Recent reviews by Alfadorfox

The gameplay loop: As shown in the trailer, you're building a deck of card effects to battle between linear spaceships sliding back and forth and firing at each other in turns. There's a huge amount of variety beyond the basic attack, movement, and shield mechanics.

This game thrives on the character interactions as much as the gameplay. Even if you're not a pro at deckbuilders the Normal mode is forgiving enough to have fun, and cards and artifacts that are suboptimal are still fun to mess around with.

You're given small blurbs of what a character does in the world by hovering over their portraits, but it's by their interactions with one another, and the past cutscenes you uncover, that you really get to know them. It is definitely worth playing with many different crew combinations to see the interplay between them, both from a character standpoint and mechanics wise.

The music is wonderful and the ending sequence is well worth the slow burn--and not too slow either. And even after that there's incentive to keep playing. I'd recommend buying the soundtrack but not listening to it until you've watched the end credits roll--some of the tracks just hit harder in game. I actually cried in part of the ending sequence.

If you're new to deckbuilders, and you have trouble getting good draws, I'd suggest putting more focus into keeping your desk size down. When I started out I was tempted by all the interesting new mechanics, and it is definitely worth unlocking all the cards to see how they work. The "basic" cards can be upgraded to have zero cost, and that helps save energy for other things.

Night In The Woods, the Choose Your Own Adventure book. Except that in order to make certain choices, you need to have explored down other paths. Delightful, cute, spooky. I haven't even finished it yet and already I can recommend it. Though I do wish they'd kept the demo around after launch!

[EDIT] As of tonight, I have finished the game and I would like to amend my review. I would now like to recommend it EVEN HARDER. Yes, a lot of the play turns out rather linear even when you get all available charms as you go, since so many branching paths are dependent on charms in a specific sequence... but it's really not a problem. There's a ton of detail, so much that I'm wanting to play through a second time after I've had time for everything to process a bit, just so I can take in all the small events that I didn't realize the significance of at first.

There's no repeating the experience of a first, spoiler-free playthrough. But a second should also prove to be a unique experience all its own. Especially if I take some notes.

[EDIT 2] I should also include in here that there are a few minor graphical glitches, but nothing that really detracts from the story. I have heard of people getting blank screens when the credits were supposed to play, but that didn't happen to me and they should have it patched fairly soon anyway.

Do yourself a favor and uninstall. They've already ruined it and they're not stopping.

It's difficult to describe this game without delving into spoiler territory, since the entire point is to explore and discover what's going on. I wholeheartedly recommend diving into it blind, and don't look up any guides until you've truly finished.

Treat it like investigating a mystery, trying to figure out what happened and why. Talk to the characters. Look for hidden things. And enjoy the music--I bought the soundtrack and did not regret it.

Also, if you're worried about the frustration of things resetting at the end of a loop like Majora's Mask (it's safe to talk about the time loop being a thing because that's in the promotional material), don't worry. 99% of the stuff you do that's affected by the reset is just getting TO pieces of information, and all the information gets recorded from run to run so you have a "Bomber's Notebook"-esque way to keep track of important info.

Take risks, make mistakes, get messy!

After you've won, though, go ahead and look up spoilery guides because the easter eggs are worth experiencing, too.

I backed this game's Kickstarter a long time ago and the extra development time they needed seems to have been all spent on making this one of the best polished games I've seen recently. It's quite well balanced in terms of the combat, especially considering the leveling system, and the inevitable Metroidvania backtracking is not painful--in fact, the leveling system helps with that, since early areas will be weaker relative to where you are later on. The controls are quite tight and remappable, and the time mechanics are interesting to use (I will be vague about exactly HOW they work, due to spoilers). I highly recommend Timespinner.

Excellent. Short playtime, each piece used to perfection.

My first impressions are very good; though the controls tutorial seems a little incomplete, that's only to be expected in early access. I'm especially pleased with the camera--though I was worried a bit when I didn't have a lot of camera control and we're in a forest... those trees open up in a "viewport" that reminds me of Katamari Damacy when something's blocking the view.

The crafting and leveling system seems simple enough to not detract from the main action of the game, while having deep enough customization to make things interesting.

There's not a lot of appearance customization, but that's fine in a game with this angle--many other games with a similar look and feel, like Diablo 3, don't allow customization at all, and you're not going to be focusing on the nuances of your characters face when fighting zombies.

In fact, I'd be willing to trade away all the facial customization, in favor of more body shape customization. Different body shapes will help in distinguishing teammates in multiplayer games. It's important in first-person team based games like L4D2 and TF2, but it's especially important in a game like this where you need to identify your own character if you lose sight of them in a big zombie pileup.

I haven't had a chance to play multiplayer yet, but I find myself looking forward to it. Definitely a game to keep watch on, even if you don't care for the early access model. Heartily recommend it.

Whatever you do, do NOT look at spoilers. Don't watch videos, don't read a wiki, don't look up the TVTropes page until you've played through the game at least once.

That said. DO play the game at least once. It is utterly worth it, even if you do not usually enjoy the genre.

Do you feel that modern FPSes don't have enough exploration and secrets, remembering hidden nooks in the levels of Doom and Quake? The Talos Principle has that kind of exploration in the physics-puzzle genre. Where Portal and Portal 2 thrived on dark humor from the unseen voice, The Talos Principle's Elohim booms religious symbolism while at the same time the terminals deliver on philosophy, moral questions, and ruminations on the nature of consciousness and personhood. The puzzles themselves are fun, and many require you to really get creative with the solutions.

I have a lot more to say in favor of it, but I'd end up spoiling much of the story that way.

Do you like creepy atmospheric environments? Do you like jump scares? Do you like piecing together subtle hints and disturbing clues to a horrifying scenario that the protagonist cannot fully comprehend? Do you like playing the role of a toddler? If you answered yes to any of these questions, give Among The Sleep a try. You will be even more affected by this if you try to get into the mindset of the main character--though if you are prone to getting very far into the headspace of first-person-view characters, or are easily startled, I would recommend wearing a diaper.