Recent reviews by pewt

I regret waiting to play Civ VI.

This isn't a review, but I'll list just a few things off the top of my head that I find completely wonderful:

-Builders use build charges
-Tile management is so amazingly satisfying that the next couple items are all about the tiles alone
-Geography informs your City identity profoundly, especially in terms of optimizing District locations
-Districts occupy tiles and are built and owned by Cities; they specialize a City; adjacency bonuses can boost their efficacy
-Encampment Districts! Such a cool idea and what I always wanted from Forts! (Also Forts are there)
-Support units enhance combat (e.g. vision, range), including the ability to Link together Military + Civilian units

tldr; don't expect Riven, but it's not bad

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"Recommend" wins out, but this feels like a primer puzzle game, at least to me.

The puzzles were fine, but this game, unlike Myst and especially unlike Riven, made me feel like my hand was being held. Quern would have greatly benefitted from insisting that the player experiment in order to solve some of the puzzles, especially in the alchemy section, it literally made the game formulaic and not at all organic.

I'll also echo a couple points other people made in some reviews, and pepper in my own, in no particular order:

+ Several puzzles were genuinely clever and creative
+ The game kept revealing more puzzles every time I thought I neared the end, it was a pleasant surprise each time
+ Unlike Myst, there were not many major back-tracks that would take hours to conceive

- a number of puzzles were so simple that I over-solved them by anticipating a more devious solution
- the puzzles didn't reveal anything about the universe, they just felt like impedements to progression (to which an in-game character basically confesses, at one point)

- Too many puzzles were solved using components/ciphers provided for you in the same room. I'd pick up an item and use it immediately to solve a puzzle in the same room more times than I care to recall.

- The story is not bad, but there is definitely missed potential. Myst's universe is silly, let's face it, but it's also compelling and ambitious. Quern's universe is far more serious, but feels hollow and insincere. That said, I think the ambiguous ending was a master stroke -- there's no "good" or "bad" ending. Surely there is from the perspective of the Seeker (I can't be bothered to remember her name ...) and from the professor, but you as the stranger know only what you're told; in that way, the ending was ironically satisfying. Personally, I thought that the (presumably) "good" decision to isolate Quern from the Worldchain was wholly unconvincing. #teamProfessor

A charming and merciless 2D starship management game, FTL is a roguelike. This style of game is defined by random encounters, random levels, and permanent death -- but don't let permadeath scare you away: not only do the phenomenal "chip tunes" keep up your spirits, but looming threat of losing your hard-earned crew and ship makes every battle srs bsns and every victory a truly fist-pumping event.