Recent reviews by Gladpus 💙 they/them

edit: after patch 3, game refused to save because it thought we were in a dialogue, lost another hour of playing, and after loading the game still couldn't save. Soooo we're giving up on this for now.

(I haven't played enough single player to comment on that, but others seem to be very happy)

Our attempts at playing the game multiplayer have been painful, several crashes where we had to re-do around an hours worth of gameplay
Only one character can be interacting with a trader at any time?
The game cannot be saved if someone is interacting with an NPC - while not game-breaking, it was very annoying.
Movement feels somewhat janky - for example toggling sneak, jump, dash wasn't particularly intuitive outside of turnbased mode
Could do with a prompt when another character enters a conversation, so you can listen in immediately without relying on people shouting that they're talking to someone
Look forward to playing this when it's less buggy, and I imagine I'll update this review to a positive one once it's a bit more polished, but right now it's not a particularly smooth experience to play multiplayer - especially not at this pricetag.

A beautifully relaxing experience.

The animations in this are excellent, and the lowpoly-ish visuals work great. The bubbles that follow you when you move, dust that appears when you're near the ocean floor, plants that bend out of the way or otherwise react as you approach. Just so many wonderful details that all make up a very enjoyable and relaxing experience.

I look forward to finding all its secrets.

Absolutely beautiful. Also infuriatingly intense at times.

I could go in depth with a gameplay breakdown, and analysis of the story, visuals, music. But really all you need to know is: It's a gorgeous experience, and you should absolutely play it through to the end.

I'll start this out with this fact; I am kind of bored with the survival genre.

Rapidly eats all my time if I start playing. Gets updated all the time because the devs are so damn efficient, so I can't keep track of all the new features all the time. Some servers have absolutely terrible communities.

Stuff you find in most survival games, and that get boring after you've figured out how to do them, and done them a few times.

• Build a hut
  
• Build a spear
  
• Gather food
  
• Build a better hut
  
• Build a better spear
  
• Gather more food
  
• Build a fort
  
• Build a gun
  
• Kill everyone else that you come across
  
• Take over their fort, steal their food

Some of these things I have never done in other survival games, which is partially down to community, and partially some very active devs. Well done guys!

• Join a new server and apply ROCK to TREE repeatedly.
  
• Set up an inn, assign sleeping bags to anyone who asks for one, and give them a warm meal and somewhere to spawn while they're getting to grips with the world.
  
• Rent your services out as a Lumberjack.
  
• Rent your services out as a Miner.
  
• Rent your services out as a Farmer.
  
• Rent your services out as a Building maintainer.
  
• Rent your services out as a Hunter.
  
• Rent your services out as a Chef.
  
• Rent your services out as a Gatherer.
  
• Go from server to server offering up your artistic skill to anyone who gives you a sleeping bag and a sign to paint on.
  
• Make lots of signs and spread them out in a forest for people to stumble over.
  
• Sit in a bush, terrified that the guy you just spotted over there might kill you on sight.
  
• Spend all your resources on getting a winter jacket so that you can climb up the tallest mountain to watch the sunset and sunrise.
  
• Create a shop where players can come and trade items with you.
  
  So really the thing I like the most about Rust is all the things that are emergent gameplay. The developers didn't specifically intend for these things, players just started doing them and they spread onto other servers. And I think that's great :D

Would I recommend this? Yes.

Life is Strange is a wonderful, facinating experience more like a movie than a game. Yet your interactions with it make all the diffrence to the story. Honestly it's amazing what they've made here, and every time I play it sucks me in for hours!

If you're looking for something shallow to waste 5 min on, don't play this. If you've got an evening in with a cuppa and you want to experience a cool story; this is worth the money and more.