Recent reviews by fst

Very similar to Return of The Obra Dinn, but somehow I enjoyed it less. I loved Obra Dinn and expected much from The Case of the Golden Idol, maybe too much. It is very similar, but the design is less elegant, jumping between scenes breaks immersion and maybe it's just that magic of playing such a game for the first time is gone and I idealize Obra Dinn and downplay this game.

Overall, I decided to give it a thumbs up, because many puzzles were interesting and some designs were really clever, so I do consider this a game worth playing. But I also am a little unsatisfied with it and really urge you to try Obra Dinn first if you haven't already.

Heartwarming little puzzle game. Puzzles are quite easy and more on the relaxing side which fits the overall feel of the game of being cozy, but some require you to get a little creative. Overall a great and wholesome experience that I liked much more than I expected.

Talos Principle is one of my favorite games of all time and I'm so happy for the devs that they could build something much bigger than the first one. The setting, story and puzzle mechanics are all great, but there are some minor caveats:
- puzzles are great, but for me they were too simple (I'd prefer more puzzles on the "golden gate" level, these were much more enjoyable for me). because they were too simple, running between them and solving them was more of a chore than fun sometimes
- this also resulted with slight annoyance with size of the world - huge distance between two simple puzzle rooms resulted in much more time spent on boring "solve an easy puzzle + run to the next one" loop with nothing to really engage me till I finally got to some harder puzzle
- monument puzzles just didn't click for me - I finally gave up on solving them because they weren't much fun

Overall it still was a great experience that I can recommend to everyone. For me the story is it's greatest strength while puzzles for the most part were more of a "means to an end" to access more story.

Good platformer, not a good metroidvania as map design is too chaotic and levels are too branching for a game like this. Sometimes you wonder whether you can't get somewhere, because you don't have some ability or you just can't nail some really hard segment. Or you go through the first part or two of some branch, but then it turns out you weren't supposed to get there as you are presented with some impossible obstacle and it becomes clear now that you struggled with previous segment needlessly and did some sequence-breaking. And now you're frustrated, because you just wasted some amount of your time without reason.

This game also needs a map. If you can't play it in a few subsequent sittings and if you're like me and it sometimes takes 2 weeks between your half an hour sessions, then this game is not a good choice, because it's so easy to get lost and there are far too many branches to remember this after a 2-week break. You can always look some map online, which I did, because without it I'd give up this game entirely after one of those longer breaks, but those maps reveal the whole world, not just the part you discovered and this also breaks some fun from discovering the world and expanding the map by yourself.

IMO this game would benefit from being more linear, because platforming is quite fun, but those "I don't know if I'm supposed to do it and now I've wasted 15 minutes on it" segments and lack of map ultimately led to more frustration than fun.

Really great game, highly recommended if you like Sokoban-like puzzlers. Level design is not as good as in Stephen's Sausage Roll (which has a cleaner, better thought-out levels with more stable difficulty curve) and I think that I found some unintended solutions, but overall I had an amazing time.

A really unique experience with a touching story - even though blinking mechanic didn't always work for me as it should, it was definitely still worth playing and I'll remember this game for a long time as something special.

It seems that the developers just tried to do too much with this game. They tried to build a card battler roguelite, but with expanded story and fairly long dialogues. Unfortunately, the first part (card battler roguelite) doesn't sit well with the second (extended narrative).
Roguelites usually have quick runs that allow for bigger variety and trying different things between runs. Here, every run is 5-6 hours long (because it represents a bigger story), so you'll probably have enough after playing it once. It's often too easy and unbalanced, because of the lengths of the runs - particular encounters just lose significance when you have so many of them in the run. Card variety is not really interesting either.
There are few interesting concepts, but they don't work well together or lose their significance, because they are lost among other mechanics. In my opinion, it'd be better to do less, but give these things more time and focus.
Unfortunately, the end result is a card game that is only decent and you'll be much better playing titles like Slay The Spire or, my personal favorite in the card battler genre, Inscryption.

Great parody of The Witness. If you have played The Witness, try this one, it'll make you laugh - it's free and only 1 hour long so there's no reason not to try it.

(If you haven't played The Witness, then you won't get most of the jokes, so I'd strongly recommend playing The Witness first)

I agree with other negative reviewers that this game simply is not anything special. When I bought it, it had an overwhelmingly positive reviews ratio, but I don't think it deserves it. It does nothing special and is rather bland - combat is clunky and just not fun, especially knowing how great it feels in e.g. Hollow Knight or Souls games. People seem to talk a lot about aesthetics and music - and while I agree that the art-style is ok (but again, not amazing), the music just did not do it for me and I found it unfitting and a little bland. It did not fit the pace or the mood.

Hollow Knight set the bar extremely high for other metroidvanias and while I don't expect other titles to surpass it, I expect them to at least offer something interesting to set themselves apart and Ender Lilies unfortunately feels just bland and "safe".

This game is truly a cinematic experience. I thought I wouldn't enjoy it, because the main gameplay loop is mostly "go there, deliver that", but it's realized so well that even these parts are somehow not boring and instead allow you to enjoy the scenery and the music. Being connected to other players' worlds and helping each other is also really cool and wholesome concept.