Recent reviews by Krango Bango

This game hit a certain nerve of nostalgia very hard from the word go, the art style, the main character's design, the *laugh track* option in the menu, it feels like a lost licensed game for a banger 1 season cartoon. It permeates through the writing too, there's a breeziness a kind of 90s laid back cool to everything that lends itself well to a game that's fundamentally here to chill. Ali as a lead especially evokes the kind of Will Smith, Bart Simpson troublemaker with a heart of gold really well, her banter making checking everything and talking to everyone worthwhile.

The main loop of the game starts out as just walking around chatting to people on the street, but once you're introduced to your hustling mentor Ted things pick up. The game then becomes a combination of pick-pocketing, collecting random garbage and eavesdropping to gain information on marks for slightly more involved scams. It's not really a game that's trying to be especially hard, the only punishment for getting caught is a unique gag for each level where you just have to wait around for about 10 seconds. But there is something compelling about going through each level with a fine tooth comb not just to just try and rack up as much money as possible (you can earn waaaay more than the amount the game sets as a goal). In addition the game has some genuinely well guarded secrets, some even needing you to interact with ARG type elements on the game's discord to get started! All this kind of lends itself well to replay-ability, and for anyone else who endlessly replayed point and click adventure games, this seems like a similar kind of game that's fun to revisit.

The only real issue I have is some roughness gameplay wise, the sprites moving around on isometric backgrounds feels a touch wonky, there's occasional issues with thought bubble descriptions not appearing if one's already on screen and there's the odd weird scripting where you can trigger 1 time events over and over. But none of this felt like it substantially worsened a playthrough, and the core gameplay is simple enough it's easy to ignore.

Overall would highly reccomend!

MySims, Scribblenauts, Poly Bridge and just plain old Lego building.

It's hard to describe this game succinctly without drawing a comparison to one of the above so I'll just do it off the top. Bricktales is a very pleasant blend of these sources, offering light accessible and honestly quite relaxing game play centred around a mix of lego building challenges and overworld puzzle solving. It's an ideal game for kids or even adults looking for something breezy, especially considering just how nicely it's presented.

There's a few small gameplay gripes, the controls for the building mode are decent once you get to grips with them - but getting to grips with them takes a little time. On the over world it can feel like you spend a lot of time switching between traversal powers and watching the corresponding animation. And in some places the game can let you build something that counts as a valid structure but isn't actually traversable for your character. None of these felt like a big issue though.

I think the most engaging thing personally is that the themes chosen (Medieval, Egypt, City, Caribbean and Jungle) are all very familiar genres for original Lego sets of the past, which combined with the simple blocky nature of the things you build in the game makes it feel much closer to the vibe of just playing with Lego as a child than something licensed. There's a very charming *vibe* around this game that I think gives it value beyond something just for children, and is a large part of why I would reccomend it.

Superhot MCD is the follow up to the very cool, but perhaps somewhat overly short Superhot. The concept remains the same and is just as intriguing as the original; a shooter where time only moves when you move (or more accurately time moves very very slowly when you dont). The original superhot presented a short series of constructed levels with some honestly kind of aggrivating story cut ins that were especially tedious on repeat playthroughs. Superhot MCD on the other hand shifts to a gauntlet style; each level or core is a series of randomly generated encounters on a rotating set of maps. This mostly feels like a positive change as the game is considerably longer as a result, most maps having enough detail, space and variety to not feel too samey as they come up through subsequent cores. However there is something to be said for superhot 1s very deliberate challenges; it's not so bad having played through the first one just recently but I did find myself missing scenarios like the train and elevator levels in MCD.

The main area of improvement however has to be the immense expansion of the gameplay, MCD feels much more like a fully realised game than the original. The main change is the addition of two types of character upgrades, both of which are unlocked as you play, main cores give you a unique ability across an entire run while hacks are offered in between maps as part of the levels to give various bonuses. This is a fantastic addition when put with the gauntlet style levels as it allows your character to become progressively stronger and mixes up each attempt. Recall in particular creates an entirely new style of gameplay around throwing, recalling and deflecting with the katana that was not at all realised in the first game. My only issue with the system is that the charge and hotswitch main cores have a lot of overlap in usage and the first core the player gets is not incredibly interesting, offering an additional life. Additionally the hacks are only ever offered two at a time and it can be fustrating to get only hacks affecting shooting when focused on a recall build or vice versa.

The other significant gameplay change is the introduction of the railgun, a low ammo high speed sniping weapon that feels very satisfying to use, new enemy types and "boss" enemies. The new enemy types are somewhat of a mixed bag, while mixing up the core gameplay loop is good I'm personally not so into the implementation. White shielded enemies can only be killed by hitting their weak spot, but their colouration and the lack of audio cues mean it's easy to miss them which feels unintended. Spiky enemies explode in bullets upon death and can often lead to unlucky or unavoidable damage, at first I thought the orientation of the spikes on the model indicated where bullets would go but that doesn't seem to be the case. These along with the especially irritating spiky floor and wall traps feel like oddly unpredictable elements in a game that should be all about giving the player total control. This issue also crops up in enemy spawning, enemies enter the stage through glowing doors positioned strategically around but as there's no audio cue for anything except bosses it's fairly common to suddenly have an enemy behind you. There's a system that gives you a free block for when this happens which feels more like a bandage than really addressing the issue.

Boss enemies are an interesting addition, unkillable and disruptive enemies who have to be avoided while you kill the required number of enemies to end the stage. Again there's an issue of design where they are the same colour as the default red enemies and only have a unique head model; making them often hard to distinguish in the heat of the moment. These enemies overall however, feel like necessary additions to stop the player being able to simply camp a small area on each stage to rack up enough kills to progress, instead encouraging faster more frantic play to stay safe.

Overall MCD feels like a much more fleshed out and fully realised game; in closing thoughts, personally I wasn't super interested in the story aspects and I'm glad they were made much more optional than the original, and the visual design of MCD feels much more distinct and deliberate which is also commendable. I would encourage anyone who enjoyed the concept of Superhot to play the sequel as I feel it makes many marked improvements over it.

Hiveswap Act 2 has been in the pipes for a long time, not quite the wait for the original game but certainly enough to get some expectations going. Overall the game delivers the goods narratively on most fronts, while I was a little sad the plot wasn't pushed forward to the point of encountering any brand new characters - the further development of Joey and Xefros both invididually and as a duo helps make up for that substantially.

Hiveswap Act 2's greatest strength in my opinion would be it's character writing, it introduces almost the entire cast of the Friendsim spin off game to bounce off both each other and our protagonists in interesting and dynamic ways. The framing device for doing so, Joey and Xefros boarding a train segregated by blood based social caste and navigating from bottom to top of the social heirarchy is clever and allows distinct levels with their own themes to be presented. Because of this even relatively minor characters feel fully realised and often offer interesting commentary on Alternia as a planet, in particular I adored the Jadeblood cloister - where mum friend Bronya desperately tries to keep a group of people who absolutely hate eachother together. But it's obvious that the strongest members of the game's cast are it's main duo, radical lawyer Tyzias, punk Elwurd and eccletic clown rapper Marvus, and the game does well to centralise them. The development of the main duo in particular feels realistic and grounded, offering some pathos and grounding to a story that might otherwise feel a bit too silly.

As well while it's hard to particularly get into comedy in a review without just quoting jokes, the writing for the game is witty, clever and has a strong sense of both creating comedy from the premise of Alternia as a planet of wayward teens and character dynamics.

Art wise while there isn't quite the sense of atmosphere as offered by the Harley manor for much of the game, this is made up for by an incredibly strongly designed cast - including dense collages of background trolls in the lowblood carriages. However I felt there was a noticeable uptick in the background spectacle as the game went on, especially in the final two levels. Additionally Hiveswap for areas where typical adventure game asthetics won't quite convey a scene, will use some incredibly charming animatics and short animations to get itself across. Leading to some of the most comedic and in some cases, tense moments in the game.

Music wise as expected from a WhatPumpkin project it's nothing but bops top to bottom. In particular I loved the trains theme being played with different styles from carriage to carriage, again helping convey instantly a sense of what each caste is like at a glance.

The main area of critique for me is while the game is excellent at conveying character and location, I found it more lacking when trying to convey gameplay. In particular while the tealblood cart presents a fun homage and interesting commentary on Alternian law - I found it mostly fustrating trying to navigate the puzzles here and decided to just use a walkthrough to better enjoy the scene. It's a shame as I do genuinely admire the efforts to push the gameplay depth from Act 1's very sparse offerings but I feel this is perhaps a less strong area for the team - having previously delivered games that are more interactive narratives. The bee dance section was a fun distraction though, and minigames similar to that feel like a natural fit for the series.

In conclusion despite the anticipation Hiveswap Act 2 delivered the goods, offering the sharp, insightful and clever writing I've come to expect from the WhatPumpkin team, and I am eagerly awaiting the next chapter of Joey and Xefros' journey.

Freeways is one of those games you buy on a total whim, because it's cheap as chips and seems interesting. And in which case you'd discover a lovely little gem of a game! Freeways is a traffic management game where you build roads to connect up several input and output nodes, as part of a larger traffic system being simulated.

To get possibly my only gripe out of the way, roads are drawn by simply clicking down with the mouse and tracing out the shape you like, with the option to right click to begin building an elevated road up. While this is very intuitive and easy to use I feel there's a slight lack of precision to it which does start to factor in on later levels - especially because the roads are drawn quite thick compared to the size of the play area. Additionally I would have appreciated an "undo" feature that allowed me to slowly remove sections of road I'd just drawn rather than having to use the slightly cumbersome existing tools.

Anyone whose a fan of games like Cities Skylines I think will already find a lot of joy in this as it definitely plays in the vein of some of the more complex traffic principles used in that game. On some of the games trickier scenarios I ended up looking up real world junctions and roundabouts for reference and found them to be incredibly effective.

Presentation wise the devs chose to work around what was likely a fairly limited set of resources and style the game like an Atari 2600 or early PC game, both in audio and visuals but without compromising clarity and ease of use for the sake of that asthetic. It's charming and the beeps and boops of all the simulated vehicles during test mode especially are one of the most charming parts of the game.

Additionally there's also the excellent choice to have all traffic spawn in from specific nodes on the wider world map, rather than generate out of nowhere and to then have it simulate the entire thing at once - a map the player has made entirely through their own design! This is immensely satisfying, as is the efficiency scoring system allowing you to go back and tweak your existing designs to try and better them.

Overall freeways is an excellent little game and well worth picking up - especially when it's price point even before sales is a total steal.

Really high quality Smash-Like fighting game with not only mainstay mechanics such as wave dashing but it even introduces new mechanics like a dedicated midair reversal button. Full of charm, incredibly fun and it's a godamn steal at the price it's at.