Neue Rezensionen von JMac

Tales From Candleforth is a good point-and-click puzzle game with a good story, although it's not without its criticisms. Let's go over it point-by-point.

1. The art was incredible. I really loved the style. The puzzles were good, and never felt too hard or too easy. The music and the visuals really worked together to create something really cool.

2. There were a couple grammar errors in English here and there, but nothing too severe. If pointed out to the team, I feel like they'd be corrected pretty quickly.

3. While I was very interested in the puzzles and the story, the ending left me a little unsatisfied, and I hope there's more coming in the future. Without spoiling anything, I was also hoping for there to be a secret ending based on a certain set of mechanics in the game. There's definitely room for improvement, but what is there is enjoyable enough.

3. The puzzles felt good, most of the time. They weren't too hard or too easy, most of the time. On that note, the forest was easily my favorite part of the game. The way the puzzles intertwined with each other was cool. I loved going back and forth between the different versions of the woods. The only puzzle I didn't really like was the tree mirrors. I'm still not sure if there was a trick to it, or if I had to just click different mirrors until I got the right one.

5. To the devs: you should feel proud of yourselves for this game. I look forward to future releases from your studio!

I wish there was a middle thumb button for this game. It's lots of fun with friends, but right now it feels like it lacks a lot of the features that make other games like it shine. The primary goal is to go down and record "scary" clips to go viral. But beyond that, the game is really feature barren. Unlike Lethal Company, which is the closest thing I can compare this game to, you NEED friends to enjoy this game. Additionally, core features are just broken. The Video Extraction feature is very broken, which kind of ruins the whole point of the game (you don't get the video about 50-75% of the time right now, which sucks). Occasionally, voice chat just completely stops, requiring a full restart of the game.

I cannot in good faith recommend this game, despite how much fun I've had. The fun I've had can't really be attributed to the game, and more to the way my friends and I interact. The bugs and server issues make it unplayable about 50% of the time, and the other 50% of the time its core features that differentiate it from other games just don't work.

I will revise this review if the game is fixed.

I just simply cannot recommend this game in its current form. There's a lot of fun to be had, but not $30 worth of fun, and the problems - especially later in the game - vastly outweigh any fun had with the game. Allow me to explain.

The longer you play, the bigger the threats become. Which isn't bad in and of itself... except that some of the monsters are world-breaking forces of nature that just clip through walls and one-shot you, one-shot your entire base and build, and take entirely too many shots to kill. I've waited for months for them to address this problem, and thought surely it must be an obvious and known problem since this slinky monster doesn't take too long to appear. But instead, I'm left with the only possible conclusion: that this no-clipping build-breaking one-shotting monster is intended functionality. And thus I uninstalled today. It really feels like they're forcing you to play the game their way, not the way you want to play. Which is real cheeks for a sandbox-esque game like this.

The game is itself a paradox. Lots of clear direction while simultaneously having no clear direction at all. Lots to discover at the same time as having nothing of real merit to discover. A map laying out the points of interest, while not really being fully interesting. Sandbox elements while demanding that you play the game the way the developers intended and no other way.

Hard pass.

I'm sure it's a great game, and I know it has a really big community, but I simply cannot recommend this game. If you have anything BUT top of the line specs and a SSD, load times to get into the server will be anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour, and there is no guarantee that it won't crash mid-loading. My computer exceeds the minimum requirements and even the recommended requirements, but still I cannot play this game. Which is a shame, because I quite enjoyed the legacy edition, and was hoping that my gaming PC would be able to run the newer version.

But it can't. This is still an incomplete game, and it should be approached as such.

I must say I'm a bit confused at how vehement the negative reviews of the game are. You would think this game killed their parents or something with how angry some of the reviews can get.

I've had enough time in the game to experience all the mechanics, from gathering and inventory management, to sailing, to combat, and the various other mechanics. I have thoroughly enjoyed Windbound so far. The story is pretty solid, the art is gorgeous to look at, exploration is fun, and the core gameplay loop is pretty solid. I've never felt like I spent too much time in any particular Chapter/World/Whatever you want to call each set of islands. I've also not run into the problems that the other reviews so prominently feature.

Windbound is a good game. It does a good job of explaining to you what you're supposed to be doing, if you're paying attention. I went in expecting a steep learning curve, like one of the reviews put it, and that never actually happened. The in-game tutorials are non-intrusive and do a good job of explaining the game's mechanics. They continue to show up until you've gotten the point of it.

My only gripe early on was inventory management, but it quickly becomes easier as you craft bigger baskets and bags. Before that, it was tough to manage my resources, with me dropping things and leaving them behind (but even then, not really). Even then, inventory management only really became a problem for me in the World 2 (or Chapter 2, or whatever it's called), and it was also solved in World 2. Once I got a Bamboo basket to put on my boat, my worries were solved. It slowly crept up again in World 3 with the addition of the forest islands, but once again, it was solved in World 3 with the addition of silk and bigger bags. The only "scarce" resources (as in, they don't respawn when harvested) are things like Sticks, Thick Grass, Clay, and Bamboo, but the game supplies you with enough of it. That being said, I've never felt like I've been starved on resources - especially not any of the critical resources like Thick Grass, Sticks, Palm Fronds, Bamboo, etc. Most appear frequently enough that you'll have a good amount to spare.

I think the only mechanic that isn't really well explained is boat crafting. I knew it was possible to expand my boat, but it didn't really teach me that. I learned how to do it when I was standing on my boat while in the boat crafting menu, because the boat parts just kind of snapped to the rest of the boat. I can picture some players running through the game with only a single hull, which has room for a basket and a sail, and that might be where some of the problem arises with things like inventory management.

The combat isn't the best combat I've experienced, but it is also by no means bad. While it can be a little buggy sometimes, I've never come away from a combat encounter with a bad taste in my mouth. I have a couple of minor gripes about how the system works, particularly with regards to targeting, but it's also nowhere near as bad as one of the reviews puts it. The ability to "target nothing" is by design. I've also never had trouble with enemies getting the jump on me or sneaking up on me because there are very clear audio cues that tell you you've been spotted/are in combat. (Yes, this is in direct response to one of the reviews that angrily calls the combat trash because of what amount to personal problems and skill issue).

If you're really worried that you won't enjoy it, get it on sale.

It is my firm opinion that The Complex is the best Backrooms-themed horror game out there, and it's completely free.

TL;DR: The Complex is a REMARKABLE atmospheric horror game. It relies very much on atmospheric horror, which is difficult to pull off, but this game does it really well. The game does a very good job at filling you with a sense of dread as you explore these seemingly empty locations. I can't even begin to explain why, but I felt extremely uncomfortable as I explored, and in a very good way. SPOILERS AHEAD. Reading this review will spoil the experience for you, so read with caution.

In The Complex, you find yourself in the Backrooms - an interesting thought experiment about endless mazes and liminal spaces. If you don't know what a liminal space is, think of what the Uncanny Valley is for humans - something that seems human but isn't quite right, and creates a sense of unease or dread. Apply that to things such as rooms or hallways, and you have a Liminal Space.

As opposed to other Backrooms-based horror games that try to draw upon newly created lore, this game takes more of a purist approach, using the original idea: you are alone here (or are you?). As I explored, I was constantly filled with a sense of general uneasiness about the place. Everything in the game looks remarkably realistic, but also somehow off. The sound design--and there is some truly incredible sound design--lends to a feeling of discomfort as well.

Most important in this game is the sense of dread. Occasionally it sounds like something else is walking, not just you. Several times I would stop dead in my tracks and look around to find the source of a noise I thought I heard, only for there to be nothing. The levels are quite large and lend themselves to exploration, but sometimes there is an urge to just find the exit. There was always that fear - that something is lurking behind the next corner. In one of the levels, you even see a head peering around the corner at the end of a hallway, and as soon as you see it, the head moves back around the corner. That moment scared me and kept me on edge for the rest of the game. Suddenly, exploring became even scarier. That singular moment after a while of tension building, caused things to become more tense. There was never a jumpscare to relieve the tension, either. It was always just a creeping and slowly growing tension and sense of dread.

If you like puzzles, this game is for you. The Witness is a unique experience, and I've never played another game quite like it. On the surface, it's a puzzle game, but there's so much depth to the world and the puzzles. The community is very much against spoilers, and so am I, so I'll try to structure my review with that in mind.

You spawn in a chamber with a simple puzzle: connect the starting circle with the end of the puzzle. The starting area kind of serves as a tutorial for how The Witness puzzles work in general. As you explore more of the island, the puzzles become more complex, with different rules being added to them. These rules and patterns recur throughout the game, and sometimes combine to create even more complex and challenging puzzles. The game does an incredible job at teaching you the new rules by starting with very simple puzzles containing the new rule, and then moving on to slightly more complex versions. I never truly felt lost with a puzzle, except for a couple of them in one zone, where I feel like that zone's rule could have been taught a little better.

Also littered throughout the island are several hidden puzzles that require you to be standing in specific locations and looking at specific angles. They're super satisfying to find and solve, and I still haven't found all of them, despite being a speedrunner for the game. Another thing you'll find are little recordings, all of which are philosophical and scientific. I was always quite fascinated by what the people had to say. They added just that little bit of extra wonder to the world.

If I were to rate The Witness on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be a solid 9, maybe a 9.5. It's extremely satisfying, and I always want to come back for more. There are a few things that keep it from being perfect, but I can't even begin to describe what would need to change. I think the only change I would want to see that would give it a 10/10 is for (spoilers ahead) the swamp area to have its rules explained a little better - the puzzles create an ambiguous understanding of the rule that could go one of two ways. The way they do it is serviceable, save for one puzzle in that area that can cause some frustration.

She Will Punish Them is a rather barebones game about dressing up a sexy succubus. Oh and there's some bland fighting that they try to pretend is the main part of the game. But it's a succubus dress up game. The levels, save for the few siege levels, are all basically the same thing over and over.

The AI is dumber than a rock. The controls have a significant amount of jank to them. Friends and enemies frequently get stuck on map elements, and save for a small minority of levels, every level is just the same arena combat game.

The character customization part is the best part, and you really will only get limited enjoyment out of it. There's no tutorial about how to dress up your character/equip items once you've created your character, and you're basically left to figure it out for yourself. Items that the game tells you are unlocked don't appear in the wardrobe, and it just becomes a mess. I imagine they fixed this, but buyer beware because I'm sure not gonna test that.

The game runs like trash. The framerate is bad, and there are memory leaks everywhere that the developers are either incapable or unwilling to fix.

I really wish I had refunded this game when I had the opportunity.

Keeping comments closed for this review so the coomers don't get angry that I insulted their wank simulator game.

It's poorly optimized garbage with higher minimum requirements than many of its contemporaries, and much higher ACTUAL requirements than the listed minimum. My computer exceeds the minimum requirements, and it froze the entire computer to the point where I had to hard reboot.

It's been abandoned by the game devs for another of their games. I imagine they'll abandon that game, too. Don't buy anything from these devs. They put out a garbage half-finished project and deserted it. And they have the audacity to charge $30 for this.

Sorry, the game isn't "abandoned" - it's "being worked on at a slower pace" - and that "slower pace" is so abysmally slow that it may as well be abandonware and I will be surprised to see an update to it in the next year.

Reading through the reviews, there are plenty of problems that could be fixed, but none of them are. Not even addressing those problems means you've abandoned the game, devs. Stop lying to yourselves and your customers.

First of all, Developers: ♥♥♥♥ you for making me feel things. Second of all... I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love you oh my god. This game is amazing. It was a magical pure adventure/puzzle game with some truly magical writing.