Recent reviews by Heckvetica

I started out playing Dawnfolk on my Steam Deck and was instantly enchanted by this game. It's a really simple to learn game, but there's fun challenges along the way. I really enjoy all the different modes the developer put into the game. As you play you unlock points to open the game up more, gaining different modes to play. Puzzle mode is a favorite of mine. There's even an endless mode, fun secrets and ways to make things easier/harder.

This game seems to have gotten an unfair shakedown, and I'm not sure why. I thought it might be helpful to provide my context and support for a game that I think shows a fair amount of love for the Batman franchise and some great game play concepts.

The story is really compelling. Gotham city having it's main protector gone and turned over to four "knights" has been a fun world to explore. Each character you play as has their own story lines, and different reactions to what's going on in each scene. Batgirl is a brawler with some hacking skills which make level traversal easier, Robin is quick and sneaky, Red Hood is a melee & ranged brawler, while Nightwing flips and tumbles through fights dodging hits easily. They each have ability trees, and once you grind through the city on your first knighthood challenge, they have really unique and interesting ways to travel around the city.

The co-op experience has been fun, what little I've tried of it. Having Robin set up a team attack for my Nightwing was really creative. I've not done but an hour or so in that mode, but I'm eager to explore it again. The sheer amount of content you get with the game has really blown my mind. Also there's a punk cover of "Livin' La Vida Loca" that's really spectacular and comes in at the perfect time for a great fight.

All in all, try to come at this game not expecting Arkham game play, and I think you'll be fine. I think the combat is a little different as it's made for four players with very different skills, so it's set to let you experiment and do some really cool stuff with it. Aside from maybe a few optimization issues that will be worked out in time (We're still in the first week of release) I've not had much difficulty at all playing.

You can tell a lot of love went into the creation of the game. I think over time it'll grow to be a cult classic Batman game.

This game is charming as all get out. If you're looking for a cute adventure that might take you around 5 to 6 hours to get through the main story if you take your time, but offer a lot of endgame content to experience the world, this game is for you.

The difficulty is low for this one, but I think the story telling and the messages they send are really well thought out. The characters are quirky, have flaws you can help them with, and the general message of the game is one of self care and helping others. It's a family friendly title and I think a younger audience would like it, while there's still a lot of depth for adults. There's also a ton of homages to other indie games in this game.

Good

• Art Style is charming and clever. Jon Nielsen did the art in Forager, and I see a lot of growth in his style.
  
• The writing is witty and kept me going for side stories. (Tell Blake I said hi!)
  
• The Music sets the perfect tone! It's relaxing and happy.

Meh

• I wish there was a little more to the game, as far as playtime goes, I'd have loved to have more end game content. I hope more will be added over time.
  
• Mini-games are fun to an extent but I'd like to see more and have more variety.

Bad
There's nothing bad about this game! It's well worth $15 at full price.

Pugstorm has made a game that I sincerely hope will live on for a long long time. I can see this game having a very long lifespan like Stardew Valley or Terraria. I mention these two games specifically because that's what I think this game really reminds me of. (Less Stardew, more Terraria.) But if you like base building and exploration, this game will keep you busy for a long time.

Good

• Vast explorable maps
  
• Ability to use once character across multiple worlds
  
• Really good multiplayer (I've played a handful of times with no interruption or difficulty.
  
• Welcoming community around the game

Neutral

• Music - nothing I'm bobbing my head to off stream, but it sets the tone
  
• Graphics - I think this is niche, if you like it, you like it, but it won't make or break it for anyone.

Bad

• Honestly? Nothing much. It's in Early Access and I think what's there in the game is a very solid foundation to build on. I might ding them on the amount of content but the updates coming out would fix that very very soon. There's already what feels like a lot to do.

This game is pretty interesting. I like the roguelike card based take on tower defense.
The game play loop is to start a map, place defenses, let the wave come in. Once the wave is done you unlock another tile along the path. Sometimes they branch out, sometimes they don't. You can buy upgrades between games to unlock more types of defenses for your tower and it's really interesting.

Good Stuff

• That feeling of mowing down many enemies with sawblades or ballista bolts!
  
• Gameplay loop is pretty fun, and each round does feel wildly different at times.
  
• Plenty of upgrades to keep things interesting.

Bad Stuff

• A lot of folks are mentioning this, but there should be either a fast foward button, or you need to speed up the game. Watching towers destroy monsters as they slowly waddle can take a very long time. At times I want that so I can notice patterns, but a bit faster of a pace would do a lot to make this less of a time sync.
  
• Graphics: The general world is okay, enemies are fine, but the menus and the like could use a designer's eye. These can make an excel spreadsheet look exciting.
  
• Respec needed for upgrades. There are times early on when playing where I thought about stopping because once I realized I needed something else in the skill tree, I realized I couldn't redo the build. This makes early game even more of a slog than it really needs to be.

Overall, I like the game, but I don't think you're going to get 100s of hours on it if the tedium sets in early for you.

Shapez.io after awhile playing is a mess of conveyor belts, painters, rotators, and other parts all blurring by as you appease the giant hub in the center, asking for more.

Good

• The graphics are simple, and they need to be that way, it really helps me focus on the factory building.
  
• There's a dark mode, and my poor eyes really appreciated that.
  
• No enemies or mindless resource gathering for factory parts to distract from the main concept here.

Neutral

• The Music. I'll be honest, i played this with the sound off because I was watching other stuff while playing. It's a good background game to have.

Bad

• It gets a little boring and repetitive after awhile. My way to solve this is to refactor everything to make it as efficient as possible, or start new factories with challenges.

It's for sure worth the price!

This game starts out a little slow, you have a character, you use your weapons automatically, and all you do is walk around a repetitive level shooting the weapon and collecting gems. Seems boring, the graphics are pretty generic right?

After a few plays though you can get upgrades, you unlock more characters, more weapons, more items. You figure out that weapons and items can now evolve to better weapons in the end game. Eventually you can turn on Hyper Mode for levels that you've completed which make them go faster. You get a run where eventually you just stand in an area and enemies around you melt. This is the point where your brain clicks and you realize you've got a build that just makes endorphins flood your brain. Before you know it, it's 4am and you're going just once more for that rush.

This was a game made by one person (who is now hiring more as I've read) and the addictive flow of the game along with catchy tunes really is impressive. The graphics I know were just thrown in there and very generic, but it matches the feel of old school 90's games and I think that's pretty nifty myself.

It's inexpensive, you can play in short blasts if you want, and there's always more to do. The developer has also been making a ton of updates! I see almost no cons to spending 3 bucks on this game. (Let's face it, most other games with this much content and updates would cost more to start and contain DLC or micro-transactions. This is a true gem. Thank you developer for not doing that to us!)