Recent reviews by Reiyu

I lost my entire 20 hour save and found out I'm not the only person to have lost their entire save from just having the "wrong" configuration of items in their backpack. That really sucks. I can't recommend a game where you might just lose all your progress from a glitch that is way out of your control.

A stand up act on how to bring a board game to a digital platform. "Quilts and Cats of Calico" is right up there with "Wingspan" as board games that have been brought to PC by developers that clearly enjoyed the boardgame and worked hard to to create a fun, streamlined experience.

The gameplay is straight from the board game--a 1-4 players puzzle game where you draw from the same bag of quilt tiles. Quilt tiles each have a color and pattern. The player with the highest score win.

You score points by:
- Arranging 3 quilt tiles in a row of a color. The edges of the board count. If you manage to get 3 tiles in a row of all 6 colors, you achieve a rainbow for a huge score boost.
- "Attracting" cats to your quilt by arranging the tiles in a way they like, such as connecting a pattern for five tiles in a row. Three cats and their preferred patterns are set aside at the beginning of the game in the top left corner.
- Fulfilling pattern-based goals that you choose at the beginning of the game. You get more points if you fulfill the goal with both color and pattern.

The digital version is amazing and brings features you just can't have with a physical board game:
- They added lil 3D cats that will run around your board and lay around and fall asleep all over your quilt?! You can even pet them!!! They're the perfect companions while waiting for other players to finish their turn.
- Just like Wingspan, you can play one game over a long period of time and Steam will alert you when it's your turn.
- A matchmaking system that will match you with other players that are active and playing
- On top of all that, they added a single player campaign?! I do want to say that a lot of the single player gameplay feel more like interesting pattern puzzles than the standard experience of Quilts and Cats of Calico, though. I enjoy them, but it might not be what you're expecting.

It's just a great "port" of Quilts and Cats of Calico! If you like the boardgame, the digital version is very much worth picking up. This is one of the favorite board games and I hope you'll check it out if you enjoy cats or patterns or strategy. It has a bit of strategic depth like "Splendor" does in the sense that the player all draw from the same pool of tiles, so you can try to steal a tile before someone else's turn. Or if you don't want to get that competitive, no matter what score you get, you win by the end of the game because you made a pretty quilt that you get to admire. C:

THE NUMBERS, MASON... THEY GO UP!!!

I thought it was a crime for me not to review the game at this point.
ConcernedApe is a champion developer and and Stardew Valley is an absolute gem.

My number one advice is to not be a sweaty minmaxer trying to get everything done everyday. There are very few things you can miss out forever on and very few ways you can mess up for real. If you miss something, you can always wait for the next year.

My number two advice is to get a movement speed mod. :^)

Despite being very excited for the game, I ended up requesting a refund. I was just expecting a lot more for a game that is $25 at full price and I was foolish to think that this game would instantly be good for an official League of Legends game created by the people behind Graveyard Keeper.

The pixel art is beautiful. The story and worldbuilding has a lot of charm to it.
However, Bandle Tale is an empty game that lacks player freedom.

My biggest criticisms that lead to me refunding:
- The grind is too much, not fun, and a straight path that you can't meander from. There is no player freedom when it comes to finishing quests. When you hobble around Bandle Tale to accomplish your fetch quest, there is nothing to do except to walk painfully slow from one side of the island to the other to try and find the materials you need. The biggest problem is that it's all a straight shot. There is no secret paths to wander off to and explore, all NPCs you encounter only have a SINGLE line of dialogue, and the beautifully drawn world is just so empty.
- It is counter intuitive to have a game that is relaxing 99% of the time but also has the most stressful cooking minigame with the tightest timer in the world.
- Lack of player freedom. I think a simulation game can be boring and can be slow-paced so long as there is player freedom. A slow game can be excellent if you just let your player meander and take their time building or customizing. Beyond the initial character customization, there is nothing to customize or really do in Bandle Tale. You can choose where to put down stuff in your home/shops but not only are there predetermined spots to put things down, but everything you put down has a function. There are "correct" places to put them down to maximize efficiency. It's not really customization from a base/house building point of view.
- Resources having respawn time was just not a fun choice in a game where there is nothing to do but the main quest. There is nothing for players to do during respawn time except to wait. Players don't have side quests or secrets to go find during this time.

Overall, this might be the game for you if you LOVE Yordles and you don't mind a game that is slow and lacks freedom.
No matter who you are, I would definitely wait for a sale.

Her Story is a mystery game that respects your ability as an investigator. It's quite short but it feels great to solve the mystery and piece together the evidence by hunting down keywords and connections.

I played this game back in 2015 and I still think about the clever design today. I felt that I really needed to leave a review, even though I am several years late, haha. The only other mystery games I can think of that scratched that same investigation itch since I played Her Story are Outer Wilds, Lacuna, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Disco Elysium. Those games are all very different mechanically from Her Story, but all these games leave an interesting mystery in your capable hands to solve however you want.

Lacuna was a great point-and-click noir game set in an interesting sci-fi world where you're in the middle of a case that will shake the galaxy... or something like that. Play to find out.

- The unique sleuthing game mechanic here is that they have these little worksheets for you to fill to finish a mission. It's really cute and there was actually two sheets I got stuck on. I had to take awhile looking over all the evidence to make my way through and a mystery game that makes you stop and think is the DREAM!
- The world breathes. The pixel art is downright breathtaking and in combination with the sound design, it just makes the sci-fi world feel complete. The game even cleverly gives you the ability to take cigarette breaks, if you want, so you can really take it all in.
- I firmly believe that Choices Matter games are just on a different level than games where your decisions don't impact the story.

- The story really leans into every single Noir trope out there, just in a sci-fi world with sci-fi buzzwords. This means that none of the characters were that riveting or memorable. If not for the interesting pixel art and environment design along the way, I would have not have enjoyed the game as much.

I enjoyed Lacuna and can't think of anything negative to say beyond it being a bit short.

If you enjoyed the game and poring over texts to find hidden clues, I highly recommend the "Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective" board game collection. If you're a mystery fanatic and dying for a game that really tests your sleuthing prowess, I recommend the game "Her Story."

I have played Cozy Grove for 25 days straight now and it was a great companion while I was recovering in bed from a medication swap. While I enjoyed doing dailies for awhile, I think the grind is no longer fun for me. However, I think there's a lot of people that could love this game and play it for a long time so I do recommend it.

- Do you like bears? Good news. All the villagers in this game are ghost bears!
- The game is often compared to Animal Crossing because it's plays in real time and you're meant to play the game a little bit everyday. It's really not the same, though. You get an hour of hidden object and material gathering fetch quests to do to get "spirit logs" which you feed to Flamey, your campfire, to grow the island and unlock new bears. Don't forget to check the store for spirit logs too!
- There are stunning one-liners and character story reveals. The story is darker than it appears at surface level and I think that's awesome.
- Lots of cute clothes and hairstyles to customize your character with while they hop around the island!
- The art is just splendid!

- What ultimately killed my enjoyment of the game was around the 20 day mark when I got quests that started to take me days to gather the materials for an finish. That's just no fun for me in a game that is already so slow to progress.
- There are birds/cats/imps/deer in this game who give you more material if they like the decor around them. You'll want to start collecting these creatures as you can or you'll hit a wall of a quest. Their materials take a long time to gather and are required for crafting and progression. You can choose where to put these creatures and your furniture, but I really didn't like this matching decor system. Decorating the island is pretty much the only reason to progress in the game. The decor these creatures liked usually fell into one or two categories where all the furniture look the same. Mixing and matching decor however you liked was pretty much the only thing you could do in this game to express yourself and limiting that expression is not fun, in my opinion.

Cozy Grove is perfect for someone who enjoys collecting every item ever, gathering and hoarding material, finding hidden objects, finishing a museum of fish/bugs/collectables, and decorating an island. If you're looking for something cute to play for a little bit every day, Cozy Grove is perfect for you. If you're impatient like me and you can't handle eventually getting quests that can take multiple days or even a week to finish, then I would not recommend Cozy Grove.

I am giving American Arcadia a positive review because I can tell the devs put some much love and heart into the game but I didn't have a great time playin the game.

- Great characters with amazing voice acting!
- The worldbuilding told through beautiful, well-crafted designs. The colors, the UI, the music... it's just sets the vibe so perfectly!
- The story is meta and interesting and has lots of twists and turns to keep you intrigued.
- I really loved quite a few of the puzzles in 3D mode. They were fun and really had fun "infiltration" vibes!

Cutscenes and long bouts of dialogue are unskippable. This just sucks when you die and have to sit through a whole cutscene again. Also, the game crashes a lot on Steam Deck, which makes the unskippable cutscenes worse.

The level designs may be beautiful but they can also be hard to understand where the game wants you to go. There are multiple segments where they suddenly want you to run the direction you come from, but there were zero cues to do so or a line of dialogue that comes too late. There were times that you were supposed to push something to jump on but it was just unclear that the object could be pushed because there was so much clutter on the map.

There was some gameplay was inspiring and integrated into the story, especially in 3D mode, but a lot of the gameplay time was filled with waiting "puzzles" where you are just wasting your time. There's no extra dialogue to keep you entertained during these segments or anything to do except to wait and twiddle your thumbs while the game shuffled you along a boring puzzle anyone can solve at a glance, but you're forced to wait for the solution to appear because the game makes you wait.

Lastly, there is a trippy section of the game that requires backtracking and it sucks. It sucks to run back at Trevor's snail pace while nothing happens except you making the awkward trek backwards. It takes so long and there is nothing to keep your entertained.

Despite how beautiful the world was, there are lots of segments that feel empty and long.

There are long hallways that actually lead nowhere, which could be easily fixed by not creating the hallway at all or rewarding the players with a line of dialogue or a collectable. There are long stretches of time where Trevor is just running right, as he always does, but there's nothing happening for minutes at a time. There's the horrible, confusing backtracking section where absolutely nothing happens except you walk back the way you came, wondering why the game forced you to sit through a long cutscene of the camera panning the path backwards but didn't care about your time enough to just teleport you.

There's also a spoiler-y scene that I think is supposed to be of emotional importance where Trevor plays piano, showing his love for music. This section is shuffled in there awkwardly and lasts two minutes while you just sit there and stare. The moment would have meant so much more if Trevor had ever talked about his love for music before or if you had just shown him playing piano at the beginning of the game or made that segment into a game/puzzle or even if there were things happening in the background. Where it is in the game currently, it feels just tossed in there and awkwardly long.

I don't regret playing American Arcadia. The game is filled with love and great visual design but the gameplay design is questionable. There is a lot of empty time spent in the game with nothing for you to do except wait. The gameplay design, especially in 2.5D, is simply not fun. The story is interesting, but in my opinion, could have been told in half the time that the game filled with empty puzzles and dead air.

I don't recommend playing the game, but I'd recommend watching someone play the game because you would get the full story.

This one's gonna be a banger, you guys. I checked StormEdge out on stream and was blown away!

StromEdge is a pixel art co-op action roguelike, making it somewhat similar to Wizard of Legend, Children of Morta, and Ember Knights. Compared to them, I think this game has the potential for getting you into a flow state due to its interesting combat design.

The 4-hit combo system is super interesting! The riposte system was really thrilling too! I have never played a twitchy and fast game that rewarded you for dodging in as satisfying of away as StormEdge does!

The best part of the game was the readability! The combat mechanics are built around flow. All the enemy attacks are well telegraphed! Even the traps on the floor are well telegraphed!! I love that the attack/riposte number is indicated by orbs right below the character! Amazing!

Chapter 1 was a bit too easy for my taste. I hope to see more ways to amp up difficulty in the future!
I'm particularly excited to see the co-op will be for this game!!