Recent reviews by Bleak

I'm not sure what I expected from a game with a name like this, but I was hoping it would be more fleshed out. I've played free flash games with more depth and enjoyment than this.

Satisfying gameplay loop, neat retro visuals, and an amazing soundtrack. By far the best $.75 game I've ever bought. The only minor issue I ran into was FPS drops at the very end of the game despite only 20% GPU and 10% CPU usage. Still, truly incredible for a first game. Hope to see more cool stuff from Monu in the future.

Widget Inc. feels like a simplified Factorio-meets-idle-game in a good way. The core gameplay loop does get a bit repetitive as one would expect with an incremental game, but the details of each individual unit are neat and include tons of mini-games.

My beavers commit warcrimes.

I've played MMOs off and on for about 20 years. Throne and Liberty is a beautiful albeit bog-standard MMO.

The graphics and effects are terrific, the world is varied and very well designed, and the combat is pretty decent. The classless system is cool at first - until you realize the sheer amount of time you have to spend if you ever decide to try a different play style out by leveling different weapons.

Unfortunately, the downsides outweigh the upsides. The story is derivative and disjointed like something out of an anime fever dream. I know MMOs are generally not known for their stories, but T&L's story is laughably bad. Lore is given very piecemeal and you have to rely on finding books in the open world to figure out what in the hell is even going on.

Movement is clunky as heck which is unfortunate because it is a key component of combat and exploration. Jumping puzzles in a game with such bad movement is unforgivable.

But worst of all is the end game loop. Once you hit level 50, you are relegated to farming the same few dungeons and world bosses. Dungeon mechanics are OK, but world bosses are all basically loot pinatas with no variety. PVP is frustrating at best and downright annoying at worst. The only way I can see the end game being enjoyable is if you're in a large, active guild with folks always available to play with. Relying on PUGs or trying solo play is a non-starter for nearly all content outside of dynamic events. Even more unfortunate, every single dynamic event is timegated with hours in between instances and all boil down to "Kill X, Collect X, Deposit at X" which is uninspired and boring after the second time doing it.

TL;DR It's free, pretty, and fun for a couple dozen hours. Beyond that, you'll need an active group of folks to play with to have any shot at having fun after that.

Dopamine Injection: The Game

Pretty neat little horror sandbox game - feels a bit like a spiritual successor to Portal. Aside from some minor bugs, I feel like I got what I paid for here. The platforming is quite frustrating and I didn't really appreciate being forced to do it to finish the game but aside from that, it was well worth the time and money.

No subscription, loads of content, and a friendly community. My only complaint is I didn't discover it a decade ago.

Part Legend of Zelda, part Dark Souls, Enshrouded is a terrifically fun survival game that puts an emphasis on exploration and learning by doing. This is the game I wish Valheim was. There are a few bugs to be worked out namely with traversal and polishing the combat system, but this feels much closer to a full release game than early access to me.

Battlefield Bad Company vibes with devs that actually listen to the playerbase.