Recent reviews by 󠀡

A native islander's body ragdolls into pieces 0.5 seconds after he appears in a headlights of our off-road golf cart as me & the boys drive through the night blasting hardbass while high on energy drinks.

100% Orange Juice with Booba but without comprehensible User Interface

SsethTzeentach-ass game

ghostpia is a beautifully illustrated and animated kinetic (linear) novel featuring flawed but likable characters and a fair bit of a morbid humour.

Set in a small winter town of eternal night, portrayed with cute pastel artstyle, the game evokes cozy and melancholic feelings. On the other hand, it features a decent amount of action sequences and doesn't shy away from graphic portrayal of violence. Such contrast works well to deliver the aforementioned dark, slapstick humour, so that many scenes look like they would fit just right in Tarantino movies. The soundtrack does a fine job signifying and elevating impactful events and turning points in the story - be it a triumph over an adversary, a shared moment of happiness or the disengagement of tense atmosphere by a comedic occurrence.
On a little more personal note, I found the protagonist's struggle with self-doubt and excessive self-awareness around other people to be relatable.
The game has episodic structure, with every episode featuring an intro, intermission(s) and credits sequences, and the plot of each one being self-contained to an extent, so it feels like watching a TV series.
The first 2 (out of 5 total) episodes are available to play for free as a demo, with saves carrying over to full version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA2pLrfEZAk

Believe people when they call this a fighting game. Skill ceiling is so high that without looking up a fair amount of tutorials about ambiguous interactions and mechanics as well as performing combos and then practicing it in training mode for hours you're very unlikely to improve naturally.
This complexity wouldn't have been something to complain about in a review were it not for a complete lack of a skill-based matchmaking. Every match you have not only numerous bot players who ALWAYS perfectly parry your heavy attacks fighting against you but also high level players whose performance may appear incomprehensible for a casual player. Once in a ranked game I, while being in the lowest Bronze bracket, was killed by a player from top-25 of EU server. Looking at a player count for this game, which ticks well above 100,000 daily, one would have expected it to have big enough playerbase for this issue to be non-existent, but alas. It might be that player count is inflated.

It is also worth noting that in late 2022 game's female character designs were subject to censorship the likes of which are usually performed to appeal to modern western sensibilities (cleavage and thighs covered, breasts physics disabled). I don't find self-censorship acceptable and wouldn't want to support developers who practice it.

Once you get a grip of it after playing a few rounds, the game feels very shallow. Playstyle variety is minimal and only matters in early game. Manual aiming could very well be replaced with auto-aim like in similar games and gameplay would essentially be the same, but without the need for player to constantly repetitively click/hold down the mouse button.

Although there are a number of positive things to say about Limbus Company, I wouldn't recommend it unless you are a fan of games from this particular developer.
The story has been entertatining so far, but it's hard to get a grip of and appreciate it without having played previous installments in this series, which would require a rather huge time investment (two single player games that take 60+ and 120+ hours to beat respectively).
Gameplay on the surface is quite basic and honestly isn't much fun - you just drag a line across the screen playing match-3 across two rows and watch a dozen of 2d sprites fight each other all at the same time. Under the surface though, it feels overcomplicated. There is just way too much to take into account both when building a team and making decisions in combat.
A team consists of 5 characters.
Each of whom has:
- basic stats
- passive skill
- ultimate abilities
- a skill deck consisiting of multiple skills used in combat
Each skill from the deck, as well as ultimate abilities, has:
- basic stats
- type
- element
- "coins" (number of attack success roll attemtps)
- coin flip success bonus
- one or more effects that could be conditional
- (ultimates only) cost depending on previously used skills
In combat you would also have to take into account all of the above for each of the enemies as well as interactions between different characters' skills elements (the aformentioned match-3). It feels overwhelming and the UI doesn't really try to present this amount of information in an easy to read way. Should I chain 2 blue skills together for a resonance or choose the red one because the enemy is weak to the blunt attack type? It's hard to tell. The fact that your characters attack enemies at random unless it is a bossfight makes combat more RNG-dependant than it could be otherwise.
As for it being a port of a free-to-play mobile game, it appears on the player-friendly side, including features such as ability to store the time-generated resources for later use and a way to obtain all characters by means other than rolling a gacha.

A short, humorous parody of a few popular indie games & visual novels from 2010s that incorporates interactions with Windows desktop environment into gameplay in a creative ways.

I guess it could work as a horror if the subject it brings up makes you feel uncomfortable. Otherwise doesn't really provide any entertainment.

Open the game expecting yet another experimental obscure indie horror.
Close the game having played fun first-person platformer with surprisingly decent amount of movement options.