Recent reviews by NiftyHat

A game that satisfies my urge to dig a whole without a bunch of pointless vestigial crafting or levelling mechanics.

A really joyful and silly way to spend 2 hours.

The very best game in which you can watch a guy comically wobble over the edge of some water and then kick them in because it's immensely funny.

I accidentally forgot to put my car in park and got run over by my own car.

11/10 would panic in the PNW again.

FixFox is like a friend who lacks confidence but has great vibes.

There's this great frontier feeling from cruising around the desert on your speeder looking for hidden parts to steal from pirates so you can do a very illegal repair on a blender for an NPC. The game is filled with little quirky new systems and story reveals that really make you feel like you are exploring and discovering new things.

I do wish sometimes it would be a little more confident and not be so quick to throw ways to skip certain mechanics or gameplay, like it doesn't believe those systems are fun and worth engaging with and that you might be bored or frustrated. Which occasionally brings you down from what is otherwise a fairly unique and memorable game, with a great soundtrack to boot.

This game is a very flawed gem. If you want to be do some simple quests from incredibly charming and quirky characters for 6-8 hours, I would recommend this as a fun diversion. If you don't like games that lack substance under their surface then I would pass. Kraken Academy!! is very transparent about the games that inspire it (specifically Majora's Mask and Phoenix Wright) but never really captures the heart of what makes those games stand out, which can often make it feel like a hollow experience in spite of it's variety.

The biggest shame in this game is that it has a great cast of character that you just don't get to spend enough time with. It often feels like a visual novel or graphic novel was crammed down into a much smaller space and had all the depth and nuance filed off to make it fit; or like the game is a proof of concept for something much larger that could really do it's characters and setting justice.

GAMEPLAY/ENDING WARNING (minor spoilers)
The last 10% of the game has very different game play to everything else. The dissonance is wild, but it's arguably more fun than the mini games everywhere else.

I wanted to like this game, I really did :/

The self aware jokes seem dated, and don't seem to carry and weight to them. If there are any stakes in the game the feel like they truly don't matter because the game is constantly making fun of itself. It's not clever enough to be funny or honest enough to be charming.

The platforming is ok, mediocre. The character frequently glitches into the ground for no reason which makes the game feel cheap and unfinished. I would give this a pass but the game has been out for 18 months and apparently it's still not fixed.

The click and point adventuring somehow manages to bring some of the worst bits of classic click and point of having obtuse clues and solutions; and makes them worse by adding the layer of self awareness. Ben literally recognises how weird it is an item continues to be useful in the prologue. Sure game, you got me REAL GOOD by going "ha ha isn't unintuitive puzzle design funny"

Occasionally, when the two modes are kept separate the game is about playable; but the desperate justification that you need to do both platforming and point and click adds a lair of tedium to the whole experience. You constantly have to switch character to pick Ben up with Dan and then drop him then swap again to interact. This extra complexity is also intentionally joked about by the characters during the game, like the game is mocking you telling you it is putting you through all these tedious extra steps intentionally.

If you chose to play with a controller, be prepared for a whole extra layer of frustration whilst you struggle the the point and click interface.

There's a body of conventional wisdom about games design the An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs flips off to deliver such gems as:
- Helping a dog with their cabinet collect addiction
- Accidentally drinking artistinal toilet water whilst cycling the dozens of weird items you've collected
- Going "AUGH MY EYES" when you accidentally ask a dog for five lamps.

it's weird and full of stock photos of dogs you can pet and I don't know what else you could reasonably ask for from a game called An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs.

I've played the tutorial for No Mans Sky 7 times.

I've never made it past the tutorial since 2017 due to bugs and issues like
- no being able to save
- tutorial steps not working
- tutorial goals not appearing
- dying repeatedly due to the hell planet i've been spawned on.

it's not even a very good tutorial and takes like an hour to get through.

Maybe since 2017 the rest of the game is rad now. I wouldn't know, I've never been able to play it.

I didn't play this because there was no game and it was amazing.