Recent reviews by sprsclr

Graphics are pretty stellar even on a machine with specs below the minimum requirements without any performance penalty (i.e. the game still runs smoothly without lag)

Music is consistently good as was in the past

The difficulty settings have been split up into Fight Difficulty, Puzzle Difficulty, Resurrection Difficulty. This means that you can tweak each difficulty setting independently. For example, you can have Puzzle Difficulty on Hard while Fight Difficulty on Easy. However, take note that although you can change difficulty at any time - progress that you make is tied to that specific difficulty setting. In practice this means that the game discourages you from switching difficulties to get past a specific battle / puzzle in a level because you'd have to replay the level again from the beginning up to the point at which you changed difficulty.

The story this time features a lot of callbacks to characters / events that have appeared in previous games. While you can still understand the story without having played the previous games, it would be quite a bit less enjoyable given how these previous characters / events are heavily featured throughout the story.

Gameplay wise there are a few nice abilities added - Zoya's fox rope, Pontius' clone which make the game feel fresh again. It's a pity that even on hard mode the puzzles don't have enough space / length to truly push the limits of the new abilities.

Enemies feel less like damage sponges and boss fights feel a bit more varied compared to Trine 4. There is still a limited variety of enemy types which is similar to Trine 4. The balance between difficulty and reward is still off to me. Higher fight difficulty just feels like you face more enemies with increased hit points. It doesn't feel like there's much of payoff for playing a harder difficulty. Instead it leaves you feeling like you're getting penalized since it takes a longer time to get through. It would be nice to have some hard mode achievements like in the past in Trine 1 / 2.

In my own experience Trine 5 has been the most frustrating of the series so far. Part of it is because the entire game is built around understanding the visual cues. When you don't get it or when you did something which you think should have solved the puzzle / boss but didn't it leaves you wondering what went wrong. Somehow I ran into more of these issues in Trine 5 than any of it's predecessors. Another part of it is for the issues that have persisted throughout the Trine series of games, namely the overall physics fails - items / characters going through rope / rails, the rope tying / untying working unexpectedly, arrows clipping through summoned objects instead of the displayed path, etc.

Conclusion
The series feels stale in the sense that the core formula remains untouched throughout the years - co-op puzzle platforming adventure with lots of possible way to solve each fight / puzzle or fail spectacularly. While it's hard to fault Frozenbyte for not perfecting notoriously difficult tasks like balancing the game difficulty, giving players sufficient visual / audio feedback to solve puzzles / bosses, fixing the janky physics, it's also hard not to fault them when you see the exact same issues in the 5th game of the series. When the game is as good as it is most of the time, the weaknesses in the game stand out more. Such is the case with Trine 5.

In Conclusion,
If you're coming into the game fresh, this is as good of a starting point as it gets.
If you've played the Trine 1 - 4, I would almost say that you can go without playing Trine 5 because there isn't enough new to recommend it. It is a worthy addition to the Trine series but unfortunately it doesn't raise the series to new heights.

I think this game is a gem that is somewhat reminiscent of The Secret of Tremendous Corporation in terms of the art style (black and white hand-drawn) and humour (quirky?). It's a short platforming game with minor puzzle elements which is not difficult although some sections might have a difficulty spike. The kind of game which you play mostly to see where the story goes. The setting is surprisingly well fleshed out - the background scenery, enemy / environmental hazard designs, the writing of the story it just comes together well. Having said that, I can see how this flavor of humour / setting might not appeal to everyone. Considering it's a free game, recommend to give it a try if you're into puzzle platformers.

Final Dusk at it's core is a casual puzzle game with action elements. You play as Mina the Vampire Princess and the goal of each level is to guide Mina to the Exit Door while avoiding obstacles and / or enemies. Each level also has 3 pieces of garlic to collect mostly for the extra challenge but it also gates your access to the next chapter. A level is separated into 2 phases - 1. A Planning Phase where you manipulate the environment to create a route for Mina to get to the Exit Door (mostly by blocking out light sources and deciding on the order of tasks - i.e. do you go up the stairs first or clear the area below first?) 2. An Action Phase where you need to execute the route you had planned out. The action part comes in the form of timing when to use skills / consumables you have. Mostly this means managing the cooldowns of the skills as well as deciding if and when to use your consumables. All told the game has 4 chapters of 20 levels with the final level of each chapter being a boss level for a total of 80 levels.

At first glance, the idea of having a planning phase and action phase is an interesting one. In practice, what happens is that you 1. Find out during the Action Phase that you missed tweaking something during the Planning Phase or 2. Time one of your skills incorrectly. In case #1 you can't just return to the Planning Phase and just tweak the element that you missed (or I did not find a way to do so in my entire playthrough) so you need to restart the entire level and re-do the same item placements / tweaks. In case #2, you have Checkpoints which save the state of the game which you did during the Planning Phase and allows you to replay the Action Phase. The problem is that you for the larger, longer levels when you make a mistake close to the end of the level you have to re-play the entire Action Phase for the level. As you can imagine this gets annoying very quickly. While there's an option to fast forward it's not meaningful because a) the speed up is barely noticeable b) because you need to activate your skills you probably end up not speeding up anyway lest you screw up the timing again... A better solution would have been to have a rewind option but sadly there is none.

Separately there are 2 issues which lead to said mis-timings of skills during the Action Phase. 1. The camera follows the character around which makes clicking upcoming obstacles / enemies to trigger skills very iffy due to . 2. For me, I didn't realize until later that when you block light sources with objects, you can only trigger the bats to block the light source if you click on the visible area of the light source. This led to multiple times where I'd be left wondering why the skill didn't trigger.

There's also the issue of field of view. You can't zoom out to have a full view of the entire level. You can only scroll around the level and piece together the full view in your mind. Fortunately, the levels are not that huge and are fairly linear so usually you break the level into sections and once you've solved a section you move on and look at the next section.

All told, if I came into the game knowing all those issues I mentioned maybe my experience wouldn't have been so bad as I would have set my expectations correspondingly. Final Dusk isn't a bad game per se because the puzzles themselves are fine as casual fun and the visual novel bits of story at the beginning and end of each chapter is both enjoyable and funny. It's just that the overall gaming experience is hampered by the issues I mentioned. So I wouldn't recommend this game if you're expecting a casual puzzle game with a fuss-free experience. Just go in knowing there are issues with the game and you'll be fine.

A free, fun, short puzzle game with a low-key catchy soundtrack and some really good looking game sprites. I'm probably pushing it but it's a nice combination of 'visual novel' / 'story' elements with a puzzle. Give it a shot and you might end the game wanting a "Heaventaker" sequel.

As many others have said, this is a refreshing twist on Hotline Miami. It's also top-down, but you get the ability to teleport and a bullet time ultimate based on a gauge that builds up as you land more punches. Personally, it plays like a cross between Hotline Miami and One Finger Death Punch in that every mistake is quickly punished but every success is equally rewarding. The game only has 18 levels so it's a short game but if you're aiming to 100% it, you're probably going to spend more time playing through levels flawlessly for quick clear times.

Playing through on a keyboard and mouse, there were a few times where it seemed that keypresses / mouse clicks didn't register but it happened seldom enough to not be a problem. More annoying were the janky proximity mines which would go off for no apparent reason at times, spoiling a flawless run. I also did encounter a number of full on game crashes (roughly 10 or so). Finally, I really wish there was a way to skip / fast forward the story text as it makes repeating levels tedious (though on a tactical level, those pauses help since you recover your shift). Having said that, some of the lines by Nyx, your partner were really funny.

All in all, there's no real way of describing how satisfying it is to play this game. It's slick, quick, and rewards precise play rather than mashing buttons.

If you've played the original Trine / Trine 2 this will be very much in the same vein except with prettier graphics. I feel like Trine 4 was a bit more focused on the puzzles than the platforming / challenging achievements. The puzzles themselves are just right in my opinion - not too easy but nothing that will stump you completely, because what you need to do is always obvious, it's just a matter of solving the "how". In terms of challenge, there are only Easy and Normal modes; Meaning to say no Hardcore mode / Ironman achievements (or even solo-only e.g. Amadeus only / Zoya only / Pontius only). EDIT: Hard mode was added in a patch in Nov 2020. I agree with other reviews saying that the battles are pointless. The reason is somewhat related to the lack of achievements related to enemies and also the fact that no enemies drop experience. The map / level selection menu now shows how many experience points there are at that section / checkpoint of each level. You can even jump directly back to the checkpoint where you've missed experience points instead of having to play through the early sections of the level. One minor observation from myself - some of the experience is tagged in a misleading way. I missed some experience at The Nightmare Academy and the system shows 5 missing experience at Checkpoint 13 when in fact the missing experience can be found at Checkpoint 12.

All in all, Trine 4 was enjoyable though I think that Trine 2 is still the better game from a gameplay and value-for-money standpoint.

If you're into other rhythm platformers this will be an easy to recommend game considering how it's free. Having said that it's currently only 3 levels (not counting the tutorial) but it seems that there may be new content coming out later on. A free game where the music is good and the platforming with some achievements to ace - what more could one ask for?

Surprisingly engaging simplistic fun where your goal is to fly the furthest using the combination of contraptions available to you. Each launch grants you money based on your flight distance which you use to further upgrade your equipment. As you experiment with different combinations you will realize that certain equipment will only take you so far but combining them with something else might completely change the equation.

[Kickstarter backer]
As a visual novel on the topic of Starcraft, it is really well-written and definitely induces a nostalgia filled trip back into those forgotten times. The Starcraft mini-games were at least engaging but it could probably be improved a bit more. Of all the things in this game, the 'Star Sense' dialog system was probably one of the more annoying mechanics. Simply put, I really wished it would need less mouse clicks to go through everything. Ultimately as many have said, if you played SC2VN you'll probably like this too. Regardless, it's still a well written story though perhaps slightly lacking in detail for the side characters.

This game reminds me of Super Hexagon and 64.0 except unlike those 2 games the waves / patterns you need to clear stay varied enough that you never get bored of playing it. The music in this is exceptional (electronic). It's a pity there aren't any leaderboards because I'm sure it would be competitive like in Super Hexagon.

It's free! Donationware available if you so desire. Seriously this slick game deserves more attention.