Recent reviews by Danjb

It's fun, but I feel like I've already seen more or less everything ISLANDERS has to offer.

I love the concept for this game, but I wouldn't really recommend it in its current state.

Firstly, the game lacks a bit of polish. A few examples...

1. Some things are not explained, e.g. the fact that you can only pick 3 ships, or that you can buy more hexes / buildings (I lost my first run because I didn't notice this button), or the differences between each of the game modes.
   
2. When you click on a building to place it, you can't see what you're placing, and there is no way to go back to double-check.
   
3. You can place buildings accidentally if you try to pan around the map with the LMB.

Secondly, the game feels quite slow to me, as you're constantly having to place new tiles around the island. This is much less interesting than placing buildings, because there is less strategy involved. I kind of wish the new tiles would just get placed automatically.

The main problem, though, is that decisions lose their meaning as the game progresses. It becomes less about placing buildings optimally, and more about placing them wherever they will fit. The land-to-building ratio is just too low (or maybe I'm just bad?).

In any case, I would love to see this concept explored further. It's a neat game, just feels a bit half-baked.

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EDIT: An example of another game that does this really well is ISLANDERS. It's similar in concept but the island doesn't grow, so it's all about building placement. When your score gets high enough, you can warp to a whole new island, so you get a fresh start while retaining your score.

Lingo is a brilliant puzzle game and the world is fascinating to explore.

Unfortunately, navigating the world can become a bit of chore towards the end of the game as you try to track down the last few puzzles. It seems like using a third-party tool and/or external hints is practically essential at this stage if you want to complete everything.

Nonetheless, I would recommend this to any English-speaking puzzle fans!

Linelith is a truly excellent game. It's extremely simple and elegant, but still manages to blow your mind several times over, without ever becoming overly difficult. Short game but well worth playing.

1 hour well spent.

This game is immediately fun and addictive. No faffing, no long tutorial, just straight into the action - and it keeps progressing at a fast enough pace that it never feels like too much of a grind. Mechanically speaking, it's a somewhat formulaic farming simulator, but it does it very well, and with a fresh and vibrant theme.

Give it a try; it lives up to the hype.

Nothing groundbreaking here, but it's a short, fun puzzle-platformer. Most levels can be beaten in a couple minutes.

Fun but hard.

One important note: while this is undoubtedly a great game, but I do think the price is too high. I would expect to pay £15 for a game like this, not £30.

I want to chuck a positive review into the mix because this game is getting a lot of hate, which I feel is unwarranted.

It seems a lot of people are unhappy with the way skills are tied to certain areas, because it feels like you've lost progress whenever you go to a new area and your progress is seemingly "reset" because you have a different set of skills. The designers have discussed this decision in an update post, and I find their reasoning very compelling. It may not be what players are used to, but I respect the Brighter Shores team for trying something new, rather than leaning on established mechanics from other games.

I haven't played a lot (yet), but personally I've been enjoying the game so far.

• Simple and elegant: The gameplay is simple and fun.
  
• Effective tutorialisation: The mechanics are intuitive and well-explained.
  
• Caters to everyone: I feel like the game respects my time, at least so far.
  
• Fun narrative: The writing is fantastic; Brighter Shores has that same silly, self-aware humour that was so iconic in RuneScape.
  
• Transparency: Devs have been very transparent about the state and direction of the game.

• Underwhelming music: Compared to RuneScape's incredible soundtrack, the music is a bit bland.
  
• No player interaction: Strangely, although the world is buzzing with players, I saw almost no-one talking. It felt like other players were just ghosts - I could see them, but there was no interaction.
  
• Disjointed world Having the world divided into distinct regions makes the world feel small.
  
• Disjointed skills: Skills are not particularly interconnected, levelling up one skill rarely helps you with another.
  
• Lack of variety: At higher levels you obtain the same resources from the same locations, just with a new colour.

Overall I think Brighter Shores is very promising, and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I hope that players can come to terms with the zone-based skills and enjoy Brighter Shores for what it is.

This is very different to the original Toki Tori - in a good way. While the first is very episodic, this game is more of an open world where the only barrier to progression is your own knowledge and puzzle-solving; a true "metroidbrainia", if you will. The puzzles are clever but excruciatingly difficult at times, and the sparse mechanics start to feel a bit samey by the end. The ending also fell a bit flat - although admittedly I didn't find all the collectibles.

Overall it was a clever puzzle game, but it's not for everyone. It's hard, you have to figure almost everything out for yourself, and there's not much reward for your efforts.