Recent reviews by missiloon

A lovely new entry in the ongoing series of Primrose Lake. I love this type of time management games in which you fulfill orders, and this one improves quite a lot compared to earlier entries. It takes around 8h to complete, can be played on easy and has no missable achievements.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 8 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don't need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Yes, a few ones feel a bit grindy because you have to replay a few levels multiple times
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play on the easiest difficulty and still unlock everything
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Yay a new game in the Primerose Lake series and it improves on quite a few things. Let's first start with a very small negative point: There is no recap, just like in all GameHouse games, but I forgot most of the plotlines of the first one, only remembered a part of the main event. And it will not tell you anything about the first game, just moves on from there. I hope they will consider a short recap in future titles, even if it is just a few screens with texts or an option in the main menu where you can read a text that will tell you the things you need to know from the first game. However, it isn't that important, as most of the fun in this type of game comes from fulfilling the customers' orders.

In this title, they show you 4 levels at the bottom instead of 5 and while that is such a small change, it felt better to me. I normally try to only take a break from the game when having finished a full screen, so if I only want to play for a little while, I would play 5 levels, in this case, it is 4, and that made this stupid little OCD kinda thing so much easier. Another thing I enjoyed is that the levels felt shorter. They didn't drag on that long, so you would quickly see how the story goes further. It is a small difference per level but it made quite an impact and felt so much better paced this way. I hope both things will become a regular thing in the future GameHouse/SQRT3 games.

None of the achievements are missable. A few might feel grindy because you need to do an action X amount of times, and especially if there were only a few levels of that type, then you have to replay a level multiple times to unlock it. It wasn't bad at all and with a completion time of around 8 hours, it is very doable and a lot of fun to complete Welcome to Primrose Lake 2.

The story ends without giving all the answers, but I know there are more Primrose entries in the make and I can't wait to see where the story will take us.

Little Kitty, Big City is such a joyful game! Playing a cat who does typical cat things and is a little mischievous but overall is there to help others out as well on his journey to find a way back home.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: ~5 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, I used this one[www.xboxachievements.com]
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, 1 achievement: talk to the ducklings before doing the objective to bring them home. Each one has a small quest before they will follow you, talk with them first, that way they will tell you why they won't follow you instantly and that counts toward the "hello" achievement in which you have to talk with all the animals in the neighborhood.
Grinding Achievements: The one to get 20 times photographed is a bit grindy, but if you wear a hat as soon as possible and meow to every person with a phone in their hand, you get already a bunch of them while doing the rest.
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting, but there is no combat or anything else that will make you fail
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

I love that we see so many wholesome games in which you play someone who is a little mischievous but in general, a good person/animal while exploring their world. This game reminds me so much of Lil Gator Game, Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip, and Rain on Your Parade. The open world in which you're free to explore but find a bunch of things to do is so addictive to me and it offers so many directions for a game to take.

You play as a cat in this game who was sleeping but then falls out of the window and you don't have the strength atm to climb back up, you first need to eat something. so your main quest will be to find food, but on your journey, you'll meet several other animals who all can use a little bit of your time to help them out.

I adored this little kitty and the typical cat things you can do, like swapping items so they break or stretching in a typical cat way. There also is this meow button to get the attention of the humans that walk around in the city. some of those are happy to see you, others ignore you or are even angry already... let alone if you let them trip :P.

The only slightly negative thing I can think of is that jumping feels a bit awkward, but it allows you to hold the button down so you can more precise jumps, which I almost used exclusively at the moment I stopped with just pressing the jump button as an automatic response. So it took a bit of time to unlearn the normal quick button press to jump but it gave me more control over my little kitty.

I struggled a bit with finding my way in the city, but this is totally a "me" problem. I am very bad with having a general sense of direction and a lot of the city quite looks the same. somehow I always thought the fisherman is South, but he is NorthWest as an example. And the way the map opens with the turn of the camera from your view to the map made it a little more confusing. While the arrow on the map correctly shows you which way you're looking, so it shouldn't be a problem, but it was just not making sense in my head.

I love the type of achievements this game has. Just doing a bunch of stuff and getting achievements for doing them. The achievement for meeting every animal can be missable (as far as guides online tell me) but who wouldn't talk with the cute ducklings before pulling them out of their situation and taking them home? Knowing that you have to talk with those 4 before "saving" them is enough to play the game without a guide. However, I would highly recommend wearing a hat as soon as possible and start meowing to everybody who holds a phone from that moment on, because there is an achievement for which 20 people have to take a picture of you.

I highly recommend first going for the fish and going home, because after you finish the main quest you'll see the collectibles on your map, which just makes it so much easier. The rest of the achievements are basically just for helping everybody and collecting all the hats.

I give Little Kitty, Big City 4 out of 5 stars. A short but wonderful adventure.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 17 hours ( around 12 hours for the story and most of the progress and the last ~ 4 hours breeding the missing colors)
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this guide, and Tasselfoot wrote a breeding guide.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Yes, sleeping 20 times and filling the whole Frogedex are a bit grindy
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty options
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is such an addictive game. It feels a little bit like a clicker, but in other ways, it isn't. Maybe Viva Pinata combined with a clicker game? However, in Kamaeru you get to this area where a childhood friend is building a frog refuge and you are there to give him a hand. You do this by placing furniture for the frogs, but also digging ponds and placing crops. The ponds also attract insects which you can feed to the frogs to tame them. And the crops produce goods which can be made into items that can be sold for money.

What makes Kamaeru as addictive as it is (I didn't even want to look at any other screen or respond to chats/text messages etc) is that there is always something to do. From spotting new frogs and taking a picture of them, or maybe even feeding them to tame them. You also want to harvest the crops (which is easy, just press the button to harvest them all) and use those goods to make products, taking high-quality pictures when you unlock the option to make 3-starred photos. You don't have to be active every single second, but you can be if you want to. And since there are 512 different frogs, you'll be busy for quite a few hours). I really couldn't put the game down, only did it because I had to sleep or work.

The achievements in Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge are very straight forward and it has no missable achievements. Most of them you'll unlock by even thinking about them. digging ponds, planting crops, registering different frogs, all this you were doing anyway. However, one of the things you should start early on is sleeping, you need to sleep 20 times for an achievement and you can only sleep during the evenings/nights, so start early on with sleeping. |

There is also an achievement for finding every different frog and taking a photo of them or taming them (aka feeding them). This one will get grindy in the end because 2 colors you only achieve by breeding them. This will cost quite a lot of money but also patience. I recommend doing this as the last achievement because by that time you will have found almost all of them which can be found in the wild, you have easier access to money because of the different areas and goods you can produce there and you got the ability to breed those 2 special colors.

I had so much fun playing through this game and the frogs + some of the furniture are just so freaking cute (especially the furniture you get as a reward for catching fireflies later on in the game). I give Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge 4 out of 5 stars.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 17 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don't need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Yes, getting all the recipes requires you to get to restaurant level 20, which is a grind
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty settings but you can't fail, the game is very forgiving
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

What an adorable main character and what a beautiful game! Rolling Hills is a game in which you run a restaurant. I want to make it clear that it is not a cooking game, there is no cooking involved. It is mostly a time management game where you have to bring the customer the right order.

In your restaurant, there is this machine that makes the sushi automatically, and you have to deliver the food to the customer. There are 4 color types and they have a level as well, the customer wants the right color and a specific level or higher. If the right one isn't on the conveyor belt, then you can refresh the section that is available on the conveyor belt. There is a short period between the possibility to refresh, but if you upgrade your recipes, you'll be able to find the right sushi dish within the current section or the refreshed section 99% of the time.

Between sessions of serving customers, you can run around in Rolling Hills, which is a small town. The better your restaurant gets the more people move to this small town. This also means that if you have space in your restaurant for them to sit, more customers will come to visit your restaurant as well. You will befriend a few and with how better you know them the more positive effects it has on your restaurant. For example, if you befriend the man of the grocery store, the more luxurious items he will have in stock, which will help you upgrade the recipes faster.

One of the things that will help out a lot is the store where they sell furniture. The furniture will have different effects, for example, there is an effect that will give you money for every customer that enters your store, and another that will give you restaurant experience, but there is also an effect for customers to be more patient. Of every effect there is, there is also a "super" variant which is just better than the regular one. With those items, you can customize your playstyle.

What I loved the most is that the game gave daily challenges. You can ignore them but they give points for which you can buy extra recipes and hats. Most of them are quite easy to do, so it doesn't take much time but helps you out in the long run. I thought this was an awesome addition to spice things up a little bit.

The only thing I struggled with was if 2 customers sat at the same table, sometimes I gave the food to the wrong person while trying to give it to the right person. I know the devs are looking into making it more clear which customer you've highlighted, but what worked for me right now is standing behind the customer and then giving the food. Not intuitive but it worked like a charm.

A small thing I didn't notice until the dev pointed it out is that the achievements give bonuses, but to get those you have to go to the achievement menu in the game and click on the unlocked achievements. I only learned about this after missing a few recipes while very close to the maximum restaurant level.

About the achievements, Rolling Hills has no missable achievements. most of them you just unlock for playing the game. I recommend picking up every soda can you find, but maybe wait with the recycling part until you have the daily challenge for doing so. There is an achievement for recycling 100 soda cans, but you'll find those easily if you just pick them up while doing the rest.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you want to get every friendship to level 5 but if you get more experience than is needed for the current level, that experience is lost. So for level 1 you need 100 exp and for level 2 200, level 3 300 and so on. The amount of gold the activity costs is the amount of experience it gives. So you can plan the right activities to not waste money.

The achievement that will take the longest is getting all the recipes. You get a lot by just playing and befriending the people in Rolling Hills. There will also be a few available by the NPC that tell you about challenges a little later on in the game. The traveling merchant also has a bunch of recipes as well, so make sure you keep a bit of money for when she is in town to be able to buy a recipe. For this achievement, I would highly highly recommend stacking up on furniture with the charming stats, or even better the super charming stat, so you already get a bunch of exp for them to walk into the restaurant. For the last 2 hours, I just opened up my restaurant and let people in but didn't serve them, with quite a lot of tables but otherwise just a bunch of furniture with the charming stats. I didn't serve them so that the little helpers would just keep fiddling with the items that gave charming and keep giving a bunch of experience that way. I'm unsure if this was the fastest way to do it, but it was the most effortless way for sure. I did this on my Steam Deck because on PC it has to be the active screen for the game to run. A really helpful thing for this strategy is that the music chances if the day ends, so I grinded the last 2,5 levels this way while doing some work on my pc.

I give Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends 4 out of 5 stars.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: My guess is around 20 hours or so, still working on getting there.
EDIT: I just learned from the developer that holding X/spacebar for 3 seconds skips the walking animation, this will speed up the game a lot more, so my guess of 20h might be overestimated.
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1 if you use a savescum on the Hazel achievements
Is there a good guide available: Not yet, but you don't really need a guide.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, 2 achievements have something to do with Hazel, if you choose one you will miss out on the other, but if you quit the game before it saves (it saves when you sleep) then you can replay that day and later on get to the other option for the second achievement.
Grinding Achievements: Not really, the amount of trades and cooking will probably be done before finishing all the achievements, and if not, they can be completed quite easily after that.
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Fireside is such a lovely game that feels a bit like a board game but also like a roguelite in which you upgrade stats to get better. Fireside reminds me a lot of No Time to Relax. That one also felt like a puzzle board game.

The main mechanic in Fireside is trading, you will trade items to get other items and make your way up to the items you want to upgrade items in your base camp, or to cook recipes. You only get an x amount of days to run around before you have to return to your camp, but the number of days can be increased with upgrades, as well as the amount of storage you have in your camp and in your pockets, a board on which you can see quests to get to certain people with the right items and a bunch of other stuff.

The most charming part of Fireside are the characters you meet on your way. There are a bunch of characters without a story but also a bunch with a story, who you will help along the way and meet again later. Such charming people and it felt like a puzzle in itself to then help them out and get the right item back to them, or check a location they told you to go.

Before starting with Fireside I wasn't sure what I was getting into but it just looked cute and lovely. I was welcomed by such a well-made "puzzle/ choose your own adventure" kinda of game with as main mechanic trading. I can't explain exactly how but it reminds me so much of the Viva Pinata games. Like tinkering with the environment, or in this game: the wares you have on you to get to a specific outcome. It is so addictive and you kinda have nothing to lose if you don't succeed in an attempt to get what you want, there is always a next try.

I have not finished the game yet, and I expect to keep playing in the upcoming weeks, but I can see now that I did go for the wrong objectives at first. Trying to get to the next area as soon as possible looked like a good idea, but in hindsight, I can see that I should have focussed way more on cooking and mostly on the upgrades in your camp. I thought I would find more of the required items in the next area and maybe find them more easily over there to then upgrade my camp and some items you will find there but the trades get harder in the later areas and some items you might not even really find there. Gladly in every run you choose to which area you go so I'm not working my way on the upgrades through the earlier areas before going back to the final area.

For the achievements, most of them you get for trading and playing through the storyline. There is this storyline with Hazel where you have a choice of what to do with her axe. Those 2 achievements tied to that are missable because you have to make a choice. However, if you choose one option and close the game before it saves (which it does when you sleep) then you can replay that day and choose a different outcome. You'll find Hazel in the second area (The forest).

There are also a bunch of achievements where you need to own a bunch of items together, for this you need to own them all at the same time, but some can be in your storage and others on you for it to unlock. I don't think those are missable as most of the time when you have traded that item, you will encounter that same person and he still will have that item on him.

I'm looking forward to playing a lot more Fireside and finishing the game myself. I give Fireside 4 out of 5 stars.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 25 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1 + chapter selection
Is there a good guide available: Not yet when I write this. I hope there will be video guides on where to find all the collectibles in the future
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Finding all the collectibles feels as a grind
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Astor: Blade of the Monolith is a great Action-Adventure in which you play as Astor. You'll go on a journey to try to understand the world around you. Some crazy things are going on. However, the more you unravel the more confusing it gets until you find the real answers. I keep this a bit vague on purpose because I think that the story hits much more when you experience it for yourself.

What I love about Astor: Blade of the Monolith is the story in combination with how beautiful the game looks. The game is much bigger than I would have expected before starting to play it. And the further you get the more powers you unlock to play around with. And very early on you get a mount! Which is so lovely in this huge world.

The combat takes a little bit of time to get used to, because the buttons for hitting and heavy hitting are on different spots on the controller than I would expect, but it is quite easy to get used to them and just enjoy the wonderful story this game has to tell.

Many of the achievements are for completing the story, and the others are for upgrading everything and finding all the collectibles. There are also achievements for beating enemies with a specific weapon. Most of those you'll already unlock without even really trying to get them as long as you switch to the new weapon when you unlock it. You can always have 2 weapons equipped: the newest weapon and the second one you get to choose. You can switch between them at any moment and they all feel different.

The only achievement I struggle with is with finding all the collectibles. Gladly there is a chapter selection system, and during chapter selection, it even shows you how many out of how many you already have. Even more importantly, when you get new collectibles, it is saved and you don't have to complete the whole chapter. However, the chapters are quite big, and sections of a chapter are closed off until you get to that stage or get locked out when you get to the next stage of that chapter. So most of the time you can't walk freely around to search for them through the whole chapter. This is one of the things that prevent me from getting the last few achievements at this moment. I wish you would feel more overpowered after finishing the game, but it feels like the strength of the monsters stays the same, so it is never a walk in the park to go back to a previous chapter and rush through it. On my end, I also have a bug during chapter selection that the game doesn't show where the next objective is. The weird thing is, so far the developers haven't been able to reproduce this and they are busy looking into what causes this. I hope nobody else encounters this bug, as it makes replaying older chapters more challenging than it needs to be. I can say that the developers are very responsive and that I found a few other bugs but those were fixed in just a few hours.

I give Astor: Blade of the Monolith 3,5 out of 5 stars.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 10h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this guide [www.missitheachievementhuntress.com]
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: I'm unsure if you can continue after finishing the game.
Grinding Achievements: Yes, collecting all the collectibles is a bit of a grind
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip is an awesome (small) open-world game in which you play as Terry. your parents are on holiday and you are left alone. You have just one wish and this is the right time to go for that.... A car to get to space! So you go to the Job Application Centre to apply for a job... kinda... which comes with a car. And after you get the car it is time to explore the city. Meet some people and help them with whatever they ask for.

I love the world Terry lives in. It is a city without many rules. So many times I saw cars crashed, or waiting in a line for nothing.. but that also makes total sense because if you have one person that parks in the middle of the road (Terry would never do that, would he? :P) then the rest is stuck there as well.

I felt a bit lost at the beginning of the game... it wasn't totally clear what I should do next, but that is because you can do anything you want. There are no rights or wrongs, just go to question marks on the map to meet people and help them out. I would highly recommend destroying boxes and garbage bags because they contain money, and you'll need a lot of money! To buy equipment ( a net, a helmet that will tell you where to find Turbo Trash, a paraglider (PS I would also buy them in that order)), to buy hats, and also for some quests (aka To-do list items).

For me as a Dutch person, it was so funny to see some of the names of people but also places. They are not totally Dutch words but are made up with parts of Dutch words. You don't need to know any Dutch to play Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip but it feels like a little easter egg.

I had so much fun playing TTTT and I love the humor the game has. There are so many jokes, some in plain sight, some a bit hidden but I laughed out loud a lot of times because of the twist something took that I didn't expect.

About the achievements in Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip, I'm unsure if you can continue after finishing the game. The game warns you about going to the finish, so you will clearly know what to do to end the game. After doing that I came back into the world but without any to-do list items. However, I completed them all before going through the ending so maybe that is why the to-do list was clear? Or maybe because you can't continue, which would make sense story-wise. I would also guess that having 450 Turbo Trash on you is missable. However, if you missed that it is quite easy to get that in a new game, and gladly the game has 4 save slots.

What I love about the achievements in TTTT is that they are there for just doing everything. Nothing hidden and you don't need a guide if you don't want to. The ending is so clear that you don't need to know beforehand when that will happen to make sure you did everything. However, it has an achievement for getting every single Turbo Trash ( aka collectible) in the game. There is a hat that will tell you with audio when there is turbo trash nearby and I highly highly recommend buying that very early on to already mop up most of them while playing through the game. This will be the most challenging achievement as there is just trash hidden everywhere. In the sky, underground.. in buildings, at the top of buildings.. as I said, everywhere. I'm so so glad the developer added the Ape Escape helmet (kinda, but it reminds me of that) to tell you when you're close to the trash.

I give Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip 4,5 out of 5 stars.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 2,5h without a guide
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: There are guides on steam with the solution. However, you still have to find the clues yourself.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Probably the one to kick over all the bins. However, you spend almost the whole game in that building, so as long as you do it before solving the last puzzle you're fine.
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: I think that you can play on story mode without missing out on the achievements, but I didn't test this.
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

What a lovely game. It is such a delight! It reminds me a lot of "Frog Detective' but with some mechanics of "Obra Dinn" added and as an extra treat, the game is fully voice-acted.

You (Duck Detective) get hired to solve the mystery of the stolen lunch, however... there is much more going on at the company you visit to solve this game. It has a button to quack and it the loading screens are short, but when they are there, they will throw funny duck facts at you.

Duck Detective is so well done. I love how you could see how many clues to find for each objective/person. This stopped me from overthinking it when it wasn't needed. It was also nice to see that the game kinda tells you when you have enough clues to solve part of the mystery. I suck at this type of game but this one was just great with a wonderful production.

What was a lovely surprise is that at the end of the game, it tells you how others judged the characters in the game, which was nice to see, and while I voted differently, I can totally understand the scores at the end.

Achievement-wise this game has only one missable achievement, which you can complete almost the whole time you play this game as long as you don't fill in the final solution. That achievement is for kicking the bins in the BearBus Office. There are 9 bins (the one in your own office you can kick over but doesn't count). All the other achievements are story-based and can't be missed.

I give Duck Detective: The Secret Salami 4,5 out of 5 stars and I hope we will see sequels in the Duck Detective series!

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 7 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this guide.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Maybe the 1500 collectibles, finding the last ones you're missing can be a challenge
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can use the accessibility features freely and still unlock everything
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Sometimes you instantly fall in love with a game in the first 30 minutes. Pine Hearts did this for me! When the game starts and your first quest is to pet the dog, it is a great start! And after that, it only got better and better. However, I also want to mention that Pine Hearts has very emotional moments. It is based on the creative developer losing his dad in a very short time and while the game is wholesome it also touches on the sad feelings of losing your dad. The implementation of those feelings is done in such a beautiful way. I can imagine how challenging the development must have been with a project so close to his heart, but the love and beautiful memories he has shines through the game and I hope it also helped focus on those beautiful memories.

So why did I fall in love so quickly? It starts with how cute this game looks and there went so much attention to detail. What I love about that is how they highlight all those little details by making it reward you with collectibles. Do you see a crab with a crow? Pet it to get a collectible! Do you see a sea otter? wave at it to get a collectible. There are canons broken? Fix them to get a collectible.

What is also implemented in a great way is the interactions you do with a controller for each interaction you want to do. There is a headlight and it can run out of battery, then you have to take it off your head and recharge it by rotating your left thumbstick. If you want to dig you pick up your shovel and first press the left thumbstick down and then press it up. If you don't like this or can't do this, the accessibility settings have the option to turn this off and have simple controls. Speaking about the accessibility settings, there are so many great settings in this menu. For example, there is the option to standard run, or standard walk, or switch between them with a button press. There also is an option to highlight all the interactive things so it is easier to differentiate between things that are for show and things that are important to the game. It is so nice when a developer wants to include everybody and find ways to implement accessibility features to make the game playable for a wider audience.

Another thing that I love about Pine Hearts is how it uses the Steam achievements to challenge you to do more and find more things to do than the main quest line. Almost every easter egg and little activity is tied to an achievement and this way a lot of people will get to see everything in the game. It is also done well how the achievements are color-coded and by seeing which color you're missing you can know in which area to look for it. And it gets major bonus points for not having missable achievements, so you really can just walk around and find everything for yourself without worrying about missing out on something. The only downside the game had for me is that there is an achievement to find all 1500 collectibles, without knowing in which area of the game you're missing some. I was lucky with this achievement. I had looked at most places, so I only missed 3 at the end of the game, and I could deduct which area I had not looked hard enough and quickly get them that way, but it can be such a struggle and annoyance to find those last ones without a clue where to look. luckily the accessibility feature to highlight interactive things is very helpful when walking around looking for those last few collectibles.

I highly recommend Pine Hearts and give it a 4,5 out of 5 stars.

Venture to the Vile is an awesome but challenging Metroidvania! The story starts a bit slow but it is important to get an emotional connection with Ella and your role in this crazy world. It managed to give you already a rollercoaster of emotions in the first 30 minutes.

There are so many beautiful and great things in the gameplay of Venture to the Vile. The movement feels really really good, which is so important in an Metroidvania. The upgrade system is nice because you upgrade with body parts from monsters and the upgrades felt like good upgrades. The story and world-building are done beautifully. The world feels alive and intriguing. And last but not least the artwork is just stunning, with so many small details. My only criticism is that walking to another part more on the front or in the back felt a bit weird. It doesn't match the movement speed of the character, it is slower.

And loved my time in Venture to the Vile! It is such an addictive game. However, I didn't manage to get far. The second or third boss gave me already a really hard time with the way the pre-fight starts but the real fight was even more challenging. However, I had high hopes to still get through the game because of the accessibility settings which allow you to have more health. After fighting that boss for 1,5 hours or so I finally managed to beat him and got my shiny new upgrade and was well on my way. However, in the area you go next it became quite clear that the difficulty level of the game had increased around that last boss fight and I kept struggling. I'm planning to come back to Venture to the Vile in the future, as it is just an awesome game, but I got destroyed right now and it might just be too challenging of a game for me. (And then there is even an achievement for completing the game in Prisoner's Garb which will make the game even harder than the normal version.

I hope that what you get from this review is that Venture to the Vile is awesome if you love a challenge. The game is beautiful with a very intriguing story and I can't stress enough how good the movement felt!