Recent reviews by [STA] Cheeto

Did you like GEO, or Galactic Mining Corp? You'll probably like this.
The random upgrades pigeon-holed my build strategy to something that would let me win 90% of the time, and didn't really increase the game's replayability.
Plays great on the Steam Deck! I almost missed picking up my partner from the airport because I was busy doing "just one more round" while clearing the game map.

BLUF: Great music, good play control, solid gameplay loop, engaging (and hilarious) story.

Dave the Diver is a love letter to gaming.
And memes. I wish there was an easy way to describe how much care has been put into this game, but I think I'll put a highlight. You can skip the repeated cutscenes. You won't, though.
The biggest negative I had about it was the patch management(2 GB updates?!), but they fixed that ages ago. It can get very repetitive, but that's exactly what this style of game is about--improving and refining your gameplay loop, to see bigger returns.

[edit2]20231110. I just 100%'ed the game and "get it" now. I recommend this game only on 2 conditions-you DO NOT play on "true" difficulty, and you do not try to get all of the achievements. Those are exercises in frustration.
This game is more akin to bullet-hell air hockey than arkanoid or wizorb, if you come in with that in mind, *AND* you play on the easier difficulty, there's a lot to enjoy. If you play on the harder difficulty, all the cracks in the game show up and ruin the parts that could be considered fun. Original review follows.
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At first, it's interesting with all the unlockables and level designs that slowly ramp up in variety and difficulty. A break-out with classes and upgrades and abilities? Interesting! Another interesting fact is that your paddle is circular, and 80% of the map is angled. This means the ball NEVER goes where you expect it to. Which then turns into a massive con.
Eventually, it's just obnoxious and rude. And it stays that way for the rest of the game. I had a great time for the first 1-3 hours, and haven't enjoyed a single thing since.

Bottom line? Play it on casual and enjoy the break-out clone for what it is. Achievement hunting ruined what was a fun game for me.

[edit]20231106. I've played through more of it, and it gets more forgiving as you progress, but permanent upgrades and abilities are gated behind game progression, and the more upgrades there are, the lower the chance of the upgrade being the one you want.
This is a super fascinating game, but if you do anything besides play it on casual, you are asking for pain. I also encountered a common Unity engine bug, where I had to unplug peripherals until the game allowed me to use my RMB (required for game progression). There is no way to edit the controls in the settings menu. [/edit]

Did you like Wall World? Do you want more of its bizarre and creepy story? Then this DLC is for you.
Gameplay-wise it's more of the same, with 2 new weapons of questionable use, and a new "bonus upgrade" tier for all of the gear you'll find (and some of that gear is game-breakingly awesome, and you'll probably lose if you don't find it early enough).
The mines have been redone, completely ruining any sort of "quick in, quick out" type of strategy, which is probably my biggest gripe. What does it add?

You'll see a lot of negative reviews from around the release of the DLC, and I would have been one of them--the first wall boss you met was harder than anything ever encountered, and if you messed up twice, your 15-minute+ run was ended. They have since patched the game to reduce the difficulty. And patched the game to reduce the size of patches.

Sadly Wall World and Dome Keeper came out so close to each other that it's hard not to compare the two. Wall World is if Rogue Legacy and Dome Keeper had a baby. Super powerful permanent buffs allow you to explore deeper and deeper until you're a near-unstoppable force. Which is a good thing! If what you're looking for is a fun romp with upgrade options that (sort of) matter, this game will keep you entertained! And at the price point they're asking for, this is a great game.

Took me 14 hours to 100% it (had to find the recipes to get the last chievo.

Gameplay is great on Mouse+Keyboard, fine on controller (you will suffer hand cramps!). Runs Fantastic on Steamdeck, but I switched to playing it on my PC for better play control (twin stick shooters have always played better on PC for me)
Music is appropriate and awesomely ambient, graphics are exactly what you need (and expect at this price).
There's even a decent universe if you want to pay attention to the game's story!

This game takes the perfect amount of time for those 10-40 minute pauses during the day. It's both neither too hard, nor too simple, and has a sense of humor that might catch you off guard for such a "browser" game.

Plays quite well on the Steam Deck. It has some lag spikes as the screen fills with both your attacks and your enemies' bodies, but I never found it unplayable.

Just beat the game and I feel you should watch someone else play it until you're bored, then move on with your life. Skip it.
It has hilarious narration by a rick&morty voice actor (Chris Parnell of SNL fame), a cute/dumb story about a shark getting revenge on a shark hunter, fairly pretty graphics, and godsawful play control and pacing. And Denuvo (worked around by playing it on the SteamDeck).

SteamDeck review-it played good/great, except in very large battles. It crashed a total of 5 times during my 9 hours of gameplay. Overall I'd say pretty good performance.. Drained the battery pretty fast-make sure you have a power source handy.

This was definitely a middle-of-the-road review. I wish I could vote "ambivalent."

Do you remember Kirby Pinball? Do you remember Space Cadet? This is more of that, for better and worse. I probably enjoyed about 8 hours of my time I spent 100%'ing this game. There are interesting features to each level of the pinball table, and fun things you can only do with "video game" pinball tables (bullets, varied challenges). That said, Pinball FX does a far better job of this on most of its tables. It took some fiddling and getting used to where the game places your "view", especially during multiballs--You have to 'know' the table or you're going to have a bad time. The help documentation needs a little more descriptions in it (what's a secret passage, how do I spend Pachi?), but if you play this long enough, you figure out the shot locations and names.
If you're looking for a quick little SNES-era arcadey pinball game, this is totally acceptable. I don't regret buying it, but I don't recommend it.
Oh, a final point-you really do need to nudge a LOT on the 'advanced' table variant, and the only way to do it consistently is to use a controller. If you're trying to from a keyboard, you're going to have a bad time. Luckily, I had a controller handy.

If you liked the other Supralands, you'll like this one. I don't know how they do it, but they deliver "more of the same" in the best possible way. The tools are slightly different from last time, but not in a significant way, and that's nice, too. I think the biggest nitpick is that most of the exploration abilities aren't available until end game (which makes sense given how powerful they are). There are also some super complex puzzles that you can solve with brute forcing the physics engine instead of doing it the intended way.

Pretty fun idler that is currently still in rapid development. It focuses heavily on "combat" but doesn't punish you if you want to watch your nonviolent skills to grow instead.
The Dev helped me solve an issue I had (the issue was me), so they definitely deserve accolades.