blazing or without making a sound, either way it's incredibly good fun.

Challenging, but not impossible.
Most indies these days are hard and Dark Souls made difficulty a selling point for videogames, but often times it feels like difficulty is just there to water down the content.
Deadbolt on the other hand requires a calm hand and good planning. I've never been frustrated, because I knew I could do better and even then the game respects your time and effort. Something I've never seen before. When you fail a couple of times - and you will - the game tells you to take a break, reconsider your strategy or gives you a hint. I've seen people on the forums outraged, because they felt babysat, but I really appreciate the notion.

The pixel art appeared simple at first, having played Hyper Light Drifter and the like, but it is that simplicity that grew on me with excellent, fluid animations and a necessary minimalism to give you the canvas to splatter zombie brains on.
The level design gives you multiple ways to complete missions and offers a variety that won't bore you, constantly introducing new enemies which will mix up the gameplay and force you to adapt. It keeps the game challenging and interesting.
The story is cryptic, which seems en vogue these days, but offers enough clarity to let you follow and actually care about it, so that the apex doesn't leave you completely cold.

For me Deadbolt was a huge suprise. I had so much fun that I actually replayed levels after beating it, which is extremely rare for me. I'm glad when I even beat a game in the first place. I highly recommend it.

The price of videogames and the value you get out of them is often compared to going to the movies. You can spend 20 bucks on a 3D flick with some popcorn and a drink or use that to get a game of the same length or even more.
I think that deep down we still feel the need to justify the medium, even though I understand the argument, but Firewatch was the first title that made me reconsider that comparison and where it immediately made sense to me.

Firewatch is a walking simulator, with Telltale-esque dialogues, that tells the story of a man that chose escapism as his life went downhill and became a fire lookout.
The prologue is only told with text and some accompanying soundscapes, but I already felt deeply moved and instantly invested in the story, which tells a lot about the writing, where other games struggle to achieve this level of immersion even with access to all the artistic tools videogames offer.

As soon as you're thrown into the actual game you can't help but be amazed by the breathtaking vistas and goregeous color pallets. Definitely one of the most beautiful games I've ever laid eyes on.
The story itself is mostly conveyed with dialogues between the protagonist and his superior via walkie talkie and the voice acting is on par with big budget productions, if not better, and again the writing proves its quality.

Those 4 hours I've played were incredibly dense and intense. All killer, no filler. It's an emotional rollercoaster.

Yes, the game is short and yes, the game costs a bit much, considering you can get more bang for your buck these days, but I don't think I have ever played such a compelling game.
And if this wouldn't have been a christmas gift I probably would've waited for a steep discount, yet after finishing the game I think that those 20 dollars are more than justified. Just like going to the movies.

Afterbirth+ ruined Isaac.

I don’t wanna say much, except that it’s a puzzle game with some interesting mechanics and unusual yet beautiful visuals.
There were minor things that annoyed me like the really cheap feeling animation while walking and the puzzles that jumped from obvious to extremely hard and back to super easy again.

It reminded me of Dead Space a lot in various aspects of the visuals and story, but the latter is what’s standing out the most to me. At first it all seemed like pseudo philosophical jibber jabber, but the ending… Oh my.

If you have it, play it. If not, look at some screenshots I took and regret not owning it.

Review taken from my backlog profile.[backlog-deepness.rhcloud.com]

After 3.4 hours I’ve completed the story mode of Omnibus, which is a rather short but very enjoyable time. If I’d hunt for achievements and had friends to play the versus mode with I would get way more out of it, so I feel like the money I’ve spent is just right for what I got. Mind you, I didn’t pay the full price. Thanks, Nuuvem!

The graphics remind me of the PlayStation era and the gameplay recreated a feeling that I had with games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater back in the day. A game that isn’t necessarily close to what the title advertises, but gives you an arcadey experience - not too hard, not too easy and no matter how often you fail, it’s never frustrating.

If I had to compare it to modern games it would join the ranks of games like Goat Simulator, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. Not because the mechanics are unique like in I Am Bread, but because it’s goofy, doesn’t take itself seriously and relies heavily on weird physics, which serve for funny moments here and there.

The story mode is a collection of mini games. Structured like an old school platformer and seperated into different worlds. Each level is idiosyncratic and guarantees that you don’t get sick of the gameplay at any time. Of course some levels are better than others, but it maintains a certain quality that doesn’t exhaust you.
And there’s a little Pony Island WTF moment later in the game which suprised me.

Overall Omnibus is just a really stupid game and I mean that in the best way possible. It’s exactly what I was hoping for. A game you just play for quick fun, rather than a challenge or an immersive story.

It’s not the best game ever made, but it didn’t disappoint me either.

Review taken from my backlog profile.[backlog-deepness.rhcloud.com]

What happens if you take away the wastelands and reduce Fallout to its vaults? You get a rogue-lite RPG dungeon crawler called Wasted, a cel-shaded FPS heavily influenced by Bethesda’s most beloved franchise. A lot of the mechanics and gameplay will be very familiar if you played the post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, but it’s not just a shameless copy, it’s a game that stands on its own and doesn’t hide its influences.

The story is a negative of its role model. Instead of being a survivor of a vault, you are a waster of the surface, while everyone in the coolers, this game’s vaults, have died due to malfunction. The coolers were supposed to keep the smartest minds of the world alive in cryogenic chambers to rebuild everything after the radiation has settled. Instead only the dumbest specimens have remained and raid the coolers for their radioactive booze, which grant powerful hangovers and you are out to get them as well!

The gameplay is really solid and can be challenging when you don’t play the game as intended, but from all the FPS rogue-lites and -likes I have played, Wasted seems to nail the mechanics perfectly. Alas, once you obtain the required skill to progress, the game becomes too easy - an extreme contrast for a game that felt too hard at first. And even though the gameplay mechanics are really good, the enemies don’t offer much variety, meaning that you must have a high tolerance for repetition. Same goes for the dungeons themselves. They all have the same layout, the same rooms and beside some visual changes there is nothing fundamentally different. It’s the same thing over and over.
But if you are like me, you love hoarding and grinding for gear, which this game let’s you do. Inbetween runs you can go back to your home and hoard all the loot you collected to prepare yourself for other raids as well as visiting the Ony Express, a small town you can go to to receive quests, buy gear from the TP you got (yes, the currency is toilet paper) or just get hammered - not really, you get a buff that will last for a run though.

The quests are what make the game more interesting, they connect each cooler run and give them a purpose. The writing is hilarious and the voice acting suprisingly good. The last hours of the game felt exhausting, but the story was so rewarding I didn’t mind all the repeptitive, time-consuming dungeons.

If you are the Diablo grinding, farming, looting type and have a high tolerance for frustration and repetition you will have a good time with this game. I certainly did.

Review taken from my backlog profile.[backlog-deepness.rhcloud.com]

Over time I was doubting if the hype for this game was justified and I can confirm that it was and still is.

I've got the true pacifist ending, after some major mind-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and never has a game encouraged me to play this way. The game is so positive and fun, it was just a joyride through and through. I don't want to kill anyone in this game and usually I'm always the bad guy in videogames, except for the ones that force you to be good, because the bad route is often the wrong route and punishes you for choosing it. One of the things I hate the most about the supposed multiple choice, choose your own way ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ these days.

Tem outta tem!

There are a few things to criticize though. Playing with a controller is wonky at times and I wouldn't recommend using it for the fights. Plus you'd think a game of this magnitude would have full controller support and give you the chance to take screenshots, but the game engine hinders you from doing that. Only minor things because I grew to take them for granted, but still an amazing game!

Review taken from my backlog profile.[backlog-deepness.rhcloud.com]

By now everyone knows what this title is all about, so I won't have to tell you anything about the fun time-bending mechanic, right? Time moves only when you move, yadda yadda.

The story of the game is rather short, taking maybe 2 hours to complete, depending on how fast you clear the levels. It's trying really hard to be meta and deep, which isn't a bad thing, but it has been done before, maybe even better. So the philosophical tone is a bit overused, but it's just something that ties together each level. So I still appreciate the effort. After all it's about the gameplay here, not a story.

So is it worth the money playing a 2 hour campaign? Probably not, but you get a ridiculous amount of challenges, endless modes and other unlockables after that, which adds a lot of replayability. It also gets crazy difficult, so my initial goal to 100% Superhot isn't as easy as I thought it would be.

What I absolutely love about the game are the visuals though. It's rare to find titles that try to be visually appealing, beyond pixel art and your usual videogame realism. Everything about this is perfectly designed. From the logo to the levels. I don't say I know ♥♥♥♥ about graphic design, but I bet anyone that does will highly appreciate the looks of this game.

Review taken from my backlog profile.[backlog-deepness.rhcloud.com]

A nice short little adventure with easy achievements. Really enjoyed it, although there are some minor things that bothered me, which makes the universal praise a bit confusing to me.

First off the positive aspects though. The mechanic of controlling each brother individually was definitely unique and entertaining. Sometimes I had to figure out who's who, so I always preferred having the older brother on the left and the younger one on the right, so that they align with the analog sticks they're controlled with, but once you get used to the controls it's somewhat fascinating to play two characters at once. It's surreal to look at the screen and see them move so naturally and despite being in control it disconnects you from what's happening. I felt like I'm watching a movie or something. That's not a bad thing, it only underlines how idiosyncratic the feature is.

What I didn't like was the gibberish language they were talking. Growing up in a multicultural area, and being a son of migrants myself, most words sounded familiar, but didn't make sense at all. So it really took a lot of immersion away from the game when they just sounded completely ridiculous in, what supposed to be, moving scenes.

It also felt a bit incoherent, because this game got really, really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dark all of a sudden. At first it was a beautiful hike through the woods, but then it was all about death, halucinations and what not. You could argue the sudden change is an artistic tool to add more weight to the events, but it just felt out of place.

Still an enjoyable experience and alone the gameplay mechanics make it worth being played.

Review taken from my backlog profile.[backlog-deepness.rhcloud.com]

Been wanting to play this game for a long time, so I was excited to finally explore its beautiful, cryptic world, but my expectations haven't been met unfortunately. The combat felt punishing and way too difficult, because it technically doesn't give you the finesse required to master the fights. Knowing it had four directions to go to, and discovering that each had a boss required to progress in the game, I was suprised to beat them all that fast. So the game was shorter than I thought, too.

But once I closed the game to take a break I realized I had spent 4 hours and later finished the game with almost 9 hours played in one day and it felt like I played way less!

The game grew on me and after a while my first impressions all have been eradicated - I begun to love the game more and more. The soundtrack is subtle and fits perfectly, ranging from lovely piano music to goregeous analogue, warm synthesizers. The pixel art is beyond everything I have seen before, setting a new standard for what you can achieve with only pixels and a few colours. And the combat got easier after time once you know how to time your dashes and combos, making each encounter a well choreographed dance. Boss fights sometimes felt too easy, sometimes too hard, but overall it boils down to how well you can play - memorize attack patterns and behaviour, counter it with a dash and time your combos just right to make the most out of the small time windows where you can make your move.

In a lot of ways this game reminded me of Titan Souls, although both are completely different. If you wonder if Hyper Light Drifter is something you would like, then give Titan Souls a shot. Should be easy to get since it was bundled a bunch of times.

Review taken from my backlog profile.[backlog-deepness.rhcloud.com]