Recent reviews by Acierocolotl

I am actually surprised they're not charging for this game.

Usually, when I see "student project" and "free" I'll usually pass it over. Often times these free games perform very poorly and look kind of rubbish. NOT THIS ONE.

The art style is consistent and terribly charming. It's actually quite light-hearted, which masks the really dark undercurrent of the game: you are playing a werewolf, who will easily, if not cheerfully, murder anybody who looks at him funny and then snarfle the corpse like a BBQ brochette.

That tension defines the game: you're a janitor who, for corporate dystopian rules, is obliged to work at night while transformed. Other workers are also there. You need to still clean those messes, but you need to not be seen while doing it, so you become a stealth-janitor, skulking about, trying to avoid being seen so you don't have to silence witnesses (and then eat them to conceal the evidence). The game will reward you with a tiny medal if you can get through an evening without murder, but... eh, who's going to miss an office drone or two, anyway?

I quite like a stealth game, and good ones have opponents who don't just walk around predictably in squares with convenient pauses - those games are geometry problems. People here are more believable, meandering to do various tasks. But, in a nod towards good UI in gameplay, a little timer appears over their head telling you how long you have before they do something else, which lets you decide if it's worth chancing going for that hallway, or waiting to see where that person goes next.

So, to recap: the art style is remarkably cheerful, and apart from the excessively juicy transformation noise, it's not really gruesome either. (Okay, consuming a corpse leaves big red splashes and what my wife would call "squiggly spooges" on the ground; they're more like pink corkscrews than internal organs). If these guys actually tried to sell this game, I'd've actually bought it, and I can't think of any higher praise than that. I don't even plan on pushing my gaming-adjacent stuff much at all here, that's how highly I hold this in regard. (But do look at my profile if you'd be so kind.)

It's free, it's pretty good. Can't beat that. Give it a try.

The game shouldn't surprise you. It involves a cat, a kitty. It involves a city. The city is much bigger than the cat. And if you're still with me, that kitty is in that city.

Now, if you're the sort to get huffy about cats and post angry things in forums about this being a cat game, I'm gonna suggest you just pull out now. That's the point of the game. The kitty makes well-realized kitty noises. It is well-animated. Partway through the game, you're given the ability to style the cat as you please, emotes to pose the cat, and a camera to take in-game pictures. The Cat Is The Point.

The game's fairly vertical in places, and what struck me as I played was how much of a sprawling playground a developer could make out of just a few city blocks. When your scale is smaller, scrambling up a one-storey shop is a trial, and a block of two-storey houses is an entire adventure waiting to happen. Map boundaries are marked with things like unclimbable chain mesh fences, concrete walls, or (ugh!) puddles of water that kitty rightfully refuses to touch.

Now, the kitty can talk to ducks and ducklings, ravens, other cats, a tanuki, a rhino beetle, and a parakeet, amongst other things. They have their own needs, and there's where your quest structure comes into play. Since we have talking (to each other) animals, the game isn't really shy about getting silly. If you need things to be gruff, or dire, you are looking in the wrong place, my friend.

Anyway, this was a terribly cute time, and I spent a good chunk of it arranging (and posting) screenshots of my cat sleeping or otherwise being adorable. I'm told some of the viewership curled their toes, it was so cute. While it's not a long game, it does also mean it doesn't overstay its welcome too. Just don't rush through the game.

I've already been streaming this one as I played it, I'll probably save the videos for later. I've got another cat game or two queued up, and if that doesn't move you, something edgier after that. Pop on by, I keep a strict schedule (listed on my profile): http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner. If you're here, you're my kind of people.

Did you like playing Gloomhaven? I mean, I did. So it's like that, but streamlined: a turn-based tactical game but you can do all the busywork on your phone and only the host needs a copy.

How'd you like that for an elevator pitch? BAM!

Okay, at its core it's somewhat like Gloomhaven, and I glommed onto that thought really hard so bear with me while I get that brainworm out of my head.

First and foremost, unlike Gloomhaven, this runs really, really well. It's just as nice to look at, but it doesn't molest the bejesus out of my computer.

Now, Gloomhaven has you playing a character with a custom selection of moves printed on cards, you can't take all of the cards with you so you need to be selective. On any given move, you pick two cards. Play the top half of either one and the bottom half of the other on your turn. There's a random factor in your attacks, based on a customizeable "attack" deck with random damage offsets.

This game cuts that down a lot. You'll take three attack cards, they're self-contained, that contain both your movement and attacks. There's that attack deck, pretty much verbatim.
Gloomhaven had this business with attack discards that slowly whittled down your attacks, and this doesn't bother. Gloomhaven also had some complexity with initiative which might influence what moves you might take, and this has discarded it. Players go in whatever order they please, based on whoever selects an attack card. If you can coordinate and communicate, it's great. And if not, perhaps chaos?

So it's not a really complex game; it takes a good formula and pares it down. If you're really into tactical board gaming you may not be satisfied, but if you want to have a chill little coop affair, this shines.

Now, it does lean into the anthro theme quite a bit. I kind of don't care, because at some point, what's really the meaningful difference between a half-demon thief and a ferret-man thief? There hasn't been the seedier side of furry, so this is fine to bust out for the younguns.

Now, the missus and I had an enjoyable couple of hours, and we're looking forward to more. With the software itself running on my laptop, we've got the software running on phones and it means minimal fussing, more time spent burrowed under covers while it gets cold outside. And if that sounds terribly macho manly behaviour to you, then you are a right-thinking person.

Anyway, the best part is that you only need one copy of the game. Get three friends along, and you're playing a very economical coop game. Bam!

Obligatory nonsense: I stream on a pretty regular basis, and I really like chatting with people who show up, so pop on over to http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner and say hello. You will earn my gratitude. If you like curators, that's on my profile page (see "Omnishambles"). And get this game, of course.

Did you ever play with those plastic toy blocks that snap together? The ones whose brand name rhymes with MEGO? You know the ones. Well, it's like that, you're building wacky vehicles to do some different jobs. The game describes itself as "moving... awkwardly shaped cargo from place to place." This is completely true, but such a profound understatement like "lava is a bit toasty". Yes, you move things with your MEGO weirdo-haulers, but that's like maybe a third of the game.

Making it so you can even get there is the other two thirds.

This starts off with radio towers; your vehicle's remote-controlled, so you need to send it signals. Each tower you put down has a limited radius, and needs line-of-sight to another tower, so... I spend probably way too long optimizing where to put the things. They're cheap, you don't need to do what I do. But maybe you want to go put a tower on the top of a jagged peak, and it's a tradeoff between that and how much cussin' you want to do trying to get a buggy up the side of a sheer cliff.

Later, there's monorail lines and maybe even elevated highways, and it means to can start bypassing some of the worst terrain. But until you get there, you should get used to reading a topographical map and practice your best cusses. You're goin' offroadin'.

What you need to know is the vehicles can be dynamically rebuilt, if you've unlocked the parts. If things like approach or breakover angles doesn't mean a lot to you, you're going to learn! More importantly, "center of mass". The game goes a little easy on you, I think the offroad tires have some kind of van der waal's grip dealie on them, but the effect is small. Get something topheavy and ungainly, and you're not going to have a good time. Some of the terrain can be really rough and require a relatively small vehicle.

Note that I didn't mention departure angle up there. Some of the cargo can be fragile, but your vehicle is indestructible. I've sent whatever I've been using off cliffs without a care in the world. Now, the problem with that is if you're carrying cargo and it pops loose.

And that's the real meat of the game: You've got to lug some weird items around the map. I have carried bendy pipes, a floppy air duct, an umbrella, a bundle of balloons, step ladders, a toaster with toast, and so many more. You'll need a vehicle that can pick up the item, and if that item has its own items, you either need to avoid tipping, or being able to manipulate small items. And then carry those item(s) over potentially rough terrain to their destination.

If you drop it, you need to pick it up again. If it had parts, all of them need to make it to the destination, though there's no reason you can't do it in multiple trips. That said, I wind up playing it in small doses sometimes. My wife's heard enough cussin'. But it also does a few things for you: the tires seem unnaturally grippy, and the game does throttle control on your behalf so you've got maximum grip while climbing.

So, yeah, I didn't even get to the graphics 'til down here. They're kind of basic, some low-palette cel-shaded affair. Edges are highlighted so if you're driving along and there's a visible edge, you probably want to slow down before you get there or you're going sailing and, if you're unlucky, not landing squarely and going for a tumble. It's a visual style that takes a bit of getting used to.

Hauling ass throws up big clouds of dust. Despite the cel-shading, it does a really good dust simulation. Since it's Mars, I do expect dust, after all. I think I only brought this up because I remember somebody ranting about this in the forum.

Anyway, I know I've been rambling and I think I lost the thread of what I was meaning to write here anyway. It's got a coop implementation, I've yet to try it. I've had a fine time at this, I'll be chipping away at it some more over time. It's all entertainingly low key, requiring more patience than, sometimes, I'm willing ot provide. But that's a me issue.

So if you kind of liked building up custom, weird vehicles in Space Engineers to solve problems, this is much the same, except waaaaaay less janky. And therefore you should get in on it.

If you made it down here, not put off by my rambling, I'd like to invite you to pop by and chat me up a bit during my streams. Honestly, I do it more to meet people than anything else. http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner. Schedule's up in my profile.

I had a fine enough time, so you can just go, "Oh yeah, blue tick, good to go," and if that's all you need we're square. But that's not what I do. Stick around for some rambling.

Do you know about the Aliens franchise? I imagine most folk do. So it's waaaay more Aliens and not at all Alien. Which is to say there's a lot of alien grass and you're the lawnmower with a full tank of gas. Which is, in turn, to say that you regularly get swamped with a lot of easy-to-kill alien weirdos that try to run up to you and bite you, and you can easily dispatch them with a few rounds from any gun. And, on occasion, something zestier shows up that spits, or explodes, or ambushes, or something else, just to mix it up.

Now, if you don't know about the Aliens franchise, basically a bunch of insectoid-lookin' aliens that were initially designed by famous artist H.R. Giger want to kill you, and do try their level best to do it, essentially uncaring for their own personal well-being. His art was intentionally evocative and creepy but you never get quite that good a look at them, as they're usually dying in droves. The aliens are more disturbing than zombies to me, but getting into that is going to take more paragraphs and veer this review off-topic. They're not the only enemies; there's a few others, most of whom act essentially the same (cannon-fodder rushes, heavier dudes with specialty attacks), and one clump of them in the second campaign are a radical departure from the rest. But I'll say no more not to spoil it.

The closest comparison to this game is the Left 4 Dead series, in terms of gameplay. Left 3 Alien doesn't quite cut it as a title, but the differences are largely academic. There's enemies that can temporarily incapacitate an ally, but they can struggle free at least; a timely rescue means they take less damage. You want to stay close to your allies, keep an eye on all approach angles, but not too close as there are a few AoE attacks to encourage a bit of a healthy distance. Well, also the marines have a very good dodge-roll so the battles tend to be a bit more dynamic.

There's four campaigns, each broken into three chapters, each chapter will take 20 minutes if you rush it, 30 to 35 if you take your time to drink in the scenery. So if you played through the base game the once, about six hours of actual shooting, plus extra time between missions twiddling your loadouts and trying on new hats on your dudes or new colours on your guns. But your dudes (and their guns) have levels, there's new guns to unlock, so if making numbers bigger speaks to you, you're encouraged to go back and play again on harder levels of difficulty. Maxing out every class and every gun could well take you a few hundred hours, and you'd wind up seeing each map about 50 times each on average in doing so. They're not dynamic so you'd get real familiar with 'em.

I'm not wired that way.

There so many nods to Alien(s) lore here that playing it with people who know stuff about it can be amusing or interesting if you can get 'em to prattle on about it. Not *too* much, as audio cues are helpful to help get the drop on would-be ambushers, especially as your commanding officer is directing your fire and attention mid-fight. Well, also, one of my buddies was deeply bothered by what he thought was willful stupidity on the parts of our commanding officers, so you might not want to engage too deeply. (For the record, I think it was a mixture of cynicism and policial flexing, but he was also the guy I got into a long-winded discussion about the nature of F3AR, so, y'know, we're both opinionated and will talk for hours about minutiae of little interest to others.)

Anyway, the various campaigns do have notably different scenery, and it's well-realized. Each area feels quite distinct. It also makes for enemies specific to individual maps, which initially feels underused... unless you go max out all your classes and guns and you'll be seeing an awful lot of it. If I had my druthers, I'd rather have many more maps and have to play each of them fewer times; make each campaign have six or twelve missions or something, even across the same terrain set. The outing length is pretty good though, at 20-30 minutes each. Keep them that length, that's brilliant..

There's jumpscares galore here, as the smaller cannon-fodder aliens will jump out of convenient hatches in ceilings, ambusher aliens will lurk around corners and wait for you, and they're always keen to pull a Rear Admiral attack. It's best appreciated with friends. Bribe a couple people if you need to.

So in short, if you missed Left 4 Dead, want to get that sort of coop against-the-horde shooting, like Aliens or just a touch of scifi, this is a pretty good proposition for your money. You really will get the most out of it with buddies though.

I'll go back to this with some other buddies in time, but I'll be streaming other things instead. I'm also open to ideas. Mostly I'm just talkative when there's an audience, so if you're down here, I think you and I will get on just fine. http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner

Ain't gonna lie, I had a lot of fun. Thumbs up, there you go. Works a treat, changes how I play the game. But also not gonna lie, this totally breaks things too. Being able to one-tap mechs at over a kilometer away is silly, but the maps rarely allow that much line of sight. It's lopsided victory after victory now that Mason and co. (as Demon Core LLC) proceed to utterly humiliate every last jackanape that dares cross them.

I'm not a lore grognard, I just like the visceral feel of stamping about in a mech. But this era has been visitted by four different games at least, now, so I know the general story beats and what's supposed to be up. The presentation, therefore, is kind of ace. Who are these guys? What are they up to? What stupid garbage weird words are they saying? Is that an insult? Why are these powerful pirate fellas so scared of 'em?

Then it's your turn, and at the outset when you don't have any clan stuff, facing these guys is scary. Their weapons reach farther, their projectiles sail much faster, and they can cram in ridiculous amounts of firepower into small packages. How many freakin' lasers does that gangly thing have? And it's hitting me from back there?

Some people were complaining about being shot out of their mech cockpits a lot. I've never had them do this once, and I am on normal difficulty as well, with an almost entirely unmodded game. The inner sphere has come closer to doming Mason's mech, though they're way less reliable about landing headshots at all. This may also be that I have sort of a brawling approach to the game by default: move from cover to cover to close the distance, never stop moving, weave and twist, and when you're in range, snap your shots off quickly and then twist away while your weapons cycle.

The Solaris DLC introduces some weapons I thought were quite OP and I was leaning on them for awhile. PPC-Xs in particular were my bread-and-butter and, if I could get within range of a clan mech, would still humiliate it as readily as any other mech... as long as I could get close. And I did.

Now, they hit a lot harder, and inattentiveness gets a mech killed quickly. On the other hand, my Marauder II is now fitted out with a lot of clan guns, and I'm coring these guys from a kilometer away. For me, this has radically changed how the game is played, as I creep around and angle for long-range shots, rather than plotting my route to from cover to cover so I can jump enemies at close range for some Shotgun Surprise.

Also they have flying infantry that want to latch onto your cockpit and go drilling for oil. They're kind of annoying to fight if you didn't bring shotguns, but some calm, precision, and backpedalling furiously can help. There's other people cussin' them out, I just find it really warrants caution and not barging into a fracas like I used to.

Yeah. This has turned the game into a sniperfest. And I imagine this is kind of how MWO is played by people who aren't light-striker-driving hockey pests, such as myself. That said, there's a mech that does 160 out of the box, 242 in short sprints, and all that without the extra speed buffs available. I think I could get it to do over 310 km/hr and I can't wait. Yeah, it looks goofy AF, but I'm so fast you'd never see me. In somebody else's game, I'd engineer reasons to go use it.

I feel like I'm rambling here, so let me summarize things and wrap up: The clanners, when introduced, are properly mysterious and their weapons are quite scary, and they remain that way. The weapons introduce all new levels of overpowered that humiliates the Solaris DLC guns. For some, I'm lead to believe that's a plus. Fighting the clanners requires attentiveness as standing still and being an easy target means they'll show you how easy a target you are. And there's MW5-Clans-style cutscenes! There's not a lot, but it's kind of nice seeing Mason not presented as a hunka hunka man (he looks a little careworn over a few decades of warfare), and it weirds me slightly to see my second-in-command clearly having made herself up. But I also don't claim to understand the ladieeezz so maybe there's a reason to have some on-point eyeliner game.

What a weird thing for me to latch onto.

I'm sure this all ties back into the first hints of the main character's father's Mysterious Oogy Past, and I don't know what it is yet, but we'll get there and... if you're watching me, I guess you can find out too. http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner

Why didn't I review this? What is wrong with me? Maybe I took a bodyline shot too many, I onno.

You may not know much about cricket and, honestly, you don't really need to. This is cricket throughout the ages, and frankly, sports mutate over time. Cricket is no exception.

All this flummery aside, it's a goofy ragdoll physics games wrapped in a thin veneer of (mostly) sports, and sometimes (post-apocalyptic or prehistoric) combat. It's kind of random, a bit wacky, and presented utterly deadpan seriously which is part of the humour.

What you need is a buddy to play with who likes (or could use) a good laugh who isn't that worked up about wins and losses. Yes, it's a competitive game, but the prize for winning is getting your head cut off by the Queen... who is controlled by the losing player anyway. Oh sorry, I should have spoilered that.

Anyway, it's a lighthearted bit of fluff, intentionally awkward to control, and you can do Steam's remote play thing to get your buddy in on this. It will take about 2, 3 hours to play once through the game in its entirety. I used it to cheer up a buddy of mine once, when he was down in the dumps, so I think it was very much money well spent.

By the way, if you don't know much about cricket, just try to hit the stick-things at the far end. Doesn't matter what you use. The ball is fine. Your opponent is fine too.

If you got down here and are still paying attention, you're my kind of person. I do some streaming and other things too, so, like, hey, pop on by, come shoot the ♥♥♥♥ while I stream. http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner. See you there!

There's this thing some developers do, where they decide to have French characters utter like one or two words in French in the middle of a sentence. Yeah, that's my leadoff. This is a rambling shamble of a review.

Now, I may know a language or four. I can tell you that, in the midst of a conversation, if I can't find the word I'm looking for in the langauge I'm speaking, I'll flail my way around for awhile and only after I've given up would I use another language's word. It goes something like, "Euh, uhh... 'ow you say... ananas?" If I know what the word is, in the language I'm using, I use that word! I mean, that's what the word is for!

Randomly peppering your speech with words from other languages is pretentious to the nth degree or possibly the laziest way to suggest foreignness by writing, but okay, let's say that was the intent. If your voice actor is going to use the French word, say it like it's an actual French word. Or, if you're not, okay, say it like an English word. Fine! Whatever! But pick one approach and stick with it! Don't just randomly switch it up in the same little bit of dialogue! Frikkin' pay your voice actors enough that you can have lines redone if they forget to roll that r or whatever!

You want to set my ears on fire? Just make your r's as flat as possible. Bone Joor. Gem Appel Fran Swah. Je do le streaming on le Twitch. Wee wee.

Fuuuuh.

Yes, I am really fired up about this. That's the mood I had coming into the game. And if they're that cack-handed about easily the most important bit of dialogue in the game, if they've already tripped over their own shoelaces right in the first minute, where else are things inattentive?

So, uhh, you ever play Far Cry 3? Hold on, I have a point here. I mean... FC3 is kind of rubbish. It falls quite short of Far Cry 2, and what's more, totally revealed the smoke and mirrors of FC2's enemies to me as well, so it went hard negative. Buuuuut there's this antagonist in that game, a relatively minor character who's dead by the end of the first act or whatever, named Vaas. Do a websearch for this dude, you'll find the Internet is basically a shrine to the guy, and for good reason: the actor was way better than the script called for. But he has this monologue which stuck with me and was a repeating theme in the game:

"Insanity is doing the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing, over and over again, expecting ♥♥♥♥ to change."

After a few minutes of intro exposition and making my character, I spent the next 45 minutes getting to the first boss - the tutorial messages weren't even done, so it was still technically part of the tutorial I found out later - and it started doing the soulslike thing. Start from your bonfire respawn-cagey-thingy, kill this mook, take that corner, kill t'other mook, bossfight, die, back at the respawn-cagey-thingie, do the kills, grab up your magic space bux, die to boss, etc.

Now you could rightfully say it's a skill issue, and I won't fight you on it. You're probably right and, at 4 AM, I wasn't seeing how to beat the thing. And it didn't help I took the most fragile class right off the bat, apparently. And I don't even strictly mind that it's "soulslike" but it was exactly soulslike.

But ♥♥♥♥ me running if I was going to keep slamming my face against that wall either. That's the picture of what Vaas was talking about. That's insanity.

Then I remembered the game has an "assist" mode. You can reduce or remove the damage entirely. So I did that. With no damage, now it's just a clicker, I could W+LMB my way through the content... and now it's just content, a word that bleaches all interest out of anything. Am I playing a game? No, I am experiencing content. It's a slight degree of interaction removed from an idler. I have now taken the game out of the game. The rest better be real good.

The foresty stuff was foresty, I suppose. The robot's whirring noises did sound like a lot of fine, straight-cut gears working their torques. That was actually a plus. But that same, elegant robot - in "dancer" class this time - was still kind of stiffly animated. Some of it was the impact-pauses that games insist on doing, maybe. And the enemies, which I haven't talked about, looked like molten brass boogers that had been cast on the blacksmith's floor. And oi, did I want more dudes who would talker in le français from temps to time?

I groaned in dismay and mashed alt-F4.

I feel a little bad about it, a tiny wee bit. I know it's hard making games, by and large. I do have to admit the player character's little whirrings and sounds were pretty convincing! It's just alongside everything else - the boogerbots, the randomly-inserted needless French (with a cointoss on the accent), the ♥♥♥♥-stapling joy of repeating the same content a dozen times for a loot-run, I'd quite well had enough.

Maybe things get swazzier later on. I just made up that word, you work out what it means. But Vaas had a thing or two to say about going back to that same well and expecting it to go differently, and maybe even the criminally insane have nuggets of wisdom from time to time. Today, I learned a lesson from an Ubisoft NPC. Hunh.

This game recently went coop, and my wife said to me, "Hey, let's play this." Now, I love this woman dearly, I'd do anything for her. I'd throw myself into a woodchipper for this woman. I spend my days being the manliest man alive, speaking only in grunts and flexed biceps and my only emotion is vexation.

And you know what? I had a great time with this game on its own terms.

You ever played Stardew Valley? If you haven't, just skip down a paragraph or so, this won't mean much. If you have, though, this game is so exactly Stardew Valley that if I tried to tell how exactly it is, this review would be really, pointlessly long.

Instead, there's some differences: it feels a little more like a real place, with a southeast Asian sort of vibe. Obviously, 3D art assets, polygons instead of pixels. The characters are more... generally credible, represent a far wider range of human personalities. There's also some "diving" but it's really scooting around on a different map with a different costume on. Oh yeah, and instead of Jojo Mart it's an oil drilling company called Pufferfish, and they seem more longterm-schemingly evil than just offbrand Walmart.

Now, if you don't know what Stardew Valley is, I'll try to make it brief: You have the only farm in an isolated community, and the farm is greatly rundown. Starting with very poor tools, you steadily reclaim the farmland, farming crops to earn a profit, and any spare time you have is spent in side activities, such as mining or fishing, or roaming about the village where the rest of the NPCs live and chatting them up. In time, you might court one. Advancing the game's plot requires engaging with the various distractions (like mining, the museum, etc.) and the progress of the game is pretty slow.

Meaningful actions cost energy, so you have a finite number of actions to do in a day and a limited number of hours as well, so budgeting your energy is the "challenge", and I use that term quite loosely. Since the game has seasons, and your chief moneymaker is farming, scheduling quality farm time each day is really the main goal if you want your character to stop being be a pauper.

Playing it cooperatively means the ol' divide-and-conquer approach works. My wife likes the farming part, so I tend to leave that to her. Meanwhile, I tend to spend a fair bit of time "sanitizing" the mines, which also involves smashing monsters and rocks in equal measure, and I get to let off a bicep flex or a manly grunt in the process. The combat in the game is not at all difficult nor remotely challenging; you can take quite a lot of hits and a night's rest heals all your wounds, so gamers looking for a combat challenge won't find it here. Really, the monsters are a minor inconvenience between you and some quality ore.

The chief goal of the mining is to get metals, which can be used to upgrade tools, which largely means the farm can be made to run more efficiently. Kind of a win/win, even by not farming, you can help the farm.

Really, the game is one of those "cozy" things you've heard so much about of late. Nothing is really a threat. You can build up and decorate your house, adopt a cat, woo one the villagers (or your coop partner), have kids, raise a family, develop an orchard or ranch or your own wines... or all of that at the same time. The villagers are all generally affable, and even the few stern ones can be won over easily enough.

I was indirectly asked if you could play this as a vegan. Now, I suppose technically you could, but it would be really difficult. The museum requires fish and bugs to display, a... second collector (let's just leave it at that) also requires this and more, so if your moral code prevents you from playing a fishing minigame or netting bugs, you could hope to randomly find them under rocks in the mine or in trash bins, but... well, it would be agonizingly slow progress. Or you could turn a blind eye to the depredations of your coop partner, supposing you find one that doesn't mind doing all that.

That said, you don't even have to eat at all, let alone meat products, so if that matters the game definitely has you covered. A breatharian lifestyle is actually viable.

So, to kind of wrap up this ramble, I, macho as I am, have had a perfectly fine time. Playing it with my wife makes it much more enjoyable, as I'm not completely sure I'd want to run the farm myself. But it's kind of fun helping her make this thing take shape, seeing it get better, and the community around us start to get a bit of a glowup as a result of her efforts. There's a few bugs here and there, but I have confidence (judging by developer posts) that they'll be dealt with in the fullness of time.

If you made it down here, you're my kind of people, you really are. I do some streaming from time to time, that's at http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner. I'm notoriously chatty, so you can say hi if you want. There's a link to that, and my curator group, on my profile.

With most of the reviews being ASCII tall ships, getting a review in here of some faint value shouldn't be hard. It's not a long or deep game, this won't be a long or deep review. And, bearing in mind this game was free, my expectations are not huge. But before I go too deep, listen to me: Press down arrow to bring up a map. You could get through a round in a few minutes, rather than 22, as I did.

The game's very pixelly and basic, built on the Pico-8 engine. You sail a tall ship around a map looking for "eggs" to awaken a kraken so you can fight it. I'm not sure why, but probably the reasons are really good.

You can collect coins. These do nothing of note except build up a score. You can fight enemy ships - mostly for score, maybe to declutter the map as they don't respawn. They'll attack you at random, or they'll fight each other. And, frankly, the combat is the interesting part of the game. It's mostly about trying to position yourself so you can land a broadside hit and they can't. The range is short, the shot is slow, so it requires really good leading or the guts to get in close and risk being hit. Since any ship is destroyed after three hits, it's risky. Granted, a destroyed ship drops a heart which lets you regain one lost hit, so there's reward to the risk.

The kraken is your real goal. You get those previously-mentioned eggs by sailing up close to a bouncing non-sequitor character, like a moon-man-face-thing or a handheld console or somesuch. Get five, the tune changes, the kraken wakes up and can be fought in the deep seas.

I didn't last too long. I wasn't trying all that hard, because in truth to you, I was getting kind of annoyed, but that's because I didn't know about the map and I spent so long blundering around. That's on me, but a little "these are your controls" text on the title screen would have saved me that embarrassment.

I mean, as far as first efforts go, it's not at all bad. It caught my sense of whimsy in the Steam suggestion list. I don't plan to go back and try to beat the kraken again, because I'm not madly in love with the slow sailing and such. But I don't regret my time at it either, so with the stakes this low, I'm calling it a win.

If anything, it's worth your time to give it a spin and see what somebody can get up to in such a limited development system. And with all the slop out there these days, expressions of human creativity are true gems to be cherished. So there! Besides, I'm writing my own thing, on an entirely different system, and game recognizes game. I'll be curious to see what the dev gets up to going forward.