Recent reviews by Indie-ana Jones

This game is extremely glitchy and after playing through it all, lacks a lot of the promising content seen the trailers. The story has also been husked out to the point where all the interesting avenues they set up for this game to take, they ignore them all. Stay away until something changes, the fact a $40 game released in the this state is abysmal and shows that the golden days of FNAF are behind it. I'd argue this is much worse than FNAF World's release, but this time there will be no apology and re-release to this dumpster fire.

I payed money to kill myself in VR, what a let down.

I should preface this by saying I loved Don't Starve. The core concept of this game is genuinely great and to play that core concept with your friends is a great time. The reason I can't recommend it is because of how the developers have been adding to the game since DST launched.

My main issue is that everything that's been added to the game since launch adds nothing to that core experience that was so great in DS. Survival is the name of the game, but everything (and I mean everything) added post-launch has essentially been optional content which poses no threat to the player unless they willingly indulge in it. Once you have a proper setup going, there are no more threats to you. The game doesn't have anything new to try on you once you make it a whole year, and whereas in DS you could always reset the world by leaving it and going to a new one, the only thing left for you in DST is the optional content. The surviving part once you get set up is stupid easy and the optional content is of noticeably lower quality than what's found in the base game. Again, the base game is great, but the devs have essentially just been adding useless bloat instead of building onto what makes the game great in the first place.

To grind my gears a bit further, the devs originally did intend to work on how the game scaled with players over the course of one's world expectancy with an update called Through the Ages. However, this idea was scrapped with what we're getting now (Return of Them) because according to Joew (Developer), the team had a discussion on what audience they wanted to appeal to during this change in direction. Essentially, they decided to reject the base of dedicated souls who were the original game's audience to instead appeal to the casual player, since they figure there's more of them and that means more people to buy those juicy cosmetics which are all the rage these days.

Not only has the new content not really added to the core experience of the game, they've also been doing kit reworks for a lot of the characters over time as well. However, the best way I could describe these reworks is simply, "bloat". Instead of doing tweaks and centralizing on a character's identity like the clamors for these character updates originally wanted, but instead adding a bunch of other mechanics and small things so that their kits ulitmately feel loosely cobbled together like a bad character mod. Not only that, but they do lore animations each time for the characters they rework, and god do they look genuinely terrible. Seriously, go look at the Woodie animation and then go look bad at the original DS trailer, its night and day, the art's taken a step in becoming an ugly clone of its former self.

On top of all that, the fourm has essentially become a hugbox for the development which is only accepting of positive feedback, which in my opinion is extremely lame. There's a lot of people who care about this game, the original audience, that they don't want to listen because in their eyes they cast their die a long time ago. I understand trying to reach out and connect with that casual audience, but I don't think you had to burn the bridge with the old audience to do so. Maybe a half and half instead of a 0 and 100 scenario, you know?

Some more knowledgeable people reading this might think I'm being hypocritical, since the caves are essentially akin to that optional experience I'm complaining that the devs focus on today. To counterargue, the caves are much more integrated into the base experience than anything new that Klei's been adding since DST's launch. You can access them from the start once you have a pickaxe and darting into the caves in many ways during the regular survival season is a smart move and it still feels like you're working within the main survival loop of Don't Starve while interacting with cave content.

Compare that, however, to the lunar island that's been added to the game in Return of Them. It takes a long while to get there, most threats are negated while being present there, and all the content that's there is some weird stuff you can do to get some juiced up tools. There's nothing much of interest there at all. Also, you could compare caves to just the addition of water in general; most threats in the game are entirely unequipped to handle some of the stupid things you can do with boats. For example, a character Winona can create automatic catapults which fire at enemies. They can be placed on boats, which has become the most effective way to kill bosses since most of them can't cross water at all. Ocean content is also very sparse, and houses the Malbatross and the Crab King, two of the worst bosses in the entire game, along with some more optional content which has you slave away at menial tasks not at all related to surviving in return for petty rewards.

But yeah, ignoring all that, the core gameplay which was made years ago still holds up today. A lot of people don't know how development has transpired and frankly won't care for the sobstory I just typed up, and that's fine. I bet my ass you'll love the core of what's being offered here if you've never seen it before, since regardless of what they do that core experience they've built their additional content onto is godly. However, if you reach the point where you realize you've survived what the game's thrown at you and are looking for more of it, Klei doesn't care about you at that point and you're never going to get anything other than some poorly-developed mods to feed into your interests.

I love this game, but I can't recommend it. The devs don't deserve your money until they straighten their act honestly, but if you just want to mindlessly play around every so often and buy all the cosmetics you can you'll probably have a blast.

EDIT 10/3/24: If you really want to play DST, use Uncompromising Mode.

Only pick this game up if you want to be fodder for the tortured souls who were playing Chivalry for years before this came out. You'll never make up the skill gap unless you're mental, and you'll get stomped wherever you go. Gimmicks are the most fun thing you can do in this game but the developers keep them in check so you don't do too much harm to the core audience.

Fun concept with a good dev team that keeps going regardless of whatever happens. EVIRMA branch might not be much to look at now, but I expect fast-paced development now that the base of the work has been completed.

Extremely repetitive. Along with a very high entry barrier and stunning but hard-to-see visuals, the total game experience is subpar at best.

Doom Eternal is a great game. I'll admit, I got it mostly for the multiplayer, unlike many, and I think Battle Mode is actually pretty fun. I think Invasions will make it a lot more interesting, but we'll have to see when they get added.

A poorly explained game with severe optimization issues. Could be good in the future if they actually ever explain the game mechanics anywhere to you, but for now steer clear and just go play Dead By Daylight instead.

Great game.