Recent reviews by onLooSe

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Published by Devolver Digital you can probably guess how gory and brutal the game can be. There’s plenty of controversy around this game, which I find to be completely wrong or unjustified in general. For me Pixel Titans developers did a pretty nice job bringing the old school FPS gameplay and mixing it with the almost never-ending replayability of the more modern and up to date Rogue-like aspect with plenty of innovations and twists in the genre.

STRAFE: Millennium Edition has plenty of unique mechanics to offer in comparison to the well-known games in this category. You don't get permanent stat increases or the usual items, characters or weapons unlocks between your runs. The only way to make things easier for yourself after getting deaths on a conveyor belt is to just keep playing and get better at the game. That's right - the game is on the unforgiving tough side (a bit more than Ziggurat and WASTED for instance), but nothing really scary when you start to get the hang of it.

You have 3 starting weapons for which you get ammo and that’s part of the big twist they went for. You have a shotgun, machine gun, and a railgun starting choice that will change your gameplay completely. Every other weapon that’s dropped comes with only its own magazine and the only way to resupply it with ammo is to find it again. This is a pretty interesting concept because there is a pretty good variety of weapons and you would want to save them for the right situations.

Between your regular runs, you can only unlock and activate mutators for your next ones - big head enemies and what not. Some of those can be really helpful, but they are pretty much the only assistance you can get. The game is broken down to the well familiar worlds with sub-levels. There are 4 worlds and I think each one contains 3 sub-levels, all of them pretty different from each other containing different helpful stuff for your current run - main weapon upgrade machines (they can totally change how your main weapon of choice handles), shops (one per world at fixed sub-level) and secrets that give you upgrades (for those a bit later).

One thing I find really appealing is the movement mechanic. They went for the CPMA quake 3 movement mechanics, which means you increase your speed (to insane levels) by strafe jumping and alternating left and right mouse (camera) movements while having the air control turning. This makes the game really fast if you know what you are doing. It’s hand down the fastest regarding the movement Rogue FPS I’ve tried.

There’s a decent variety of enemies - ranged and melee ones including stationary and moving ones with the introduction of new ones the further you go through the worlds. Tons of hazards like fire, acid, explosions and what not to make it even more unforgiving. I haven't beaten it yet, but I'm pretty certain there's at least one boss fight as well at the end of the game, so I'm pretty much looking forward to this one.

STRAFE has tons of old game references and plenty of secrets, you need to find to make your life easier with upgrades. I will just mention that one of the early ones is you have to go through Wolfenstein 3D level on an old school arcade with the same control mechanics like back in the early 90s of course.
The game doesn't end in its regular playthrough game mode at all - there are few extra ones you can have tons of more fun with, like for instance wave survival mode, daily and weekly challenges.

I never play shooters with a controller, only M+K, but there's an option for Aim Assist, so I guess it can be viable. Fully customizable controls for M+K, but I'm not happy with the mouse sensitivity slider. You go through set increments and me being slow sensitivity player... I play on the second increment, so I have only one option to go lower sensitivity than that.

Well, you see them so I suppose not much to mention here, but still, I have no issues with pixel graphics like some people. It’s not that much it’s pixelated, but just it’s made to be a mix between old 3D engines like Quake 1 and Doom 1/2 mash up. I feel they managed to pull the retro look pretty nice and I like the design choices a lot.
It can run on weaker machines with no problems, but I guess you might want to have dedicated GPU even being 10 years old one.

Actually pretty good if not amazing, but that’s always a personal thing just like the graphics. Can’t say a bad word for those.

Pretty much what you would require from such title. It has everything needed + option to go full potato graphics and the so necessary FOV slider on top of multiple monitor support.

Totally worth every buck at its full price. It even gets discounted pretty often.

STRAFE: Millennium Edition deserves way more than what it's getting. It's a well-polished game that can bring nostalgia in every old school player about the good old days of the FPS gaming. It might even get new people hooked to it if they keep on “gitting good” and stick with it.

Pros

• Tough and fun game
  
• Retro feel and gameplay
  
• Blindingly fast movement mechanics
  
• Suitable for short sittings
  
• Tons of replayability
  
• Steam trading cards + achievements

Cons

• People complaining they can't git gud enough
  
• The in-game map is completely useless, but who needs a map anyway?!
  
  

  I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.

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Being an old school FPS player that grew up with games like Quake I can tell you that for sure it's inspired by those, but does it carry the true weight? Not really - of course it has its modern touches, which on the other hand can be beneficial and bring far more versatility in such a complex genre if done right. Darkest Depths is a project that's being developed by a single developer and this didn't change the fact that I tested numerous iterations, fixes, and changes during the past month - all of them improving the game significantly. This true dedication is what you need to expect from every EA game project out there.

Darkest Depths is randomly generated First Person Shooter, done in the Rogue-like fashion by weapon unlocks and RPG upgrades during your runs. As expected from such kind of mix, if you die you have to start from the top and the only way to improve your progress is by utilizing "Practice makes perfect" or "Git gud" if you will and there is no way around trying over and over to improve your gameplay.

One particular sub-genre that isn't mentioned in the description and makes a really strong impression is Bullet Hell . This is probably the first word I would use to describe the game in its current state. You are given a crazy amount of evasive mechanics from the get-go you have to take advantage of avoiding the various enemy attacks.
You start with a Double Jump, air dash (costs energy, which you replace by shooting and killing enemies), wall running and a Slowdown Time mechanic (tied to killing enemies in quick succession - combos). Mastering and chaining all of those together in the best way possible is a fun experience that keeps the combat fresh and as expected keeps you alive for longer.

The Rogue-like aspects comes from the permadeath and the ability to unlock new guns - about 6-7 currently. You start your playthrough with one extra gun on top of your starting one and to permanently unlock more you have to progress in the game or get them from drops or the RNG shops. Each gun has alternate fire mode and most of them consume your energy bar for ammo. Your extra weapon in the starting hub will be decided from the ones you have unlocked, but when you get more during the playthrough you can keep them all and cycle through them on your whim.

Stat buffs/debuffs and leveling up are in the core of the RPG elements the game provides currently. You can obtain those from either RNG enemy drops or the shops that utilize your in-game currency. Gaining health back is done again by enemy kill drops in the form of healing orbs.

The enemies are varied for such an EA release and most of them have melee attacks as well, which even further strengthens the need to utilize your evasive mechanics to keep your distance as much as possible. Each floor ends up in a big boss fight, which underlines the bullet hell experience and I've seen 3 or 4 so far.

I play all FPS games with M+K, so I haven't tried the game with a controller. I'm not sure if it's supported yet.
I'm a slow mouse sensitivity player with around 25 cm for 180 degree turns and I'm at 5% of the sensitivity slider, so I would suggest a bit bigger variety in that setting for players like me. Another thing here I would like to see is individual weapon bindings because currently, you can only cycle up and down, which is not optimal when I require a particular gun in a particular situation.

It's UE so the graphics are really pleasant and you even have different graphic presets - around 6-7 currently that allows you to change the looks and the game atmosphere on the fly - if you want to make it look old school as possible with bright colors and black outline this got you covered.
The enemies are really distinct from each other, so you always know what to expect when you get familiar with them. They are decently animated and designed. Obliterating them with your various weaponry feels satisfying enough especially with the gory blood animation that was added in.
Currently, one of the primary goals of the developer are to make the different floors unique and distinct and floor 2 design was revealed with the EA start, so I can't wait to see what more he can come up with.

The sound effects are decent enough, but they might need to get some more love eventually, especially your and enemy firing.
The music is pretty good and most of the time works really well except for kinda the slow tunes that sometimes kicks in while you are flying around a room trying to melt down 30 enemies, but that's personal opinion.

Plenty of graphics option, individual sound sliders, and key bindings. It's possible to use a multi-monitor set up as well, by switching the game to windowed mode > moving it to the screen you want > getting back to Fullscreen.

It's a long road ahead and plenty of stuff to be ironed out. Bugs, fixes, balance changes, and improvements are bound to happen, so don't hesitate to provide feedback. During the closed testing, I had conversations with the Dev and he was really easy to talk to - considering and working on plenty of suggestions that stay true with what he is trying to achieve with this hard project. You shouldn't forget about prioritization involved in such an endeavor.
After the current work on different levels/floors variety, a different kind of rooms or levels is promised to see its return eventually - movement based ones. They are set to be in the game to allow you to utilize even more the movement mechanics. I personally can't wait for their refined version.

The price of 8.19 Euros or your equivalent is pretty decent, based on the work being done to the game.

Darkest Depths is a tough game combining tough genres with tons of potential and if done right can get really successful. I can't wait to see it improved to find out what more it can bring to the FPS table.
It's in Early Access, so a lot of work needs to be done by its single dev, but from what I can see and the feedback exchange, it can go only up from here.

Pros

• Great mix of gaming genres
  
• Dedicated and easy to reach developer
  
• Complex variety of movement mechanics
  
• Suitable for short sittings

Cons

• Plenty of improvements required for the full experience
  
• No steam cards or achievements
  
  

  I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.

March of the Living is a game that claims to be INSPIRED by FTL (in the steam short description) and this indeed might be the case, but I wouldn't go further than that. It's procedurally generated "roguelike-like" (whatever this means and this is a looooong stretch as well) zombie apocalyptic survival adventure with strategy (this is again a stretch) elements. The game needs a lot of work and somehow barely got any and mind you that it was released the end of April 2016. The last patch/update done was the 22nd of July the same year.

It's developed by Machine 22 who have only 2 other titles under their belt with questionable quality, to say the least. Both were released in January 2015 on Steam. Their last recorded project was the DLC - The Three of Us for this very game one month after they did the last update. Published by Creaky Corpse Ltd who have one more game on steam that they have actually developed themselves and made accessible 9th of September 2018, and one browser MMORPG dating from 2014 - both being F2P.

Zombie apocalypse happened, though no one tells you how of course which isn't something new for such a setting. At the very start, you have only one character available for you to play as and probably this is where the "roguelike-like" thingy addressed in the Steam description comes into play. In the base game, you can unlock a few more characters by completing the game with previous ones. Each has its own story, agenda and a mission to first find out what happened to the people he/she cares about and then to save the one survivor among them so both can go to the rumoured safe haven. Of course, you meet some other survivors on the way - some can tag along and others have their own plans.

This is where the things get a bit wonky and I have to warn you this category will be tied to the Controls one as well.

Continuing from the Story chapter I can't stress this enough - if your main character or the one he is supposed to save dies... Game Over . Story-wise it makes total sense because you are supposed to take the role of your character, but on gameplay level - completely no and this can be a bit frustrating.

The main things you will be doing in this game except for praying to RNGesus are Marching (lol); Combat; Side quest interactions via text boxes and simple choices; Trading and probably looting a city might require another one, but I really don't see the reason why it should.
There's no need to explain the traveling, but let me mention that you get a huge map like a spiderweb separated into 3 pieces which are procedurally generated. You will have to think about the best route to go to the end of each of those while everything being RNG except the minority of quest markers and the Cities which will be marked on it.
The combat is a pretty peculiar thing, to say the least. Zombies get thrown around you and you have to deal with them with either melee weapons or ranged ones. Each of those has it's not that big stats like a chance to hit, bullet count, attack delay, etc, but let me just say that constantly missing with melee weapons can get annoying pretty fast. You have a dodge mechanic which requires you to press somewhere on the ground so your character will start to move in that direction and he then probably performed it...
The devs claim that there are 160 unique events about the small story encounters, but I have my doubts here. The issue here is that most of those barely have any options, some don't have any at all. Some are really goofy as well, but I'm pretty sure that was intentional even though most people won't laugh at all.
The trading and looting a city don't really require much of an explanation. You have to barter things and if you sell a few things in advance and close the window by accident you are done for with your virtual barter currency for some reason. Plundering the cities is always the same thing - having access to 6 areas which have 3 options with time to go search the place and of course zombie encounter possibility. High risk = high reward I guess.

Each character will have his own perks, pros, and cons which can't be changed because there is no learning RPG system in place. Those will provide extra options for pretty rare extra encounters to make your life easier a bit.

The only management you have to do is to make sure you rest and have your guys fed up and healthy, so the strategy aspect isn't that good either, especially when you add to those the combat system.
The most annoying things come from fighting the UI itself and trying to manage your characters no matter in what situation. I will just mention a few things here because else I would need to type another review.
Transferring items between your party members utilizes temporary inventory you toss items to and from there you switch to the desired character. You will never know what weapon your characters are currently using except when checking their management tab - if you switch to melee just for the end of combat - it's on you that you forgot to equip your weapon to reload it. The 2-3 different types of shooting actions reset each time when you swap a weapon mid-combat... don't get surprised if you are wasting bullets for no reason. If you are bartering with NPC and you need to buy a weapon for a party member you can't open their perks screen at the same time... actually you can, but it will be behind the barter one so you need to close that one first and later reinitiate it. Actually, this applies for every window from the UI in the game. There are plenty more, but this will be just a waste of time to list them all.

Mouse + keyboard, but the problem here is that I facerolled on the keyboard numerous times and couldn't find anything more than Space = pause, 1-6 = character select, w = weapon swap, and r = reload... This made the playing really tedious, to say the least.

I don't mind pixel graphics games but I need to mention a few things here. The backgrounds although look plenty in the screenshots and the trailers... those are the only ones you will see over and over again. Enemy design is just zombies with different clothes and the occasional the same bandits or military. The controllable characters have a bit more variety to them.

The music is ok, but you can barely hear it by the constant zombie growling - it's all the time.

Barely any. The most vital one is to disable auto-targeting if you want to conserve precious ammo.

No idea how it's ok for the current quality of the product.

If it was a bit more worked on I don't see why it wouldn't have been a decent survival 2D game. It really shows it was rushed a lot and the gameplay gets boring in no time.

https://youtu.be/pCfe5O6Qm6A


Score: 4/10 -Only, because it had potential

Pros

• Ok concept
  
• Steam trading cards + achievements

Cons

• Annoying UI and control problems
  
• Shallow gameplay

GoNNER is a tough procedurally generated rouge-lite side-scroller platformer with shooting in mind. The game manages to combine all of its genres flawlessly with fluid and pleasant movement mechanics with a unique art style being the top of the cherry here. Recently (December 2018) the game even had its first DLC which is for free on top of that - BlüEBERRY EdiTION 2 years after the game first launched.

The developers Art in Heart managed to make the game available on every main platform and OS imaginable, so there are no excuses to not try it out if you love the genre. It seems it's their first and only title so far and this being the case I'm really impressed. Publisher Raw Fury is well-known for taking over only really high-quality indie games from whatever genres and I'm pretty sure that this one is the only rogue-lite under their wing, so this says a lot.

The level design is based around the well known and established structure of areas/worlds that include a set amount of sub-levels. So far I don't know if you have any alternate choices where to go, but I haven't yet reached the end of the game. Of course, it's not surprising that each area has its own specific layout, gameplay and feel to it with even being procedurally generated and a fixed type of enemies designed to make your life as difficult, as possible.
It includes regular levels with the occasional RNG secret that can spawn almost whenever, secret separate and bonus ones, shop levels and finally, of course, challenging boss levels.

Fluid and responsive movement are probably one of the main things one is looking for in such a blend of genres and this product can't disappoint in that department. Wall jumping and wall hanging; double jumping; jumping off from enemies (resetting each one of your movement abilities); incredible air control; jump height sensitivity and precision are combined from the get-go to provide perfect platforming experience with fast-paced action. The way to master this game is obviously for you to learn to chain all those actions together as smooth as possible.
The only negative thing about the mechanics (totally personal gripe) is that the double jump has a bit of a delay to it. It works the same exactly as in Hollow Knight (which is a newer game though) and your character feels really heavy and sinks a bit downward after you have already initiated the double jump. I prefer more instantaneous ones such as in games like Dead Cells, but it's just something one needs to get used to.

The rogue-lite part really shines from the gear options and combinations presented to you. It might seem there's not much to it at first, but the number of combinations really provide the replayability. First of all, you have different "heads" which give you different perks and mechanics, health and of course, having their cons. As expected you have different ranged weapons that can cater to all playstyles and situations. Having a particular passive gear choice just completes the package and I won't spoil any of those for you, so you can go to discover the vast combinations on your own and find which work the best for you or the area you are having troubles with. Last but not least you have followers, but yeah, just go check them out on your own.
You unlock all of those gear pieces by finding them in secret areas and levels or reaching certain points in the game where a particular item will be waiting for you. There's a chance you can find something you haven't unlocked yet in the shops, which means everything you touch will be available for you to choose from the very start of every run.

The currency in the game is called glyphs and the drop rate of it is total RNG. Only one glyph can drop from a single enemy. You use it for shops which include rerolling them as well and the cherry on top - CONTINUE after you die . Each price to do so is always fixed - the first one being 6 glyphs and it doesn't matter in which area/level you die, might as well be the last level and of course, gets exponentially more expensive for the next ones. You have to replay the level you died in and it will be randomly generated again of course.

There's a decent variety of enemies and most of them correspond to certain areas. As expected they have different attacks, abilities, and aggro range on top of being grounded, flying, trap alike, stationary, turret ones, spawners and what not. The bosses though are always fixed at the end of a particular area.

Apart from game completion you have Leaderboards and Daily Challenge which adds a bit more replay value for the more try hard players out there. The Daily Challenge concept is simple - you play it only once for the highest score possible and when you die it's all over, but is it? The developers provided a pretty good addition to it - you can replay it as many times as you want - not for the leaderboards though.

As expected there isn't much of a story here at first glance and such games almost never intend to have one, but I might be totally wrong and it can be really convoluted and revealed in the end game. For one thing, I'm certain though - something will happen to your buddy... "the space wale Sally" and I can't wait to find out what.

Some might not find this style to be really appealing, but I for one can't say anything bad about it and I like such minimalist approaches. It's a unique art project on it's own. The main idea here is that everything pops out clearly in this well crafted and colored world. Each color describes the purpose of an object or a thing - the simplest example being that red means danger and enemy.
The only problem I find with it is that sometimes it is a bit hard to distinguish your character among all the particles and everything that's moving around you.

All of them blend in perfectly though it's nothing groundbreaking and when it works - it just works!

Plenty of stuff here and probably everything that you need, except for remapping your controls, unfortunately. You can easily set up the game on whichever monitor you wish when using multiple ones and it remembers on which to launch. The system requirements are pretty low, so it's supposed to run on almost every machine.

It worked great on DS4 controller with DS4Windows and no idea about keyboard though.

If you love the genre combination this game is a steal for its price tag at 10$/€ or your alternative. The replayability is there and the price per hour is too good to pass on.

Great game for short sittings if you want to improve on your reflexes and skills. It's an art project as well and It's shame it doesn't have a bigger player base. It deserves better because it manages to blend all of those genres perfectly with its own unique twists while being highly polished with an unusual design.

https://youtu.be/wXRewIid6xw


Score: 9/10

Pros

• Amazing blend of genres for the try-hards
  
• Great replayability
  
• Unique art style
  
• Steam trading cards + achievements

Cons

• No remappable keys.
  
• No Steam Cloud saves.

Lost Chronicles of Zerzura is an old school point and click (some of you might remember this genre as "quest") adventure that utilizes intuitive and yet interesting puzzles compared to plenty of games in this category. Even the staples in this genre often push for solutions that are so far-fetched and "outside of the box" that you have to bang your head for hours and stumble upon the crazy answer by accident or just trying everything possible without even thinking anymore. Well, fear not - logic is mainly the driving force here.

The developers Cranberry Productions worked on the sequels of the well know and established game Black Mirror , so they are far from new with such games and I wasn't surprised at all when I found out who they were after I spent some time in the game already. It's a German studio dating back from 1997 and was called 4Head Studios back then and renamed to Cranberry Productions before Black Mirror II and after Lost Chronicles of Zeruza was acquired by Deck13 and renamed to Deck13 Hamburg. So, they are still active and have more than 20 years of gaming experience. The publisher is Viva Media , which are one of the biggest for Point & Clicks, Hidden object games, and Puzzles, so they, of course, took advantage to take this title under their wing.

Everything revolves around two brothers in the year 1514. The older one being fascinated with ancient civilizations and cultures - a scholar. You as the player take the role of the younger brother: an inventor, a man of science and physics. When you add the Spanish Inquisition into the mix you are up for a pretty decent adventure to find the lost city of Zerzura. I won't say anything more and I would advise you to not read the description of the game, nor the "About this game" section because I went in blind - not knowing what to expect. I'm even surprised that they shed so much light about the plot on the store page. At least for me, there were some plot twists going blind.
The story, in general, isn't something you will be writing home about, but it's compelling enough that it hooked me to see what will happen next and what more can go wrong. I'm usually an action game player, so this speaks plenty. 10 hours in and I haven't finished it yet but I just can't stop now.

In some games (actually probably most of them) in the Point & Click category, you are forced to wait for every action and scene transition for ages because your character can't run but don't worry, here this is far from the case. Your character even runs when it's too far away from the queued action and you can even double-click on screen transitions which will just send you there straight away. The only thing I found to be a bit of an issue here was that in some stages of the game if you don't go into the proper order required things might look a bit awkward, but still, you will be able to progress further.
Except for the usual features of the genre, you have a mini-game of course and different small puzzles which is always fun diversity from the rest. If you get stuck the devs gave you an option you can enable, that gives you hints by turning your cursor red when trying to use an item with the interactive points of the environment, or when combining them in your inventory. When you press the spacebar you can see each point of interest in the current scene as well, compared to you having to go over with your mouse over everything. The Game as well uses a manual saving system and there are no quick saves.

The pre-rendered background scenes are real eye candy even when the game was developed so long ago (actually released 2012, not 2014), but this has its toll: the character animations are sometimes wonky and awkward, but this won't break your immersion, but make you laugh probably. Not everything is animated when using items and sometimes the walking animations of the characters are really strange. The general design of the backgrounds though is top notch and I doubt someone can find something wrong with it - architecture, colors, lightning - all are pretty well designed and made.
The cutscenes are really pleasant, and they are the only thing that's hand drawn in a colorless fashion. I had a bit of issues with the UI design through - the font in the menu is really convoluted for my liking and requires a bit of getting used to.

The game is voice acted decently, but sometimes the main character sounds a bit off. The narrator kinda reminds me of Trine which of course can't be a bad thing. The music really blends with the atmosphere and it's what one might expect - classical music. The only problem I had with it was during progression points when it becomes a bit loud and it's a bit troublesome to hear what the characters are talking to each other.

Except for the gameplay hint ones and subtitles during the cutscenes, there isn't much here, unfortunately. Thankfully there's resolution options, even including modern high resolutions. Being 2012 title means there are no multiple monitor settings or even windowed mode which was the most annoying thing for me because I wasn't able to set up the game to run on my second monitor. Even the mouse goes out of boundaries if you have more than one screen and move it away from the windows default one so you can easily minimize on accident.

I'm still 10 hours in without getting stuck for long, so even if it's 1 buck per hour for this experience I think it's totally worth it if you are into the genre.

If you miss the good old school Quests with a pleasant and interesting story and puzzles - look no further and give this one a try.

Lost Chronicles of Zerzura - Cross the thin line between science and miracles.

Score: 8/10

Pros

• Compelling story
  
• Great graphics and art
  
• Decent voice acting
  
• Intuitive puzzles

Cons

• Lack of multi-monitor options
  
• Awkward character animations
  
• No trading cards or achievements

Check us out at IndieGems . Follow the curator page if you want to see more reviews like this one.

Dead Cells Is not your typical action rogue-lite platformer at all, because this game really puts an extra oomph on the action. It’s probably the most smoothest experience one can get in this large variety of gaming genres combined! Motion Twin managed to implement unseen so far POETRY in game movement and combat mechanics. Playing this will make you feel like a god, being able to sequence tons of motions and actions in one single deeeep breath… until you get hit… reminded that you can still die like a ***** and still suck.

At first glance you might just think “oh another 2D side scroller platformer with rogue-lite elements”, but you can’t go more wrong than that. The last thing I will describe this game is by the “platformer” genre. It’s still there, but when you pick up the game and take a look at everything as a whole and how action packed this is you will even forget that you indeed jump to move around apart from jumping over the huge number of enemies you have to deal with.

The metroidvania implementation is really well done, even probably better than the staples in that particular genre, because it’s combined with the rogue-lite aspect. Even when you unlock all the possible means of traveling and have access to every biome (it’s how the different areas or levels are called) you will still have endless diversity and choices why, how and where to go next in your runs. Some biomes are only accessible when you find a permanent rune unlock that will grant you a special ability. Being a straight up ability means it has tons of uses during all biomes not just to enter the previously locked ones.

It’s Rogue-lite after all, so few deaths here and there are expected, but that’s the beauty of it and from where the great replayability comes from. One should embrace death and have fun with it, while learning bit by bit how to avoid it better in the future. This shouldn’t be off putting at all considering that a regular run (no matter the difficulty) is maximum about an hour in real life time. It’s really good to play in short seatings when not having much time and it even saves your progress if you have to get up, so you can finish your run later.

I won’t even bother to try to describe the combat and the action, because it has to be experienced by everyone that’s even slightly interested in those genres, but the vast majority of gear choices and weapons makes it even more outstanding. There are tons of items you can have fun with and I can’t stress this enough - Every item plays completely differently! Some you will love… some you will hate… some will get completely changed by the on going patching of the game (for that a bit later), but to get familiar with everything and to master it - probably more than 100 hours. I hope this puts in a perspective how much variety is there.

Unlocking gear and passive skills and what not is done by acquiring a particular blueprint of said item and bringing it after the level is done to one of the NPCs, which means surviving while carrying it - might not be that easy in plenty of cases. Than you need to spend one of the in game currencies called Cells to unlock the particular item. It’s really straight forward and of course all the progress is saved in between runs.

The enemy variety is pretty impressive and on top of that Motion Twin managed to make their different behaviours and attacks complimenting each other when in diverse groups. This is how they tend to control the difficulty levels in between said biomes the later the game progresses and in completely higher difficulty settings as well. Grouping particular type of enemies together can be a lot more interesting and devastating than you can imagine. You have all types of the little ******* … melee, ranged, flying, spawning, multi action ones… ability ones… whatever you can imagine ones.
There are currently 6 Bosses in the game and if you followed my drift so far - yeah… they are completely different from each other. In every playthrough you can go only for 3/4 of those, so the extra one is a choice matter.

The level design is done pretty well and it’s as RNG as you can get. Of course from time to time some hickups tend to happen by being completely blocked, but I think they worked a lot on this part and soon this will never be the case. It’s no secret this random level generation underlines the insane replayability value of this game, but the variety in the different biomes and their unique feel and layouts is really diverse. You have completely maze like levels, horizontal ones with vertical dungeons… mixes of both and what not. They won’t stop doing biomes for sure, but at this point I can’t imagine with what they can come up with.

Few gameplay mentions not needing details that the game has: various types of Shops, challenge rooms, Secrets, Lore rooms, Cell rooms - depending on your active difficulty, Timed Doors, Kill count doors, etc. I’m probably forgetting something. All those are up to find in all biomes.

There’s full modding support and already tons of mods done out there. I have never installed a mod so far, because I don’t feel the need to, but it’s there for whoever wants that.
You even have the options to fully customize and change your runs, pick ups - everything to the smallest details right from the game menu.

Patching is going strong and constant. Motion Twin isn’t scared to experiment and completely change whatever they aren’t satisfied with. They do listen to the community, but stay true to their concept and ideas and I can’t complain at all about that. I’m actually keen on them experimenting.

I will go with a stereotype here - Motion Twin are French and it shows in the art. I can honestly say that this is the most classy pixel graphics I’ve ever seen! It’s true eye candy and how they managed to come up with this … the only thing that comes to my mind is … french people! Seriously though every detail is polished perfectly. The animations are smooth and amazing, so are all the effects. They recently even added new weapon animations and what not. The surrounding environment is gorgeous and immersive.

The sound effects are pretty on point and really well done. You have your sound queues and what not … I can’t say anything bad about any of this. The music for my taste is phenomenal and fits the atmosphere perfectly. I played probably 400 hours, before finally started to switch with my music.

Well you have almost everything you can desire here from effects to separate audio sliders to in game mechanics to…even FONTS… so I will just mention the 2 things I feel the lack of. The game takes your monitor resolution when you go full screen, so this might not be optimal for every person out there. Second thing is you have to go to windowed mode and move the game to the monitor you want and than go full screen and it’s done if you use multiple, but having to do this every time kinda wore me down by now.

If I was Motion Twin I would have slapped 40$ on this without any regrets, so they are actually being really generous for what they give you. You can’t go lower than 100 hours in this and probably most people stay lot longer like me - FOR TONS OF REASONS!

Git Gud and Try Hard in it’s full meaning and potential! How can you go wrong if that’s what you seek in a game you can play over and over... and over, and still cherish and enjoy it?!

Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior is an old school arcade action platformer with his fair share of beat 'em up elements. If you are like me - just missing the good old days, you probably don't want to miss this title, or hell... if you are not familiar with them - this is a good opportunity to check out what you've been missing and hopefully fall in love with it. The atmosphere in the game screams about the 80's music and movie inspiration, while the gameplay is staple of the early 90's action games.

The tag line "Winners don't use saves" is slapped on the screen even right before the intro when you launch the game. Yes - it's supposed to be played in one breath / during one sitting, because it indeed doesn't have your typical modern game saving system, but don't get discouraged by this. There are in game check points on the start of every level and before each boss fights as well (I'm kinda against the bosses check points, but that's probably just me). The levels aren't that long and there are no RNG elements at all during them, nor the boss fights, except for the amount of coins you can get which serves the purpose to buy hearts when you encounter a health vending machine. The bigest RNG element is between the levels where you have to spin a roulette and you have a chance to increase your max health amount for the rest of the run, but it's not that big of a deal and I suppose it's even there for comedic purposes.

One thing that was really interesting for me is that the side-scrolling is done via the older flip-screen room to room graphics transition, which means when you reach the end/exit of your current room the screen will flip to the next one, and still has the environmental hazards active in the adjacent screens/rooms. This might sound like nothing to most of the regular players, but for speedrunning purposes it makes things pretty interesting that it will be important how much time you spent in the current screen before you move further.

The combat is pretty simple and mainly includes 3 hit combo with a little twist, which is the only thing that the game tries to teach you from the very beginning - timed attacks. I really like this implementation and fits great with the level and enemy design. You need to be able to evaluate for how many hits you are willing to go without getting punished on few occasions.

There are abilities in the game which you unlock by beating some of the bosses - I could have just said through natural progression, because you can't skip those, but whatever. As you can imagine they are necessary to keep on going and they are fun to use for sure.

The jumping is a bit more advanced for the genre - the longer you hold the jump button - the higher Cybarian can go and this is important for a lot of the platforming sections, so it's necessary to get used to mixing low and high jumps. It feels incredibly smooth and the DEV team did really good job going this route. The air control is pretty tight and responsive too.

There's decent amount of enemy variety (even ranged ones), so I doubt you will get bored by them at all.

The boss fights are really fun following the concept of multi-phases. The platforming chunks are the majority as you can imagine.

If you like pixel art it's simply charming. The levels are well made - the atmosphere is there; the background design elements are just right and not taking your eyes off from what you are going to do; the animations of every character (including bosses) are smooth and well done; the art is just right - not a single time I felt like this enemy or this object doesn't belong here at this exact spot. It's colorful and I can't say bad thing about the graphics or the design.

The music tunes are great and they blend in with the gameplay perfectly. Actually kinda memorable too, so amazing job on that. The Sound effects are nothing special for the genre, which doesn't mean they are bad at all - just perfect for what you can expect. Well, probably except for one little thing I will mention in the "Suggestions for the DEVs" part down below.

Nothing much here as expected. The options menu consists of 4 things - SFX and BGM volume options, control scheme - just to check it out (no changes) and "Scalelines" toggle for the graphics depending on how retro you would like it to look.

I play on DS4 controller using the D-pad (of course) and DS4Windows tool and it was flawless experience. Haven't tried to play with keyboard, nor even checking the layout for it, but I doubt there will be some problems there.

It's right where it should be for the content and the enjoyment you can have with it. It's a tad short of a game for my liking, but if they add a level or two I think it will be just right on their part to increase the price a bit.

If you love old school arcade games you should definitely give this one a try and if you don't like those in general... well, it's your problem, and if you haven't tried them - this is a perfect opportunity to finally do so. I have fun with it and I will keep going pushing for 100% after I failed at the last possible moment for few of the achievements.

This key was provided for free from my dear friends at IndieGems so drop them a follow if you want to check far better reviews typed in proper english compared to mine.

If you are wondering how the game looks/feels from a fresh new perspective check their first impressions video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkJBw0y2CVs

• Possible BUG - Now when I quit no matter where I'm in game to the main menu and click play it will load the last checkpoint I've been at - level or boss. As far as I remember this wasn't the case when I last played few weeks ago and now this forces me to restart the game while trying to push for the achievements.
  
• Length of the game - even for one sitting If you go with one or two more levels it will still feel natural, (depending on their length of course) but so far I have this feeling screaming "I hope it lasted a tad bit longer!".
  
• The "Go >" notification when you kill the enemies to go further to the next screen... I know that it's classic element in arcade gaming, but the sound effect can be like 2-3 times only, except if it's not just like this for comedic effect or intent :) ... and yet again I'm not laughing :D. Sometimes you are prevented to go further from environmental hazards and this thing keeps nagging you.
  
• Ladders - they are part of the level design, but for sure some people will find them painfully slow, so a bit of speed increase only when sliding down on them should be enough?
  
• A lot of people now use 2 to 3 monitors and frankly it took me some failed attempts when I first launched the game to understand that I won't be able to escape the default desktop monitor on windows 10 and to use my bigger monitor I had to stop projecting or switch which one is the desktop one - both options aren't really comfortable. Even windowed mode will do just fine to move to another screen if you don't mind the game not being on full screen.

Not your so typical closed maze PAC-MAN everyone is familiar with, which leads to a great new twist - RNG. There's no levels this time around and it's completely randomly generated as you go further. You can go as far as your skill or knowledge allows you to.


A lot more replayability is the key word here. Everything being RNG based will force you to adapt constantly for the main goal - getting as further as possible while making the best possible score... and than you just start over. The game will increase the ghosts you face with their quirks and abilities to keep you away from the goal of climbing the leaderboard the further you push forward.
You are constantly chased behind by a wall of death so the only way to go is forward, but of course the "rooms" you encounter aren't totally randomly generated - there's a preset number of them you will get really familiar with even in the first hours of play, but keep in mind that ghosts and power up pick ups spawns are different every time.

The power ups this game provides are pretty diverse and there's even a progression system tied to them - unlocking and upgrading them. This leads to probably my only problem I had with this game - the most meaningful way to get currency to upgrade your power ups is by completing missions. The missions consists of pick up "x amount of this power up", "eat EXACTLY this fruit x amount of times", "kill x number of ghosts using <power up effect>" and "eat (which means only using the Power Pellet) x number of ghosts". This sounds like a no problem at first, but if you want to 100% this game the currency you get to upgrade those abilities (all of them and this is the hardest achievement) comes from cases after doing those missions and the value they provide are totally RNG... so they can go from 128 to 1024. In my case it was 128 after 128 after 128 over and over and on top of that ... "eat 3 oranges" took me plenty of time because there was every other fruit imaginable but not what I needed. It took me not more than 6 hours to unlock everything and 10 (at least) hours more to upgrade it. The game has lost the fun element for me at this point when everything became a grind. You will find yourself suiciding just after you are done with said mission, because it probably forced you to take x power up in your build so it's impossible to fight for the highest scores possible with this set up if you don't feel comfortable. They could have made the missions way more interesting and push people to go further as possible, while they turned it into a grind.

There's a multiplayer but it's only couch co-op unfortunately.


It's PAC-MAN FFS :D. It's pretty cool they provided plenty of blocks/pixel art templates you can choose from without having to unlock them at all. I suggest you try those out before it can possibly go really boring for you.


There's almost no music at all except from the start of every game short tune and the sound effects are what you can expect from pac-man. I can't say anything bad about those. Nothing out of the ordinary and I bet you will get bored by it after even few hours, unless you are one of the fans of the series and you can't be bothered at all :).


4 buttons (movement) + 3 for only menu navigation (pause and accept/cancel). I played on DS4 controller but I doubt this game can give any issues to whatever method you desire to use in it.


I find PAC-MAN 256 to be really fun and entertaining game for what is worth. If that's something you like, you won't notice the achievement unlocks as a problem for sure. It's classic with a twist done pretty good. One day I might even try to get even higher in the scoreboard, which should have been incentivized a bit better though.

Well, well... what do we have here? It smells like typical SD to me...

Once upon a time there was this girl - lets call her SD and we had this guy - lets call him Id software. He really liked her for what she was - honest and straight up to the point. He felt in love ... being delusional and all that, the first child was born - let's call it ET. You might think it's not ok that the child was essentially given away for adoption, but it found great home and was taken care of - let's call his new parents "community". In the mean time they tried to have another child together ... let's call it ET Quake Wars. The father was really involved this time ... he really did his best trying to make the mother understand how to be responsible and everything. No surprise there that she didn't listened at all so their next child died shortly and he left her. Few years have passed and she started dating her previous boyfriend's boss - let's call the boss ... bethesda or zenimax (doesn't really matter). They had another yet another child that unfortunately ended up for adoption, but it's not actually certain it found new parents even to this day. After this painful birth, she somehow managed to shock ppl by carrying YET another child... the date when it was conceived isn't certain, but speculations claim it should be around 2010 and after few years later, she mentioned the probable father... let's call him Nexon - just for fun this time. She carried the baby for at least 7 years and actually dumped out the wanna be father by not doing anything for almost an year - not even eating or anything... trying to push the guy further as possible risking her own life and the life at the baby combined (whoever thinks differently is really delusional and gullible... I pity you poor guy). It seems the gal had found a new boyfriend and yes this was the case. She was waiting for the break and she sold her unborn child even.... yet again after at least 7 years in her womb she didn't cared. How can you blame love? She felt so deeply in love that she just rushed to give birth so she can have clear way with her new HERO while we can shovel away DB... her baby.

After my short introduction I will review the game now...

Graphics:
Modded Unreal Engine 3 ... Imagine all the problems that come with this ♥♥♥♥? Are the graphics good? Yes if you don't have anything better to do and enjoy the bugs.

Gameplay:
Well they removed most of what they introduced during the 3 years long open beta, so the base game is unique - you never know what it will get removed next, but is it fun to play? Yeah... NO if you care about proper FPS gameplay. Now everything is just a bonus of what's left of SD's incompetence

Sound:
Triple AAA title according to them.

♥♥♥♥♥♥ up management is the best part of this game ... the community manager even went to a point saying "not happening" for fixes and features requested for years on years and he isn't to blame when the code is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ broken no one can ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fix it. Mediocre development potential - that's about it concerning SD.
I hope one day SD will manage to finish a single game project, but this is not it. One day they will start to listen to the community that made them what they are, but they aren't there yet. For now they will keep thinking they are AAA company and burn to ashes or realise that you are just mediocre company...

"Competitive to the core" is what you were saying about your game... "Incompetent to the core" is what you are for me!
It's not DB I have to shovel...it's you SD. Good job on leaving your shop open after you announced the death of this fiasco... :D I hope you get your money back... lol....
And yes! It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to add this game as completed in your CVs SD!

Everything you need to know about this was said thousands of times.... I will get back to this till the end of my life for sure.

With all it's problems - still the best game easily