Recent reviews by Mallorn

There seem to be a lot of people having all kinds of technical problems with this game.
I, however, am not one of them except for a couple of times my character got stuck.

I'm a Kickstarter backer from day 1. The things they promised got me excited. Dropped some extra bucks so I could get beta access.
Beta access didnt do me good. It looked like crap, played like crap, kingdom crap. Money wasted I figured.
When the game got released on Steam much of my enthousiasm was killed by the beta. So it took some time before I gave it a go.

My first couple of sessions I wasnt sure what to think. It looked and played a bit rough, and my character got killed easily so exploring (which I love to do in rpg's) was a stupid thing to do.
On my 3rd session I started to enjoy the game. Did mostly follow the main story, practiced fighting skills and did some thieving.
The thing is, practice makes perfect. You use a mace a lot? You get better stats, slowly. You decide you want to switch to a sword? Tough luck, you have to start practicing again. Reading? First go to a scribe who teaches you. Then, everytime you go to bed take some hours to read a book. It sounds all logical but I havent played a single rpg where you needed to invest so much time and thoughts into "levelling". You really have to work on your skills.

So here's my list of good and bad in this game:

Good
- Nice story. Have to say its been done before like a thousand times: Start as a nobody, end like ... eh... lets not spoil that.
- Fighting is fun and rewarding (yet frustrating in the beginning)
- Because of the first 2 points, it was highly addicitive.
- Multiple ways of tackling a problem or completing a quest. Really well done!
- Mature content.
- Realistic scenery.
- Realistic day pattern. You'll get hungry, you need sleep. It wasnt even annoying.
- Fast travelling.
- Funny at times.
- Voice acting and music.
- Game ran smooth on my 970gtx / 16g ram. Graphic settings at high.
- Mods

Mediocre
- Sidequests. There arent a lot of them. Some are great, some are crap. I dont like fetch/hunting quests. And many of them are unrewarding.
- Loot. Its basically much of the same. And when you already have 10k in money you'll mostly leave it untouched. Same goes for treasures: handy at the first part of the game, after that its pretty useless.
- Character animations in conversations. They are bad, but the funny kind of bad. It kinda kills the mood though.
- Towns feel a bit empty. NPC's giving the same responses when u talk to them.
- Game ends suddenly. Lets just say there will come a sequel, the story aint finished.
- Graphics. Its all mediocre. I noticed a lot of popups: trees, npc's clothing, buildings. Like I mentioned before, its a bit rough.
- No replay value imo. The main story is quite linear.
(EDIT) It might be interesting to try tackling quests in a different way on a 2nd run.

Bad
- The save system. I'm glad they implemented the "save and exit" option at some point. Its a hardcore system, make mistakes and get punished by replaying a whole hour.
And then make the same mistake again! (Like thinking next run youre able to kill that pack of bandits). Not what I enjoy. I started using the "always save mod" around 2/3 into the game and it made the overall experience a lot better.
- One part of the main story. The Monastery quest... When you get there make sure you'll have something to keep you awake.
- I dont consider myself an idiot, but quite some part of the game I was running around with a nice longsword I found and a shield wondering why the hell I couldnt produce the combos I learned. The interwebs told me eventually you couldnt do combos when you carried a longsword and a shield. Makes sense, but I would have loved a warning from the game.
- Just 1 bossfight. A pity.
- Promised massive battles lack massiveness.

Funny bugs I encountered:
- Early in the game Lord Divish's clothes failed to load. It resulted in him walking around the castle butt naked. I regret I didnt make a screenshot but I was busy cleaning my keyboard and monitor from the beer that ended on it.
- Main character Henry taking a bath while wearing his full plate armour. (check my screenshots)

This game is far from perfect. I enjoyed it a lot nevertheless.
WIll update when I finished some dlc.

Update september 2019.

I upgraded my GPU recently and am able to run the game using the free highres pack.
Graphics improved a lot without causing fps drops. Definitely worth to install the highres pack if you have the power to use it.

So, I completed the DLC "A Woman's Lot". This is a free DLC for Kickstarter backers like myself and ofcourse also available in the store.
The DLC can be started by visiting a quest marker on the main map.
There's 2 storylines in this dlc and I started with "The Madonna of Sasau", simply because it was the closest to my location.
In that DLC you play Henry doing multiple quests for a NPC called Johanka. Theme is religion and heresy which fits the time it all takes place in.
If you completed the main game like I did you will find Henry has no problem at all dealing with enemies. That made this DLC rather easy. But in terms of story it's well worth the ride. This part of the DLC has different outcomes, based on how you handled things.

All is different with "A Woman's Lot". You'll start this quest by visiting the mill where you will find Theresa. Theresa tells her side of the story, the attack and the aftermath. You'll start playing this new character. The cool thing is this storyline crosses Henry's at some points and it adds to the story of the main game.
During the game you'll be accompanied by your dog named Tinker. Tinker is cool. Tinker can help you during fights and helps you find interesting stuff.
With Theresa you dont have a one man killing machine at your disposal, but a woman who just needs to survive. You're packed with a bow but most of the time you'll be sneaking around and doing stealth kills. The story is exciting and heartbreaking, yet linear.
This DLC is well worth the purchase. I think it took me about 6-7 hours to complete it. Have to say I backtracked on the Sasau quest to get the most satisfactional ending.

I was pleasantly surprised when I started playing the Descendant a few months ago. Got it from Indiegala (bundle).
I played it till the end, and that doesnt happen to me often with bundled games. It isnt GOTY material and has some mayor flaws but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

What I found odd is that only 1.2% of all players finished it (finished episode 5). That only means no one is playing and everyone is just collecting the cards. Just 5% gave this game a try (unlocked the very 1st achievement which you get when you start the 1st episode).

If you like the Telltale games this one is worth checking out.

just wanted to say this game deserves more attention ;). It shouldnt be just a card idler game.

You're a paranormal investigator and your task is to investigate a haunted house.

The big plus in this game that its kept me going on just to see what was coming next. Its creepy at times, got some jumpscares and imo its well made in terms of gameplay, story (great ending!), atmosphere, graphics, animations and sounds.

I give it a thumbsup because of that.

However, for people who are interested in buying I have to point out some issues:

- There's no freedom and no free movement. You move from one spot/room to another and you have to finish investigating until everything is covered. Only then you can move to the next spot/room. Rinse & Repeat.

- It´s linear. The only choice I had in is wether to start investigating the library or dining room. I finished the library and went into the Dining Room after I completed the first route. I guess its the same if you would start in the dining. Sometimes you can choose wether to interact with an item or not, but thats it.

- Its a REALLY slow game. Because you have no free movement you'll have to watch a load of movement and door opening animations before you can continue your investigation.

- You'll die. For instance there are scenes where you have to shine your flashlight for some time at an approaching ghost. You never know which direction its coming from as it can change after a reload. I also died because I made a wrong choice in a conversation with a ghost.
The biggest problem with dying is that you have to redo a couple of actions. And because its a slow game its annoying. Especially the last part of the game where its easy to make a small mistake. I think I had to do that part about 20 times before I was succesfull. I almost gave up on it because I was getting really mad. (It took 1.5 minutes to get to the part where I kept dying. You understand having to sit through this 20 times can get your blood boiling...)

- Unplug your controller! At some point I had a conversation with a ghost and could ask some questions. I had to end this in the proper way or I would die. I kept dying because I wasnt able to select the proper response (it just picked the first at hand automatically). After unplugging my controller it all worked fine. That was really annoying because it took some time before I figured it had to do with my controller.

- Its rather short. It took my 3.5h to complete it. You can take off 0.5 if youre a smarter player than I am. The very last part of this game took me way too long.

EDIT: Last update after finishing the game on easy.

I was given a key to review this game by the dev.
I've been playing this on a Dual Core 2.1GHz laptop, which is less than the minimum required specs.

Mooch. One of those games that kinda got buried by the avalanche of indie titles hitting the Steam store for a few years now. Tbh, I probably hadnt noticed it if a friend didnt tell me about it. A problem many indie devs experience.

The game is pretty simple. The main character, a puppet named Blink, is a slave working in the mines for the evil Puppet Master. He discovers there's a world outside the mines and decides to escape with his girlfriend. The girl gets caught and torn apart (ouch). Blink needs to fix this and he can do that by picking up all the soul orbs lying around each level, pacman style.
Each level is small and is completed when all the orbs have been collected. That wouldnt be a difficult task if there werent some obstacles. The enemies are robots, trapped floor tiles, lasers, etc.
After completing a number of levels you'll meet a boss. Until now I met The Spider Bot (who moves around the area shooting lasers and The Worm (a worm throwing bombs at you.) Pretty simple if you ask me but it makes the game a little less repetitive.
Steering Blink is simple. Its WASD to move Blink and the mouse is used to rotate the camera.
Animations, graphics and sound effects are ok.
Overall, its a nice little casual game. Better than most of the indie titles I've played. Its ok priced and it works on basically every pc or laptop.

Railshooters... not a really popular genre in the pc gaming world.
I've always liked them though, ever since playing Operation Wolf and Thunderbolt on the Amiga and Virtua Cop in the Arcade hall. I even (kinda) liked Rambo The Videogame on Steam, and the odd game The Typing of the Dead.

Blue Estate is based on a comic book called "Blue Estate" (duh) created by a guy named Viktor Kalvachev. Doesnt ring a bell for me, but I'm not really into comics so that might explain it.

I've been playing this with mouse/keyboard.

You start playing with an interesting character named Tony Luciano. Tony is the no-brain son of a mobster boss who gets into a war with another gang called the Silk Brothers. (Later into the game another character is introduced, a merc named Clarence.) The story is insane but not really relevant. It involves a lot of shooting, outrageous scenes, strippers and a horse.

I guess you all know the concept of a railshooter right? You follow a story from scene to scene while shooting down enemies as many as possible. You have your handgun, rifle and shotgun. Leftclick is shoot, rightclick is reload. Arrows are used for cover, melee, collecting items (ammo, guns) and reflecting incoming projectiles.
You shoot enemies, bonus items and every now and then there's a bossfight or a shoot-a-mole.

Now why would you get this game? Because its well made. The action is smooth and the graphics, music and voiceacting are great imo. The dark humour might not amuse everyone though, personally I thought it was a hit and miss. Great and terrible at times. The whole game and dialogues are cheesy to the max, the action over-the-top. The characters you'll meet are just... very interesting.
Just watch the trailer on Steam. It basically covers everything.

Only downside I see is that I cant play games like this for a long time. I cant play this longer than 45 minutes max. My head explodes and my hand gets too sweaty. Its too hectic and fast. But it sure is a fun ride.

That Sarkeesian woman will totally love this game.

The main reason I was drawn to Bot Colony was because of the voice recognition.
After about 5-6 months I still get errors on startup. My Windows is a Dutch version while you need English recognition. I've tried numerous options on different computers, including downloading all necessary English files. Tried on desktop (Win7) and my laptop (Win 8.1)
Still getting a wide range of errors on startup. Problem is a described on the discussion forum: http://steamproxy.net/app/263040/discussions/0/37470848280779806/. Poster is a Dutchie as well, so I dont know if other languages get the same problems.

Cancelling all error popups will result in the game to start. Its playable but without voice recognition.

I'll redo my review once I get this game to work properly. Until now there's no reason for me to recommend it to anyone.

Its still a promising game though imo.

Update april 20th 2016: Trying to get this to run on Windows 10 resulted in the same errors on startup and after clicking them away my pc had a bsd.

Update june 17th 2016: I got an extremely rude comment from a "private" profile (a user with the same name as the main character of this game, how odd), which I deleted.
Anyone else who wants to insult me, grow up or just fix the damn game, I'll simply remove your comment. This is an honest review and I gave it a lot of hours to get this thing working.
Fact is, its STILL not working. I tried everything I could think of. Those 3.2h I have on this game, 0 minutes are playing time actually. And I dont count the hours I spent on searching for a fix. This means I WAS looking forward to playing this.

Flyhunter Origins is a mobile platformer game that got released on pc.
I havent played the mobile version so I cant judge if this was a good port.
You can change resolution, full screen/windowed mode and controls at the start of the game. This game supports a controller.

This game is aimed at the family with a younger audience as a focus.
The creators all work (or used to work) at Pixar.

In Flyhunter Origins you play Zak, a clumsy one-eyed alien, who seems to be the only survivor of an alien spacechip. Because of an incident all precious cargo has been ejected from the ship and landed on planet earth. It's your task to return it. This precious cargo is a bunch of exotic flies, hence "Flyhunter".

Armed with a Fly Swatter (later you get access to a gun) and a jetpack you have to find these flies. On your quest you'll find numerous obstacles and enemies (earth's insects). Zak is a very small alien, so earths creatures are about his size or a lot bigger. You can collect eggs you can use to upgrade your weapon stats (add +1 to damage, very basic).
At the end of a level when you're about to catch the fly the game changes to a 3d racing game, in which you have to smack the fly a few times. Odd imo, but it works.

Its a typical platformer. Controls are easy (jump/doublejump/shoot/melee). There are plenty of spawn points. Anyone can play this.

The good
- Lovable and funny maincharacter
- Very easy controls
- Controller support
- Nicely priced
- Pixar style artwork and characters
- 3D Racing
- Upgradable weaponry

The bad
- Hit detection seemed to be off sometimes. I had a lot of trouble defeating the big spider. Could be me though.
- Might be a bit too easy for the more mature players.
- Graphics arent really impressive

Overall a nice game for the younger audience. There are more impressive platformers around though.

Recommend? Yes, but not for everyone. 70/100

I played almost an hour before writing this review. Passed the 1st part of the game (meadow).

Trial-and-error 2d Platformer.

There's no introduction, its just bam: you're in the game. While playing you'll understand what youre supposed to do.
You can walk, jump and freeze time. Thats it. (EDIT: a boomerang is added later in this game)
While time is frozen you can destroy little "heads" by jumping on them. Clearing all heads in a puzzle means the gate gets opened -> proceed to next puzzle. Its all about common sense and timing. You miss a jump or take too much time you have to start over. Luckily there are plenty of these spawn points, and always in front of a puzzle.
I think I spent about 15 minutes on one of the puzzles, dying over and over because my brain couldnt solve it (I blame the Belgian beer). Turned out to be pretty easy. Hah.

There's no text and no speech in this game. There's just some soothing and very nice background music. You could call this relaxing if there werent these annoying puzzles. Irritating, annoying, but addictive.
Could have been called Bliss: Prepare to Die.
Graphics are nice but repetitive.

Its pretty damn cool just 1 guy made this in this free time (during office hours he works for a AAA developer). I have a lot of respect for that.

The good:
- Simple controls
- Nice music
- A challenge

The ok
- Graphics. Could use some variation.

The bad
- No controller support. I like to play my platformers using a controller.
- No graphics setting option. There should be at least the option to change the resolution or play full screen.

Its an ok 2D platformer with some nice challenges. And nicely priced.
Recommend? Yes: 70/100

I enjoyed playing this. The story kept me interested, but I have some problems with it:

- I finished this in about 1.5 hours (the other 1.5 were card farming)
- Its the 1st episode. All episodes are sold seperately if I'm right.
I'd rather pay 15 euros for the whole season than x times 5 euros for an episode.
- There's no voice acting at all. There are some (rather nice) background melodies but thats it.
- Its 2.9 gb.... I REALLY wonder where all those mb's went to....
- Too easy. No puzzles, didnt get stuck, didnt die.
- One of the main characters looks like dr. Phil
- No replay value unless u want to want to go for the achievements.

Recommended, yes. Its a nice little game with an interesting story and decent gameplay. I'd wait for the whole pack of episodes at discount though.

As a big fan of the old Sierra classics from the 90s I knew I had to own this the minute I saw it on Steam.
It's all there: the cheesy but funny jokes, the oldschool style and a real challenge. This isnt an easy game, not as easy as most adventure games released nowadays (but also not as hard as for instance Quest for Glory).

It reminded me most of Hero's Quest/Conquest of Camelot. Except the maincharacter isnt a very nice person, he's quite egocentric. Which is nice for a change, I also like his dark humour ;).
Its mostly adventuring with a little fighting.
This is an adult themed game. There's killing and cursing. I havent seen any sex or nudity yet, but there are hints it might be possible (maincharacter is a ladies man ;) ). Dont expect a Leisure Suite Larry though.

All text has voice actors. Some of them are brilliant, some of them, well, are not. A lot of cheesy overacting, I love it.
Graphics are... retro. Awesome.
System requirements? a pc will do

If you have fond memories of the old Sierra games and youre looking for a challenge you'll love this.
If youre new to adventure games this probably isnt a game for you.
If you dont like the retro style dont buy this.

One thing though, the price seems high. Especially for a retro game. But dont forget you'll have many hours of fun playing this, and for me every euro I spent on it is worth it.
One of those games I'm convinced I will finish eventually.