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Recent reviews by TheQuack

Showing 1-4 of 4 entries
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
1.9 hrs on record (1.7 hrs at review time)
And remember, they may have the Moon People on their side, but we have lovely hats. Those hats will shield us from their fearsome gaze!
Posted 29 June, 2019.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
16.3 hrs on record
This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
Posted 26 November, 2018.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
3.8 hrs on record (2.8 hrs at review time)
I'm not a big fan of modern indie platformers. Several of them feel like someone's just taken a decades-old game, updated the graphics, and added some modern one-liners. VVVVVV goes in the opposite direction. It looks and sounds like a game from the 80s, with just one new gameplay mechanic: reversing gravity. Yet, by building the whole game around that concept, the devs have managed to put together a game which feels very focused, and is truly unique.

The soundtrack and graphics are a perfect fit for this game - they add to the atmosphere, without distracting you from the puzzles themselves. The game is difficult, but I didn't find it as frustrating as some other precision-jumping games. The hardest puzzles in the main game are optional. Also, with frequent checkpoints, a fail will only set you back a few seconds - you won't have to keep repeating an easy section because of one difficulty spike.

The main plot is relatively short, but the game includes a wide variety of challenges (e.g. speedruns, endurance, no-death runs), and lets you play user-made maps. If you like the style of gameplay here, VVVVVV will provide you with great value for money. Highly recommended.
Posted 28 November, 2016.
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3 people found this review helpful
23.3 hrs on record (7.3 hrs at review time)
Tharsis: "It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."
[Player stands up.]
Tharsis: "Sledgehammer to the face! BAM!"

My first game on "normal" difficulty felt like that. If that was my only taste of Tharsis, I might have assumed it was one of those rubbish games where near-unplayable gameplay is explained as a "design feature". Fortunately, the devs recently added some tutorial missions and an "easy" mode. After trying them out, and getting familiar with the mechanics, I think there's a decent game under the hood.


Main points:

1) Tharsis is more complicated than it appears. If you just roll the dice and hope for the best, you will almost certainly lose. It's worth looking at the tutorials and the manual - there are also some quality game guides out there. For example, I've read several complaints about health-damaging rooms, but the manual includes all of these suggestions:

-Use assists to protect your crewmember (don't waste them on safer rooms)
-Use research projects to fix the room, get assists, or make you immune to damage
-Shuffle to get new research projects if none are helpful
-Work on other issues, while storing research dice, and deal with the hazard room next turn (you get one assist every turn, with the chance of more)

The in-game tutorials don't explain all of that, but one of them, "Injure and Endure", contains nothing but health-damaging rooms - it's a great place to practise.


2) Every turn, your ship and your crew will be faced with a wide variety of issues. You'll need to decide which issues are most critical, then come up with a plan to deal with as many of them as possible. Each crewmember and room has their own unique function - your plan should take advantage of that. This part of the game is similar to chess, in a way - to do well, you have to plan a few moves ahead. (If your crew are kept well supplied with dice, you’ll be able to do much more in the long run.)


3) Good planning can reduce the risks of the RNG (see Dragondave17's 30 wins in a row, including 5 on hard), but nothing can eliminate those risks. If the game throws a bunch of nasty events and bad dice rolls your way, you can have a brilliant plan and still lose. If you don't like the chance of losing in that fashion, you shouldn't buy this game. (Compare this to a card game - top poker players can greatly improve their odds of winning, but still have to deal with the luck of the cards.)

On the plus side, the game sessions are relatively short: a loss here doesn't eat up hours of your time, unlike some other rogue-likes. This is a great short-session game, since it challenges you on every single turn - there's no boring warm-up phase, and no predictable endgame where you're strong enough to steamroll anything. There's no countdown clock, and no reflex actions - just the pressure to make good decisions. If you like a game based on that, and if you're willing to accept the random factor here, you should enjoy Tharsis.
Posted 21 August, 2016. Last edited 22 August, 2016.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 entries