Recent reviews by OtacA

So allow me to preface: is it the next great roguelike in its current state? Nope, not even remotely. It has its issues, one of which being a seeming lack of game-to-game progression (aside from some, so far, fairly minor stat buffs). The system is fairly limited, weapons don't really attack differently. its either "Swing", "Shoot pellet", or "Summon Defense", just like the past games, but in this case the defenses you summon disappear after a short period of time, forcing you to stay active in the combat the whole time. In all honesty, there's not a ton going for it at the moment, so why am I giving it this thumbs up?

The devs, Chromatic Games, have been very open about their reason for this game, and their plan for both it and DD:A. Is it a cash grab? Kind of, but only in the sense that Tower Defense is a dwindling market and they needed something to keep their business running to continue to work on Dungeon Defenders titles, DD:A included. Why make a new game instead of doing something to improve the one they've got? Well, they didn't want to make a paid dlc to split the dwindling community they have further, so they made a game using the same engine and many of the same mechanics, but structured in a way that might find more success in the current gaming industry than a tower defense title. This has the advantage that when they develop something for one, it's easy to port things over to the other due to using the same engine, while just needing to do some tweaking to new things.

So yeah, my thumbs up is more because I have high hopes that the studio doesn't shut down and can make good on the plans they have been fairly open about than because this game itself is absolutely fantastic. Do I still think it's worth a shot? If you've got people to play with. It's kind of bland on your own.

The combat flows super well, the story is super straight-forward, and the game looks and sounds amazing. Sure, I got an in-depth look at the inside of the game geometry a time or two, but honestly, it could've been worse, given Bethesda's track record.

9/10 would hail the coming of the destroyer from the inside of a wall again.

tl;dr: Book of Demons is really, really good, with beautiful and consistent aesthetics, very creative mechanics, and a fair amount of challenge in the game. If you like dungeon crawlers, give it a shot. It scratches an itch I was completely unaware I had, but oh boy was scratching it nice. The overall score I give for this at its $25 price point is 9.375/10, although it's worth mentioning that to get this game in the first place I was able to purchase it for around $7 thanks to a very generous coupon. I have since purchased the Supporter Pack, though, so I've definitely given more than $7 to Thing Trunk for this game.

==============The Overview==============
Book of Demons, the first game of the Return 2 Games set by Thing Trunk. A game I had no clue about, but had a coupon to get for a really good price, and I have the real problem of buying things that are heavily discounted. After purchasing it, it sat unplayed for a few days until I was bored and looking for a new game to try. I took a glance at Book of Demons, glancing at the reviews and steam page and opted to give it a try. Book of Demons is a dungeon crawler that reminds me a lot of the Diablo series, with a few twists. You explore dungeons along what is essentially a fixed rail. While exploring, you have a radius around you that you can interact with things, such as breaking pots, collecting items, or, more frequently, attacking enemies. You auto-attack an enemy close to you, but you can click (either click and hold or repeatedly click) on the enemies to attack faster. Killing enemies (and certain item pickups) grant you XP, leveling up gives you the chance to upgrade your health or your stamina. The health is really straightforward, having more of it means you can get hit more before you die. The Stamina is used a bit more interestingly, and that ties in with the main way you improve your character's fighting ability.
This system is their collectible cards, which I swear is less intimidating than it sounds. Everything besides your health, stamina and basic attack is decided entirely by the cards you have equipped. Cards come in multiple forms: Items, like health potions. Passives, like Armor or weapon enhancements. And lastly, Actives, like special attacks. Using items is straightforward, click a button you use a thing. Actives use a set amount of stamina and create a specified effect. Stamina normally doesn't regenerate, but there are a few ways to refill your stamina. That leaves passives. A passive card creates a passive effect (Like Shadow Sword, which causes another enemy in your range to be attacked any time you attack an enemy), but also locks off part of your stamina gauge. If you have a max of 6 stamina, but equip a passive that costs 2, then you only have 4 usable stamina. This means that increasing stamina will always be useful, even if you only rarely use active abilities. This is a beautiful design choice and cannot overstate how pleasing it was for me to find this.

==============The Actual Review==============
ANYWAYS! It's time to get on to the actual ratings, so let's go!
Sound Design: [10/10] The volumes are balanced, the monsters all have sounds that feel right, the music is good, I literally have no complaints about the sound design.

Visuals: [10/10] Oh god, where do I even begin? How about with a quote from the Book of Demons artbook: "We wanted a style that would be symbolic, one that would leave room for the player's imagination to roam freely." They nailed this goal, the entire game is designed to look like a pop-up book. Not just the player and enemies, not just the dungeons themselves, not even just the ground effects. Even the Health and Stamina bubbles on the UI looks like it was made by cutting construction paper to different shapes. Everything about this game fits this design, looking like you could print out their textures and remake the entire game as a tabletop rpg. Wait... Hey Thing Trunk team? I just had an idea for how you can take even more of my money...

Gameplay: [8/10] Oh look, there's something about this game I can actually criticize! Now don't get me wrong, I've had a great time exploring the dungeons and improving. But There's a glaring issue that I've run into multiple times that I feel like I may eventually get used to, but am not sure I should HAVE to get used to. This is the fact that the button you use to move is the same button you use to attack, interrupt abilities, pick up items and use fountains (ways of restoring health and stamina). While I realize I don't have the MOST time in this game, every death I've experienced so far has resulted from me attempting to interrupt a monsters ability or quick-attack a small enemy, but missed the clicks because the monsters are always moving, which resulted in either me walking closer to a group of enemies, and then the monster AND the camera were moving resulting in me continuing to miss the small interrupt button and the enemies again, OR I was holding in place and starting taking attacks from enemies because I couldn't land my attacks. As I started to inch closer to the swarm of enemies, I started to panic which didn't help, and I died just slowly walking into a group of enemies not even swinging. There is a button you can press to hold your character in place, which certainly helps, but there are still certain enemies, and the small interrupt buttons that are hard to click. I'm still giving this an 8 because I can't even come up with a solid way to improve this other than separating the move button from the attack button (or allowing the right mouse button to move your character without interacting with the interactables), that way at the very least I can for sure click a move button no matter what is on the screen and try to retreat from a dangerous situation, as clicking on things that you can interact with causes you to stop moving entirely.

Appropriate Challenge: [9.5/10] This game, at least from what I can see, isn't built to hold your hand. The story is there, but it's up to you to earn it. It sometimes feels like the difficulty spikes out of nowhere, but honestly the inconsistent difficulty curve is just a small gripe.

Honorable Mention: Something worth noting is the free Streamer integration, allowing viewers of someone streaming this game to have direct impacts on the players adventure. I don't personally think this is worth adding points to the game, since only streamers with at least some form of a following will get any benefit from using this, but it's certainly worth mentioning at the very least.

Overall: [9.375] Do you like dungeon crawlers? Do you like the art style? Try it. It's a $25 game if you buy it at full price, if that price tag is a bit too steep for you, then keep an eye out for a sale, because I can essentially guarantee you that it's worth trying. Just make sure you read the tutorials, enough about this game is different from the typical games that it certainly helps if you pay attention to what the devs are trying to tell you.

==========================================

What if I paid...?
$30 [9.375]
$40 [9.250]
$60 [9.000]

That's right, I think this game holds up really well even at $60. It takes a small hit at higher prices just because I feel like that control issue I outlined would be less "forgivable" if I were expected to pay higher prices. However, the rest of the gameplay is so solid, unique, and fun that I just can't bring myself to bring it below a 9 at even $60. Basically, what I'm saying is give it a try. If you have as much fun as I do playing this game, consider buying the supporter pack. You get some really cool stuff, and make sure that they can continue to develop this "Return 2 Games" series.

tl;dr: The game's really good, DD isn't satan, and if you're a die-hard fan of the first FNAF game, there's a solid chance you might be just as disappointed now as you were with most of the others. I give it a 9.25/10 overall for a free game.

Ultimate Custom Night (UCN), from the moment you first launch the game, is very obviously a love-project. Not just for his series, but for Scotts community as well, and it shows through. The game is a mix of 50 animatronics you CAN control, and a handful of ones you can't, such as DD and the ones on DD's secret roster. This game isn't scary, unless jumpscares get to you every time without fail. The game throws them at you so quickly that you get desensitized really quickly, but this isn't a bad thing. This game isn't meant to be scary, this game is meant to be fun and challenging, a mostly skill-based game with, as far as I can tell, actually surprisingly little left up to RNG when it comes to this many characters. I want to clarify that though: there IS RNG, but not so much that you can't predict, prepare for, or adapt to as the night goes on. If it was a bad amount, I don't think I'd be able to get 5000 points with >50% power left every night. The one bit of RNG that can easily get on someones nerves is DD, the animatronic that sometimes will show up and throw a new animatronic into your night at a random difficulty (usually 10 or less), or raise an animatronic you already have to a higher difficulty. Possibly an unpopular opinion here, but I love DD being in the game. Sure, it sucks if you're trying to get some of the secrets or specifically just trying to practice with a handful of animatronics, but most of the time to me, DD is a test of how effective I am with my current setup, since I now have to play out my current strategy while throwing a new problem into the mix I hadn't already planned for. It forces you to always think on your toes, and that's what I love about it.

Anyways, long story short, here are my ratings:
Sound Design: [7/10] Some of the jump-scare sounds feel a bit too.. generic, for lack of a better word, some of them are a bit tired (we've heard them before), however the volume levels feel just about perfect. Even when several different jump scares go off at once when I slip up, I can still hear audio cues if I'm listening carefully.
Visuals: [8/10] The game looks similar to any FNAF, but with more polish. All in all, when I look at it, neither the words "Reboot", "Distracting", or "awful" come to mind, and that was something I was always worried about.
Gameplay: [8/10] Played a FNAF game before? You probably already know the basics of the controls. Exception being that you HAVE to use the keyboard to close doors and vents. If this is an issue for you, trust me, you weren't going to get very far clicking on the door controls manually. Some of the characters feel a bit too "I ran out of good ideas" for my taste, but even those are typically creative, just for me feel out of place.
Appropriate Challenge: [10/10] This game was BUILT to be a challenge. Sure it's got its secrets and lore bits that everyone is combing over, I'll leave that to the theorists. This game wasn't built to be scary (at least, I hope not, if so Scott may have messed that one up), this game was built to make you look at the roster of Animatronics and go "If I slap all of these guys into one room, what're the odds I make it out?" A mindset that it nails, might I add, and never feels cheap since you have direct control over every aspect of the difficulty except for DD. Speaking of Which:
BONUS POINTS! : [4] DD, a character everyone seems to hate on for... understandable reasons, is one of my favorite aspects of the game. It keeps every second of the game interesting and intense, simply because you have to play every second of the game prepared for a new threat. You're not ALLOWED to be sloppy BECAUSE of DD, and as a lover of challenge in games, I don't think this could've been more effectively implemented. If Scott added DD to the roster to let people actually turn DD off, (which I don't think he'll do), I hope there's a checkbox somewhere where you can keep it original and let DD be completely random in your game. I'm also giving another 2 bonus points for 'Improvement over the Old'. Don't get me wrong, FNAF in general is a wonderful series, and I honestly couldn't really bash any of the games, but I can't help but respect Scott for his decisions with each new game. He knew better than to keep making FNAF 1 straight from the beginning. Resident Evil made this mistake, since by the time the second game was out, no one was surprised that Umbrella Corp was evil except your protags, and it took out the tension the first had. FNAF, on the other hand, is aware that the tension created by the first game wouldn't carry it through multiple games. So he kept making this either more challenging, or more story driven to mix everything up. This game is the extreme of the "more challenging" branch, and it's all the better for it.

Overall: [9.25/10] I definitely recommend giving it a shot, even if you've stayed clear of the other games, as long as you enjoy a challenge. It's a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get started, you'll find that things start to make sense very quickly.

What if I paid...?
5$ [9/10]
10$ [8.5/10]
15$ [7.75/10]

These higher costs would make my issues with the game less forgivable, but overall, the fantastic challenge the game has to offer is enough that I would still even recommend this game all the way up to 15$. The fact that it's a free game?

Get it. If you like Challenge, you'll love it.

Alright, I think I've put enough time in to give it a review.

It's pretty alright, the music is neat. There's a few things to do in it, too.