Recent reviews by Sweet Cuppin' Cakes

Updated my review from my previous review after 100%ing the game. Still don't recommend.

Pros:
-Interesting items to mod your car
-Great, engaging gameplay
-Great soundtrack
-Great level design and atmospheric sounds, as well as ambient sound and environmental sound
-Great story and character design
-Game is not meant to be a horror or scary game, but keeps you on your toes especially early game, learning about all the different anomolies and which ones will actively try to kill you.
-Dying isn't the end of the world, you can go back and get your stuff you lost.

Cons:
-Most recent update has caused low frame rates

-Once in a zone, you are unable to save. The game saves in-between zones, so if you're on a long trip you won't lose progress from previous completed games if your game crashes, but if your game crashes in the middle of the zone you lose all progress. To give you an idea of how much time I've lost from crashes, my Steam has 37 hours of gameplay recorded, but my save file is only 32 hours, so I've lost a title of 5 hours of gameplay from not being able to save and crashes over 37 hours of playing, which means you can expect to lose 10-15% of your progress when you play due to crashes and not being able to save.

-Lots of game crashes, sometimes after being in a zone for 20-30 minutes. There is no way to save while in a zone, so all progress in that zone is lost, plus when you load back in the zone will be re-randomized as well.

-The game will spit out loads of glass for you, even though it is a useless item.

-A lot of the car mods aren't that useful. Ultimately if you do anything crazy with your car you are going to damage it. There are mods for going super fast, basically flying, and doing crazy menuvers, but all of these will damage your car and endanger it as opposed to just driving normally. This totally negates the purpose of these mods.

-You will always need cloth, and there doesn't seem to be a reliable source of cloth, sometimes you will search 10 buildings and get 0 cloth. You need cloth for everything, including creating blueprints. This was the only resource that I needed to spend an absurd amount of time to get to 100% the game.

-The second you get to the garage for the first time, there are a bunch of stickers waiting for you that are all virtue signals for any kind of LGBTQ group you can think of, as well as Black Lives Matter, which destroyed a good part of the USA in the 2020. Cannot honestly recommend a game that supports terrorist groups and would not have purchases the game if I knew this in the first place.

The reason this game became so overwhelmingly popular was because it had a paid currency, but you could also get the currency just by playing the game. There were some items you could purchase, but they were not "game breaking".

Recently the dev just added an update that added some game-breaking items (companion pets) that you have to "roll" to get. The rarest one is game-changing and broken. It is a 0.28% drop. The only way you can "roll" for it is by using a currency that you HAVE to buy (cannot be obtained by just playing the game).

You get 1 free "roll" a week, but the dev stated that the pets will be swapping every 10 weeks, so you only get 10 chances at this 0.28% drop chance pet until it is gone for who knows how long, and the next game-breaking pet will appear that you will have a 0.28% chance of getting.

Update 7/5/23 -

I joined the Idleon Discord and posted some feedback that I thought would help resolve some issues with the negative feedback regarding the companion system. I was subsequently permanently IP banned from the Discord server for daring to question the creator. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME.

This gem popped up on my feed, looked interesting and who can so no for $2.69?

This game is fantastic. The pixel art is gorgeous, and the game-play is fun and interesting. It took a little bit to figure out the mechanics, but it was rewarding figuring out how to "game" the game. One of my favorite things was the "hidden" recipes. Some of them are simple, like if you make a skeleton with two crossbows, normal skeleton legs, body, and head, it will save a permanent recipe automatically and whenever you use that recipe those minions get a bonus buff on top of their normal stats. This is really great, PLUS there are some combinations (which I won't reveal) that aren't as apparent, but the cool one I found was called "gargoyle" which includes parts from a couple different monster archetypes.

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My only big issue with this game is the fact that the player minion's AI is terrible (there is no AI for the enemies except for 'run directly towards your base'). Now, I can kind of understand this because you play as a necromancer who is creating minions from body parts on the ground. So your minions would technically be "mindless", so I guess in the story the terrible intelligence makes sense, but for an actual fun game it is terrible. You CAN take control of a single "mindless" minion (you can have up to 15 minions at one time) and fully control their movement to basically do whatever you want. Otherwise, if you do not actively control a minion, it WILL actively work to sabotage you, which I will explain below.

The minion AI works like this: The minion will scan everything around it, and it will select based on the hierarchy of enemy > loot > building > enemy base. Once it finds the closest of those 4 things, it will head directly towards it. When fighting enemies, if your minion has ranged attacks, it doesn't matter. The minion will kamikaze right into the minions killing itself, even though it could have easily killed them from range.

This means that your auto-pilot minions will run around kamikaze-ing into the closest enemies (which is great) but then totally ignore the enemy base that is spawning the enemies if they manage to survive. So if you make a bunch of minions, they will run around and ignore all of the enemy bases until your main base gets overrun and you lose.

The way you counteract this is counter-intuitive to the whole entire idea game (which would be summoning a horde of undead minions to conquer your enemies). The way to play would be that you make the most powerful monster you can with the parts you have, then you either let it go out on its own and baby sit it, or you take direct control of it and do it yourself.

I did fine some arguable 'game breaking' game design when I played (do not read unless you want to ruin the game for yourself):
Monsters do not spawn unless you get close enough to their lair. Meanwhile, whenever a "day" passes, the only thing that happens is that all the buildings you captured generate resources, so coins, ore, body parts, and mana. You can capture a couple of each building, leave the game open for a few hours, come back, and have all of the coins, ore, body parts, and mana you will ever need with no risk. I would really like to see a re-work of this system, so that the player is unable to do this.

Other that the major game design flaw I see, the rest of the game is fantastic. Tons and tons of parts to choose from, millions of combinations, and the best part is that the best monsters aren't typically the ones that use parts from the same set like 'all zombie parts' or 'all skeleton parts' sometimes mixing and matching parts can give you some pretty crazy combinations.

There are also a bunch of different upgrades you can get, spells you can learn, and a story to boot.

I'd love to see this game built on, and would gladly pay for some DLC.

Overall, though, for the cheap price I can see past the flaws and really love this little gem. Would love to see more features added, and I believe this would be worth 5 if not 10 times the price if some of the major issues get fixed, and possibly an "endless" mode gets added.

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The developer has quickly fixed every issue with this game, BUY IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dont play on expert unless you hate your life

TL;DR: Great game, probably the best story I've ever seen in a RPG (and I've played all the Fallout series and Elder Scrolls series). Side quests also have great writing and stories, overall fantastic character development. Play this for the story if nothing else. Other than that, most game breaking bugs have been fixed, a lot of glitches/cheats patched, and crashes aren't frequent (but may happen after 8-10 hours of continuous play).

After some bad experiences I no longer give into hype and pre-orders. Cyberpunk 2077 looked like a great game, but I was skeptical at launch. Of course, as many of you know, Cyberpunk 2077 was a flop on launch. While a lot of RPG games (Fallout series, Elder Scrolls Series, etc) are known for having some crazy bugs at launch, Cyberpunk was claimed to be unplayable and completely broken on launch with constantly crashes, graphics issues, and game breaking bugs.

So why do I mention this? That is because I have a fresh outlook on Cyberpunk 2077. I did not look at or touch the game on launch. I saw the memes, and heard some stories, but that's about it. I had no interest since I heard it was a buggy mess.

I never intended to pay $60 for Cyberpunk, but it was on sale for $30 for Steam Winter Sale. I figured I'd grab it and give it a shot, and I am SO glad I did.

First of all, there are so many mechanics and ways to play in the game. Unfortunately, the game doesn't explain them that well, but you can basically be a major stealth player, a strong beefy berserker, a net-runner hacker, or anything inbetween. There are different arm enhancements and you can get a built in wire to strangle people with, a rocket launcher in your arm, ninja mantis blades to jump at people and slice them up, and gorilla knuckles for fist fighting. There are tons of different mods to your "cybernetics" to give you different effects and buffs on top of these cool enhancements.

There is also a weapon crafting system that is the best I have ever seen. A huge issue with RPGs is level scaling with unique weapons. Some games the weapons are locked to certain stats so they might be super strong at low levels and drop off at higher levels. Sometimes the weapons are super broken and are tuned for max level, so if you get them early on your are a god. Cyberpunk solves this problem by scaling the unique (called Iconic in the game) item to your level, and then giving you a crafting recipe to upgrade the item. This way, you can constantly upgrade the item as you level up, all the way up to max level.

There is also a whole perk system which I won't go into too much detail about, but some of the perks are basic (like 5% more damage) while some will give you new abilities which will alter your gameplay.

The final thing for me is the story. I am not going to spoil anything, but all I can say is that the story is really unique, and brings up a lot of real questions about what humanity really is, what it means to be a person and what it means to exist. There are some real existential concepts touched by this game, and it has a very unique story that I've never seen before. I HIGHLY recommend trying for all the endings, and the best part about this game is that when you get an the "ending", it will ask if you want to continue playing, go to a point before you made your decision for the ending and give you special rewards that pertain to that ending.

You can tell a lot of hard work and love when into this game. It is easy to hard on a game for releasing with bugs and issues, but that is not the fault of the team that created it, that is the fault of the leaders in the company for allowing the game to be released in that state. You can tell how much love went into this game with the immense amount of detail, the highly detailed city and characters. Even when you go into places that are irrelevant there is tons of detail. It is so easy to get immersed in this game.

The only bugs I've encountered (writing this January 1/23/22) are graphical bugs where sometimes textures will glitch out, but this only seems to happen after a long play period (maybe 8-10 hours) and fixes itself if you relaunch the game. Typically, if you don't relaunch the game when the textures are bugging out, it will crash after about an hour. I only had a bug with one quest, and it was unfortunate because I had to load to an early save, so make sure you SAVE OFTEN. F5 is the quick-save key for me and I would just make sure to quick save about every 15-30 minutes.

More of a neutral review rather than a glowing review here. I've just finished all of the "content" of the game.
In the current game state, I can't recommend it saying "yes buy this right now! totally worth it" but I can say that it isn't a waste of money. I'll give a pro and con list, and then write out improvements I'd like to see, then my final thoughts. This review is being written early in development.

Pros:
-Great attention to detail
-Lots of customization for your recipe book, and how your potions look (you can even write descriptions!)
-Beautiful art and a very attractive and fluid interface system
-The potion crafting itself is very fun and interactive, and you spend lots of time early on optimizing potions

Cons:
-There is no real "end game". Once you discover all the potion recipes, that's about it. You get about the same 10-20 customers asking for the same 10 potions. There is no point in customizing potions or adding different ingredients, if a customer is looking for X Y Z potion, you have to provide X Y Z potion, or they have no interest. And if you combine effects, for example they want a X Y or Z potion, and you make a X3Z2 potion, it will not sell for more. It just sells based upon the "highest quality" effect (so X3 in this case).
-SPOILER: Creating the Philosopher's Stone and Life Salt are huge letdowns and almost slaps in the face for how much material they use. The only useful item is Void Salt which isn't terrible to make.
-Once you get through the first 2 weeks of scripted characters, they run out and its the same 10-20 customers for the rest of your career until Popularity level 15.

NOW, I understand this game is still in development, but I am writing this renew because it is for sale right now, and I am writing this review with the thought you will buy the game now. There is a good 20-40 hours of content in this game, depending on how clever you are. I play a lot of sim games, so I got a lot of the basics down quick.

In the future of this game, some of the things I'd hope for is that changing a potion's bottle, label, etc effects its price depending on customer. Also, adding multiple effects increases the price as mentioned earlier. (if someone wants a potion to heal their arm, a Heal III Fast Growth II should sell for more than just a Heal III since a "fast growth" should also help in the healing process). Also, I'd like to see some tuning with Life Salt, either making it cheaper to make or making it more effective, or giving you SIGNIFICANTLY more when you produce it. Lastly, some things I know are coming but I'll mention them anyway, more variety of customers (and maybe some small chance random event customers), and SPOILER: an actual use for the most coveted alchemical tool: the Philosopher's Stone.

Overall, if you like simulator and puzzle games, and don't mind spending $15 and are looking for something to do this weekend, I recommend this game! If you're looking for an in-depth, complex simulator where you can min-max profits with tons of different variables, I think you should hold off on this.

Great math game. Honestly if you love math, you will love this game. It is more fun for me when I manually do all of the calculations in my head to see which upgrade will give me the most significant increase in cookie output. Before I started playing I had no educational degrees, but after sending some footage of my live-stream gameplay to Harvard University they just gave me an honorary PHD in Calculus.

10/10, would click again.

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Seriously, though, if for some reason you are looking at reviews for an actual reason to play the game, I will give them to you:

There is a TON of content. Even if you use an auto-clicker, you will find yourself coming back every minute, if not hour, or day, to check how many cookies you've earned and what upgrades you have.

This has the same addiction as a mobile game but there is no paid currency, once you pay for the game THAT'S IT, no DLC, no hidden things, no "pay $50 to get 5,000,000 cookies!". You play the game, and that's how you earn currency.

I have been following this pet prokect from Orteil for many years since its inception, and it is obvious that they've put A LOT of love and care into this game.

I am really looking forward to this Steam release and seeing what the modding community comes up with!

This game looks basic on the outside, but the longer your play the more features you unlock and there is a lot going on and a lot to play with!

For the amount of content in this $5, you'd be stupid not to buy. It has more hours of content than some $60 AAA games...

I would rate this 4/5. The reason I wouldn't give it full 5 stars is because the campaign is terrible. The campaign adds a mechanic called "Max Combo" where you have to limit yourself to a max combo, and if you go above that combo you instantly lose. It is always low (20-30) and you cannot avoid it to progress in the campaign. This is one of the stupidest things in a video game I have ever seen. You basically HAVE to fail in order to pass the levels in the campaign. What sense does that make? You have to be BAD to do well in the campaign?

Another reason I wouldn't give a 5th star is the mapping for the base songs. The mapping for the base songs (included with the game) are generally boring once you get up to Expert level or higher. They aren't very challenging and leave you wanting more. Of coursed, if you want more, you have to buy expansion packs, and even THEN some of the expansions are BAD (just read the individual ones for those). If you do get any expansions get the Rocket League one. All of the songs on there have great (and fun!) mapping for all difficulties.

TL;DR: Base game kinda sucks, campaign sucks once you get to the "max combo" challenges, but game is fun with expansions (get the Rocket League one!)

I bought Cube World back when it was first for sale in alpha. I played that alpha nights on end because it was fantastic. Fighting tough guys and slowly getting stronger.

I really REALLY want to recommend this game so badly, but in its current state it is just not fun, not addictive, and punishing with no direction.

The thing that frustrates me is that the alpha was so good, all it needed was a little better quest system. But now, in its current state, it has the quest system, but your only way to level up IS the quest system.

This is a terrible game design choice and I have honestly confused. When you start out, 95% of the monsters are stronger than you. The game guide recommends you go to town, gear up, and try some quests. I went to town, which had some gloves which were a minimal, at best, upgrade for me.

I thought "ok well I will just grind some mobs to level up". After about 30 mins of grinding, I find out you don't get xp or level up from killing mobs now. I look up and find the ONLY way to level up is finding "artifacts". So I spend an hour going out, doing quests and I get 3 artifacts, all of which are borderline useless, and all of which don't level me up. All the other quests are "blue" to me (AKA very hard) and impossible for me to do.

So what am I do to next? Wander around for another hour, getting killed by 95% of the monsters which are WAYYYYYYYYYY stronger than me, trying to find a new town with new level 1 quests in the HOPES that I find an "artifact" that gets me to the next level?

I am honestly VERY frustrated. I LOVEDDDD this game and was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited for a new update but now the game is borderline unplayable. Please fix this. I would love to change this to a positive review. There are SOOOO many good elements in the game. Right now I just can't recommend this game. Please put back the old leveling system.

Slay the Spire is such a fantastic game! It combines dungeon delving and fast paced combat with deck building! It is very unique and every playthrough is unique and different. I would like to see constructed deck building in the future but it is still so fun!