Recent reviews by CueZero

This review made possible with a press key and through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher.


Incredible classic SRPG that follows the traditional mechanics of classic Japanese tactics titles.

Take the nostalgic charm and the addictive simplicity yet endless strategy of Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, and give it a wonderfully colorful and artistic Ancient Japanese aesthetic and you have an absolutely worthy revival of a fan-favorite genre.

The same easy to grasp grid-based movement and turn-based attacks, with some spiced up modern mechanics, and all with a plethora of wonderful characters, insane historically appropriate yokai and other beasts, and of course even some cute kimono waifus abound.


I've been playing GOD WARS for about a month on Steam during press pre-release and I'm still firing it up and plowing through missions every day.

GOD WARS is an incredibly beautiful anime-style package of mythological Japanese history, chock-full of interesting scenarios, tales that range from humorous to epic, and intense battles with all form of human and yokai enemies. All tactics enthusiasts owe it to themselves to check out GOD WARS.

The PRO content for Space Engine may be a tad pricey but it's absolutely worth it for media nerds who need full control over creating their own assets for post-production work. Capture images and videos in the highest resolution you'd like for whatever you desire, for video projects, for music videos, for documentaries. As anyone who's used the fantastic Space Engine knows, the software is unparalleled in its visual fidelity and wide open accuracy of the most beautiful scenes in our cosmos so having the ability to use these adventures outside of the program is a damn near Godsend. Worth it for those who intend to use it, absolutely.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & promotions

I don't play Tycoon games all too often but when I do I tend to lean towards something with an emphasis on ease of access. After all, when I sit down to game its to have fun and not complete some tedious or mundane numbers keeping or spreadsheet tracking.

Rescue HQ is exactly the rare kind of Tycoon management title that I can get into, free of the boring, tedious number crunching and statistics of the real world and focusing mostly on the addictive daily activities and roles that keep your important services running for the people in need.

Rescue HQ is everything I look for in a management sim and tycoon game, with fun tasks, addictive progression, and an ease of access that allows for all levels of strategy and management players to engage in.

It looks good and is attractively colorful and despite its low-poly visuals manages to be incredibly detailed. The music in Rescue HQ is upbeat, it's groovy and its energetic and keeps you in the action. It has a certain sort of 70's cop drama vibe to it, serving to the public service employment side of the game and the particular Americana angle on that sort of a workforce.


Rescue HQ is the perfect tycoon package and if you're like me and just want a ridiculously addictive hook in a management game that lets you zone out and build up for hours, this is it.

If you're looking for something a little more complex and with big number crunching, this might be on the simpler side for you but it still has enough charm and replayability to hook anyone in if you're in the right mood.

This review made possible with a press key and through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher.

This game was obtained through an early press key for reviewing purposes

Been playing Void Bastards for a bit now in pre-release and it's just about everything you'd want and expect out of a roguelite FPS, with a whole layer of a nice creepy sci-fi atmosphere a la System Shock and a very unique comic book style.

The lore is deep and mysterious, the aesthetic is on-point, and the shooting controls are surprisingly tight and precise which isn't usually the case with games that go with a heavily stylized comic book visual. Even better than you'd expect, check it out if you love roguelites or FPSes in any capacity.

It's incredibly cute and it's very stylish, but the cartoon-y packaging of You Died but a Necromancer Revived You is not to be trusted. There's something much more brutal under the surface, here. Scores of undead beings are given a chance at life again but only if they manage to escape the clutches of a winding and impenetrable series of death gauntlets.

To escape the dungeon is to escape your own mortality, but is it really worth the torture of reliving the same monotonous death over and over, only to witness your own pitiful demise in a number of ways? That will be for the player to decide, as the deaths will come hard and they will come fast but no matter how badly you want it to end the Necromancer knows no mercy; It's time to try again!


You Died is not nearly as casual as it appears at first glance, nor is it as easy as appearances would have you believe. There's way more to keep track of here than you might realize by looking at screenshots or watching videos, and it isn't just the spiked-floors, explosive cannons, or spinning maces that you have to worry about. Without putting some careful consideration into timing your mad-dash for the exit, death is certain.

The timing behind these traps is precise and dashing forward at just the wrong second will leave you impaled or worse, so players will find themselves stopping to think occasionally. This is not something you want to do, as you'll find out the hard way just like me. You see; Not only are there multitudes of various traps with different gimmicks to stop and consider but the floor is quickly decaying behind you at a faster rate each stage. This adds another entire layer of frantic-ness to the urgency of your quick runs, increasing the rate players will plow right into a deadly trap ten-fold in some kind of sick, sadistic twist.

Stages start out in a mostly predictable spiraling pattern that is easy to navigate. This allows the player to really get the hang of the timing of traps and get a handle on the controls and when to stop themselves before careening off the edge of a walkway. By about stage 3 the layouts become much more randomized, much more sporadic, and really begin to take a toll on your thumbs especially in tandem with the progressively more insane, progressively more diabolical traps.


And just like that the sadistic necromancer will be sure to revive you again and again, just to die another humiliating death at the hands of the tower and its many gauntlets of death. If you like pixel-perfect retro challenges and palm-sweating speed-runners that push you to perform second-shredding speedruns through wild obstacle courses this is one to get hooked into with its countless death and addictive retries.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & game promotions

Technosphere is a real treat of a game for fans of the 3D marble rolling genre of obstacle-course games. It manages to be not only the most mechanically interesting and diverse in terms of gameplay but also the most visually impressive roller around, and all while sporting an authentic sci-fi atmosphere that stands out as unique to the genre.


Aside from the adrenaline pumping danger and speed of the gauntlets and their plethora of unique hazards and obstacles, most are forgiving and most are a pleasure to complete though; The real difficulty here comes from the unforgiving checkpoints that will set you back multiple areas a la Dark Souls if you succumb to the test of endurance.

Players can't afford to be reckless, as they are limited on both time and resources. Orbs of energy can be picked up to refuel your sphere and if you manage to take long enough in a level with out finding any you'll be stopped in your tracks and down a life. Keeping the player even more focused and on the edge during their futuristic gauntlet run of death is the countdown Doomsday clock, which is the overall time allotted to make your escape. It's actually a quite lenient time limit, but it keeps players pressing on and frantic enough to happen on an occasional and frustrating death.

The variety of gameplay elements is wide and they all blend together very well and at a rapid pace that keeps the player's attention grabbed all the way through. There's loads of reflex-testing platforming, all kinds of balancing acts, visually insane hazards to dodge, and even some block pushing puzzles that manage to not be tedious or boring through the sheer joy of free-rolling movement. Paths to the next section or objective will often contain multiple routes of differing obstacles, with one being much harder and challenging to navigate than the other. These also contain much more rewards in the form of point-boosting nodes and extra energy.


The obstacles are challenging, the level designs are incredibly addictive, the visuals are absolutely stunning in a unique sci-fi way, and the whole thing moves along at an incredibly addictive and hard to put-down pace. Unfortunately, the whole thing is over before you know it and you're left salivating for more sci-fi rolling action of this kind of caliber, and that's going to be hard to come by. There really isn't anything quite as visually impressive in the rolling genre.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & promotions

Instead of banking solely on age-old nostalgia or jaw-dropping modern visuals Risk System delivers what old arcade aficionados might really want out of a shmup, a solid and unique new mechanic that pushes the player to take high risks in exchange for unrelenting power and exhilarating score chains.

Boasting an outstanding gritty pixel-art style with a decidedly retro style of sci-fi space opera ship designs, Risk System has a certain 90's anime flavor to its presentation that along with this new and fast-paced brand of shmup action makes the whole thing pretty irresistible .


Just as its name implies, Risk System features a death-defying risk and reward mechanic that incentivizes the player to take acrobatic feats. While the mechanic of grazing bullets to achieve higher scores and multipliers is not new, Risk System evolves and enhances this risk/reward idea with an incredibly slick and responsive dodge control as well as a table-turning finisher that depends on the energy gained from skillfully grazing bullets.

This graceful display of bullet-grazing skill also gives the player quick bursts of powered shots, so pilots who take the highest risks will come out with the most impressive scores and times. Risk System is pure acrobatics as you dance and weave in-between a dazzling ballet of bullets, saving up energy for the boss-shredding Barrier Breaker and taking a quick and triumphant win.


Dissonant and eerie celestial electric vocals in the synth-y and arcade-y background music hearken back to the iconic space opera feel of Darius Gaiden, and in general channels the energy of Zuntata's extensive history in shmup soundtracks. Fans of Taito classics will feel a warm nostalgia to the strange sci-fi sounds here, and its all propelled along with its gameplay into a modern age with heavy beats and pulsing rhythms. This is a classic shmup soundtrack by every means.

The visuals feel absolutely genuine to the late 90's era of arcade shooters, and has elements of high quality anime in the character designs. Also impressive are the big-robo enemy designs, complete with a giant wall-riding mech spider boss that feels like something right out of Ghost in the Shell. Risk System clearly wears its pop-culture influences on its sleeve, and wears it well.


Risk System is an arcade and shmup enthusiasts retro dream come true, the outstanding opening animation, the high-energy soundtrack, and stylish anime presentation all give the game a sort of late 90's Neo-Geo feel to it, like an early Cave shoot'emup a la ESP Ra.De.

The dodge system accelerates the age-old shoot'em'up mechanics with a slick and much faster paced style of gameplay than retro-minded players are probably used to, and that just serves to make Risk System a worthy modern upgrade to a genre that has withstood the tests of time. Absolutely recommended.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & promotions

Epitasis offers a serene and tranquil trip into a terrestrial world. A surreal place in the cosmos filled with its own rich lore of ancient races and forgotten technologies to scout out and ponder the machinations of.

Despite its appearance of open and explorable alien worlds rife with beautiful surreal landscapes Epitasis is much more than a cosmic walking simulator. A plethora of unique puzzles and interesting solutions are spread throughout the world to interact with, and the mechanics are never quite clear leaving the player to use their intuition and creativity to feel through the mechanics of ancient technologies.

With a visual presentation that lies somewhere between the simplistic surreal pleasantries of Proteus and the grand sci-fi wonders of No Man's Sky. It's way more active in game play than either, however, with interactions and puzzles that keep you pressing on to the next important piece.

I'm still very early in my journey, and the entire purpose or plot is not entirely clear to me yet but I can easily say this is one that will engage anyone with an explorative side and an inquisitive mind, as this is purely an experience of discovery. Much more to come as I work my way through, but this is an instantly memorable and accesible sci-fi adventure that I can already heartily recommend to anyone interested in such topics.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & promotions

Over My Dead Pixel is a visually simple retro-flavored 360 degree shoot'emup with a uniquely challenging and equally addictive mechanic. The trapping of your own greedy spray of bullets will be your prison, leading to an untimely death. Here only players with the most patience and the highest level of self-control will prevail.

The player's ship is able to easily lob bullets across the confine walls of the surrounding box, but isn't allowed to move across it resulting in an instant death. The cube shrinks in moments of panic trapping those without steady and careful shots, and releasing your hail of bullets will quickly give you room to breathe. In short, the big problem is that firing your weapon causes this "death box" to shrink with each shot closing the walls of death in on you and severely restriction your range of movement when in the heat of battle.

Deaths come swiftly especially to newer players who haven't grasped the concept of the deathbox, or for those who are just plain clumsy. That's why instead of points the player's score is determined by the seconds they've remained alive, a much harder task than it sounds. It's deceptively simple and a single round never lasts me more than 100-150 seconds or so, but the lure of gradually increasing your time makes a session last upwards of an hour from the sheer number of retries. As the player slowly grasps the restriction of their movement and learns to work around it, staying towards the middle to shoot, survival time gradually increases and the potential for more upgrades to collect rises. Blissfully simple, painfully addictive.


Over My Dead Pixel is the perfect little retro coffee-break package, the kind of game that can be played in minutes-long intervals but can also easily be binged in long sessions for score-chasers. All the bells and whistles you'd want for a Steam release are here including achievements and even more importantly for an arcade game; Leaderboards to push you further and count every single second like your life depends on it. It's also a mere 5 bucks which is more than worth it for a well-made arcade shoot'emup with charming retro visuals and a very unique gimmick.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & game promotions

You've been hand-picked by a British counter-terrorism operation, specifically for your reputation of being a hard-boiled bad-ass and doing things the not-so-clean way; A band of grizzled veterans known for not wasting any time and not exactly playing by the rules, but one that always gets the job done and done well.

You and your talented team of assassins will take on a series of counter-terrorism operations, in the form of daily missions, single operations, and even through procedural Case Missions in order to take down some high-profile targets. Some of the most cartoonish-ly thugged out gangsters and druglords await you guarding various caches of evidence, drug operations, and other objectives behind closed doors, and through lightning reflexes, skillful dexterity, and some serious sweet door busting dashes you'll dispatch these goons and help the international community sleep just a little more soundly.


RICO takes the twitch action of the First Person Shooters of the Golden Age, the reflex-based action of 90's shooters like Quake or Unreal, and spices it up with the addictive and procedural unpredictability of the modern roguelite craze. It's as simple as a shooter could get and it brings us back to the basics of gun play with a simple point, aim, and shoot of your starter pistol but its the satisfying ways in which you figure out how to dispatch each horde of armed thugs in each room that make it worth it. Kicking doors down, sliding in on your knees and triggering a slo-mo mode to help deliver multiple headshots before the figurative sh*t hits the fan is exciting every time.

Similar to the low-poly Devolver shooter, High Hell, the shooting mechanics in RICO have a very methodical yet lightning-paced accuracy to how each room is dispatched making it feel very much like a 3D Hotline Miami. The same thrill is here of anxiously waiting outside a closed door, strategically plotting and planning your next massacre on well-deserving gangsters and drug kingpins. Each mission you take on has totally randomized room layouts, with completely unpredictable placements of gangsters to deal with. You'll also encounter different objectives that are as simple as holding down the activation button, such as defusing a bomb or stealing a cache of evidence, and completing these usually triggers a stream of enemies to come in and hunt you down. You definitely want to do these particular tasks last, plan your objectives accordingly!


The biggest and beefiest mode is the Case mode, where a whole campaign of branching level-paths with varying difficulties to climb is randomly generated for you to take on. At the end of each of these randomly generated Case missions the player receives important Merit points based on their performance and the number of objectives successfully completed before departure.

This is basically the only persistent element of the game that carries over, allowing you to purchase new weapons and powerful attachments that make dispatching large rooms of enemies even easier. These bought weapons and attachments can be brought into the randomly seeded Quick Operations increasing your arsenal from the measly pistol provided to an array of assault rifles, shotguns, and tools like life-prolonging medkits and various grenades or other explosives.

There's also an Experience system for leveling up, which earns you particularly useful traits that you can bring with you into battle allowing for three at a time. Gaining new levels unlocks higher tiers of traits, which give you various passive abilities like extra defense while sliding or lowered recoil while firing from the hip. You can even spend some of your hard-earned cash on some swank new skins for the weapons you've bought and unlocked across Case Missions, when there aren't other more pressing matters than your vanity.


With co-op gunfights that are this solid, it's a relief there's so many ways to play in multiplayer. Whether in Random matchmaking, directly with an internet friend, or even in split-screen for couch co-op with a close buddy you can generally find someone to slide into action with and shoot down some thugs. Playing with another agent is a whole different experience, where your shots take even more careful planning and consideration so as not to damage friendlies or get caught in the crossfire. Calling shots is necessary, and teamwork will make clearing a room twice as fast as it would take on your own or with no proper communication.


RICO is the distilled sort of reflexive action I look for in an FPS, the sort of action that feels right at home in a 90's PC game library. The shooting is so precise and perfect, and it packs such a satisfying punch with such a gritty crime world surrounding it, it's the sort of thing that will gel incredibly well with fans of the aforementioned Devolver library of games. With such explosive and stylish sliding and dodging action, one thing I would hope to see match that style is the game's presentation; There's virtually no music here and I feel like that's a crime in such a good title.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of Review Experts(REXnetwork) and the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & promotions