Recent reviews by Sagebrush

Good little game, esp. for fans. I prefer Streets of Rage-style beat 'em ups, but the different characters and abilities make this River City Ransom-ish one interesting. Can't argue with a free game with this caliber of workmanship, either.

It is, uniquely, so far the only game played on this system which induces an odd coil whine in my graphics card, but it was bound to happen with something.

The PBR shading + Pals + guns may give the impression of asset flip, but this is an entirely unfair summation and disservice of what's actually going on here, which is a strong showing for an EARLY ACCESS indie open world creature-catcher. There are problems such as woefully-dumb pathfinding and logic for hostiles, as well as a need for more exploration content (while large and fun to roam, the world could use more points of interest with varying purpose), but if you like to roam and hunt and capture and tick boxes, there's stuff to do. Don't expect anything in the way of story or NPC characterization. That's not really there yet, and I get the impression it's really not a priority and may not materialize. Also, expect nothing but chaos from the public servers, but that's a given. Play private servers or singleplayer, the way it's meant to be done.

Modding will unleash its true potential.

TL;DR: Currently a quirky, immersive, thoughtfully-crafted fishing/farming/building/cooking/collecting/grass-cutting sim.

An early-access game with promise. If it gets the support it needs, it should become something great. The bones are there for something that realizes something similar to what I think many truly wanted from games like Dark Cloud: An immersive wind-swept free-form roaming + building sim with an uncompromising 2000's-era JP aesthetic. The effort put into the existing systems, map, and art are encouraging. Takes a little patience, but rewards it subtly and gradually. Something to keep an eye on, at the very least, if you're interested in such.

Good little tower defense game (I have a history of not particularly liking the genre.) At 5 hours, I'm probably roughly 10~25% through, but it's getting pretty hectic so the rest will probably take me longer than projected. Great aesthetic and sound/music, but the controls cannot be remapped in-game as far as I can tell-- you'll want a gamepad unless you're highly accomplished with the WASD+ZXC-style layout.

* Play the free prequel, Doll Explorer: Prologue first (it's a short, deterministic, turn-based programmed-move card-based one-dimensional dungeon-crawler.)
* Witch Explorer is succeeded by a later game, Doll Explorer, which looks to be an expanded take of Prologue.

Runs fine under Proton.

An enjoyable game for fans of Hololive. I had my doubts initially, not having really played much in the way of these sorts of gacha titles, but so far there's no monetization and it's not braindead like you might expect coming into the genre fairly blind. Looks like it might turn into a little bit of a grind, especially if you're not prudent in your team builds and spending of holocoins, but that shouldn't be too bad.

Plays fine under Proton.

Good little game with a great aesthetic sense. UI/translation could still use a little work (some text is cut off in some UI elements, etc), but it's quite playable and maintained by an active dev, having just received a large update. Personally, I've been wanting more games like this (lifesim/economic sim), and it helps to fill a void.

Plays fine under Proton, so far.

Underrated.

Had its production not been console-centric, and if it'd been topped off with another 3~6 months dev time, it would probably not be as seemingly obscure as it is now. It did have to compete against Fallout: New Vegas and Borderlands, but BL2 had not yet come out, and this is a better play than BL1 unless you want more empty space to explore and a true loot system.

As it stands now, the default FOV is unplayable and it needs config file tweaks to make its best showing, but don't leave the console enabled or it will complain and halt the game every single time you would have gotten an achievement. After this is all addressed, however, it's good times. Satisfying animations and sound design playing out in maps seemingly all hand-crafted by concept artists.

Grimcomfy kemono survival. May seem a little cryptic, but it's not hard to figure out after a couple of runs. It might be a little light on content, but I don't regret getting and completing it. Will probably play it more on and off through the month to see if I can collect more endings. One of the many small Halloween-appropriate treats to be collected across Steam.

Underrated RNG-Fest rpg-adventure. Disregard the condemnations of the would-be chess pros and MLG acolytes.

I tend to think of it as a fun little fangame I've been grinding after each update, but at this point it's verging on being one of those shining gems among easy-access games-- the kind you might toss on every machine to have around just-in-case, alongside your emulators and doom ports of choice, kind of like Vampire Survivors before it.. with the added bonus of the itch version if you don't want the Steam overhead.

I could go on, but I'll keep it short: Nice pixel-work, great animation, good sound, great arranges of Hololive songs, smart design with fun weapons and mechanics. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for future projects involving Kay Yu and the others involved, perhaps going back and trying River City Girls (I believe Kay was animator in that).

Also, it's a nice and pretty tactful window into the world of Hololive through fans' eyes. It will help immortalize the legends over the years.

I just kind of hope it gets a few more semi-relaxed side stages alongside the usual progression, maybe they could be holiday stages or something, but they'd be between stage 2 and 4 in intensity.