Recent reviews by Smoke

Luckily for me, I played this game after a lot of modifications were (seemingly) made to the original one, solving most of the complaints from people who reviewed it negatively.

The game is exactly what I expected, and I'm glad it was popular enough that the team is working on a sequel!

Definitely a hidden (very hidden) gem in the Steam library.
This game is the perfect "midnight game". It's athmosphere is strong. Its story is dark but filled with hope.
The combat is dynamic and makes it feel like a survival horror game.
Deserves more that it'll ever get.

The combat is challenging and the story is good once you understand more than it's edgy surface. Of course, the most memorable is its visual style, which is both memorable and strangely endearing after a while.

Fast, funny, full of furious friends, free to play. What more could you ask?
Better optimization, for once, but that is likely coming.

An interesting iteration in games like Papers Please that nails it's concept along with it's gameplay. The fact that it's inspired by real life events makes it specially effective and is not diminished by a few UI issues.

The art is beautiful (and horrific when it needs to) and I respect the effort and the intention of the team bringing stories like this into the gaming sphere. I just wish the experience wasn't marred by how the technical issues and poor controls make you lose again and again.
Also, some of the achievements seem to be somewhat tone deaf, rewarding you for getting killed... in a game about a young girl trying to escape a human trafficking ring...

Hard as balls but really enjoyable when it's not making you want to throw the controller straight into your TV.

Since the thing that I did not like about Slay The Spire was the generic nature of it's characters and setting, this game is like a blessing. The lore is fantastic and surprisingly interesting if you like games like The Witcher. It can be a bit slow and translation/localization needs some polishing, but so far it's looking pretty good.

Concept is fun. Art is good, great even. The music is nice, reminds me a lot of Crypt of the Necrodancer in style.
The one major con is game difficulty. The type of puzzle in this game has one single vertical for difficulty and it's step specificity. That means that as you progress the game becomes less about using creativity to solve problems and more about trial and error, scratching every move combination possible from the decision tree.

Maybe it's just me. Puzzle difficulty is really difficult to get right and keep it interesting. I didn't let the "free to play" aspect dissuade my opinion, I judged this game as if it costs around $0.99 - $2.99.

Some interesting ideas are thrown into the mix, but the game presents the player with some bafflingly bad design choices that prevent it from being an enjoyable experience.