Recent reviews by popcar2

Not everyone's cup of tea, but Tangledeep is ultimately one of the greatest roguelikes ever created. It's the perfect balance between old roguelikes (like nethack) and newer roguelikes (like dungeons of dredmor). It might not look like it, but this game does have meta progression through raising pets (which you can level up and keep for future runs) and the ability to store gold and items for future runs.

Unlike most roguelikes, the gameplay here is legitimately good. Using skills and walking around is quick and smooth compared to others in the genre. This makes the game more engaging, with tons of QoL features that drastically reduces downtime scrolling through your inventory or inbetween combat.

Overall, Tangledeep feels like a great love letter to the current hottest genre of gaming. There's enough depth here to last you over a hundred hours, with an upcoming expansion to keep you busy even more. If you enjoy roguelikes, you'll absolutely love this. However , if you don't enjoy dungeon crawler roguelikes, I don't think this game will make you a believer.


First, what the game does right:

• The combat is great. I really can't think of other ways it can be better, except for maybe adding more obvious effects (such as notifying me when I parried an enemy, it's sort of hard to tell).
  
  
• The loot system is very well made, and the QoL stuff (such as instantly being able to sell your common items). The ability to go each item's world (it's literally item world from disgaea but alright) is also a great feature. You can get side tracked and provides a bigger incentive for grinding rather farming a specific floor. You can generate new floors while also having a major goal in mind other than just grinding for XP.
  
  
• The pokemon-esque pet system is great. Not having to worry about your pets dying and including additional features like a friendship meter and pet insurance makes it way less tedious than it actually sound on first glance. They're quite useful, and being able to keep them for future runs gives you a bigger incentive to level them up and care for them.
  
  
• Classes feel unique and different (until you hit the level cap and constantly switch jobs)
  
  
• The game doesn't force you to play in a specific way. For the most part, you can ignore almost every mechanic you don't like. Don't like cooking? You can just not do that. Don't like caring for pets? You don't really have to do that either.
  
  
• Multiple difficulty levels, including an easy mode where there's no permadeath, and difficulty modifiers to customize your playstyle make the game very accessible and grants hardcore players a harder challenge if they ever wanted to. That said, I recommend people starting on normal difficulty, I found that no permadeath makes the game a little boring.

But, even though the core gameplay loop is super fun and rewarding, this game still has a few things that stop it from actually being the greatest game in the genre.

• The questing system is unrewarding. Randomly generated quests sound good on paper, but sometimes the quest giver would give you a quest on a previous floor you've already finished. For examples you're on cedar caves floor 5, and the quest giver tells you to go back to floor 4 and kill en elite enemy there. This happens more often than I'd like to admit, and when you do finish the quest usually the reward is just some gold and JP. The quest giver also talks too much, I end up just accepting them without even reading what she wants. It's just not worth it.
  
  
• Once you unlock all the skills for your job, it doesn't actually feel rewarding to switch jobs. Each job has its own "traits", which are class specific passive abilities. They don't carry over, and you end up learning skills that don't fit the playstyle of your class. I personally don't like how you just end up using skills that have nothing to do with one another, I would have preferred if classes were more fleshed out before you max them out at least.
  
  
• Some side features (such as planting trees and cooking) don't feel very satisfying to use. They're just kinda "there" to give you more drops for whatever reason, but honestly they're pretty unnecessary. I never felt like cooking something that slowly heals 30% of my hp and gives me 20 stamina ever saved my life or remotely close to it.

In the end I still feel like this game is severely underrated, but I can sort of see why. This game is pretty niche, not everyone will want to bother with how complex it is or lose over 5 hours of progress just from carelessness, but it's obvious that the devs know how to design a fantastic game. The developers have been amazing and have been updating the game since release 1 year ago, and I really hope the new humble bundle can get more people into it. Great game, can't wait to play more.

An underrated gem. Soundodger+ is a great game to zone out to, and strikes a good balance between being difficult and relaxing. There's a ton of user-created levels as well. If you enjoy bullet hell games or rhythm games in general, you'll have a blast with this.

Wonderful concept with a really solid base but nothing to really do with right now.

Game Builder is a sandbox where you can supposedly build your own games from scratch using either pre-defined commands or by editing each entity's Javascript. Combine that with a great UI, cute graphics, and a near endless amount of 3D models you can download from the internet, and you've got yourself a very good and kid-friendly sandbox game.

The problem is that it's still very early in development. The API doesn't feel very intuitive, which is ironic because it's very shallow at the moment. Even with good programming skills, you can't do most of what you think you should be able to do.

Without any programming skills, there's almost literally nothing to do in this game since there are barely any pre-built functions and only a few customization options for building and the overall look of the world.

Game Builder looks like it could be something fantastic, and I'm very excited to see it develop further, but right now I'd suggest waiting at least a few months before diving into it.

The best metroidvania ever made. I could write an in-depth review on why it's as good as it is, but I'd rather you just buy it and experience for yourself. BUY IT NOW!

There's nothing I'll say that hasn't been said before.
This game, is almost perfect... This isn't exactly a review, but it's basically a "should I be tempted to buy this or not" kind of review, with a few heads up

The thing I really like about this early access, they nail graphics and gameplay before actually adding content, this is early access done RIGHT, rather than those where their games actually feel incomplete and you proceed to say how the gameplay/animations are clunky or weird, but this game is none of that! It provides a perfect gameplay with beautiful pixel art to go with it, and very smooth pixel animations to go with it!
The game's gameplay is beautiful. The trailer wasn't enough to show how smooth it was? Don't worry, I got you covered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGYfBYALO4
Just LOOK at the smoothness, imagine this gameplay in perfect 60fps, it's seemless!
The only reason that you wouldn't buy this masterpiece... is the current amount of content (around 3 hours worth of content), which, is pretty low for a 20$ game. However, the developers announced that v0.2 is just around the corner, it's release date is early july, and is said to show 2 new areas and more features! The exploration mode, which is roughly 2/3 of the entire game so far, is only one area. I can only imagine how much longer the game would be with two more areas!
You can watch my video, and basically graph your own expectations of the game.
So far, the game features a very small portion of the story mode (since exploration mode is basically a portion of story mode cut out since it still barely has anything to do with the story), exploration mode is basically the REAL part of the game, which features equipments, levelling up, skill tree, elements (there are 4 planned, but only ice and fire working for now!), trading, and so on! It's basically the real game, since story mode is but an introduction to the game, and serves as a tutorial for exploration mode.
There's also puzzle mode, which is the shortest mode, it features very easy puzzles for now, but the combat every few buttons and switches keeps it fresh. It also includes a nice boss at the end.

So, all in all, buy or nah?
my recommendation: Buy it after v0.2 is out, since it will actually provide a good splash of content for you to enjoy, but for now, the game isn't worth $20. The only reason I bought it was to support the devs, since it was disappointing to see their kickstarter campaign mostly ignored (even if barely reached the goal, it felt like this masterpiece deserved so much more...)
Thanx for readin.

One of the best, for free!
This game really is a treat, it's better than most zombie survival games that ask for 15 dollars, and the developer is extremely nice, kind, and active! I put a small bug report, and boom, 2 days later a patch rolls in adding fishing rods, fish, and had my problem in one of the bug fixes. Truly amazing!
Now let's stop talking about the dev, how's the GAME? note: use unturned version 3.0 for the newest features.
The game is fantastic, the thing I really like about it is...
A: You get EXP from killing zombies, which you can use for super useful skills, so it's never a waste of ammo to kill a few!
B: It isn't annoying, troublesome, and time wasting to find useful weapons. Most survival games challenge you by having to craft this and craft that, go shove some trees up your bum to craft that, then make a pickaxe and shove it in a rock just to shove it into another rock, I mean, ♥♥♥♥ those! But in this game, you can simply find overpowered weapons lying around.

There's so much else I can say, but let's just move on to the positive/negative side.
+ fun gameplay, isn't grindy or annoying in any way
+ skills, exp, and others
+ supports all styles of gameplay, usually a survival game would force you to craft, but you can get through the game barely ever crafting, or you can craft all the time and make your own weapons rather than finding one!
+ Ammo. Lots of it. Civilian bullets are almost all over the place, so using a gun is actually a good idea, and not just "save your ammo until you really get stuck", which will never happen.
+ Constant updates, the game is constantly furthering how it's better than the other survival games.

And ofcourse, there are the bad sides of this game.
- Not much to do when you get an overpowered gun. When you find one, and have enough water and food to last days, you're not exactly sure what to do or where to go. It makes me feel like I already won the game, now that there is no challenge. The only thing I can do is just look for ammo.
- The game is way too easy, the only challenge in it are the giant zombies, all zombies are way too slow, you can just move backwards and punch them to death while doing so, you almost never get hit throughout the game.

Overall, the game is really great, fun, and you usually find something to do. But sadly, the game basically has difficulties which are:
"Casual"
"Casual"
"Easy"
Almost no challenge in it, especially how slow the zombie attack animation is, it's just putting me off, really...

A nice little free game that sends a good message, but has many, many issues. It's free, so I can't rate it a bad game since It's not something I regret playing.
First, let's start with the good:
+ Beautiful look
+ Nice concept of green areas that speed you up and red areas that slow you down
+ Sweet soundtrack
+ It's free. Thank god it's not one of those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ UE4 games that are trying to look to make a quick buck
And now... The bad...
-I can't choose the resolution of the game?
- pausing stops you from moving, even in mid air, which slows me down when I unpause...
- jumping SLOWS YOU DOWN! what's the point of jumping to the next green area on the road i'm running in if it's gonna slow me down!?
- this is an incredible deal breaker for me, it almost ruins the game: YOU HAVE NO CONTROL WHEN YOU'RE IN THE AIR? IN A GAME ABOUT PRECISION PLATFORMING!? WHAT!?!?? I fall off the map because I jump to reach a green area, but realize I jump too far, I can't reach it when I'm not in control of my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ direction!
- The platforming in general feels awkward, combined with the issues up there, the platforming generally doesn't feel good. Jumping is awkward, the game is basically running at an insane speed hoping you don't hit anything (because the level design includes of tons of turns, and you basically can't see in a long range because of the ping system)

conclusion: the game generally feels awkward, I don't feel like I ever want to improve my time because game mechanics are the issue, not my lack of skill. It's free, so if you want to, you can go ahead. If you're looking for a high speed platforming game, try cloudbuilt. It has some issues, but regardless it's pretty fun if you're a hardcore gamer, but this game is not the brightest.

Ignoring the fact that this is just a copy of another free game, this game is really just bad.
1. It still feels like a mobile game, and feels really unpolished
2. The weapons have a very unsatisfying feeling to it, it feels like all the weapons are weak and they have 0 knockback
3. The game lacks content.
4. It's more expensive than it should be. I can spot 2 dollar games that are over 5 times more fun than this.
Nearly everything this game has the free version outdo it, in art style, level design, and enemy design. Sure, some people might like this, but i'll scrap this off as an okay port of a free mobile game that doesn't deserve money.

This game is the best game that's under 5$ on steam. No doubt about that.
+Amazing multiplayer action, reminds me of unreal tournament
+Make your own maps with minecraft style building
+Parkour that requires skill and doesn't feel like the game is doing it for you (Lookin at you, dying light.)
+Every weapon seems well balanced, though the pistol needs a nerf, it's 100% accuracy is getting annoying...
+Workshop map support
The game is extremely fun, one thing that really appealed to be was the parkour mechanics. they were really well made. The only thing that isn't good is the lack of a community (and parkour maps, sadly...) but overall, I would play 15 dollars for a game like this, quite a shame it isn't popular!

Probably the best free arena shooter i've played! It's pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun, and it's free, and it contains 0 microtransactions!
+Cool stunt system
+Interesting perk system
+Fun gameplay, high amount of skill needed
But sadly, the game has it's flaws...
-Sometimes the stunt system gets pretty glitchy and does stupid things which makes you blame the game (ex: when bumping into something while sliding, you don't get up right away, you just stay on the ground for an extra second while getting shot at.)
-there are few hackers, but there ARE hackers. Aimbotters and such that ruin some servers.
-Very bad menus, glitches, sometimes ignores the mouse when you're on a button, and overall just barely works for some reason.
though you can ignore the negatives, they're just annoying. this game IS worth playing, give it a try!