Recent reviews by Gloedemansch

Frostpunk is a RTS game set in an alternate history where the world froze over after a yet unexplained cataclysm. In the main story, you're the captain of a British expedition towards the arctic to build humanity's last city around a giant generator. In the process you'll not only balance out people's basic needs, but you'll also have to resolve moral dilemmas, and most importantly, you'll be fighting the cold.

I'll start out for lazy readers by saying that you NEED to get this game, even if you're not that into RTS (believe me, I'm not). The game has much more to offer than just being a ruthless RTS.
The writing the game has is excellent, and the theme is exquisitely executed. I generally don't really like steampunk all that much, but this game seems to keep one foot in reality, generally relying on real world technology like generators, airships, hot air balloons and such.
In the main story, you'll be put in charge of running the city, starting out with 80 residents (You can't even put all of them to work because there are children among them, unless...), and you'll be in a constant struggle balancing out people's needs, people's feelings towards your leadership, and the ever-increasing cold (starts out at -20 celsius, have seen it go down to -150 celsius, THAT IS COLD.). As you go along, you'll be forced to use the book of laws to better manage your city or aid the efficiency, introducing things like child laibor, adding sawdust to rations just to get more of them, going fascist or becoming a theocratic dystopia. These things affect your city's Hope and Discontent however, as well as other decisions that you'll be prompted to make like taking in refugees or deciding the fate of a thief. If you fail to keep Discontent down, you'll probably get overthrown. If you fail to keep hope up, people will leave your city. There are even more ways to lose the game, and the scariest I've come to think of is having your generator, the main, and only main source of heat in your city explode (this is an instant loss of the game). Balancing out needs, ethics and temperature makes sure that you're constantly on your tippy-toes, as you're also expected to scout the lands behind your city, and research technology in between. This contributes to the difficulty in my opinion, as I've even had some playthroughs in scenarios where I could barely scrape by on easy. You'll quickly notice that you'll be alot more lenient towards decisions that in real life would have you thrown in jail (like child-laibor as I've said) when there are people's lives on the line, but the thing that makes it more than clear that this is in fact 11 bit studios we're talking about is the fact that the game judges you for every little mistake you've made after a successful playthrough (ain't that a kick in the nuts).
The game's visuals are stunning, with an excellent interface design. This contributes to its overall theme, and delivers very powerful "end-of-the-world" vibes.

There are some things to be said though. First of all, I've had some instability issues. The game does seem to sometimes crash on auto-saving. Thankfully, 11 bit studios has released a support guide for instability issues, but it'd be nicer not to have any to begin with, to be frank. Secondly, the game currently has three different scenarios, and while they each have their own flairs, they do generally play out the same (fuel the generator, build the city, scout as fast as you can and prepare for a storm). The game does not offer alot of replayability for its value, although you'll spend multiple playthroughs in each scenario, and if you're like me, you'll end up restarting the scenario often enough because of some horrible mistake that someone ought to be really pissed at me about. The developers have stated that the game is set to receive mod support soon, however, and it is no secret that 11 bit studios has begun work on more content thanks to the games rip-roaring financial success, whether it will be free updates or paid expansion packs. I'm also very lenient on the content that is already there as it is enjoyable, and hard not to get hooked on it.

TL;DR: The game is great, stressful, beautiful, and will insult you in the end. You may have technological issues but the devs already wrote a guide. Without any question, definitely a "buy", and I can't wait for new content. 8.5/10

Suffering never felt so good

If you're lucky, like me, and don't experience any issues with the game at all, than you know my feelings here!

It's an incredible shame that the game gets downvoted this much because of these issues. The mechanics feel pleasantly familiar, with a nice addition of a whole new character with different mechanics to keep it fresh. The AI works well in most places, even noticing doors that aren't supposed to be open, objects which are missing, et cetera. The Rune and Bonecharm crafting system is also an interesting function. The only thing I particularly disliked about this game, is the voiced protagonist. I don't really like the fact that Corvo sounds extremely grudg-y (kinda like Soldier: 76 from Overwatch?), as it breaks something in my immersion. I know this isn't an RPG, but I liked the idea of just being a supernatural scumbag on the prowl ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with people. Now I'm just a pissed off old man. Note to self: Play Emily next time...

So after the kappa review I did, I suppose I might as well do a normal one.

Today's game-market is flooded with all sorts of games, triple A's, indies, and some of which even made by one person. Sometimes, one game shows up outta nowhere, and suprises us in the best way possible.

Stardew Valley is one of these games. After 4 years of development, ConcernedApe (Eric Barone) brought us a near masterpiece. Stardew valley is a farming RPG, heavily inspired by Harvest Moon. When I first heard of the game, it was only 2 weeks away from release, but it only took one glance at it to have me sold on it.
The art has been redone completely multiple times over the course of it's development and the pixel art looks great, the style's also very reminiscent of the aforementioned Harvest Moon.

At the start of the game you inherit your grandfather's farm, only to find it in a run-down state, and it's up to you (as the new owner) to return it to it's former glory. The gameplay is very slow, but that's okay, since it is meant to be a long term project. This is because you basically live your life in this game, as you progress through days, months and years.
You can farm, fish, mine, cook, socialize, forage, construct, craft, and more. Stardew Valley has a lot of mechanics, some rougher than others, but they compliment each other nicely. What I personally didn't like as much was the fishing. I don't know if it's because I'm bad at it, but it felt time-wasting because of the result in the early stages of levelling your fishing skill, due to the lower amounts of money you'd get. Sometimes the controls can feel a little bit lacking, but this does not severely handicap your experience. In fact, after the first 50 hours (which you will reach, oh believe me) you're basically used to it.
Stardew Valley has a storyline which you can follow, but it's not necessary, so you can basically just do whatever you want to do. The game has no ending, so you can also keep playing for as long as you'd like (keep in mind that you do want to have some stuff done before year three, though...).

Now that we got mechanics and controls out of the way, I can talk about what I like the most about the game. The NPCs are scattered across the map, and at first you'll be urged to seek and meet them all. Most of the NPCs all have their own little backstory, personalities, movement patterns and dialogue, of which the latter two are also dynamically influenced by conditions as the weather, day of the week, season, and so on. You can befriend these NPCs by, well err.. by doing what you'd do in real life of course! Giving them gifts every two days of the week! Barging into their homes and hand them a bat's wing, only to leave as fast as you entered to leave them in confusion. Unless you give them stuff they actually *like*. As you progress in your relationships with these NPCs, you'll collect small scraps of their backstory, and eventually they will send you stuff (yay). Keep in mind that it is thus useful to improve your relationship with certain NPCs first who fit your playstyle, as their gifts can sometimes prove quite useful. Some of these NPCs are also *bachelors*, which means that if you increase your relationship to a level high enough, you will be able to marry them. Your spouse will then move into your home, and they will provide you with dialogue, items or they will even do chores for you daily.
The soundtrack was also redone, and is quite subtle most of the times, which fits the theme. My favorite track is in all honesty "Marimba of the frozen bone".

Stardew valley has a relaxing theme, and it is a great game to just sink lots of time into. I wouldn't recommend it if you have better stuff to do, as that stuff will NOT get done.
In a world with an increasing indie-game market, Stardew Valley stands out as one of these special accomplishments, and it damn deserves to. 9.5/10.

I'm suprised the game allowed me the time to write this instead of making me play it.

Bought this game wayyyy back with my friend, all excited to see where it would go, and to be honest, I'm pretty disappointed to see where it's at right now. So much so that I feel compelled to turn my positive joke review into a serious negative one.

There are plenty of games that had a dev cycle shorter than the time this game has been in alpha state. ALPHA.
Yesterday I booted up the game a few times to give it a shot and see where it's at right now, and I can't believe that the start of the game somehow got worse... Sure, they have a PDA to explain the beginning of the game to you, but with an extremely unsatisfying start, being forced to wander around to look for either rocks containing very low amounts of ore, or ore deposits which tend to be spread around pretty scarcely (except clusters, but they don't often contain everything you need.)

This game feels like it has forgotten about early game. New planets, new galaxies, new space base defense systems, dialogues, but things like combat are completely left in the dust, resulting in a game that at its core feels kaput. At least I get to bash dodo skulls in with rocks in Ark. I had high hopes for this, but the developers seem to focussed on the later stages of the game that only 60% who endure the early game get to experience. Sure, the game will be fun once I acquire a spaceship, once I build a central vessel, once I explore more planets, but it just feels like it's too much effort for too little reward to go through the first stages of the game, even if it is just my own opinion. The only thing this game is good for now is being spammed for an hour or so by aforementioned friend to come play it even though I sincerely don't want to play it anymore. Setting up your own server is already complicated enough in some cases, but I cannot recall ever being able to succesfully set up a server.

I'll sit this one out, if it ever gets out of Alpha state...
But for now, don't buy it yet.