Recent reviews by CakeOrGlory

Utterly charming way to while away ten hours. Completely child friendly without being exclusive to them, Tinykin tickles the innocent collect-em-up urge as well as compulsion to explore and interact with the secrets of a massively scaled-up house room with a miniaturized hero. And as soon as exploration's done, you're off to another, new, untouched room.

Expertly pitched to not outlast its welcome in any aspect, Tinykin is a holiday-romance of a game. You'll love it utterly for two days, spend every moment with it. And when it's time to say goodbye, it leaves with a fond farewell.

There's something about Metroidvanias. I'll just keep playing the same damn game every time, lol.

The twists this time are that it's also got strong ties to Zelda: Link to the Past and bullet-hell shoot em ups. It's not groundbreaking but combined with a cute, polished aesthetic and a lot of personality it'll make for a very pleasant ten hours of your life. Really enjoyed it in a way that reminded me of another, older game, "Incredibly Twisted Shadow Planet" that I played on the Xbox 360 back in the day.

Although you could describe it as "Zelda + bullet hell" and get an accurate overview, there's a lot of love put into this, clearly, and it shows in the little quality of life tweaks; the stuff they didn't have to put in, but did for the love of the game, so to speak. The map is littered with powerups and bonuses that you don't *have* to find, but really give you a passive edge in a pinch. Each area has its own distinct, refined style to it but they all flow into each other seamlessly; for the most part you know exactly where you are from what's on screen, it's THAT unique.

And another nice touch: levelling up gives chunky, satisfying upgrades, but you're not locked into them. At all. Going into a boss fight, you're completely free to reconfigure your ship and, say, upgrade your range at the expense of dodge speed, if you want to. And by the end of the game you probably still won't have everything at top level; but you can shift stuff around to get two or three aspects maxed out and everything else where you need it. It's a nice touch.

Cheap and cheerful, yes, and doesn't waste your time; you'll be done with it in twelve hours. But they'll be delightful.

It's a bit difficult to get into - my first few missions were mostly blind panic - and even to seasoned players new mission types can be a bit confusing. But there's lots of different types and the actual gameplay loop is really fun once you get your head around it. The community is fantastic and there's just the right amount of communication to get information across - and there's a chat channel if you want to talk but mostly it's pointing and grunting :)

I really recommend it.

Very atmospheric short story; more a narrative than a game, but an excellently told anthology. Plays out over a couple of hours if you stop to savour it, and you absolutely should.

Three hundred and sixty five hours on record. That's nearly a review in itself. Especially since it almost certainly tops a thousand hours if you factor in all the versions and platforms that I've played the game on.

Binding of Isaac takes its form from classic Zelda games; explore dungeons, find weapons, kill bosses. But once you've become good enough to beat it - not so difficult, once you get lucky enough to find decent randomly-picked powerups - it becomes more like a Hellraiser puzzle box that sits innocently on your desktop. Tempting you in for one quick, simple run through its levels, to achieve greater feats, to unlock more complex items and new, more difficult levels and bosses.

It takes roughly forty five minutes to complete a run, less if you're speedrunning, more if you're going for the gratifying game-breaking character build - bouncing backwards and forwards between the shop and a special room, bending and splintering the game across your knowledge of the rules and effects of its systems. These are the phases of an Isaac player; Beat the game. Unlock the game. Master the game. Break the game. And beating the game once, seeing one of its multitude of endings, is just the whetting of the appetite; the first time you've beaten the game's final boss is just the end of the tutorial.

Three hundred and sixty five hours. I've probably unlocked sixty percent of the game. I'm barely qualified to write a review.

Awww, this is a bit special.

An homage to so many things from the eighties - text adventures, sci-fi one shots, big clunky switches - Stories Untold takes a handful of interesting ways of framing a game and chews on them until the very juiciest material is done, and then it throws them away.

Could each story be longer than an hour? Probably. But I'd rather spend an hour on each one and be sorry to see it go than be wasting my time and the developer's, when the next chapter is always so reliably enjoyable. The notion that buying games to fill hours of your life seems mad to me; but then maybe I'm just getting old.

It's also no challenge. Stories Untold is essentially telling you a story with some entertaining busy work to be getting on with while you do it to draw you into the atmosphere. And that's genius when what you're playing is, ostensibly, a horror game, even though it's pretty much entirely free from industry standard jump-scares and instead cultivates a marvellous sense of dread kept in check by your own curiosity.

I will say that I did find the conclusion to the overarching story was a little disappointing, even if it WAS really well told in the end. Possibly a little drawn out. Your own opinion may vary, and it's a narratively satisfying end that draws the narrative threads together in a pleasing bow.

I'll say no more since this is four hours that should be savoured and enjoyed with no spoilers. Buy it for the experience, not as polystyrene packing peanuts to fill up your days.

What. The actual. F-bomb.

Looped scantily clad women pop up, you click to slap them about, then they escape by throwing money at you and whimpering "I'm Sorry!"

There's less game here than in Cookie Clicker. I don't get why people are playing this. New cheesecake pictures pop up every so often but are people actually playing thinking "ooh, she's cute." *slap* *slap* *slap*.

Free to play and I still feel ripped off.

Tonnes of braindead splodey fun, and probably the finest Tough Guy Walking Away From An Explosion simulator to date. Still looks luscious after several years, and still unsurpassed in that very specific brand of anarchic lunacy.

NO IT ISN'T JUST 2D MINECRAFT.

I'd compare it equally to Spelunky. Building's a big part of it, but just as important, if not more, is the crafting of unique and interesting weapons and exploring the vast caverns below the surface to bring up stupidly dangerous materials like Lava and kill yourself with them.