Recent reviews by kal'tsit gaming

This game is adorable and it's single-handedly carrying my mental health. There's no pressure and it allows you to relax, idle and appreciate it for what it is. Although what you can do is limited, with some creativity and workarounds you can make quite an extensive and featured park. My constructive feedback is that it would be nice to see more building objects added over time, rather than only seasonally and on-rotation. With that said, I think that this game is well-worth the asking price. Don't forget to pet your bunnies!

What you can expect to come in Glacier 3 is best forewarned when you boot the game. When you are greeted by a shrill, obnoxious siren that caps off the title music, you have to wonder if the rest of the game and all that it entails will be so unpleasant. The answer, sadly, is an unequivocal "yes".

Glacier 3 is a series of races undertaken around - you guessed it - glaciers. It has a "story mode", although there is no story. It is merely a sequence of races. Each race contains you and three other AI controlled drivers, as there is no multiplayer. On the map you may find powerups, two that charge your turbo and three that provide ammo for your weapons, with which you may take other competitors out of the race.

In the one hour I spent in this game, I completed all six campaigns or four tracks each. Really, it is my opinion that there were only three campaigns and twelve maps, as each map and campaign has a counterpart reversal, with nothing more than the direction of the track changed and the start and endpoints swapped.

The map design isn't entirely bad. There is some variety, and the environments are as varied as you could ask for in a game called "glacier". There are ice sheets, cliffs, mountains and caves. However, while some heart was clearly put into their design, the game also feels very rushed and incomplete. This may be most obvious in your first race, when you drive into a massive jump and realize that you can change direction in mid-air, the worst sin committable in a "realistic" driving game. Perhaps you can forgive it as you race along the minute-long track, but you suddenly find yourself crashing into a wall of rocks placed at the middle of an overhang. You think you've crashed - and you technically have - but it's okay, as that rock wall is also the end-point of the race. There is no finish line, there is no obvious landmark, just a pile of rocks in which you and your three competitors burn until the game decides that it is time to show the results of the race.

The physics are wonky all around, even beyond the ability to change direction mid-air. You will find yourself moving in a direction other than that in which your wheels are pointing. You will hit objects or other cars, only to be vaulted back 30 feet, do a ragdoll flip or clip through a barrier. You will fire your weapons on flat ground, only for them to literally blow up in your face. While you hopelessly bounce along the track, you may despair, as you can only unlock new content by winning a campaign. However, the AI is just as helpless as you are, and with a few turbo powerups you will find yourself abusing the game mechanics, deliberately turboing off a cliff about a sharp turn, resetting, and turboing again in your newfound direction.

Bad music, barebones graphics, lack of customizability and content, lack of multiplayer support and so on are all forgivable. However, everything about this game is mediocre, and I do really mean everything, including aspects that you wouldn't even think about in most other racing games because Glacier 3 does wrong what most games do not. That this game was published on the Wii is astonishing, although that perhaps explains what is possibly the least comprehensive menu - consisting of two audio sliders - ever accomplished in a video game. To summarize, the game plays poorly, does not look nearly as good as the store page's screenshots suggest and is outdone even by racing games produced in the 90s.

Anarchy Arcade has been a very cool project to watch develop. AA strives to be a virtual desktop, with images, music, videos, shortcuts and objects accessible through 3D space. Being built in the source engine, this concept has its limits. It can be clunky, inefficient and burdensome on a computer. While you can navigate the desktop the same way you would navigate any 3D game, AA is best described as an experiment in personal virtual reality, which is still in its infancy but which is growing rapidly. Depending on your opinion on virtual reality, AA is either a gimmick that will never take off the ground or a glimpse into what virtual reality will bring in the coming decades.

Since only enthusiasts currently possess virtual reality hardware, this may limit the appeal of AA for most Steam users but it more commonly serves a secondary function: providing a backbone for users to create that awesome arcade, game and media room of their dreams. With pre-configured shortcuts being released on the Steam Workshop daily and with constant updates from the very involved and engaging developer, Anarchy Arcade will fully satisfy anybody seeking this latter experience and, who knows? Perhaps in a decade virtual reality will have fully permeated the gaming world and beyond, and AA will be less of an arcade-builder and more of what it is intended to be.

Game Tycoon 1.5 is a rerelease of Game Tycoon, a game-building simulator published and widely-criticized in 2006. While Sunlight Games certainly had the opportunity to capitalize on the growth of interest in the genre in more recent years and fix the game, playing Game Tycoon 1.5 is a frustrating experience and one has to wonder why Sunlight Games did not simply start from scratch.

The visual aspects of the game fluctuate between "passable for a low-budget PC game developed a decade ago" and downright laughable. In some parts of the game, text is pre-rendered as graphics. In other parts of the game, text consists of blue Times New Roman on a white screen. Think hyperlinks on the most basic webpages out of the early 2000s. The music is similar; some is passable, but some borders on the absurd. One track of the game is a six-second loop, but it doesn't loop properly. There is a delay between each loop, breaking any possible sense of immersion. It's like a bad Vine.

The functionality is, of course, entirely broken. A tooltip will demand that you name your engine even after a name is provided. Buttons and boxes will not work, and progressing in the game requires a lot of rebooting, backing out of menu and, perhaps for some, copious amounts of praying. Easily, however, the worst aspect of this game is its ridiculous mechanics. There are many different actions that the player may take to fund or advertise their game, develop it, recruit staff and so on, more, than one might even expect from a low-budget game. Unfortunately, most time spent in this game will consist of your character walking between the advertising agencies, the university, the bank and so on because yes, that is how this game is played. You do not navigate menus, you walk slowly in a psuedo-3D world in order to get to where you need to go. It is tedious and, miraculously, it manages to be worse than any escort mission because it serves zero purpose.

I know of four games in the game-building genre and this, as a game that isn't even in early access, is by far the worst. Your other options include Game Dev Tycoon and Mad Games Tycoon on the PC and Game Dev Story (personal favorite) on mobile devices. All of these games look, sound and play better than Game Tycoon 1.5, and you would be far better off to save yourself from the circle of hell that is Game Tycoon 1.5. Even if you get it in a bundle, don’t bother. It lacks any redeeming quality and ought to have been forgotten a decade ago.

A permutation is a combination of objects in a specific order. This concept helps describe the overall objective of the game, to guide colored blocks down a transport puzzle to reach pre-determined destinations in specific order. A better name for the game, perhaps, could have been "Great Iterator", not because the grueling puzzles in this game often require trial&error problem-solving, but because they frequently must be constructed such that blocks loop through the puzzle several times, interacting with puzzle pieces multiple times until the puzzle’s conditions are met.

The puzzles can be solved with two different types of pieces. These are the conveyor, which move a block to the adjacent square in the direction in which it is drawn, and devices, modifier pieces that may change the block’s color, that have variable points of output, that collect blocks and releases them simultaneously when enough are inserted and so on. The puzzles require patience and lateral thinking. They are very difficult, particularly if you try to solve the puzzles in the fewest number of moves possible. With 50+15 boards and a built-in editor, Great Permutator has more than enough content to satisfy those who appreciate genuine challenge.

A lot of Steam users are flooding Skyrim, which is genuinely an incredible - albeit imperfect - game with negative reviews because they understand a new policy allowing mod creators to charge for their content. My doctor told me that my diet was insufficient in salt. Premium mods cannot possibly detriment the hours of enjoyment, on both the PC and the PS3 edition, that I have recieved from this game. Any bleating otherwise is for petulant children who hate video games. I look forward to Bethesda's next installment of the TES franchise.

Cubot takes great pride in its minimalist presentation. A cynic may suspect that this “minimalism” is a carelessly-crafted excuse for a lazy or empty game. Such skepticism could not be more misplaced.

Cubot is puzzle-solving game comparable to sliding puzzles, or perhaps to Rush Hour. Cubot adds to these games what could only be feasible in a three- dimensional game: three dimensions. The objective of the game is to land each block—puzzles quickly include more than one block, onto its respective target location. Each action, however, moves all blocks in accordance with the game’s rules as well as with each block’s own distinctive properties. There are, as far as I can tell, ten different kinds of blocks. One moves one space per turn, another moves two. One presents or removes obstacles, another moves in the opposite direction of all other blocks. There are 80 levels and, while this isn’t the most difficult game ever presented, it is satisfying to solve (particularly in the fewest number of turns possible).

On top of these mechanics, the game manages to have a personality despite its minimalist form. The music is calm and the UI is very clean. The developers even threw in some famous quotes, and they’re about—you guessed it—solving puzzles. For the low starting price of $2 and the presumption that it will get even cheaper, this game is certainly worth it if you like puzzles (I’m enjoying this game the same way that I enjoy the Portal games, even without the witty dialogue) or if you’re looking for a game that isn’t too difficult to 100%. I am enjoying this game and I am glad to see it on Steam.

Update: I 100%'d the game. Game is hard.

Stealing Valve's graphical assets and then submitting your game with them inside is a next level strat.

Update: My game got reset. That $0.99 I paid for coins (purely for this review's sake) is now gone and so are the coins and everything I spent them on. I reported this game to Steam for fraud. I suggest you all do the same.

Poor graphics, poor audio assets, consistently poor translation and lag on a computer that is dozens of times powerful enough to run a game with this caliber aren't enough to entirely condemn this game. The gameplay can work (maybe a bit better on a touch screen) and it is moderately satisfying to play, but some very poor decisions destine this game for deletion.

Spartans vs Zombies Defense is comparable to Battle Cats. You buy units and upgrades to defend your castle gate from waves of enemies and push forward to destroy their spawn. You can use items and cast abilities to aid your units or to harm the enemy. There are enough mechanics and upgrades to keep the game playble, perhaps all the way through the 60 waves provided.

The flaw with this game is that it is free to play with in-game transactions. They are not balanced. It begins to become horribly tedious to beat wave 10 without them and I imagine that it would take months of straight, active gameplay to get to wave 60 without them. The enemy/leveling system progresses in a way where they are necessary, and that's just cynical. The game would be much better if it had no microtransactions, had a balanced leveling system, and cost $2.50. It probably would have made a lot more money, too (I feel dirty for spending $0.99 to test the coins for the sake of this review).

While I did say that this game had bad graphics, that can't even begin to describe just how bad they are. The icons for the castables are plagarized from DotA 2. I did not immediately realize that Magic Arrow was a colorized Starstorm (Mirana) icon or that Protection was a hue-shifted Time Walk (Faceless Void) icon, but the second that I unlocked Fiery Souls, I recognized it as the Shadowraze (Shadow Fiend) icon. I'm not sure if Wild Attack was stolen as well, but it is difficult to imagine otherwise. I'm certain that other assets were stolen as well - I doubt that the creators asked Gerard Butler or Warner Brothers for permission to slap his face on Leonidas, or on the game's banner, for that matter. I wish YFC luck on their legal endeavors.

For years I begged my parents to let me get a real cat and, for all those years, they always said no. Now, I don’t need one anymore. I’m sure they’ll be happy that I discovered Nekopara, right? d(=^･^ =)

The Modern Day Tiles Resource Pack is well worth the price given the rights attached to purchasing the set. It comes with sheets for A2 (although nearly empty), A3, A4, A5, B, C, and D. There are two sheets for doors, various styles of dumpsters because why not, numerous traffic signals, and a Steam exclusive background if you're into that kind of thing.

What is not as nice about the pack is that it's fairly limited in what you can build with it, but that's okay. I strongly recommend editing the stylesheet with your other tiles. The Futuristic Tiles Resouce Pack and the DS+ Resource Pack contain many assets that are invaluable for creating a richer environment than what you can accomplish with just the pack. Due to the lack of A1 and E sheets and because the D, A2, and A3 sheets are not completely filled out (A2 being nearly empty), you can squeeze far more into your tilesets to create a more complete city. This set isn't necessarily complete on its own, but it's a great resource if you're looking for more contemporary-looking assets.