Recent reviews by Zaemz

Game rips! These magnificent devs have been updating the game constantly after release and even decided to *completely rebuild their game engine* to in order to implement multiplayer/online co-op. Absolute champions. They're soon adding randomized loot and more powerful weapons as well.

The multiplayer isn't done yet, however it's in testing and they're being very communicative and extremely thorough in testing, making sure it's a great experience for everyone when it finally releases. I hope the game has something of a "second release" when multiplayer hits.

Fantastic game and a great developer. 100% recommend.

Pretty fun game!

There is a decent variety of buffs and skills that you can obtain that make each of the runs nice and unique. I feel that runs are a little slow when you're starting a new character, but once you get some momentum going and a few levels in, the action picks up nicely.

There are different zones that scale up in difficulty, and each on ramps pretty hard. You can move on as soon as you'd like since the map is exploration based. The map is saved between runs and is static. (Though I can't remember if there was a setting to change that.) There dungeons and totems spread throughout where upon clearing and activating provide permanent buffs for each character from then on.

It's got neat ideas! It's worth it as it is, I think, for sure. This is one of those games that I could see getting really cool and having a fun community if the dev keeps at it and expands on it.

Yeaaaah... I guessssss...

To be sheepishly honest, I would have known less (even if some things might be stretched to the point of fantasy) about world history if it weren't for Europa Universalis. Many playthroughs spurred me into doing research about different cultures at different periods within the last millennium, and ultimately that's a good thing. It's expanded my perspective of humanity, as superficial as that might sound.

The mechanics and concepts in the game are *really* cool. The atmosphere is great. As far as I can tell in the demo, the art direction and sound design are on point! Even piloting the whole mech by myself, I had a great time steering, shooting, and attempting to fight off boarding parties.

There are performance issues in the demo as others have already pointed out. I can't think of an excusable reason why the game would run ~40-50fps at 720p with all settings turned completely down or off on a machine with an R9 5900X/DDR4 32GB@3800/RX 7700 XT installed on a Samsung 980 Pro.

The demo lacks matchmaking but you can party up with friends. I don't know how popular it would be, but I personally hope for the ability to party up/matchmake with the public.

The demo also lacks the ability to remap or display keybinds for anything. I'm very certain that's planned for the game's release, early access or otherwise, but just figured I'd note it for anyone that finds that important.

The controls for driving the mech are intuitive and fun! A system of levers lets you set different speeds for turning, strafing, and forward/backward speed all at the same time. When you let go of the piloting station, the walker continues to move since the controls are locked into place. This lets you switch between steering and firing cannons.

Interacting with objects in the game is servicable. You can pick up boxes and fill them with loot as you're searching using the same action you'd use without the box in your hands. This is nice because I was expecting to have to loot then dump into a box repeatedly until the box was full and then deliver it. The box can be carried and filled on the fly, then you can drop it off when full.

I haven't been able to get resources in order to use the blueprint system but it looks pretty robust. I'll prolly play the demo a bit more and edit my review when I get a chance

Stationeers is already one of my favorite games. I imagine by the time the devs met their vision, this bad mamma-jamma will blow my friggin mind.

All we have is time.

In the first hour or so of playing, I wasn't sure if I was going to like it. There's no stress, nothing to really overcome at first. I was chatting a few of the characters up, kinda mindlessly exploring the game. I thought it was cute, but maybe not enough to really hold my attention. Working on tasks uses up time in the day, or your "stamina", but socializing/traveling does not. The only limitation is really how much stamina your character has, which doubles as a representation of the time in a day.

When I was growing up, my dad used to tell me, "All we have is time. Don't rush." I used to think he was just telling me that I didn't need to speed while driving or something, or to look where I was walking. Littlewood subtly made me realize what he actually meant.

I noticed that I started to min-max my stamina usage for the day. Each new character brought into my Littlewood created additional things for me to prioritize for every day. Since socializing and moving around doesn't use up "stamina", I would always make sure to talk to everyone at least once per day. When I got into Summer in-game, it hit me.

I realized that I always had time for a chat.

My motivation at the start was to "build" as much as I could simply for the sake of playing the game. As I played, it developed into a desire not to "produce" as much as I could, but to get to know each new person more. I went from thinking "I'm going to spend the whole day chopping wood," to, say, running into Bubsy, hearing the intensely-eyebrowed bird-person say something funny, and then wondering what he'd want in his house, then having him tag along while I built things for his house, just so I could hear what else he's got to say.

You can only do so much in a day. We get tired, eventually we have to rest. But in-between all our hustle, there's always time to listen to what someone else has to say.

The game helped me understand what my Pops was really trying to say. All *we* have is time. Its what we all share. It's not an original thought, right? "Take time to stop and smell the roses," and such. I've heard it said, but Littlewood just kinda nudged me into really getting it, and I honestly appreciated that.

The game is neat. :) It's a chill time, the writing is fun, and I really started to care about my town. I recommend it!

This game has a great vibe and "well-shaped" bones. It's early access and was intended to be a combo of player feedback for bug-hunting/features, and I really liked the direction it was going.

Here's hoping that League of Geeks can eventually recover and restart development of this!

YAAAAAS! Absolutely adore this game! I only meant to write a few things about how rad it really is, but once I got typing it just kinda ran away from me, haha!

The art is wonderful, whimsical, and very consistent. First time I saw some screenshots of it, I thought, "hey that looks a little like Porco Rosso" - and then I saw a video and heard the soundtrack and knew it was going to be special. The moment I got access, I wound it up and took 'er for a spin! Lifetap definitely came out swinging with this being their first title, awesome first impression. You can tell it was crafted with care. and they're super active and responsive on their community Discord server.

The OST is fantastic as well. I enjoy it so much that I honestly can't tell you I've ever noticed songs repeating or anything like that because everything blends together so well. The sound mixing is done very well, too, and they even have a slider for reducing the planes' engines' running sounds during flight. I personally leave it up because airplanes go "vroom".

The brewing mechanics are fun, and I like how they went about designing and animating the process. You can find and follow recipes or you can mix whatever you've got on hand in different ways to discover new brews yourself. You can record and track what you've made, its ABV%, bottle style, etc. in a log. If you have the ingredients on hand, there's a convenient button for recreating the batch without having to do it manually.

The flight mechanics were surprising to me as well. You'd think it'd be purely arcade-like just based on watching some gameplay, but it's actually got an impressive amount of thought put into the physics. The planes have *weight*, and it changes based on your cargo/other contents. Engines/planes and the pilots are affected by altitudes in varying ways. That's not to say there isn't some fun liberties taken with flying though! It's tuned to be pretty accessible. There are upgrades/changes you can make to planes to change how they handle, among other benefits/drawbacks.

You start with a fun booster that you can use to make yourself go stupid-fast. One of my favorite things is to use it while on the water and see how fast/far I can go before I inevitably do some very impressive, uh, "aeronautical" maneuvers which hurt the wallet and give my mechanic some experience.

Collecting ingredients is a good time as well. I haven't completed the game yet, so I'm not sure if there are surprises coming, but I've experienced 3 ways of going about finding things to turn into the sauce: shooting, bombing, and catching. You shoot some plants like apple trees to free the ingredient and then pick them up, bomb others - like a potato farm - to collect buried stuff, or you'll find various ingredients floating through the wind in different patterns and you have to catch up/fly through them. You'll also find other loot scattered about like new recipes and treasures waiting to be freed from derelict boats floatin' about. Speaking of treasure, there's also a "diving" mechanic where you use your anchor to fish for treasures at the bottom of the sea from sunken wrecks. There are different obstacles to avoid while hauling up your loot, and figuring out your timing and movement is like a puzzle. I think the treasure hunting is a nice way to break up "grinding" for ingredients.

There are AIR PIRATES. They're huge jerks and I love them. I'm not the best at flying, so they can be a challenge for me at times (especially because I'm always unprepared lol) but, just for me, they're a fair challenge and I really enjoy finding them and freeing islands from their filthy blimps.

There's a bit more than I mentioned as well. You run a bar alongside the brewery, make deliveries, meet people, and more. I think the story is pretty good, and I really enjoy the setting.

I've recommended the game every opportunity I've got. It's one of my favorites from the last decade of gaming - no joke. I'm a little biased because I'm a big fan of Studio Ghibli and their works, and Porco Rosso is my favorite work of theirs, but there's more here than just that, and I hope many others enjoy the game as much as I did!

I keep repeatedly getting kicked from matches because of anti-cheat something-or-other violations.

I'm too stupid to use cheats. I don't know what I'm doing to make this game think I'm cheating other than using Discord. I can't recommend it if I can't play it because of the friggin anti-cheat.

I. Love. This. Game.

There is so much soul and love coming out of it. It's definitely dialogue heavy and the action gameplay is rather simple and slower, so if you're looking for something that's faster and more exciting, then Eastward might bore you. However, if you can enjoy a story for its own sake, then you'll love Eastward! (and its recent DLC, Octopia!)

The music and art are wonderful and have so much care and character woven into them. I wholly recommend it!