Recent reviews by His Imperial Bodgeness

A well-executed physics-based puzzle platformer, with all the usual frustrations removed. You are a snake, and have to slither and climb around the levels as a snake would. Well-paced, pleasant on the eye, and with a gripping central movement mechanic that the rest of the game grows from - there is enough depth there to make true mastery of your movement really satisfying. It's the kind of puzzle game I enjoy, where the challenge comes in executing your plan rather than struggling to come up with one (in particularly obtuse point-and-clicks for example).

An thoughtful and grounding read, which sweeps you along on the journey along with its subjects. It almost reminds me of Sunless Sea, where stories are more valuable than currency (although obviously different in every other way). I enjoyed it like a book, with a mug of tea, and found it well worth my time.

A really interesting and well-written narrative game crossed with a resource-management strategy game. You are a fading policeman teetering on the edge of forced retirement with only 6 months as chief of police to enact your aims and steer the city's fate whichever way you want. The art style works, the voice acting is almost universally fantastic, and I found myself looking forward to whatever new story event or cutscene the game would throw my way - although these were sometimes buried beneath overlong stretches of gameplay where nothing would happen.

I really enjoyed the core gameplay, but it did get a bit repetitive. You send out cops to distress calls, which consumes their time and risks their safety (very often) - it is a very good system that is regularly spiced up with new narrative perils or twists that change the way you play. Your cops can sharpen their skills with every success or slip back (or die) with every failure, depending on how much support you afford them, and that progression really lets you feel the sense of achievement and even pride in your little guys. That system might be not sound too original, but what was really fun was toying with the more nefarious options to get rid of or silence them when they weren't playing along...

As you can tell, the game's tone is gritty, but in one specific area it felt like too much - the detective-led cases. This is the one part of the game that I gave up on, despite being really attracted to the premise. The idea is that after assigning detectives to cases, they periodically supply you with new evidence that you then arrange to solve the crime. With certain operations this leads you to a crime syndicate, and you can infiltrate them with informants, interrogating their members until you gather evidence to topple their leaders for a fat bounty reward. In principle, this is amazing. In practice, my detectives would die at random (permanently closing the case), fail to find new evidence panels for weeks in a row, or once evidence was found it would be extremely subjective or inaccurate and I often had to use a guide to satisfy the game's extremely specific conditions.

Despite this I really enjoyed my time with Jack Boyd, and the game as a whole - recommended.

I can't quite find the words to neatly sum up this sprawling game, but with all the developers' diligent tending I think it is now a nearly perfect experience.

A cozy and simple visual novel, this is a less ambitious game than Roadwarden but stimulated the same receptors that first made me love that title. The scope this time is narrower but focused on the most interesting part of Roadwarden - the tribal villages. This time you're on the inside looking out and it fleshes out a part of that world that I wanted to see more of, which I think is pretty much the mission statement for this game. I'll always enjoy spending time in this setting and hope that we see more stories from Viaticum soon.

Really enjoyable! I've played a lot of the Wales Interactive FMV games and the concept for this one feels like it fits their style of game the best - the choices do feel meaningful and the actors have fun with their script. I went back for a 2nd playthrough to see more of it, and along with Late Shift I think this is their best game.

This is the worst of the Wales Interactive FMV titles - bad acting, shallow story, annoying characters, pointless choices, thankfully it was short. Some of their other games are pretty decent so this baffles me.

An interesting mix between social deduction and resource management game in a pretty village stalked by cosmic horror where you are the inquisitor suppressing the unruly. While I found it fun - and very challenging - this tipped over into being blatantly unfair several times and did spoil things. Your ability to manage the 'resources' in this backwater depend on the character traits of your bumpkins (which are punishingly weighted against you) and there are very few ways to make your situation better, besides purification - so why can purification randomly kill villagers when attempted?! I also really dislike that characters can fail to perform their tasks and do the exact opposite of what they are meant to, meaning your decisions are limited towards the end of a season so you can guarantee safety if you need to hit a certain level of a 'resource' - I think there could have been a wider scale of success instead that doesn't punish you as much. The Great Houses opinion of you is also WAY too punishing. If steam had a neutral review option I would pick it, but forced to pick between good/bad there is enough frustration here to warn people off.

A true sequel that builds on the successes of the first title - everything is expanded in breadth, depth and quality from the graphics and environments to the progression systems and the addition of a new campaign. The old enemies, weapons and even a Ziggurat mode are still there - which pleases old fans like myself - but this title is the fulfilment of all the potential the original rogue-lite hyper-fast arena shooter had. The more structured progression this time around is an unexpected pleasure and I'm having lots of fun zooming through its' corridors. Highly recommended and highly addictive.

A great puzzle box brainteaser with a good mobile port. The difficulty is not too taxing and it doesn't outstay its welcome.