Recent reviews by Chewie

The blacksmith simulator genre has been limping along with bug riddled/completely abandoned games. This game is the exception, as it is relatively stable and also well polished. The story is surprisingly good, and the blacksmithing feels realistic and really enjoyable. Choices you make with your "special" customers have an impact on the outcome of the game. There's also an arena that you can arm gladiators with your creations to see how they fare in combat. It's still early access so there are still some issues, but nothing game breaking. The developer is very responsive in the discussion forum on steam, and they are actively working on bug fixes and improvements.

The biggest complaint I've seen is there is a part of the game where you can make a choice, that will result in you dying the next time you sleep, and some very unlucky people didn't have a save from before making that choice which required them to start over. Also, there is a heavy weapon design that is extremely overpowered in the arena to the point where it doesn't feel intended by the developers.

But as is, the game is great, and I'm really looking forward to future updates.

Sometimes you're solving puzzles, some easy, some more challenging.
Sometimes you're contemplating philosophy, morality and the obligations of humanity in the universe.
And sometimes you're chasing around a purple sparkly floating orb for the Greek God Prometheus.

Great game, Very reasonably priced.

Groundhog Day - Island Edition

It's a great game, that requires logical deduction as well as deception (if your role is evil) to play it well. Its downfall however is due to the fact that out of 15 players, if only 1 or 2 want to be trolls (game throw) it will ruin the entire game. Good games where all 15 players actually want to play the game legitimately are few and far between. The reporting feature does nothing because they simply don't have the manpower to review each game, as it's a time consuming process (done by volunteers) and there are usually 100+ games going at any given time.

I had high hopes for this game. I enjoyed fantasy blacksmith, despite it's bugs and flaws. I was hoping this would be a step up from that game, and in one aspects it was. The open world element, allowing you to walk around the towns you're working in, speaking to the people you're doing work for, is a nice touch. This game is worse in all other aspects. I lost about an hour of work at one point due to the game crashing and no autosave feature. And at one point I could not progress further because I needed to complete a certain number of contracts on the bulletin board to progress, and there were none.

I had been reading that this game was incomplete and abandoned and asked the question if this was the end, on the steam discussion board back in April (5 months ago) and never got a response from the dev or any player.

I'm not sure what it is with this genre, but we can't seem to get a game without flaws or bugs. You should stay away from this one, unless you're OK paying for about 5 hours of game play (that includes the tutorial).

Wait until the bugs are worked out of this game before purchasing. The game has potential but the bugs make playing it a bit pointless. Currently your goal is to accumulate as many SP as you can in a single shift by following the correct procedures, and you get docked CP if you do things wrong. The problem is there are several bugs that dock you CP even if you do things correctly.

Imagine playing papers please, but you got in trouble for making mistakes when you did everything correctly. That's the state of this game right now.

Interesting new puzzles with a new mechanic to master. Lots of work put into the environment too. Free! A must play for any Portal fan.

I'm giving this a thumbs up because I am enjoying the game (though I doubt I'll have the patience to play a campaign as each boss), however the game does need some work. I enjoy the setting, and I like the XCOM like aspect of combat (albeit not very difficult in most cases). If you want to play a game where you play the role of a feared mob boss with little that can stand in your way, you’ll get some enjoyment out of this. If you’re looking for a challenge, keep walking.

Many of the other reviews have covered some of the flaws, and I won’t restate them.

But a major flaw I’ve found is how battle in the street works. When battle begins in a building, it’s clear, attackers vs. defenders. However, some battles will take place in the streets. For example, if you are going to attack a racket, you have to first take out the guards posted outside, so there is no avoiding it.

When an outdoor battle initiates, it carves out a section of the neighborhood map as the battle area. Any non civilian character that happens to be in that area is part of the fight. This can include your gangsters, gang guards guarding close by buildings (these can be friendly, enemy or neutral), police that happen to be patrolling the area, down to some random thug in the alley with no gang affiliation that feels it’s necessary to jump in the fight rather than mind his own business. On paper this sounds kinda cool, but here are some issues I ran into:

In the game sometimes you have a nonaggression pact with specific gangs. This can happen after you’ve been at war with them, and decide to form a truce. This means that your standing with the gang is still “enemy”, but you just have agreed not to fight each other for some time. If you break this pact you take a hit to your honor. So if you’re attacking a different gang in the street, and there happens to be some guards from the gang you have the pact with, guess what, they join the fight and start shooting at you (since they are your enemy). If you defend yourself this BREAKS THE PACT!!!

Another bad situation I got into, I was attacking one gang, and two other gangs that were neutral to me but at war with each other were also on the map. This triggered a fight among just them, and I had to sit and watch the dumb AI guards battle it out, skipping the turns for each of my gangsters over and over until finally one side won.

Another great situation, I was being attacked and controlling a single guard outside a racket being attacked by 3 enemy guards. All I did was get shot and run to cover near a police officer that happened to be nearby (I was hoping he would help protect me, since I was outnumbered). The police officer got shot by the enemy attackers, and when it became his turn, HE ARRESTED ME!

Tl;dr: Fun game if you like the idea of XCOM in a 1920’s setting, and aren’t looking for a challenge. But be aware there are some issues.

It's fun, but pretty short. On my first play through I beat the game with only 2 hours of playtime. The achievements will get me to play through again at least once more.

This is an extremely fun and addictive survival crafting, which focuses on automation. This game has a surprising amount of depth for an early access game. Between managing the conveyors, circuitry logic, blueprints/construction bots, logistics robots and rail networks, you’ll find Factorio has all the tools you need to build a smart and efficient automated factory. I just recently completed my second play through getting the “Lazy Bastard” achievement, which really puts your automation skills to the test and forced me to explore aspects of the game I hadn’t in my previous play through.