Recent reviews by FraidOfTheLight

I mostly enjoyed this game - but it is very much a game of two halves.

The first half is a fun base builder: unlock new rooms and minions, expand, research, train, etc.

That lasts a while, but eventually you hit the minion cap and run out of things to unlock. At the same time, you need to defend your base from occasional incursions from enemy agents or soldiers.

And that's the second half: tower defence, basically. You build a trap maze - except that half the traps don't work on max-level enemies, so you can implement strategies that do kinda work, and/or you can just send in your muscle minions to clear up.

I enjoyed the first half; but in the second half, I just wanted to do more base building, and there were limited opportunities to do that. And in that respect, the game outstays its welcome. I wanted to play a base builder, not a tower defence.

Also, at no point did I find the world map fun. If anything, it's a chore, a constant game of whack-a-mole. I'd happily do without it, but they've made it a critical part of the game.

Aside from all that, the comedy spy theme is very well done, the music is excellent, and the humour is suitably goofy. But having now completed the game with one of the four geniuses, I'm not convinced that starting a new game with one of the others will offer much that's new.

There's some nice artwork, the graphics and sound design fit the mood, it's a very accurate digital recreation of the board game...and that's it.

If you look at some other digital board games, like Everdell and Root, the games' creators have managed to keep them faithful to the originals, while taking advantage of the medium to (for example) replace physical tokens with animated depictions, add animations to actions, and provide a somewhat immersive environment for the game that takes it beyond a mere board game.

Dune: Imperium's creators have not done this. Apart from the aforementioned limited artwork and sound, it's not so different from the experience you'd get on BGA or TTS. In that respect, I feel it represents a real missed opportunity to take advantage of the digital medium. (For example, why not replace the cubes that represent troops with something - anything - more relevant than a cube?)

In short: it's fine, but nothing special. Other digital board games do a much better job.

It's free, it only takes a couple of hours, and it gently pokes fun at The Witness. What's not to like?

What a gloriously strange game.

In the same way that Portal took what might have been an interesting and novel puzzle game, and turned it into something truly special, Inscryption takes an already-entertaining desk builder, and makes it...weird - in the best possible way.

From the moment you load it, everything in this game feels off-kilter, and it never lets up. And just when you think you've got the measure of it, it changes direction.

Play it, and embrace the strangeness.

This has been really good fun! An unexpectedly successful mashup of RTS, base builder and tower defence.

Taking my time and trying to be thorough, it took me about 36 hours to beat the campaign. Occasionally got a bit repetitive, but there was always plenty to do. Would heartily recommend if you like this sort of thing.

What a beautiful, thought-provoking and original game. Unlike anything I've played before.

Despite the occasional frustrating of falling into a black hole or being eaten by a big scary fish, or just running out of time for this loop, if you make it to end, it leaves you (or at least, me) with a wonderful feeling of serenity.

Play it, and go explore.

More stable as an early access game than many fully-released games; and more addictive than a very addictive thing.

I've stopped playing it because I value the simple things in life, like having enough sleep, and turning up to things on time.

- Tried the new (4th) scenario on normal difficulty.
- Failed the people, and was banished in 45 minutes.
- Tried again.
- Did much better. Took a couple of hours to be banished.
- Read lots of people online saying how easy the game is, and that they had to play it on the hardest difficulty to get a real challenge.
- Wonder what I'm doing wrong.
- Will try 4th scenario on easy and see how long I can avoid being banished for.

10/10: would face soul-crushing cold, depression, atmosphere and downtrodden people again in the name of progress (and that's just the online community...).

I can understand why people love this game, so I guess I'm in the minority when I say that Terraria is really not the game for me.

Twice I've started to play, and twice I've abandoned it within 45 minutes. The second time, I have rarely been so frustrated with a computer game. Without using a beginners guide, I found the game annoying and impenetrable. By the time I started using a guide, I was already so pissed off that I didn't want to continue.

There is clearly a huge amount of depth to Terraria, a wealth of things to do, and great outlets for people's creativity. But for me, I'll need to go elsewhere to find those things.

That was...strange.

Having reached the end of the game in about 1.5 hours, I found that the Wikipedia article on it helped me understood what on Earth I'd just played. But don't read it until you've experienced the game!