Agross is a simple survival management game. It is truly basic. The person you control is not even humanoid, it’s essentially a player counter from Sorry! In a way, it makes the game a different experience as you are being told these people are human despite not seeing them that way. For me, I feel that it makes me act differently in the game as I would if they appeared human.
For instance, all the people who worked for me had their health at 20 as I didn’t feed them for 4 days and made them work flat out until they were almost dead. Whereas in games like Sims or Settlers, I’m a little more… morally sound. The carrots looked like carrots, the chickens were chickens, so they were treated as such. The people being nothing more than pawns made me the ruthless overlord of the carrots.
There are a few things I would change, which most would only be me being nitpicky. The only thing I actually think is viable from that list and what other people have mentioned too (where both reviews have the exact wording and seem to have been copied) is changing the market from 12 hours to 8 hours. You know, because most of us like to shove some toast in our mouth before we head out, we can imagine these farmers just stuffing a carrot in their walking off to market.
Pros:
The game works soundly, with no graphical errors or musical bugs.
The aesthetics are simple but pleasing. The simplicity brings out the “simple life on the farm” feeling but adds a sort of sole barren-ness which you have to deal with.
Decent music.
A solid game concept which has been done before, but tackles it in its own way and does a good job of that.
A challenging juggle between “Do I feed my workers, myself, or force everyone to work hard, so we can sell our produce tomorrow?”
Cons:
The lack of humanoid humans brought out the sadist in me, while not even really a complaint, the style lends itself to the minimalism, the other items in the game look more like what they’re supposed to represent.
No upgrade system, for anything at all to make things a little easier over time. Like upgraded tools or cheaper labour.
Only one music track looping over and over again, the music was decent, but 1 track looping is kind of bland.
The hour usage per action could use a bit of tweaking, while I do believe that you could spend 12 hours going to, in and coming back from a market, your character had breakfast before that. The farmers around here drive their tractors with toast in their mouths and their breakfast hot drink in a flask.
The little red cylinder is your farmer or worker.
Price: £0.79 Time To Complete: No Ending Achievements: None Cards: None Worth The Money: Yeah, it’s okay for a £1 game. Definitely good when one sale.
Overall, it is a perfectly sound game, the game is good. For £0.79 it’s honestly not all that bad if you’re into these kinds of management games and can handle the tough starting challenge it presents you. All the mechanics are there for a management survival game. The only thing I would suggest is slight changes to the times and maybe an upgrading system.
Zesty Rating 4 Out Of 10. Has the minimalistic blandness of an avocado, but plenty of people like avocados. I prefer guacamole. A simplistic, farming-survival game. Tend to the chickens, plant some carrots, and don’t forget to feed yourself. Become the ruthless overlord of the carrots, and starve your workers. Barely recommended, but a good grab nonetheless.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
Apsulov: End of Gods was a game that I was really excited to play. It was one of the first games that I’d received from Keymailer that actually looked worth the price that it was. Looking like a finely polished, first-person adventure which had very different elements to it than previous games. It struck my interest and when I actually received the game, I was genuinely shocked and excited considering that the game was released in 2019.
You’re dropped into the game with a very cranky-ass GLADOS repairing you and shouting at you for being a failure. This part of the game sets up the basics, walking, movement in general and interacting with things. Not only that, but gives you the tone straight away. Lulling you into a false sense of security with being nice, and funny, and then literally screaming at you for being a failure for reasons you can’t understand as the player. (which genuinely triggered some fear for me, a bit of trauma, but we okay). From there you escape into vents, run, and get sucked into a giant, glow-y, magical butthole then transported to the Ashlands where you’re attacked by Demodogs, they eat your arm, but you’re then rescued.
The man who rescues you infuses you with a weird robot arm, which you can conveniently charge up with green ion cells lying around everywhere. With said arm, you can unlock doors using biosignatures which you’ve stolen from the hands of dead corpses. Not only that, but you can also use it to force push people and things, and that’s how you solve a lot of the travel-based obstacles.
Honestly, I couldn’t really tell you what the plot was. I have no idea if I just wasn’t listening, or if I’d zoned out because I was bored, or if it was actually given to me. In my head, all I had was “Zap, Zap, out of battery, refill battery, Zap, Ooo that looks cool, Zap.” Which is not an entirely bad thing.
The game tries to combine numerous things together, and as much as I enjoyed the game, I think that is its downfall. Once I stopped to breathe, or got tripped up on an obstacle I couldn’t solve it hit me, I don’t really know what’s going on. This game is supposed to be horror, but I, personally, don’t find it scary at all. There was only one good jumpscare/scary moment, but I forget what it was and where it was. The game also is supposed to be a mix between Sci-Fi and Viking themes. The humans within the game have “found Asgard” and therefore found items associated with the gods of that realm. Artefacts from the one that is known for raising undead, now there are undead everywhere. It’s a classic DOOM story, humans got too ballsy with their inventions, found Hell and were like “Yeah we could use Literal Hell to power our machines.” but instead it’s all the nasty Viking gods. After DOOM, looking at this game, you could replace the fact it’s Viking gods with anything at all, or take it out completely. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m more interested in why GLADOS is a dick because this robot thing is apparently sentient and really fucking pissed off at me for reasons I still don’t understand.
Pros:
The game works, no major graphical errors, bugs, or audio glitches.
The game looks absolutely stunning for being an indie game, and as visual quality goes, justifies the price of the game. It sets scenes amazingly and is not afraid to make things look grandiose, spectacular, and foreboding.
The use of colour in this game is also great, not in an atmospherical sense but from a game design perspective. You always know what something is due to the colour and the glow. The big purple horned monoliths are save points, the big green glowing items on the walls are cell refill stations.
All the controls are really intuitive and there’s no sense of mucking up what you’re doing. Everything is simple and to the point and is really “handy” when solving the puzzles.
The puzzles within the game are easy to spot, as always highlighted with light or made extremely obvious with a bright yellow valve or an obvious ladder you need to blast down to gain access.
Cons:
Despite wanting to be a horror game, the atmosphere just isn’t foreboding enough, and the enemies are not scary. There are no pivotal moments where you feel in imminent danger, apart from the cutscene where the demodogs are out to get you. Otherwise, the game is just dark corridors, boopy doors and the Iron Man gloves. The lack of fear this game supplied meant that things that I would usually find scary were just not doing it for me.
While it’s good that the exploring puzzles are easy and easy to find, so far, there is only finding the hand that opens a door, blasting a ladder down and blasting doors open. Otherwise, there is nothing else but exploring and picking up bits of dialogue from journal entries and other lore snippets.
I’m not sure what the game was really hoping to achieve. It mixes a lot of different cool elements that really catch your interest. I can’t help but feel as though it sounds like an unfinished thought, or a “what if…” statement that was expanded on but never solidified. As said before, it’s essentially DOOM, but instead of it being Hell that humans stupidly messed with, it’s Asgard and the world is at threat of the angry god people’s bad antics.
The story of the game, while convoluted, was also either barely present or easy enough for me to ignore. Generally, I was happy enough in this bliss of ignorance, happily zapping things, but when it came to puzzles that slowed me down, it dawned on me how empty the game felt.
Price: £15.49 Time To Complete: 5 Hours Achievements: 39 Cards: 7 Worth The Money: No, but yes on a discount, putting it under £10, maybe.
Overall, this is a stunning looking and feeling game, which creates a great awe-inspiring atmosphere well, but not a scary or spooky one. It has great mechanics used for environmental puzzles and opening up new areas to explore, but no other puzzles that vary enough to excite the brain. A very mixed review from me, but it’s genuinely a game that if I got around to, I would try to finish it. It has my interest, but not my heart.
In conclusion, this game would’ve been a better game if they’d been trying to rip off DOOM in a way. Taking the fast-paced action and combining it with the “I don’t really know what’s going on because things are going super fast, but I’m having fun” aspect combined with quick and easy puzzles. Throw in a few horror aspects to have the player fuelled not only with the energy of excitement, but the energy of “Oh shit, OH SHIT, AHH! AHHH!” with some horror elements.
Zesty Rating 6.5 Out Of 10. Stunning visually and gameplay wise, but the story is lacking just enough to make you feel something is missing. Interesting premise, but crams a little too much in, making everything feel a tad unfinished. Still a great game for mindless exploration of the fantastic environments created.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
Surprisingly, this game was not one of those given to me by Keymailer, nor was it one that was sitting around in my Steam account for a thousand years. Through having a Steam Curator and actually making reviews, myself, on games for longer than I’d known the person I’d previously made review articles for their site, I’ve received games before. This does not mean it’s been at all successful, or I’ve been popular to be given games to. Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is the second game I’ve ever been given via the Steam Curator Connect, and was given to me on the 29th of November last year. (The other one called, Zibbs – Alien Survival, was given to me on 22nd October 2020, and I still haven’t reviewed it yet for reasons, but will actually be doing eventually.)
I’d initially asked my previous reviewing partner if they’d like to review this game (as I essentially shared their reviewing website, they had an equal share of my Steam curator). They probably took one look at it, saying “uhh no, you have it.”. I more than likely promptly laughed afterwards expecting that response and said “Fuck it, it’s a game. It’s not really much of a waste of time.” Accepted, downloaded it and played it about 2 months after receiving it, punctual, I know.
Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is an adventure platformer game where you, an unnamed, un-aged little girl is travelling across the zombie apocalypse ridden city in an effort to find her mother because “waaah where’s my mummy?” Despite being a child, the main character makes the slightly more logical decision of travelling across the city to find her mother instead of breaking down into floods of tears. Or even screaming and crying for her mummy like any other child would, getting eaten in the process.
She travels through a sort of semi-industrial in-construction downtown area, the introduction area showing you that you can drop boxes on zombies, jump over things and control elevators. Most of the rest of the game is JUST this, which is not inherently bad. There are a bunch of different environments, such as an actual construction site and a sewer level (because god forbid any zombie game avoid having sewer levels). The game does not get more complex in terms of what you need to do to progress. It does, ultimately, use the same factors to make the game progressively more difficult by stacking them on top of each other or making the puzzle a tad more maze-like, making you think about each situation a bit more.
As said before, there’s not much more to this game, and the only thing that drove me to almost complete it was the fact that it was seemingly easily done. Down to its simplicity, it was and is (up to a particular point where it seems it’s physically impossible by the game’s standards to pass it.) easy enough to finish. The graphics themselves were cute enough in a very amateur way, and the puzzles and things were simple enough but also challenging enough to keep me in it. A few times I did debate throwing up my hands and declaring the game broken, but that was all down to a few things that are actually easily fixed.
Pros:
The game has no game breaking bugs or flaws with audio.
It’s a simple side-scrolling platformer that’s easy enough to understand, but still provides an element of challenge for the player with it’s limited functions.
While the entire game is just platforming, between stages there are mini-games where it turns from a 2D platformer into a few different types of games, switching the flow and maintaining interest.
Depending on how much of an “out-of-the-box” thinker you are, it is possible to complete some puzzles a few different ways, which in my opinion makes it that tad bit better.
The goal of the protagonist is easy to follow, and what little story the game has is sensible and doesn’t take itself too far with being ridiculous. There are a few things that seem a bit out of the ordinary, but nothing too huge.
One of the few games I’m actually okay with the protagonist being unable to swim.
Cons:
The major thing with this game that almost had me quit the game was issues with graphics vs hitboxes. A lot of the time, my character would fail to jump at a gap and fall into the fire below. This was due to the hitbox of the ledge being shorter than that of the actual image. My character, while still being on the ledge, visibly was not on the code version of the ledge and would fall through the graphic. This wasn’t a major issue all the way through the game, but led to a few moments that almost stopped the playthrough.
There’s only one type of zombie. It’s a bit of a reach of a complaint, but there is no visual variety between any game’s zombies per level. All had the same ruined appearance, no sludge for the sewer zombies and no high vis jackets for the construction zombies. The variation between backdrops was great, but lacked at the forefront of the game.
The mini-games were necessary. If there had not been the mini-games, then I would’ve stopped playing the game a lot sooner. Other than the shift change between side-scrolling platforming, there is no other pull to this game apart from the fact I “knew” I could beat it and I enjoy platformers.
Another graphical bug that I only experienced a few times with the boxes. When you’re pushing a box, it can sometimes get stuck, on nothing whatsoever. It was prominent in one particular puzzle where you had to move a box to a puddle that was electrified by stray wires, jump on the box and jump over the puddle. That was my first initial thought, but the box stopped randomly, and I could not push it any further. Me thinking in “game logic” I determined that “you may not use the box in this area and must figure out another way around this puzzle”. After attempting another couple of ways, I tried the same way again and the box magically moved further this time, to my disgruntlement.
Price: £7.19 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 4 Cards: None Worth The Money: No, only buy at a large discount. 65% or higher.
Overall, this game is actually kind of cute and semi-competent. A little simplistic, and it’s only redeeming features are the mini-game breaks between scenes and the way that it reuses the same mechanics in actually interesting ways to create new puzzles. It can sometimes feel a bit repetitive and broken, but I honestly never expected it to be as good as it was, to only have those flaws. It’s still not worth the price presented as, while the mini-games are great for what they are, the platformer doesn’t have a lot of content to warrant the price.
Zesty Rating 4.5 Out Of 10 Cute and simple platformer with other elements mixed through. Competent enough to hold its own, but not enough to hold it together. A little buggy, a little overpriced, and the only thing keeping me interested is the mini-games. How does this little girl know how to drive a car and a boat?
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
I'm still hoping that the dev of this game is doing alright, they're one of the few that took a positive influence from the review. Once again, if you're still around, I look forward to what you have planned for the future.
…
Boobie Shaker? [How Do I Verbally Facepalm?]
Another game from Keymailer, this time one that I had high hopes for. Promising classic open-world RPG elements and fun adventures, Gedonia looked like it was a bit of a break from the burden of AAA adventure games without being an indie MMO. Allowing almost full control of doing whatever the fuck you wanted and building yourself from there. And while the promise was fulfilled, I feel like it was fulfilled in the more lacklustre way.
Panning opening scenes and great panoramic views, all done with a low poly, but still nice enough looking design. A great deal of time spent on the opening of the game, making the player lean on the edge of their seats, drawn in and ready for an experience. You exclaim to your dad, who is not your dad, that you had DREAMS! And those dreams make you absolutely sure that if you go to the cave that’s at the top of the mountain… The TRUTH would be REVEALED!!! Cut to your character clipping through the rocks as they climb the mountain and find a cave. You gain control of the character to walk a few metres to find a shrine of some sort when the “ooga-booga” happens, you see some visions and then nothing. That’s it, come back out the other side and make your way back and your character hints to knowing things but never says it.
From here on, I’m a little lost. I feel like the story has just been dropped and there’s nothing, just tumbleweeds. Don’t get me wrong, there’s apparently lots to do, and there are lots that I can find, but usually these games have some sort of overarching bigger quest. While I know that there is a bigger quest, after all the hype and the “exploration” and the big overwhelming seeming “ooga-booga” stuff, it’s just dropped. It’s almost as if it weren’t relevant or never existed in the first place, or like it never really mattered. What I loved about The Elder Scrolls games is that while you have this overarching quest that you knew that you needed to do, and it was very prominent, you could go out and do anything. While you can still very much do the same here, the importance of this quest isn’t gripping enough to give me a pull to the game, and that’s the whole difficulty of balancing aspects of a game like this. In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, the threat was there and it was very real. Within the first 10 minutes of playthrough you’re already introduced to the characters and the types of characters you meet along the way, not only that, but the enemies and the overarching threats are also shown as well. The gravity of the situation hits you as the emperor is killed right in front of you, as the cultists also try to kill you as well. You’re given the royal heirloom that will save the day as a constant reminder of your task and escape the sewers into this free world where you can do anything. This is what Gedonia is missing, this overarching weight and threat. While I feel that it was trying to do that at the start, which is so crucial, it fell flat, which meant the rest of the game as well followed suit.
Pros:
The game works, no game-breaking graphical errors or audio glitches.
The game, while low poly, which is not to everyone’s tastes, looks great for what it is. Bright colour palettes for the first zone which is bright and cheery which contrasts lovely with other areas such as the swamp and the dead-lands.
The focus on exploration is great for an indie game. It has such a vast and open world with lots to discover. Off-stream, I played a bit more of the game and delved a lot further than I had on-stream, and found that the developer puts a lot of great detail into the places of interest.
This game has the start of a great character developer. With a different build for different types of characters and playthroughs, it really allows for some ‘re-specing’ or replayability.
While still a bit clunky and not polished, the crafting system is simple and is tailored to the level or level range of your character. The things you need to craft are not outrageous in comparison to the time and effort needed to find the resources, in tie with how hard it would be to obtain such resources at your level. It’s well-thought-out.
There appears to be an array of puzzles within the quests available. I’ve only came across one puzzle so far, but it was simple enough to solve but just as good. A good balance of being simple yet challenging is hard to find within indie games.
Cons:
This game is in early access, everything is unpolished and unfinished, it is not a finished product. This is more of a disclaimer than a con, but is probably the reason a lot of the cons I have so far exist.
There is a lot of character clipping in the cutscenes (and a little in the game itself) which is a minor flaw, but when watching it took me out of the game a bit.
The “main quest” of this game almost has no weight, which when starting a game like this you need some sort of momentum to propel the player forward, a little push or shove to get the ball rolling. For me, the quick intro and cutscene just didn’t hammer the nail in enough, and more or less hammered it into the coffin for the game. It left me with no motivation to explore or actually see the quest through as I had no urgency, and no sense of wonder as to what the character meant in all this.
The other quests in the game don’t really hit home either. The only quest so far I vaguely had any interest in was the person being constantly hit by lightening, but just like the main quest, something fell flat within the quest that just made me uninterested again.
The environment of the game, while being nice looking and scenic for the art style that it has, it’s very dead, there’s nothing else to it but what it is. Seeming to be full of life, but lifeless all at the same time. The NPCs, as well, also lifeless. While of course, we can’t all have wandering A.I. that have their jobs and schedules, but their animations are also rather flat and dead as well.
The combat for the game is very clunky, stiff, and slow. The dodging is more of a roll or sidestep, and when you’re a low level, it’s REALLY tricky for you to level up when suddenly ambushed by a bear or group of bandits. It’s difficult to tell where I’m supposed to level up because I don’t see any levels above the bar and always feel a bit overwhelmed being a new character.
Price: £9.29 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 16 Cards: None Worth The Money: Yes, when it’s a finished game. Not right now, however.
Overall, this game is in Early Access, there’s not much else to say. Gedonia has been in development for some time and from what I can see in the other reviews and the community for this game, it just keeps getting better and better. It also seems to be another lone dev game, which is something I love. It’s still in Early Access, for good reason, but doesn’t claim to be anywhere near finished. I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to people who want something to follow and love as time goes on, a work in progress and hopefully not a project that may get abandoned at some point. I cannot recommend this to people who want a full game, who long for an experience without pause, who require a robust adventure to fill their soul. I believe that there will be a time that I can recommend this game for that, but that time is not now.
Zesty Rating 4.5 Out Of 10 A work in progress by a lone dev, a promising outlook. Adventure and endless possibilities promised and a great journey to be had when finished. The unfinished part is the only negative, and it’s a little empty, but it’s acceptable by Early Access standards.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
Super Clown: Lost Diamonds was another one of those, “Ah, that will be super easy to play, looks like it has a low skill requirement and made with leftover unity assets from a dodgy car-boot sale.” While being one hundred percent correct in that matter, it did not matter. What is the use of a game if you cannot play it?
As I load up the game, I’m met with a massive spike in GPU in only the menu screen, this continues on through the entire game, but within the loading screen of all things. This should not be something that happens. Through most of my time gaming, I’ve only every experienced issues like this with indie games. The first of which being AffordaGolf Online, my first-ever shit indie game that brought up this issue. My computer specs are as follows: ASUS ROG Strix G15DK Ryzen 7 5800X
Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 7-5800X
Installed RAM Size: 8GB DDR4 SO-DIMM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX3070
Storage: SSD – 256GB, HDD 2TB
Why is this relevant? Well on Steam, it so nicely shows the required specs of your PC to be able to handle said game. For AffordaGolf Online, it seemed as though I was going to swimmingly breeze through the game and have no problems with my GPU whatsoever.
AffordaGolf
But no! AffordaGolf drags my GPU through the dirt and slaps it across the face, and with no option to turn any graphics up nor down, it fucked the rest of my stream for the day. Why, when I have four times the RAM required for indie games, does it shit itself so hard?
Fast-forward a lot of time to my first-ever reviews, grabbing indie games from Keymailer and just taking what I can get. JRPGs, platformers, side scrollers… Anything I can get my hands on that I won’t experience motion sickness playing, give me it all because I want it all. I came across a game called Rent’s Due: The Game (wow great name, where’d you find that?), and I ran into the same issue. Despite having over both the minimum and the recommended “everything” I am still suffering greatly for playing this game. Dragging my PC through the swamp like a horse for it to eventually sink into the mud as I cry over the sinkhole. Why? Why does this keep happening to me? Why is it only these indie games? And specifically the ones that I either can’t change the settings on or when I do “change the settings” it looks like it does fuck all?
Minimum and Recommended For Rent’s Due (Why is it so high tho lmao)
It became apparent to me after loading up Super Clown, that these indie games all have a few things in common, some of which I listed above. The lack of having an option to change the graphical settings, or when you do change the graphical settings, it seems not to have any effect. Another thing however that one of my chatters pointed out to me at the time was the possibility of the game being fully rendered, all at the one time behind the menu-page, not having the levels in a separate instance. When you load up these games, you’re running it all, all the game, all at the same time, even if you can’t see it. All of these games feature the same visual elements too, either low-poly or cheap looking assets. All with such shiny, shiny surfaces, with Play-Doh features and garishly bright colours and conflict with each other.
Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine is what these games have in common, and to a lesser extent, Unity as well. While giving people an easy way to make games and making it so “anything is possible!” and give everyone the keys to making games. I much have to agree with Ego when he argues with Guesteu that not just “Anyone Can Cook.”, in Ratatouille. He does continue to go on about how “…a great artist can come from anywhere…” and something about it being much more moving and recognisable if the artist has come from “humble beginnings” which is certainly true. It’s something, a lot of us who play indie games want, that’s why Stardew Valley and Unturned were such huge hitters. What we get landed with is mostly anything but that! We get people selling the first-ever game that they’ve attempted to make for £10+, when it barely works and hasn’t been play-tested enough by other people (Red Cap Zombie Hunter). It’s genuinely something that needs to be worked on a lot more before it can be worth any kind of money. We get people who know how to cheat the system, and will churn out games that have no effort in them whatsoever. Even turning to stealing assets and claiming them as their own, or taking template or sample games, not altering them and selling them as is! (Abscond)
Do you want to know what you see in the images I’ve used for this review? You see what the developer wants you to see. Of course, that’s what you always experience when you look at screenshots from a computer game on any platform. However, sometimes, heinous things can be hidden behind screenshots taken at a perfect angle.
When you’re looking at your lovely, smooth game that functions really well, what you want to do when putting your game on Steam is to take the best screenshots that highlight the most stunning parts of your game. The most important features or the most awe-inspiring shots that will make people say “Take my fucking money”.
When you’re adding a game to Steam, you NEED screenshots; otherwise it doesn’t let you post your game (as far as I’m aware). The developer for Super Clown needed screenshots, and as you can see already, the scenes look “okay”, they look “alright”, some are a bit “what the fuck is happening with the shading with those hills?” but it’s reasonable. This is because the rest of the game is such an empty shell. If you spin the camera around from any angle you can see the edge of the game, where the landscape falls off the map, where the ground has randomly been raised and haphazardly spray-painted the terrain. The water looks so out of sorts, appearing to be “super-duper-high def water” with the rest of the map looking like it was made from Magic Sand.
In the first-ever level of this game, you spawn on this plateau where there are at least TWELVE help signs that tell you what to do, or how to do things. For each one, you need to press the interact button but THEN click on the exit window. This is while the world is NOT paused, and you can be attacked by little COVID-19 spores that were placed very close to your character. Upon dying, you respawn, but the enemy positioning hasn’t reset, and they are right where they were before you died. On a tutorial level, I’m immediately thrown into a really shitty situation and with no reason for it. Random coins with weird placements that are probably to teach you what things are, with no way off the big rock other than to make a HUGE jump into the water below. This water being so shallow that I may as well belly-flop and get it over with. Now, in the Ultra High Def Water, and the inability to change ANY settings, my PC starts levitating with the amount of work it’s having to do and with the fear for my life I “nope” out of the game.
System Requirements For Super Clown
Above all else, reiterating the fact that indie games, of all games, should not be making my computer sound as if it smokes 60 a day. I have 7 Days 2 Die, and it has a lot bigger requirements and only makes my PC sound as if it has a tickly cough on the odd occasion. There is absolutely no need for this. There will be no pros and cons list because only the cons really matter when the vast majority of people will struggle to load this game up and play it, despite meeting the criteria.
Price: £1.69 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 72 Cards: No Worth The Money: Even with it being on sale for £0.40, I would STILL not recommend this to anyone.
Overall… Yeah, just don’t bother. You probably wouldn’t be able to make it function anyway.
Zesty Rating 0 Out Of 10. A game that looked bearable, easy enough to play, and made with leftover assets. Broken, unpolished, and lack of quality settings for shaders had my gaming PC wheezing like it was winded. Avoid.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”. Due to my PC being professionally cleaned recently, I'm choosing to give most games in which I have these “Computer sounds like it's dying from the flu” complaints another go, or at least another boot up on my freshness. Bearing in mind, these games were played extremely early on in my reviewing “career” meaning my PC should've been 100% sound to play these games regardless.
Here we are, 13 days from when I posted my last blog about moving in, and what have I done since then? Sweet fuck all. Why? Fuck knows.
So we’ll start with the scheduled things. I got my shelving unit delivered on the 9th. That was one of the few deliveries that was on time out of the three. Two, quite skinny and lanky, men struggled to lift the shelving unit up to my flat, up the two flights of stairs. I held the door on both counts, the bottom one to get into the complex and my personal door. Apart from that, my offer to help otherwise was declined. I felt like a massive dweeb, pain in the arse… Apparently one of the dudes wasn’t getting paid? I don’t know. I don’t know why I even brought it up, probably something to do with the fact they had to carry this huge piece of IKEA furniture up two flights of stairs.
So from there, all the little bundles of tat, or “tack”/“tak” as my co-worker (BR) calls it, that were in piles around the flat (neat piles thank-you!) are now all comfy comfy in the shelf. Is it organised? Partially. What’s the other half doing? Shoved on there haphazardly as I just wanted it off the floor so that everyone could do the dinosaur.
So yeah! That’s 9/11 out of the way, thankfully avoided any disasters.
Big pause between the 9th and the 15th. I spent most of my time, between then and… then…, looking for “things”. I know what I need, I just have been putting off getting it, and I don’t know why. Some sort of mental block going on. I believe that’s when another co-worker of mine (DK) mentioned to me about SCS having a sale and the whole 4 years no APR pay monthly thing… Sorry DK, I did look. I still have the tab on my browser open with the couch in my basket. I almost paid for it, but I keep getting cold feet.
So yeah, that keeps happening. I keep getting cold feet about buying specific things. Some things, I can look back on it and sort of pretend I know the reason and nod my head, “Hmm, yeah, I see why you’re being a pussy.” because let’s face it. I can’t drive, and I need to ask people to hire a van to move things (if I’m not ordering it from a company), and the whole MySchedule and ThierSchedule and the SellerSchedule needing to ALL LINE UP. Not only that, but I already had trouble with seller’s schedules conflicting with mine, let alone a third person. I keep seeing fridge/freezers on Facebook Marketplace and other heavy-yet-important-to-home-living items, and I just feel so damn awkward asking for help. So do I procrastinate? Yes, but out of how awkward I feel, I do it on semi-purpose.
Also, it would fucking help if sellers replied to me. That’s another thing putting me off. I’ve come to 17 dead ends with non-repliers when trying to source major appliances. Fucking talk to me, you morons, or take the thing off the marketplace, god-damn it.
Then! Out of nowhere… Depressive cycle. The joys.
So, 15/11 is the day in which I was to “receive” two things. Paint Smart Meter.
I paid extra money to get DHL to deliver the paint to me between 8am and 12pm. This is because the person coming to install the smart meter was to be at the flat between 12pm and 4pm.
….
Not only do I HATE multiple things happening in the one day, I hate it more when they happen at the same time. Especially when it includes multiple people scheduled to be at my place. I don’t want them meeting each other! It’s weird. They make it weird. I make it weird. Everyone gives each other weird looks, and I can’t stand the awkward exchange!
Anyway, so the paint doesn’t come. It’s 13:45, 1 hour and 45 minutes into the time the smart meter guy is supposed to get here. I see the… Seimens… van pull into the car park. He sits in the van for about 15 minutes. Cool. So after 1 hour of him being there, fiddling with things, electric box screeching twice driving me a little loopy, he comes through and tells me that the box that he’s been sent out with, that’s registered to my address, isn’t working and that I have to reschedule. He fit a new box in, so now I also have to phone to get a voucher for the money I lost with him reinstalling another box.
Okay.
So he’s still there, fitting this new box, I received an email from DHL.
“Your Wilko parcel has been delayed by 24hrs.” What. The Fuck.
You bet your arse, I went immediately and made a case about being refunded the difference between a standard delivery charge and the price I paid to have it delivered SPECIFICALLY within those times on that day. I had waited the entire 4 hours between 8am and 12pm at the flat, because I know what it’s like. It says it’s not being delivered yet, but you cross the street to Greggs to get your fucking bacon and omelette roll and look at your phone, it’s already tried to be delivered and being sent back to the fucking depot. I also needed to get scissors. I got really pissy I couldn’t go and buy scissors, because I was hyperfixating on painting something and I really needed scissors. That and I asked my BFF/co-worker (AH) if they required me to pick up her painkillers beforehand, expecting to at least have 30 min between delivery and smart meter. The amount of anticipation fuelled rage…
Smart meter guy is finished putting shit back, and there’s a knock on my door at 2pm. IT’S THE FUCKING PAINT. I’M SO FUCKING DONE.
Smart meter guy’s getting finished up and taking his stuff back to his van, I have my jacket on as I’m about to rush to boots to get the meds and here’s the delivery guy. WHEN I’M JUST ABOUT TO LEAVE. I ALMOST MISSED IT, FOR NO REASON. And, it would be my fault, wouldn’t it?
Later that day I’m with my BFF (AH), I have her painkillers, and we’ve had our walk and our complain while walking the dog. You know, usual friend stuff. I’m doing my usual, seeing her in the door, and she asks me if I want chairs.
Yes? Chairs? What kind of chairs?
Turns out one of her ground-floor neighbours are moving to a bigger flat, which is essentially just down the road, and they’re getting rid of some of their things. Outside their door are some basic white chairs, whether they’re dining chairs or not, I’m not sure. There’s no padding, they’re just wooden round chairs. Haven’t taken a picture yet, but I’ll add it here when I do. They’ve been there for a bit before. I would’ve taken them sooner if it wasn’t for the last time I almost took them, being some football game day. I would’ve felt really awkward and weird walking past at least 75+ people crowding the pavement and street I need to walk down, to head to my flat, awkwardly carrying two white chairs.
(All above text was done while, I think, slightly drunk. I don’t drink, and I tried someone’s pink smoothie tequila shot, and I can see I rambled and ranted a lot. I am going through a stressful time right now, not because of moving, so I guess it took the edge off a bit.)
Did I mention that this entire time, I’m actually off work? I have a fake rota set up in my family house so that I won’t be disturbed while doing my thing. As my family like to completely take over my days off. I’m actively pretending to go to work, to go to my flat and work on things.
So I fucked up my days, and went back to my parents when I’d scheduled the next day to be a 5.30am start. Usually, I’d stay at my flat so that I didn’t actually have to get up. This time, however, I had to wake up at 4am, “get ready”, and “walk to work”. It was about 5:10 by the time I got there, and I just went to my flat and went back to sleep. It gave me the worst headache as I’d already walked the 10-min walk in the cold 5am air, so I was pretty awake, forcing myself to sleep is never good, but it was needed. The cover for me staying at the flat is that I’m staying at my bffriend’s (AH) house, and she’s essentially kidnapping me for a night, so I don’t have to pay the bus fare back home.
22/11
I bought a knife block. No knives. Needed a paint, painted it. The painting of the desk is almost finished, just the small bits left to go, and having to leave them to dry again for 14-16 hours. I never thought it would be so exhausting waiting. The black and gold strips I tried to do didn’t turn out as well as I wanted them, apparently it would’ve been better if I’d used frog tape? But I had no idea that existed until I was looking for more masking tape.
The room I’m painting purple isn’t going as well as planned. After ordering more paint, of the same brand, make and number, and name… it’s a different colour. Looking it up online, I discover that because new paint has more water in it, it’s a lighter colour? Fucking bollocks. Having to repaint the room, at least it’ll take fewer coats. THAT, and I’ve also discovered that what I thought was a nasty pink paint job was actually an excellent nasty-pink wallpaper job. I found this out after coming out of ADHD autopilot after having picked at a bubble in the wall…
I’m procrastinating on getting a fridge freezer and a washing machine after the guys had such difficulty getting the shelving unit all the way up to my flat. I know that’s what they’re hired to do, but I’m a little mentally stuck because I feel bad. The woman next door was getting rid of her cooker, I’m not sure if she’s cleaned it yet because I’m basically never in the flat. She said I could have it once she cleaned it, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever know when that is.
The little cupboard space in the close outside my flat, I’m planning on putting a keypad lock on it so that when I get packages delivered, they can pop them in there. I’ve taken off all the handle and things, but left the little lock hatch on because of “where I live”. Meaning that you can kind of expect any open door you have to be occupied by someone it doesn’t belong to if you leave it open. Sheds, cubbies… Anything that’s big enough to sleep in with a door on it.
I’ve also forgotten how to turn on the heating. I feel like an idiot. I do however have my electric blanket, so I’m not exactly freezing in bed… the entire time…
I got stopped at Wilkos because I was buying cutlery. Kitchen knives, but you know those table-knives, not actually for dicing and cutting things. I need to be over 25 to buy them. I’m bloody 24 and I’ve bought my first house. Just reading up on it there, at 16, despite being able to fuck and marry, you’re still considered a child in the UK (based on what I briefly skimmed on the search results blurb) so if you’re homeless from 16 -17 :
That or both guardians need to sign the lease or whatever? But from 18, that’s you, on your lonesome. Are you supposed to get other people to buy you knives to eat with and cook and prepare food with for 7 years until you’re old enough? Despite being old enough to buy a house?
I still got my knives. I’m proabably not going to use them until I’m 25 right enough at the rate I’m moving, but come on. And, because of the way I am, the woman was like “Are you over 25?” I obviously respond, “No, I’m 24.” and start to get my wallet out to get my provisional driver’s licence. She asks me again if I’m over 25 with more of a say yes vibe, I say no again because I’m not lying about that shit. I got ignored and greenlit on the knives. Okay, whatever. Greatful for the knives but damn, just say “then you cant have them.” and do the job right lmao.
These past few weeks have been weirdly taxing, and I’ve done fuck all.
Another one of these games that I do not remember purchasing. However, Steam remembers it as September the 30th of 2019, and I will take its word for it. But, this is also another one of these games I will tell you to steer clear of, and this time it’s not because the game is bad.
So, here I was, probably on a shady website or browsing Fanatical Bundles. If I’d seen this game on its lonesome, outside a bundle, I would not have bought it. It came in the bundle regardless, and as part of my “I need to get through my massive backlog of games” effort on Twitch, I played it to give it a go.
About this time I was thinking, “Wow, this game cost £0.99, and it’s not bad.”
I’m zipping about in this simple, and minimalistic, but challenging, nonetheless, game, and it’s pretty damn good. Still not groundbreaking or amazing, but nothing like the other shovelware on Steam which they let pass through these days.
Low and behold, I don’t need to look very far, and I find that this game is an asset flip, complete and utter plagiarism. The developer of this game is claiming this game as his own when the rightful maker made this available on Unity.
There are pros and there are cons, but Abscond is not this developer’s game. So, there are only cons here, which are:
“Dev does not know how to make a game” / “Dev is too lazy to make a game by themselves.”
So, what do we do now? I’m downright refusing to acknowledge the “developer” as the creator of this game, and left with nothing to gripe about.
Things like this do leave me to be curious, however. If a “developer” on Steam, is willing to get free assets from Unity, not alter the game in ANY manor and attempt to sell it passing it off as their own… will they benefit?
As it stands, Steam charges the developer $100 per game put through the Steam Direct program, meaning that as soon as a developer puts it up, they are $100 down. Unless you have lots of expendable cash, it’s not money you’d get rid of without being completely certain that what you’re doing is worth it/profitable.
So, the developer, XiNFiNiTY Games, takes a free asset bundle and sells it on Steam without further modification. — $100. If you’re a nerd like me and have Augmented Steam and SteamDB browser extensions, you will be given some useful information, but I’ll touch on that in a second. Looking at the initial data of the game that the regular Steam user gets, you can see that the game only has 9 reviews despite it being “released” in December 2017. You’d possibly think to yourself, “Fuck, maybe it’s just because it’s an endless, simplistic little arcade game that’s not had a ton of spotlight.” Scrolling further down, you’ll see the usual thing of there being actually more than 9 reviews, there actually being 24, which is still not a great deal despite the game being released for 5 years.
The bigger majority of these reviews being negative, calling towards the simplicity of the game, low effort and not being worth the money being asked of it. A couple of others, including myself, using these points others had made along with the fact that the game is an asset flip to point out why it was so ridiculous that it was paid for.
24 is still a small number, but thanks to my add-ons, you get a rough estimate of how many people actually own this game.
Now, as you can probably tell already by looking at the picture. 20k to 50k is not really that much of an “accurate number”, nor is it really all that accurate at all. It’s quite the ballpark range.
Okay… So let’s outsource this a bit, and try a different thing to guess how many people own this game.
Oh…
So, we have the same numbers from SteamSpy, but some huge numbers from PlayTracker. And honestly, on first viewing of that number it seemed unreal and did not want it to be accurate. But concerning the number of reviews, and also looking at that third number (actually the first in the set, but the third that I mentioned), it looks a lot more realistic.
Therefore, on some basic maths, entirely ignoring a few factors such as Steam sales, discounts, and devs giving their keys away to bundle sites: If SteamSpy’s upper estimate is correct, and 50k copies have been sold, then you’d be right to assume that they’ve pocketed $44,900. Which would be absolutely ridiculous.
Even going by the “Owners By Reviews” lower estimate it would still mean that the “developer” made a net profit of $1340, which is still disturbing considering that this is not even their content.
So, looking a bit further into this game, on various blogs, I happened upon a very useful site, or maybe I found it useful as it provided me the information I wanted to see. (Rather than the news I wanted to hear).
A site known as Game-Stats that has a lot of information on games had something more in mind of what would’ve been earned by the so-called developer. Fair enough though, despite being a lot more realistic and what I’d had in mind, it was still unfortunately above the $100 they had to pay to release “their” game. Meaning, at the end of this (if this website’s more realistic looking evaluation of the revenue is correct) they still gained $70 from essentially stealing someone else’s work and slapping a different name on it.
Meaning, if anyone wants to almost double their money, just steal someone’s game and slap your name on it and pop it on Steam, they won’t do anything about it.(obvious sarcasm)
Hi, I’m not finished yet. So, this “developer” can yoink practically an asset pack from Unity, not change anything about it and claim it as their own, gaining almost double their money back.
What if this is not the only time they’ve done this? Or at least, that’s a question that I start to ask myself because I’m a weird one like that and apparently have too much spare time, despite never seeming to have any at all.
XiNFiNiTY Games have 22 games to their name, 6 of which being DLC (Downloadable Content), so we can bring that number down to 16. One of the first-ever games, of which being “Infinity Wings – Scout & Grunt” actually gathered enough reviews from people to generate an average audience score, which is not a good one. What the more early games of XiN have in common is that they’re not the sole publisher of the game, and that OtakuMaker SARL are the ones publishing instead. These games also still not getting great receptions, but looking and seeming to be more fully fledged games than the Abscond rip-off.
The first one that we actually take a look at is another game with a very similar thumbnail to Abscond (in fact, they all are very similar looking in terms of simplicity). Spinning Around is a basic game where you have to fly your Spaceship into the correct colour, while the colour position that you have to fly through changes. You’ve all seen someone playing a mobile game with this concept. This is another blatant rip-off, another asset bundle ripped from the Unity Asset store, a different title slapped onto it and published on steam as their own content. What is the net profit that site predicts this time? $320.
Okay, let’s try another one. Infinity Trip. Another unity asset flip, as the real developers can be seen right here. How much is their estimated return? $56. Okay, thank goodness, nearly everyone reviewing this one knew that it was an asset flip immediately. Must be a more popular asset bundle than the rest.
Stellar Warrior? Phone-game esque, so most likely also stolen. Net Revenue $0 (Seems improbable, yet there are no good reviews at all about this game).
Cubic Color? More than likely. (Can’t find original source). Net Rev $37.
Color Circle? No evidence as far as I can see, but it looks exactly like what they’d usually steal. Net Rev $75. *All “Net Revenue” are estimates made by the Game-Stats website.
So, from the asset flipping, player scamming side of things, we have 13 games that have possibly been attained from the unity asset store. All of which have been turned around, had a new name slapped on top of the old one and put on Steam to be sold as “their” game.
13 x $100 = $1300 So, the devs have spent this much putting the games on Steam, but did they get back what they spent? $75 + $37 + $130 + $260 + $18 + $94 + $0 + $110 + $56 + $340 + $56 + $320 + $170 When you look at it, there are plenty of small numbers that are below the $100 threshold, but a few big numbers. The gamble was really risky, as not a lot of their flips generated a profit, but the ones that did generate a profit only did so marginally in comparison to indie games that have any real effort.
Estimated Net Revenue for all (possible) asset flip games being $1,666. (*Gasp* 666) Provided they paid for each game to be put on Steam, they presumably made a $366 profit, assuming the website is more accurate than the others. This is not amazing, and taking a close look at their profits from each game, if Trigonometry hadn’t done as good as most of the others, they would not have as much of a profit as they do now.
Color Circle
But realistically speaking, however, what if this hadn’t stopped in 2018 and this developer kept selling asset flips? Also bringing to attention, these games are still live on the Steam store, waiting to be bought. This “developer” can still obtain money right now from any unsuspecting buyer. This slow gain of $366 has happened over the course of five years, acting like an offshore bank account or investing in a really slow-moving stock, but it’s still there.
You can probably guess my opinion on the matter. I find it morally unethical, and completely condemn this as while it’s still apparently legal, it’s harmful to the image of “indie”. Not only that, but it damages the reputation and the credibility in the eyes of players towards other games that use bought assets for their games, such as PUBG. Many indie game devs either do not have the skill, time, or the know-how to pursue making their own assets. Buying these asset bundles and game templates are what gives these developers a head start and a clear direction of where to improve from, or what to use, or how to use what they have. Unlike these innocent game devs who use these assets as intended, XiNFiNiTY take templates as they are, change nothing, and slap their name on it.
Call this whatever legal term you wish, forgery, plagiarism, theft. At the end of the day, it’s certainly a scam. You can get the tools to make these games for free, you get the templates for free (sometimes paid, but a lot XiNFiNiTY took were free or cheap), and “make” exactly what XiNFiNiTY copy and pasted yourself.
If you come across any games by XiNFiNiTY Games, then please do not add to their pool of money that should’ve been distributed to the real developers. There are many other better indie developers, and there are many other better indie developers that actually have done the work they are advertising.
The amount of time and research put into this topic could’ve been a lot more, and I would’ve gone further into this if I had the energy. However, this was made a lot quicker due to two characters on Steam. The first being Zaxtor99 TTV, whose review first alerted me to such a thing as an asset flip. I’d always suspected as such, but after playing Abscond and then being shown where it originally came from, I was gobsmacked that someone would actually do this. Secondly, to the person behind the curator calledSturgeon’s Law, Obey the Fist!, who almost had every link to all the assets that were stolen. I’ve also now read a whole Wikipedia article on “Asset-Flips” and an article/interview with Bennett Foddy and am a little asset-flipped out now.
Edit: I’ve been made vaguely aware that it’s somehow possible for developers to cheat the $100 entry fee for releasing a game on Steam by dropping more than one game at a time (or something). I’m not fully versed in this knowledge and can’t find any info on it at the moment. But it does, however, change a lot of the “predicted profit” if these “developers” managed to do this too, I, however, will probably look at this another time.
I expect this series to be longer than the trilogy I did about my move.
So I’ve bought my house, now what? I got the keys and everything is mine, and I don’t really know what to do with myself. The first time I got in, I wandered around then lay in the centre of my unfurnished living room for a good 30 minutes just… existing.
The house’s previous owners showed me how to work everything, which I’ve immediately forgotten, except from the one thing that rarely happens that they taught me how to fix. Funny how I seem to only remember the difficult things. I’ve got a gas card and an electricity key. I’ve got two sets of house keys and 1 key for the downstairs door to the block. A small key to the cupboard outside my flat that has been used as storage, but I will probably use it to dry clothes or something.
And that’s it.
Okay, so that’s not entirely it. One of the customers from my work brought in a spare kettle and a toaster. I have never used a toaster, and it’s crumby as all hell, there’s already a shit ton of crumbs over my worktop now, so I’ll have to find a workaround for that.
And yeah. First day of “moving in” and I have a kettle and a toaster, (that I don’t even really know if they work) fun.
Day two and I’m using time to my advantage. It’s probably not long before my parents figure out that I’ve bought a flat, so I need to use the element of surprise to attack. Hah.
So I have this big reusable bag from The Works, thank you The Works, that isn’t see-through at all AND it zips up. So on this second day, this pishing wet second day, I packed as many boxes as I could carry and zipped the fucker up. No peaking on the inside, no wet on the inside. My mum now thinks I’ve given my co-worker one of my Xboxes.
Carrying that sucker was another thing. It’s not a far walk, but I’m used to carrying everything on my back or doing the “I’M NOT MAKING MORE THAN ONE TRIP FROM THE CAR TO THE HOUSE, SO IM GOING TO CARRY EVERYTHING AT ONCE!” grocery haul.
Dumped all the boxes out and left my bag to dry on the installed jacket rack by the door and went to work… 1 hour and 30 minutes too early. Shit. I could’ve unpacked them.
Baring in mind that all my boxes are full of tat. Books, pens, pencils, DS games, coins, cables… Yeah, I don’t have a lot of useful things to take with me. The only “big things” I’ll be moving from my room will be my TV and my PC. I’ll be moving my old PC tower as well as I’d like to get back into building PCs, and I can at least make a relatively shitty one from spare parts I get.
A couple of boxes down, a few more to go… Then clothes and big things.
24/10
My first ever Facebook Marketplace buy was a tiny little Super Mario Mushroom lamp…
Yep…
I don’t regret it at all.
Biiig time jump. Well maybe not big, but it’s 03/11, 3rd of November for the people who put the date incorrectly…
I currently have a fully functional bed via Facebook Marketplace, and one of my co-workers (AH) knew them and greenlit the purchase. Amazing.
Went into Wilkos for the duvet, duvet sheets, pillow sheets and the pillows. No disappointment there. Except the fact they never have the tester pots of paint I want, but have the full canister, but when they have the tester pots and I buy them, and they’re the right one, I come back and there’s none of the big pots. Fuck sake. I now have one wall fully painted purple, 3 walls with a half coat, a tiny tub of “Lemon Pop” to test and see if it’s the rubber duck yellow I want.
A lot more of my things are now at the flat, I transported my first bag of clothes today that only really consisted of 6-ish items. My rucksack is great at carrying objects, but gets full after 6 clothing items, because they’re all kinda puffy, you know?
I’m getting a smart meter put in on the 15th of November for free, and I’m getting a bookcase/display shelve unit thing delivered on the 9th that I’d reserved earlier. Still not got a microwave or an oven or a sofa or a washing machine… but we’ll get there. I just keep getting distracted by shiny objects such as TRIO BINS!!! FOR SPLITTING YOUR RECYCLING. And MATCHING MAGAZINE HOLDERS! And STORM CLOUD PREDICTOR!!! Yeah, I need to fucking settle down. ADHD man, the “SQUIRREL!” thing is slightly incorrect. It’s more of a magpie vs shiny things and priorities.
Update on the kettle and toaster, well no, just the kettle, I don’t actually have use for a toaster. The kettle works, albeit it’s fucking slow to boil 1 cup worth of water.
I now have an uninstalled 50-inch TV from one of my co-workers (DK). Their old TV mind you, I have no idea what they’re upgrading to but the fact they gave me that for free is mind-boggling. Hoisting that up my 2 flights of stairs was fun, as was hauling the double bed mattress.
Assembling my bed was probably one of the best, and funniest moments so far, and it’s probably one I’ll remember for a bit too long. One of my co-workers (BR) came over and sat down and helped me build it. 5 minutes in, and she’d already smacked herself in the head by essentially headbutting a piece I’d been holding up with my foot/knee for the entire time. I learned so many new swear words that day and that I should really keep an eye on such a clumsy person like that, making MY bed. She does claim to be “the best” however, at almost everything, I just remind her that she’s Bob the Builder as Bob is short for her full name and she has a toolbox. I did however have to say “hello” to my downstairs neighbours again, just to remind them that I’m not an English bitch that swears so much she’d make a sailor blush. Not THIS sailor, however! I blush at EVERYTHING!
I’ve slept in the house… maybe like 4 times now. It’s starting to feel like mine. I don’t know if a lot of people get this kind of imposter syndrome, but I started really noticing it while I was with my last girlfriend. I can’t sleep in someone else’s house, in someone else’s bed. I just can’t. I mean, I can when I pass out obviously, but I can’t go to sleep comfortably, and I’m constantly on edge during that too, the slightest noise will wake me. It was the first experience in my flat when I slept in my new bed for the first time, (also because the mattress isn’t as sturdy as the one at my parent’s and I just sank, and it was weird.) and it was the same when I slept in my ex-girlfriend’s bed with her and when I slept in my co-worker’s bed when I was looking after her flat and cats while she was on holiday. It’s just odd. But I seem to have got over it, and honestly, I’m preferring this a lot more. Except the stupidly over-soft mattress. I’ll change that when I can be bothered.
But yeah, it’s honestly looking great. I’ve just got my council tax letter, and it’s all looking like I’ll have all the bills in check soon.
The people who said I wouldn’t be able to handle this were so wrong… It’s actually weird how wrong they were.
The proposed settlement date was on the 14th of October 2022. And we’ve missed that mark. Not because of me, and not because of the seller, the solicitor or anything to do with the whole purchase itself. God-damn postal strike.
And hey, I know we gotta strike. I understand the striking. I’ve only ever worked in a food-place, so while I’ve not been under the immense pressure of service-style jobs, and key workers experience as a whole. I’m maybe one or two tiers above that. I’ve more than dipped my toes in that steaming bathtub, but I haven’t got down to the point where you have to brace yourself as you’re about to lower your sack/coochie into the boiling water, but I can imagine it.
But UGH. Now, someone who, as a type of key-worker, has to wait until these “Saturday and Sunday Aren’t Working Days” people to deal with my stuff… which will be Monday. For anyone that knows me, I do have quite a few bones to pick with weekend people, but moreso for the fact that the entire business is shut down for 2 days of the week. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to jobs being a 7-day service, but it’s super niggly. I’ve worked in a Fish & Chip shop, Caravan Park cleaning vans and again at the same caravan park pouring pints. Now, working at Greggs it’s the same thing (not complaining about Greggs). People have got their days off, and it’s been whichever, and someone else was working that day instead to continue service. It’s probably the autism talking, but that makes 100% sense to me, regardless of the business being run. I’m struggling to try to think what business wouldn’t work on a Saturday or Sunday.
But yeah, this is just a big complaint about fucking “business days”, like fuck your business days, every day is a business day if I’m working. This week, I had Tuesday and Sunday off. Next week it’s Thursday and probably Sunday again. The week after, god knows, probably 2 “weekdays” off. I’m just irritated and whining that I can’t get my house sooner.
I’m easily irritated when I’m excited for something.
So.
Closing Statement here. £6,666.06. I immediately thought of my friend and how she would, “Fuck no. Fuck buying that house. That’s a fucking sign.”, and drop it. Brandishing my “devil’s number” and my declaration of “I definitely do not own a house and have never bought property before, please believe me”, I hand it in to my solicitor. Promptly following getting home I receive an email of where to put the rest of my dosh and boom. I’ve gone from 13k in the bank to 2k. And believe me, spending money has never been scarier.
I’ve spent a lot of money before, but never this much. I’ve given a lot of money before (more than I’ve ever spent on myself at any one time, because helping others in need is so much more important.) and even then… it’s still scary. I’m going to have to be paying money for the rest of my time to pay off the house, house insurance, life insurance, council tax, gas bills, electricity, Wi-Fi… food. This is such a massive jump and I just took the leap of faith like I’m on the Red Bull diving championships.
My settlement closes on this Friday (21/10/2022), and I couldn’t be any more excited or freaked out. I’m keeping this post until I get the keys or something else happens. I want to split off the after-purchase blog for the next part. Makes it a lot neater in my brain.
And so this is it!
Friday the 21st of October 2022, I am officially a house owner and a did a lil stweam to show you guys not only the flat, but my mind-state. I’m fucked.
The settlement was on the Friday, and then I was just told, “Yeah, they have your keys, you arrange with them when you want to take the keys from them and yeah…” That was kinda “Oh fuck…” My mortgage advisors have been chasing me for my key-date for ages, and it’s just… now? Cool…
But yeah, I got in and lay in the middle of the living room floor for a bit. Got up and streamed and painted a huge patch of yellow on a pink wall. I’m going back to do it again because it didn’t really do much, and I really want to incorporate yellow and purple in my office space. But yeah. Yeah…
This is fucking huge and I have no idea what I’m doing. Fun. But I’m happy. So much happier.
Come a couple of days after my first post, I received my mortgage offer and mortgage info package from the provider that my advisor got into contact with. Furthering the depth of how much I’ve been thrown into this largely insane and intense worry about this bog-standard thing that people apparently do once every 23 years? Mind you… Coming to that whole, “once every 23 years” thing, I’m technically only 1 year behind being 24. Not bad.
The day after, I’ve received my solicitor’s email asking for when I wish to settle the transaction.
Uhhhh… Soon? ASAP? Now? In a week? I don’t know… When do you think is best? I legitimately have absolutely no clue on a good when for this. So instead of answering or not answering, I ask some side questions about what things I would need to do, and if I should have spare time set aside to do it. My man knows my game and suggests a date while also letting me know what needs to be done. He knows the game.
So, here we are, with a settlement date and just kinda waiting for things to fall into place.
3rd of October, I received a few more documents concerning what I’ll actually be buying. Layout of the flat and the ground surrounding it. What’s mine and what’s equally my responsibility as much as every other neighbour. The solicitor’s checks and stuff.
I have my co-workers arguing with me over whether they’ll be buying me Christmas decorations as house-warming gifts, and my unfiltered, reflex response was “You better fucking not.” As much as the idea of people buying me furniture/furnishings for my flat greatly embarrasses me and completely feels uncomfortably out of the norm, I’m trying to get them to communicate with each other. There is no reason for me to have 5 kettles, but if they don’t know what each other is getting, then that’s what’s going to happen.
“I am a man… with 5 ovens!!”
More documents and guess what, these are signing documents!!
Declaration of Occupancy and the big nasty agreement that if I fall behind on mortgage payments, then the bank gets to repossess my flat. Nasty.
For these documents, you need a witness to sign as well after watching you sign them. It’s recommended that it’s not a close family member, someone who’s going to be living with you or someone you’re close to. So, the manager at your job is probably a good bet. Getting those signed and also having a read over the qualified acceptance to make sure there’s nothing I don’t understand… which realistically, who is even sure they ever fully understand these legal jargons apart from lawyers… All I need to do now is close my Help To Buy ISA, get the closing statement and hand it over to the solicitor, along with the other things I signed and that should be it!
At this point, I am also going to be making a pilgrimage to every charity shop that stocks furniture and: 1. Asking if I can reserve furniture, and if so, how long is it reserved for. 2. If I purchase furniture, how long can they hold it for. As if it’s big items, I may need a hand getting it to my flat. 3. General prices and items held at that shop. I’ve noticed that each shop is a little different. I’m uncertain if this is down to limits on things they can accept, standards on what they can accept, or just the customers they tend to get. There are a lot of charity shops where I live, but most only have clothing and knick-knacks. So, I, personally, would assume, if I didn’t know any better, that any furniture I have would either have to be dumped or sold second-hand as there’s no “furniture charity shop”. I could possibly stop people at the dump and try to commandeer their stuff. However, it’s a long walk out from where I’m situated, and our local dump requires you to reserve allocated time spots to dump… so… no one really goes any more.
And an update from previous post about having a bed, that is no longer the case. It’s been a while since I was offered it, and they couldn’t hold onto it for that long. That and I’m pretty sure it was just a single bed, but I was never told, and that’s not what I’m looking for anyway. I do, however, possibly have a toaster and a microwave. But that was from a rapid word of mouth from someone who is not really around all that often any more, so I’m not putting all my eggs in that basket.
The plan is, fridge-freezer, washing machine, bed. Couch (fold down double bed), Chair (fold down single), Kettle, Microwave.
jinxlgamez
Leighann Paige
Doubtful Player 