Recent reviews by spooky goblin

I've written a full review at http://bitsandpieces.games/2024/01/30/granblue-fantasy-versus-rising-evolves-from-the-first-game-review/

Granblue Fantasy Versus and Rising are back-to-basics, simplified approaches to fighting games. However, Rising swings the pendulum way back to the ‘anime’ type, mostly by introducing some new mechanics (staggeringly powerful Ultimate Skills and Raging Strike, which along with some tweaks to the combo system enables much higher average damage). Most of these are genuine good fun — while some characters’ Ultimate Skills feel horrifyingly strong (Zeta’s beam and dive haunt my nightmares) the majority are a good trade-off between meter and utility.

When it all comes together, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is a blast. The gorgeous visuals, fantastic music and sound and the faster and more frenetic pace of the game really work. The changes to the formula will depend on your specific taste, but the mastery of the audiovisual experience (provided you like anime stuff) can’t be denied. With a variety of content and a smooth experience whether playing offline, online, with friends or without, I’d heartily recommend Rising to just about anyone. Interestingly, this new iteration of GBVS even includes a free version — so if you’d rather just see it for yourself you can skip the rest of this and go play that.

This is an excerpt of my review from: https://bitsandpieces.games/2022/06/20/bargain-bits-vampire-survivors/

Vampire Survivors is an extremely budget-priced roguelite-type game (just £2.09) where you wander around and biff monsters – so how well does it manage to deliver, both for the price and in the abstract? One thing about buying games that fall within the purview of bargain hunting is that you usually don’t need to worry about the time to cash ratio – for just a few quid, I’m happy enough to sacrifice this angle in favour of a shorter, more unique experience, or maybe one with an outstanding aesthetic flourish. Vampire Survivors represents the other side of the bargain-diving coin – it aims to nail a wee gameplay niche and offer a lot of replayability.

And that niche is mowing down comically-sized hordes of foes, selecting items and doing one more run, maximising the synergies between characters, weapons and accessories for thirty minutes at a time. You repeat, find unlocks, chase down achievements, and do it all over again. All attacks run automatically; all you do is move the character, collecting dropped experience points and outmaneuvering hordes of enemies. Item selection and combinations are king here, and you can get permanent upgrades in between runs.

There's an occasional lack of build variety, with incentive to pick the same strong weapons multiple times only just outweighed by the temptation to get unlocks and secrets. Plenty of new items have arrived over the last few months and probably will continue to do so leading up to the game’s release. Vampire Survivors gets a big Bargain Bits thumbs up, with such a low price making it worth a punt for those who habitually play this sort of game as well as those that don’t.

This is an excerpt - check out the full review at: https://bitsandpieces.games/2022/03/18/bargain-bits-mysteries-under-lake-ophelia/

In 10 years, I doubt I’ll remember Mysteries Under Lake Ophelia as an indie game I bought on Steam in December 2021. Instead, I’ll probably be convinced it was a thoroughly weird, fever-dream-ish game from the deep past. One I played one summer holiday, in the very early 2000s, at the house of a friend who hadn’t yet got a PS2, a dusty second-hand copy from Gamestation dug out of a cupboard. At its heart, and for the enormous majority of the time you’ll be playing, it’s a simple, laid-back fishing game. You’re a kid in jorts and a Dreamcast t-shirt and you wander around the titular Lake Ophelia, which seems to possess every variety of fish imaginable. You collect fish and either sell them to a strange travelling fishing equipment salesman or cook them into meals. There’s a sort of eerie overtone to the whole experience, leaning into that slightly spooky vibe that’s a regular feature of 5th-gen styled indie games.

Mysteries Under Lake Ophelia is probably my favourite game I’ve played for Bargain Bits so far (admittedly there’s only two others at time of writing). The winning combination of simple but effective fishing mechanics with the immense charm of its styling and attitude make this little game a gem hiding out in Steam’s new releases. I don’t think it’s changed my outlook on life or games about fishing more generally, but the aesthetic juice (technical term) is very potent indeed. There’s something exceptional about that PS1 look but also this game specifically. It’s as if the lack of the now-familiar enormous detail in the early 3D era invites the mind to examine and fill in the flat landscapes, lending the whole thing a wistful, haunting energy. Check it out if it seems like it’s up your alley; I think you’ll know if it is.

This is an excerpt of a full early access review I wrote at: http://bitsandpieces.games/2021/12/27/bargain-bits-rust-raiders-early-access-review/

Rust Raiders has all the bones of a good entry in the deckbuilding roguelite genre, and is currently totally playable, though it has a lot of rough edges and as yet isn't fully-featured. The scope for what the developers need to do to improve the wonky bits of the experience are pretty clear. That’s more than you can say for a lot of games in the sub-£5 early access bracket. I hope it gets some attention from deckbuilder enthusiasts – I’m no expert in the genre (pretty rubbish at them), and while I found the central mechanics of Rust Raiders enjoyable, it’d be a shame for it not to receive useful feedback from more experienced players.

Rust Raiders is a fun little deckbuilder, offered at a very reasonable price-point. If you’re a deck construction enthusiast looking for a new experience – one that you could probably help to shape with feedback, I imagine – it might be worth the small entry fee and a few hours of your time. It’s definitely a very early-stage Early Access title, but as long as you have a clear understanding of what you’re getting into, it’s got some mechanically satisfying card combat to offer as you learn the mechanics and fight robo-pirates.

This is an excerpt of a full review at: https://bitsandpieces.games/2021/02/05/bargain-bin-bits-doll-explorer-prologue-review/

Doll Explorer is a puzzle game made by a single, self-taught Japanese developer under the moniker Pico Games. The free Prologue is out now on Steam. You may as well play it yourself at that price point and time investment, really, but I thought I’d give my thoughts after spending my lunch break playing through it. So if you want the brief version of this review: the art is adequately anime-cute, the translation is a little odd but fine considering the game’s development, and the puzzling gameplay is pretty satisfying. I’ll expand on what I think below, so read on.

At first glance, Doll Explorer looks like a deckbuilder of some kind, maybe of the dungeon crawling type. However, it’s really a pure puzzle game. There is a single, definite correct solution to every one of the Prologue’s eleven stages. It’s got a dungeon crawl-ish appearance, but from the Prologue it doesn’t use any mechanics associated with that genre. You get a little set of ‘cards’, a specific few more for every enemy defeated, and a set number of turns to reach the end of the level, defeating all foes and negotiating the environmental hazards. You play these cards in order to move and use a small range of attacks to manipulate enemies’ positioning and/or chuck them into dangerous terrain. In this way it’s a bit like a linear, puzzle-ier Into the Breach.

It’s a pretty basic demo, with a small number of stages and only two hazards: falling stalactites and pits, which you have to use to your advantage. It culminates with a boss level, which combines all of the mechanics found in this short demo stage in a satisfying way. The two protagonists form a deeper bond through the first chapter of the game, though it never addresses the, er, questionable ethics of using magic to build a fully-sentient dungeon-crawling magic android and using them to face lethal challenges for profit.

It's short and free, so give it a shot.

This review is an excerpt of my full review here: https://bitsandpieces.games/2021/01/15/how-necrobarista-pushes-the-visual-novel-genre-forward/

Is there a best way to define the ‘visual novel’ as a genre? I’m not about to do a detailed dissection of my own conception of the genre (tried in an earlier draft, ended up swearing), but suffice to say Necrobarista by Route 59 ticks my main box: most of the gameplay is clicking to reveal more text. It isn’t first-person, really, or even from a consistent perspective, and there’s no narration – text is simply spoken by characters on or off-screen (represented by a cute little icon). There aren’t any decisions to be made that affect the plot, either (though it isn’t the only purely linear visual novel), so maybe by and large Necrobarista would fall into the mechanical neutral-to-rebel end of any VN alignment chart. It is quite anime, though, so if that’s a significant factor in your conception of the genre space it’ll slot neatly in. It even has an opening theme.

If you were ordering a Necrobarista, you’d ask for a visual novel – heavy on the visual, hold back a little on the interactivity, with a heavy sprinkling of rumination on life, death, and letting go. The beans would be very Australian beans, as the game is set in Melbourne. Apologies – I still can’t come up with good coffee metaphors. At any rate, Necrobarista’s focus on its visual elements offers a genuine freshness to the game – it legitimately pushes the envelope in terms of visual artistry, something that the VN genre often neglects.

Necrobarista comfortably avoids overstaying its welcome, and leaves on a convincing high. It’s doubtless a low-interactivity example, but it’s a distinctive, stylish VN(ish) game – and the strength of its character designs, writing and visual composition prove that it’s a game of vision. Necrobarista proves that there’s still a lot of room for bold aesthetic envelope-pushing, and does so without sacrificing its own plotting, themes, or likeable cast. The end may even successfully jerk a few tears.

These are bits from my full review of Coffee Talk, which you can find here:
https://bitsandpieces.games/2020/11/13/coffee-talk-review/

To vaguely summarise, you play as a late-night coffee shop owner and barista, serving clients mundane and fantastical in a hybrid modern-fantasy setting. The influence from cyberpunk bartending game VA-11 HALL-A is obvious; in many ways Coffee Talk feels like an iteration on the concept laid out so convincingly in that game, recontextualised into the ‘lo-fi beats to relax/study to’ dimension (with orcs). Well-produced and charming, with a sharp aesthetic and an endearing cast, this beverage-slinging confessional nevertheless could have benefited from a little extra time to brew (sorry).

While I don’t think that Coffee Talk quite dethrones that game, it’s a thoughtful, strong addition to the burgeoning beverage-based visual novel subgenre. It markets itself as a chill-out game, and it succeeds in this regard with an effective mixture of relaxed aesthetic, warm characters and an unhurried feel. The game’s plotlines are maybe a little too linear for my tastes, and could have done with some interweaving and a little extra substance, but the little stories of these peoples’ lives make for small, effective arcs, wrapped in very pleasing visual presentation.

Tekken good