Recent reviews by FLETCHER

Times & Galaxy is a charming, thought provoking, and humorous game spearheaded by a team of passionate and talented people, I have had a fantastic time with this game and recommend you pick it up if it even looks slightly interesting.

This game aims to explore the realities (and fantasies) of investigative journalism, taking place in an expansive galaxy of both familiar and novel civilizations.

The player often has a choice on which stories they would like to report on, as well as how they approach writing every article. This lends a lot of strategy to interaction, as the choices you make on these excursions do actually matter, and depending on how you respond to certain people, you may be locked out of pursuing other questions, so you have to consider your priorities.

T&G showcases meticulous attention to detail in its worldbuilding, and presents it to the player without issue. There is a sort of glossary in the game, so you can read up on some of the terms if you need to, but the game does find ways to smoothly exposit these concepts to the player without feeling stilted, from the universe's sports, to its species, and even to its fauna and flora, everything is conveyed in a compelling way.

The art is nothing short of wonderful, mixing a blend of 3d and 2d elements with bright colors, fun shapes, and absolutely phenomenal character designs.

Almost every character, from the protagonist to the silent extras standing in the background, have designs that convey personality and life. Even better, the characters you do get to talk to have several dynamic portraits, allowing conversation to feel more high energy and personal.

And speaking of realistic, this game has some of the most well written characters I've seen in a while. The characters are unique without being distracting, and have distinct archetypes without falling too dewp into tropes and cliches.

Nearly every character on the main ship can be spoken to once per day, and their interactions vary in tone and length every time.

The player's dialogue choices are also handled well, they're neutral enough to let you imprint yourself on the protagonist, but colorful enough they're not dull, boring, or ironically, robotic.

None of the 'issues' I have with the game are things that affected the gameplay or overall experience, couple bugs, couple typos, couple repeated dialogues; nothing I'd say should dissuade someone from playing.

All in all, I love this game, the devs are awesome, and I'd love to see the game and community grow into something beautiful.

It's also super queer friendly and positive, which is a major plus to me, and I hope other LGBT people find a home in this lovely universe <3

i genuinely felt like I was in a dystopian universe dominated by war with giant wailing robots throwing missiles at my friends and i was sitting witnessing my last moments thank you zeekerss 10/10

genuinely i hate this game so much

I do not know what I'm doing but I'm having a great time :)

Overall- This game made me have feelings for shapes.

With a kickass collection of songs, a simple, dialog-less plot, and level design that will make you cream yourself, this game is the perfect introduction to the bullet hell genre. There's even a casual mode for those new to games like these, which is definitely handy.

It took me an hour to beat one level

10/10 would cry again.

This game had a very good premise- the atmosphere was perfect. It used a lot of good word choices to promote anxiety, but it was too much at times and came off edgy (E.G only 13% of people were able to complete this test due to DYING). The glitching of the screen and the questions gradually getting darker were very good, except when the game tried to be meta. Saying someone is inside your house is good ONLY if they've previously implanted the idea in your head that someone could be inside your house.

Now, the obvious part is the jumpscares. Nobody liked those, nobody thinks those are scary, they don't fit the setting and are just a cheap way of freaking someone out. For instance, 'A Dark Place', a game I recommend very highly, has jumpscares that make context within the story. Sit down and look at Watson-Scott, now. There are a lot of ways you can impliment scares into a psychology based test. Play grotesque noises, fade images slightly on screen, have the game glitch out (more than it already does). What I do like, however, is the fact that the images shown in the test do not lead to jumpscares.

Lastly, I'd like to touch on the novelty of this game. I was going to buy it regardless but I did get it on sale. I do not believe it is worth five USD. Two or less dollars would be reasonable for this sort of application. There is very little to the game itself, and it even boasts that there's a 'very short play time', which makes the price tag a little ridiculous. The replayability is very low for this game and at most you'll maybe get an hour out of it.

I would also like to mention that I love the snide humor in the game (420BLAZIT)

So overall- it's good, but tone down the edginess, get the jumpscares 1000000 miles away, and either expand on the game or bump the price down.

gay

First two times I played it, I thought it was a pretty basic game with an existential edge. Then I started exploring more, and I found that literally every part of the world in NITW is explorable and exploitable on different days. The characters are all relatable and three dimensional, and a combination of great writing and beautiful visuals makes Night In The Woods an endlessly interesting experience all around.

Legitimately? This game gave me nightmares the night after I played it. Honestly, I didn't see the entire thing with Monika until the very end. After Sayori killed herself, and you started a 'new game', I almost felt like it was trying to convey the feeling of unreality you get after a tragedy happens. It's really accurate in that regard, and it hit way too close to home.
Also I'm never watching anime again.

-Some Spoilers-
This is a fun and underrated game that might very well end up as a cult classic. Most of the puzzles were introduced smoothly and allowed the player to experiment with it first, while the gameplay mechanics were simply yet effectively brought in. Notice I said most.
The game itself has an interesting aesthetic which I personally adored. The idea of a game within a game has been explored before, but this takes it into new territory by introducing a desktop interface which engages the player. The climbing corruption as you progress through the game is glaring and amazing.
The ticket collecting leading up to the "Final Boss Battle" was exciting and unexpected, though it was a bit hard to do.
It took me around three hours to collect all of the tickets. The particularly frustrating ones were "Don't Kill Jesus" "Get 50 Points On Pony Galaxy" and the butterfly puzzle in the second puzzle break. Those of you who've played this before, you know what I'm talking about. The Pony Galaxy one was frustrating due to misleading hitboxes (Though, that just might be a reference that Lucifer is still a bad game maker), which makes it hard to get very far. Then there was the butterfly puzzle. In my opinion, having to stop the puzzle at a particular instant to switch out blocks was a bad idea enough as is, but this puzzle was just frustrating. I had to look up a guide on how to complete that one, and even with the gif right there, it was hard to follow. And then, finally, Don't kill Jesus. I get that it's part of the game's design that you're supposed to kill the enemy in front of you and then the other enemies appear, but if you know you're going to include a collectable within that segment, why even bother? Dodging the stars, blowing away the pink butterflies, and avoiding touching the grew butterflies rotating around Jesus was unbearable. I basically had to rely on luck, playing each stage over and over again waiting for a pattern of butterflies that allowed me to clear the stage.
My last real complaint is the references. It's obvious that you drew inspiration from Undertale, without even seeing the easter eggs. The "Credit is due where credit is due" easter egg was a pretty silly thing to do, considering that Toby Fox pretty much drew inspiration for the character Papyrus from a webcomic called "Helvetica" and he flat out put that in the credits of his game. If you want to pay respects to a game you drew inspiration from, put it in the credits instead of putting a sentence that a lot of people won't understand is just, wow.
I mean, Louey is basically an allegory for Flowey, it was pretty obvious. And the Chara easter egg? Smh. A few easter eggs are cool, ones that reqiure you to derive from the game's original path (The Pokemon easter egg when you're in the free roam segment, or Buer in the same one.) are rewarding and cool, but when they're just sitting there, it's just boring and kind of annoying.
That being said, if you want to put an Undertale easter egg in there, I recommend plopping one into the free roam segment where you first see Louey, maybe put an Undertale sprite (Or some similar sprite) off the path like you did with the pokemon ones.
And last, but not least, this has basically the same gimmick as Undertale. "Don't play this game again and let them be free" versus "Delete this and let me be free" are pretty damn similar and completely uncalled for. It felt forced and unnecessary, and I would have much preferred a simple ending cutscene where the hopeless soul thanks you and closes the game instead of insisting you delete it. This game is not a moral ambiguity choice game such as Undertale, I don't really care much about the hopeless soul because it's never really given me any emotion, so why should I care if it sits here on my desktop?
Moreso, the Hopeless Soul blatantly breaks the fourth wall, stating that doing stuff is the only way to advance the plot. That just brings back the glaring fact that: yes, this is not a real person, it's just a pile of pixels and code.
So, to recap, the things that irked me were the references and the difficulty. Pay respects if you want, but keep it subtle.
I did, overall, love this game to pieces.