Recent reviews by Soynta

Pretty good

I've been with this game since the very early access days. It's changed a whole lot over time, mostly for the better but somewhat for the worse.

In the state that the game is in now I would definitely say it's worth its pricetag, the "story" is alright and the graphics are pretty great but the gameplay is where it shines.

While its not perfect, the base aspects of the game are good enough for the rest of the game to stand on it. There are multiple ways to play and a decent progression system which is good to progress through. The replay value is the best aspect since there are many different modifiers, areas and tools you can use. Add to that the fact that many temples are procedure generated, and you have almost endless replay value.

As for the multiplayer aspects, i cannot speak for it now as i only used it during early access, but the ability to follow your friends on their own runs after they have died is the best part of the multiplayer. Due to the rather lacking playerbase, at least when i played, there werent many people randomly in temples for me to see.

Overall i think this is a good game even without the multiplayer gimmicks and even if you only play through the "story mode" you'll still have gotten your moneys worth.

Womp Womp

It's aight

As someone who initially found out about this game from snoot-game I'll straight away say that there isn't much in common between the two other than being visual novels.

The characters are all very different and nothing like the Snoot-game versions, and the actual story is way different because it's not a dating visual novel it's just a regular ass one.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game, but there is some need for polish and changes. Mainly basic visual novel things like pausing, manual saving and skipping.

The story is good and the occasional gameplay parts are also quite fun, the only issue I have is that there isn't a way to replay them.

Overall, it's a good game but if you're thinking of getting it ironically or because you loved Snoot-Game, you might want to rethink it.

Truly the dark souls of xcom games.

Came for the Snitties stayed because the aliens have made significant progress on the Avatar project. If we're going to slow them down we'll need to move fast.

So while Carrion isn't a bad game it certainly isn't spectacular either.

As a small game which is a bit of fun where you get to be a cool monster with cool abilities, it's great.

The art style, the general gameplay loop and the vague story are all good and make the game good enough to pick up on a sale.

The bad things make it not worth it to get at full price. The main issue is backtracking without a map. While mostly it's just for 100% there are one or two times where you need to backtrack for the story. The problem is no map, it is really annoying to try and go back to a specific area you know you missed something when you have no idea where it is.

Something I only found out in the last hour or two of the game is that the Hub world and the actual levels are completely separate, there is a point quite early in the game that makes it seem as if getting to the next level requires you to find the entrance to it in a previous level, but that is not the case. This might have been obvious in hindsight but I managed to miss it.

Overall it can be pretty fun but if I had bought the game instead of getting it as a gift I might have liked it quite a bit less.

Good rogue-like, good colony sim. Not the best at either but good enough at both. The game's real merit is its charm from the art, music and decent story.

Hidden Deep has great potential for being an amazing game but is currently held back by a large amount of jank/bugs and some poor-level design choices. I haven't fully finished the game as of yet but I am on the last level and I doubt it will completely change my mind about the whole game.

The story, atmosphere, graphics, and everything else like those things are great. The story is vague but there is some sprinkled around. The enemies and environment look great. The soundtrack is kinda small for the most part but it is good. There is voice acting (though mine stopped working at some point which may just mean it is not in the newer levels) that is pretty good, some parts sound kinda out of place but overall the voice actor was good.

The gameplay is great when it works. However, there are quite a lot of times when it doesn't work. The main 2 things you'll do in this game are move and shoot.

Movement is split between 2 classes, scouts and engineers. Scouts get the grapple hook and rope, the grapple hook is a lot of fun to use most of the time but some things make it painful to use. When the hook is equipped your view distance increases, but when you shoot it your view goes back to your character, this just means if you are shooting a hook at something far away and you miss, you'll have no idea why or how to correct yourself. Having the camera stay where you are looking would help a lot but also just having your player character say something to give context as to why the hook missed/didn't stay in whatever you shot at. The rope is simple, you go up to a ledge and press a button, then your character throws some rope off the edge after nailing it to the ground, letting other characters climb it, sometimes it will result in a rope that is annoying to climb because it gets blocked but you can fix that by just wiggling your character. The issues with rope are that you have to jump to get on it even if it's on the floor, minor annoyance most of the time but can be worse if it leads to falling, the ziplines made with the grapple hook have the same issue, you have to be in the air but not for too long otherwise you'll be too fast to grab it, just annoying but not a problem. The other issue with rope is larger, the fact you have a limited amount, which leads to soft locks, which ill explain more about later.

Engineers don't have any direct movement options like scouts but they use machines. For the most part, these are all fine, but they have their jank like everything else, the main issue I have with engineers is how easy it is to get something stuck in an area where you can no longer access it which makes you soft locked and have to reload a save.

The movement that is an issue for both classes is generally moving around. It's fine most of the time but there are still quite a lot of times when your character won't grab a ledge and you'll plummet 5 meters to your doom. Or you'll have a slight increase in ground height, which means you have to get a running jump, again it isn't a massive issue it's just annoying to deal with.

The real problem I have with this game is the crashes and the soft locks.

Maybe my game was extra unstable but I was crashing after most missions, meaning I had to go back and do all of the last checkpoints, which was annoying on some levels. I also crashed randomly a decent amount of times while just playing, which meant I had to redo quite a lot of content because the checkpoints aren't super consistent.

Soft locks I dealt with less of but still had to handle, vague spoilers ahead, some levels I had some boxes get stuck in an area that I could no longer move them, which happened pretty easily and meant I had to completely restart. It just seems like poor-level design when I can get stuck in a pit and can never get out, there is an option in the menu for when your character is stuck but this simply sends you to the most recent spawn point, which can be in the same place you are stuck, obviously this is to prevent abuse but it essentially means this button is useless half the time.

Overall this game was fun when it wasn't broken or made me do something for the 3rd time. It is also only being worked on by one guy so I understand why things are slow, but unless the jank is lowered by full release I'm not sure ill be able to keep recommending the game.