Recent reviews by Parnic

Voidwrought is a good game that could be great with a few changes. Unfortunately some of what needs changing is rather systemic, so I am hopeful that a Voidwrought 2 can exist and will be able to make them.

The damage balancing is...interesting. When you start the game, you need anywhere from 5-9 hits on just about every basic enemy in the game to kill them, which can be frustrating since they will attack you back and you have no recourse other than to step out of range and back in. The damage upgrades you do eventually get, however, are significant and feel like real steps up in power, which is great! But I wish the balance was such that you could still knock out the chaff early in the game relatively easily (2-3 hits).

You also can't duck in the game despite a fair number of enemies shooting projectiles at you or otherwise being low to the ground. It would help if you could duck since your defense options are pretty severely limited.

At some point you get access to a slottable ability that causes your dash to move through enemies. In my opinion, this is nearly mandatory to keep slotted for the entire game and drastically improves the feel of combat. You actually get options to be more aggressive, reading enemy attacks, and dashing through and away in a sort of dance with the enemy. This feels great, I just wish it didn't occupy a slot (and that it was available from the start of the game).

With all of that said, however, I played this game all the way through and picked up almost everything there was in the game (save for collectible items that there's no in-game way of finding without just exhaustively exploring every nook and cranny to find what you missed - I used The Explorer to find all the envoys and hidden areas, but am still missing a few items that I'm sure I just walked right past at some point). The game looks really good and movement/combat is generally satisfying, save for the issues mentioned earlier.

Again, I really hope this game does well enough for a Voidwrought 2, and that the developer tweaks a few design decisions to make a truly incredible game!

Super addictive, make-numbers-go-higher, poker-themed deckbuilder. If you enjoy building an effective points engine or the feeling of breaking a game by getting clever, this is for you. If you enjoy card games, this is probably for you.

You know what? If you enjoy games, check it out!

The bones of a really good game are here. I give it a lukewarm "yes" recommendation.

The Last Faith has a lot of the pieces of a great Metroidvania, but falls short in a few different ways. The biggest one is its input handling and blocked input windows. The simplest examples here are attempting to attack immediately after jumping and attempting to heal immediately after rolling, both of which typically don't get recognized as inputs unless you mash the button or get the timing just right. This could largely be fixed with a little bit of input buffering. Interestingly, the dodge-roll typically cancels out of whatever else you were doing, so the developer took the time to ensure that at least one input felt responsive, it's unfortunate that a similar level of attention wasn't given to every other input.

Another way that The Last Faith could be improved is with its seemingly arbitrary difficulty spikes in certain areas. There's no visible way to know that you've just entered a more difficult area, and in some cases you'll be fighting the exact same enemy in one zone that you can easily kill in another, and it will inexplicably have a ton more health and deal a ton more damage than the one you've been fighting. I don't mind having higher-level areas, but there needs to be a way to communicate that to the player without them needing to get killed to find it out.

Much has been said about the healing system being based off consumables, so I won't belabor that point any more than to say it's a thing. If you're willing to do a little bit of farming and can make it far enough into the game to get one of the earlier vendors in your hub area, it becomes a non-issue, but it's annoying nonetheless.

And finally, the death pits and spikes have also been talked about a lot but are important enough to warrant a mention. I can, to a degree, understand visible spikes being an instant-kill if that's how you want to design your game (though I wish it just took some health and put you back where you jumped from), but the bigger sin here is death pits in the intended path that you can't see from your jumping-off point, and dying to a large fall where an elevator would be if you sat and waited for it to arrive after activating it. There's no fall damage, and we know there's an elevator at that location on the next screen down, but for *only some* of the elevators, you will die if you attempt to jump down the elevator shaft without waiting for it to arrive.

All of that being said, I love the style of the game, the exploration, and the combat itself feels good (outside of the input buffering issues), I just wish different design decisions had been made in the above areas. If those things don't sound like dealbreakers for you, The Last Faith is a solid entry into the genre that you will probably enjoy.

An awesome combination of Dredge and Dave the Diver (the diving part, at least) in a car.

No wait, it's a survival game/extraction shooter mashup but without the shooting.

Really it's a "are you serious, the tire is flat again?!" simulator.

What I'm trying to say is: this is a lot of fun and you should try it.

It's the Sekiro-Bloodborne-Dark Souls mashup I never knew I wanted.

Lies of P apes the From Software style in the best way possible. This is the best non-From Souls-like game I've played. If you're a fan of the genre, do yourself a favor and play it.

Just as much fun as the first game, with a more Metroidvania-style design. Difficult, but not unfair. Engaging and fast-paced combat with plenty of secrets to find.

Great concept, executed well. Both portions of the game are fun and engaging, and somehow I just want to keep collecting fish and selling them to people.

Vote for Dave for the Steam awards!

I can't even explain what keeps me coming back to this. The graphics are primitive and you really can only run around, but for some reason I just want to play one...more...run. The upgrade loop is solid and the feeling of dodging enemies works well. You feel unstoppable once you've fully upgraded and evolved a few weapons.

A wonderful return to Guybrush and the world of Monkey Island. Puzzles are clever without being obscure, and the trademark humor is there in full force.

I've only finished the first episode so far, but this is far and away the best LEGO game I've played! The combat is fun, third-person controls feel much better than previous games, graphical fidelity is vastly improved, and the core game loop is as fun as always.